Unemployed Ben

There is a lot of debate in the world of photography about what is the hardest picture to take, some swear that sports photography is the most difficult and its hard to challenge that theory except for the fact sports photographers have the greatest and most up to date equipment. So for my money I think the portrait is the most difficult picture to take and for one main reason, it is incredibly hard to capture that moment that defines an individual.

The uniqueness of the subject is near impossible to capture as they have their guard up and tend to be stiff. Add to this the various issues of fake smiles, closed eyes, uncooperative kids and you have a shooters nightmare. Even in the best of circumstances you can take a great photo of a subject that genuinely has a beautiful smile but has a complexion problem that detracts from the photo. Most customers don’t come to a photographer to see their acne accentuated for all to see, they want the Cosmo look but aren’t willing to pay for it.

Correcting facial blemishes issues on a close-up portrait photo can be a time consuming and frustrating process that often ends up in a plastic look and an end result that is less than ideal. There are many options out there for professional cameras but they come at professional prices that can be more expensive than PhotoShop itself. Fashion photographers don’t hesitate at purchasing such photo filters as they have become essential in the fashion industry, and yes even Giselle Bundchen and Alessandra Ambrosio get the occasional pimple.

So after trial and error and many long nights trying to speed up and improve my digital work flow, I came across a product that has become one my most trusted tools. The product is called Noise Ninja and can be had for as little as $34.95, which I believe pays for itself the first time you use it. It is a standard PhotoShop plug-in but it has something special, a vast amount of digital camera profiles that can be downloaded for free to help you get the absolute best results possible. The result is skin that looks as smooth as a baby’s bottom and amazes everyone that is lucky enough to have had their photo taken by a photographer that uses the amazing product.

Don’t think this is just for portraits either, anywhere that has a low light situation that causes you to pump up the ISO will have the benefit of this product as well. Previously unusable photos are brought back to life with a product anyone that is serious about taking good photos should have in its arsenal. Thanks for stopping by

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After

Today I’d like to share with you one of my favorite and easiest PhotoShop tutorials. We’ve all been in that situation where it seemed as though we have taken a pretty good photo but when we get back to check it out on our computer the photo just doesn’t pop. Take a look at example A below, this is a nice photo of a boat in near silhouette at sunset and yet they colors are pretty bland, it makes a pretty ho hum picture.

Of course there are many things you can do to the photo to give it a little more polish, like increasing the color balance in the water, sky and clouds. But after all that work it just doesn’t seem to be a very honest representation of the original photo.

My answer to these types of situations is the following:

1. Bring the original photo into PhotoShop (File - Open)
2. Create a duplicate layer (Right Click - Duplicate Layer)
3. Set Gaussian Blur to 2.0 (Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur)
4. Create Overlay (In Layers tab change Normal setting to Overlay)
5. Merge layers (Shift+Control+E) and save image

In the example image below you can see how the colors are vibrant and stunning, it also keeps the integrity of the original image. To lessen or strengthen the effect you can experiment with altering both the gaussian blur and the overlay opacity. Good luck and thanks for stopping by.