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The Following is an excerpt from the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5, a
preset system designed to take you from Ordinary to Extraordinary photos in just a
few seconds and clicks.
In this article, we have a beautiful bride who designed an amazing red dress with
a lot of great details and jewelry. We want to edit this photo so that she has a nice
soft portrait look and the details in her dress remain sharp and crisp. To do this,
we’re going to be utilizing similar techniques in production as we covered in the
previous Soft Flattering Color Portrait tutorial. But, we are going to go through the
added step this time of utilizing our brush presets to make the image details pop.
The written article is below, and if you like, you can also watch the original video
tutorial towards the end of the article.
Here’s a quick sneak peak of our image before and after we’re done with our edit.
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 1 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
Since this is a portrait, we have a preset that gets us to a nice soft portrait look
quickly which we discussed in detail in the previous Soft Flattering Color Portraits
tutorial. This preset adjusts the develop settings so that portrait skin tones looks
nice and soft, and it also desaturates skin tones via a slight modification to
Vibrance and Saturation to help even out skin tone colors. We also increased our
exposure to +0.70 because an overall brighter image will look more flattering on
our bride. Personally, I want to go with a more neutral/white look for the image, so
that the red in the dress truly pops. So we’re going to adjust our Temperature to
4500. Here’s what our develop settings look after our preset and manual
adjustments are applied.
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Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
In the HSL our Red and Orange have been decreased slightly because once again,
we want to subtly even out skin tone colors.
HSL
Red: -20
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Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
Orange: -10
In the Details our preset gave us the perfect amount of Sharpening and Noise
Reduction. The Sharpening settings are doing a great job of showing the intricate
details in the dress, while using a little bit of Noise Reduction to smooth out pores
and fine detail in our subjects skin.
Sharpening
Amount: 70
Radius: 1.5
Detail: 10
Masking: 30
Noise Reduction
Luminance: 15
Detail: 70
Contrast: 0
Color: 25
Detail: 50
Our preset also adjusted our Lens Vignetting to +30, because we want a nice even
edge to edge toning.
Lens Vignetting
Amount: +30
Midpoint: 30
Now we’re going to do some more post processing with our Brush. The first thing
we want to focus on is the beautiful red dress. We’re going to set our Brush
settings for Clothing and Texture and apply it everywhere but her skin. If you press
“O” you can bring up the brush mask overlay and see where the brush is being
applied. (See video tutorial below for reference)
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 4 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
When you apply a brush onto your image, a “pin” will appear on your image (Press
“H” on your keyboard to hide/reveal pins). If you click on the pin you can decrease
or increase the strength of the brush settings by left-clicking and dragging to the
left (weaken) or right (strengthen). We want our adjustments to be a little more
subtle so we slightly decreased the strength of the brush.
We like the window in the background because it helps compose our frame, but
there’s a distracting bar in the middle. For this particular image, we could keep the
frame since it does a great job framing our subject. But, just to illustrate how
capable Lightroom is, we’re going to remove the window entirely, making this a
high key image with a nice bright background. To do this we’re going to use our
Brush with strong dodge settings and apply it to the window.
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 5 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
If you have additional questions, watch the video tutorial below to see exactly how
this affect was applied.
Exposure: 4.00
Contrast: 1.00
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Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
Highlights: 1.00
We want to apply the brush to the inside of her hands, but it’s a tough spot to
reach because the area is very small. This is a great place to use Lightroom’s Auto
Mask function.
Her hands are slightly underexposed so we’re going to add a graduated filter and
set the exposure to +0.90. We are then going to drag the filter from the bottom left
of the image to her bracelets.
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 7 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
We also want another subtle graduated filter for the back of her veil, so we’re
going to set the exposure on this filter to +0.30. We want to drag this up from the
bottom right of the image to her bicep area just as we did for the previous
graduated filter shown above.
Now that we’re done with the dress, we’re going to go back and touch up some
details on our bride. The first thing we’re going to do is select our “Hair and
Lashes” preset. This will give some nice contrast and sharpness in her eyes and
eyebrows.
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 8 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
Contrast: 10
Highlights: 20
Shadows: -10
Clarity: 15
Saturation: 10
Sharpness: 25
After the eyes, we’re going to move onto the lips. We’re going to select our Brush
preset for lips which will give us some nice color and contrast on the lips.
Contrast: 15
Clarity: 15
Saturation: 20
Sharpness: -10
Noise: 10
And now we are left with our final image. Here’s a before and after of our portrait.
Before
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Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
After
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Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
If you would like to see exactly how all of the settings and adjustments were
applied, please watch the video below from the SLR Lounge YouTube Channel.
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 11 of 12
Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement in Lightroom 4 and 5 - Digital Photography School 02/04/15 1:31 am
We hope you all enjoyed this tutorial. If you are interested in learning more or
purchasing the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5
http://digital-photography-school.com/color-portraiture-with-retouch-and-enhancement-in-lightroom-4-and-5/ Page 12 of 12