Engagement Photo Fix Help (photo attached)

[Visuals]

hey guys, this is my fist engagement shoot and I don't know how to go about post processing. I've been searching the internet for tutorials on how to sharpen eyes and get that vignetting effect with no real luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Visuals

[italianfemmy]

For some reason, I could not use the unsharp mask, so what I did was used the magnetic lasso and selected her eyes one by one and then went to
Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen and did it only once for each eye. I really don't know how to do vingetting myself unless I open a RAW file.. then it gives me the option to do it right there. :

[RazorAngel]

I'm procrastinating sorting through 1000+ photos I took at my last wedding... so I'm enjoying working with other people's photos. For some reason it always seems more fun than working on my own.
Anyway, I know you're looking for techniques, but I don't have much in the way of techniques to teach. What I can tell you is I got the following result using a combination of KJ's Outdoor Actions Set and Kubota's Action Set II. (South Beach Tango + Amazing Detail Finder)

It changes the darkness of the skin a bit ... but I rather like the overall effect.

[picturecrazy]

Ok, here is what I did to the file.

Ran kubotas LOTR-Everyday action, masked the eyes, ring and mouth off in the "softly part" sublayer, set opacity of the entire action to about 40%. This instantly softens the skin a bit and makes the eyes look sharper as a result.

I then applied a very light curve, as LOTR already applies quite an agressive one. IF you don't have LOTR action, you can try applying an agressive curve and then adding a bit of diffuse glow for somewhat of a similar effect.

Added Image->adjustments->Photo Filter->Warming Filter 85, at 25% just to warm it up a bit.
Boosted Master saturation by 11.
Boosted Red saturation by about 8 help bring out lips and add some more colour to the faces.

Made a duplicate layer (control-J) and performed a high pass sharpen. (I don't like the results of USM)
This is done by clicking Filter->Other->High Pass->10 pixel Radius
Then I change the blending mode of that layer to Hard Light, and then adjust the opacity to about 20%.
After that is done, create a layer mask for that layer: Layer->Layer Mask->Reveal All
Select the paintbrush tool, set it to black, set opacity to 75%, and painted over the eyes, mouth and ring to bring it out just a touch more.


Then used a Midtone burn and painted the edges a bit for a very very subtle vignette. But normally, I use either a vignette action (try atncentral) or most commonly, use Lightroom's vignette slider to do it.

It sounds like a lot but if you've done it many times, it only takes about 30 seconds to do it all.

Don't know if you like the result or not, but hopefully that helps you out a bit.

[italianfemmy]

Lloyd, lloyd, lloyd... one day....I'm gonna make it to Canada. I swear your pp skills make me envious with green.

[MrsOpie]

[MrsOpie]

I didn't even think about using LOTR on this image. good idea.

[liza]

I'd do the same thing Lloyd did, but take the path of least resistance by using actions instead, namely LOTR, Pano's High Pass Sharpening, and EZ Burn.

[italianfemmy]

Oh my. I wish I knew what all these terms ya'll keep using mean. Oh how I wish I was a photoshop queener! lol.

[RazorAngel]

Thought I would give it one more shot before I went to bed.
Actions: Rich Colors + Edge Burner + Amazing Detail finder
Manually: Liberal midtone dodging on the eyes, reducing burned edges to a smaller margin via the mask and a few other small tweaks.
New:

[italianfemmy]

razor, that one is much better and this time, you didn't blur out her entire ring!

[hjghj]

MY 2 CENTS

[islandphoto]

I would give it a shot but there's so many awesome versions already! Good Job guys! The image was beautiful to begin with also

[craiglee]

hjghj, how'd you do that?

[hjghj]

this is very easy if you spend about 15 years working in Photoshop