The secret of KJs processing!

-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 Im a perfectionist, this keeps my quality from degrading as I process, reprocess 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. Im sure you rock at exposure though, so you wont 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 ips. The greens G I was also careful with, pulling the line slightly down to the right on the lower half, making the shadows moremagenta, and the opposite on the other half (making the highlights greener). (Move it around till you get a result that doesnt look too horrible, but remember that you cant do all the colors at once, so its hard to see what its 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 its still really boring. Id been hoping to use some nice yellowy stray light on this shoot, but it was cloudy and the sun didnt 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 youve painted places that arent 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, youre 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 dont 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 Im 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 Ive already done. Thats it I hope you understood at least some of this!! Good luck, and be sure to show me your results with this technique! Love, Ganesh Bachkar