Ideas for editing portraits?

I always shoot in Raw, and I really dont know what to use in photoshop cs4, I use lightroom 3 and usually just play around with the slider bars and IMO it creates look im going for. Is there anything in photoshop maybe other than the stamp tool that I could use for my portraits?

Your choices are only limited by your imagination. Your question is so open ended that I can only answer it by suggesting that you spend some time with your favorite search engine and watch or read some of the gazillion tutorials that are available for free online. On top of Photoshop there are plenty of plug ins that will give you more creative options and faster as well. You should have a good handle on Photoshop before you start to try and get all artsy.

Chris, concentrate on effective and flattering lighting for you portrait sessions. I agree with Sheldon that your request is quite general.

If you are trying to achieve model perfection or glamour effects then there are a large number of techniques and plug-ins for your use. It's just a mattering of googling your needs. I do wedding and social event work and find that the standard tools in photoshop suit my needs quite well.

Hi Chris,

Some of the things I do with portraits are:

a) Remove blemishes. (Which it sounds like you're doing with the stamp tool)

b) Smooth the skin. (Although I don't like it when this is overdone)

c) Enhance the eyes. (Make sharper and brighter)

d) Lens Blur the background. (Giving it a more bokeh effect) <<< Not a good idea (see ni@mo's post below)

e) Sharpen the over all image. (I use the manual method of Highkey layer as opposed to unsharp as it gives me greater control, and can be undone, etc).

Not sure if this is the kind of information you're looking for or not.

Cheers

Adza

^Please don't listen to advice D.. faking lens blur isn't good and if you're new and don't know layer masking then it's going to make it look that much worse. Don't over do it, keep it natural and light until you get a feel for how each tool works and the effect it has on your photo. I've been editing for 4-5 years and use to think I needed to know/use every tool possible but now I only use 4 very basic ones and the results are leaps and bounds beyond what I use to do with 10-20 different tools. (heal/clone stamp and dodge/burn) look it up and start practicing.

You've already answered your own question. Make it look how you want it, not how a software company or a forum member wants it.

Hi Ni$mo,

ni$mo350 wrote in post #12422382
^Please don't listen to advice D.. faking lens blur isn't good and if you're new and don't know layer masking then it's going to make it look that much worse.

Thanks for picking that up and correcting me. I was wondering if you (or anyone else) could recommend a good method for making bokeh effect in Photoshop?

I've heard that Alien Skin's Bokeh 2 is supposed to be good, but figure if a plugin can do it - then I should be able to do it manually as well.

I'm not too bad with masks. (Helps with CS5 and the refine mask feature ), but was wondering if anyone could comment on what blur filter or method is the best for this?

Cheers

Adza

Honestly your best bet is to use your 50 below f/2.8 or if you use your other lenses then make sure there's enough space to separate your subject from the bg. You can achieve it as I had the same lens setup as you when I first started and it served me well. I wouldn't try to attempt any fake bokeh or lens blur or bg blur or whatever people would like to call it. Practice getting it right out of camera. It will save you a ton of time and energy down the line. Below is one of my favorite shots I took with the nifty fifty (t1i body), and it was shot at f/2.8. I wouldn't even trust myself knowing how much I know now about editing to even try and attempt to recreate that in post if it were shot at say f/10. 2 minutes to setup the shot and a quick clean edit will mean it's done in 5 minutes tops. If I were to try to attempt to mimic it in post, it would take significantly longer. Now imagine doing that on multiple photos. Now imagine even further down the line with trying to do post work on a wedding. You quickly realize that there's quicker/easier and much more appealing ways to achieve that desired effect and you don't even need to click a mouse to do it.

http://www.flickr.com …/in/photostream​/lightbox/

adza77 wrote in post #12429560
Hi Ni$mo,

Thanks for picking that up and correcting me. I was wondering if you (or anyone else) could recommend a good method for making bokeh effect in Photoshop?

I've heard that Alien Skin's Bokeh 2 is supposed to be good, but figure if a plugin can do it - then I should be able to do it manually as well.

I'm not too bad with masks. (Helps with CS5 and the refine mask feature ), but was wondering if anyone could comment on what blur filter or method is the best for this?

Cheers

Adza

Lens blur with a depth map: https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=8233462#p​ost8233462