The secret of KJ’s

processing! Ö
-an extensive tutorial
OK, so since several of you have asked me to share my processing secrets
with you, I will.

First, I open the photo in Lightroom:

I then right click it and open it in Photoshop, as a .TIFF-file (since I’m a

perfectionist, this keeps my quality from degrading as I process, re-

process and edit my re-processed photo).

Then comes the fun part:

A lot of my work is done in Curves (RGB), and my diagrams usually take on
similar shapes (even if the strength varies).
For this particular series, I started out pulling up the brightness, while
keeping the very darkest tones (in this case her hair) at the same level or
slightly darker. (Remember, most these photos were darker than I wanted
them to be - partially because of my poor exposure skills, partially because
Norway has literally no light in December and partially because I was
afraid the highlights would be blown out, and
wanted to be able to control them carefully.
I’m sure you rock at exposure though, so you
won’t need to keep that in mind. )
I then went to the red – R – part of Curves, and
pulled it slightly up from a point somewhere
in the middle (you know what I mean,
right?), just to bring out the warm, red tone
in her cheeks and lips. The greens – G – I
was also careful with, pulling the line slightly
down to the right on the lower half, making
the shadows more magenta, and the
opposite on the other half (making the highlights greener). (Move it
around ‘till you get a result that doesn’t look too horrible, but remember
that you can’t do all the colors at once, so it’s hard to see what it’s going
to look like in the next minute.) As for the blues – B – I went to the top
right corner and dragged the line slightly down along the right side,
making the highlights yellower. I then placed another point closer to the
middle, and a third point on the lower half of the curve, making shadows
bluer. If done right, this makes your tones softer, smoother and dreamier.

OK, great. Now I had a nice, wintery photo, but it’s still really boring. I’d
been hoping to use some nice yellowy stray light on this shoot, but it was
cloudy and the sun didn’t really show.
So, after a few minutes of thinking about what to do, I tried painting on
some random color, and bingo - interesting shot right away!

I started out with painting on some white on a new layer, with a soft brush
just large enough to look natural without covering her face. (Make sure
you choose the places where the light would naturally come in – usually
from the top or side.) The opacity was 100% and blend mode Normal.
When happy with the shape, I changed the blend mode to Screen and
lowered the opacity. I then picked up the eraser (where I chose to set the
opacity down to around 20%) and removed the parts that looked unnatural
or too much. Then, opening another layer, I painted on yellow on top of
the white and set that to Screen or Overlay, depending. The next layer I
used was a bright, warm orange gradient, covering the same areas that
we already painted. (If you’ve painted places that aren’t ease to cover
using a gradient, just use the brush tool as shown earlier.) Set this layer to
someone like 60-80% and Overlay.
Remember, you’re gonna have to play around a lot with the blend modes,
order of the layers and opacities to get it just right, and keep erasing the
parts you don’t like on each layer. The steps described so far usually takes
me no less than 45 minutes to an hour to complete!

When I was somewhat happy with how it looked, I moved onto her cheeks
and lips. In some of the photos, I chose a brush the size of her cheeks,
picked opacity around 50% and painted them pink. I then set the layer to
Soft Light and approximately 10%. The same thing was then done on her
lips (albeit on a different layer).

Finally, I added a dark blue/navy-colored layer on top (I

used #2579a4, but feel free to go darker), and set it to
Exclusion 3-11% (psst, this layer might work better
underneath all the ones with solid color). Also, in a couple
photos I painted a layer with a dusty red/rose tone, set to
Color around 2-8%, and a bright orange layer set to Screen,
around 3-5%.

The layers palette for one of the photos is as you can see at
the side here. As you can tell, I often use several layers for
a single operation. (The bottom layers could be replaced by
a single or several Curves adjustment layers, but since I’m
currently working in Photoshop Elements, I have to
duplicate the original image and use a plug-in for Curves.)
This gives far greater control, and allows me to go back at
any point and change things I’ve already done.

That’s it – I hope you understood at least some of this!!

Good luck, and be sure to show me your results with this
technique! 

Love, Kj.