How to get this "soft" look for my portraits ?

Hi People

I've been looking for a while, but how can i give my photos this can of soft look ?
Or can this only be achieved if you take photos during the golden hour ?

http://500px.com …?from=popular&o​nly=People

any help is appreciated

The effect you are seeing there is flare from the sun. If you look at her hair its obvious that the sun is behind her. The flare entering the lens lowers the overall contrast of the image. Its difficult to get the right amount, and you can only do when the sun is at the right angle to make it happen. You can also do it with strobes.

To get soft pictures you need soft light. Golden hour is good natural soft light. But also try window light or a diffuser.

Strobes with soft boxes and modifiers can simulate the same light.

So it's not possible to become an effect like this in post processing ?

The flare can be somewhat faked. But the backlighting and soft lighting (no harsh shadows) would be very difficult.

Can this effect be had with umbrella (either bounce or shoot through ?) , i mean if you don' t shoot during the golden hour

photographykn wrote in post #16857963
So it's not possible to become an effect like this in post processing ?

You may want to check this site out.

http://vsco.co/film

Its lighting, posing, and post processing.

The model is posed to take advantage of the light. Notice that her shoulders are perpendicular to the position of the sun so that it gives a hair/rim light effect. A fill flash would then be used so that she doesn't appear as a silhouette.

The photo was also probably shot with a prime lens relatively wide open to give that shallow depth of field.

The post processing can be achieved by using Curves; its evident that there are no true blacks or whites in the photo which means that the contrast was reduced by raising the Shadow end of the curve and lowering the Hightlights end. You could also play with the individual RGB Curves to get the color effect you want.

I agree that this effect in this particularly photo is at least mostly due to the sun being placed behind the subject and causing flare.

However, you can mimic this effect in post-processing by reducing the contrast. In short this means raising the black output and lowering the white output. In the tone curve this is done by lifting the leftmost point up a little from zero and lowering the rightmost point. The more horizontal the curve near the edges, the flatter the shadows and highlights will be.

Yep I know doing shoots during the golden hour is the best and easiest however it's not always possible (nor for me, nor for the models) , so I was curious how it could be achieved (IF) in PP

Post an example photo and I'll demonstrate how to do it.

photographykn wrote in post #16858067
Yep I know doing shoots during the golden hour is the best and easiest however it's not always possible (nor for me, nor for the models) , so I was curious how it could be achieved (IF) in PP

As mentioned above you can get part of it in post by lowering the contrast through curves, but it doesnt fully replicate the effect of the flare. You can do it with strobes, but you have to practice getting the light to enter the lens in such a way as to get the right amount of flare, but not so much is destroys your image totally.

What you're looking for is a 'hazy' look.

You can accomplish this very easily in Photoshop:
Open your picture, and then create a new layer. Fill the layer with either white, or a very, very light color (yellow, pink, etc.) if you want a tone to it. Then just lower the opacity until you get the desired haziness.

I'm no expert but the first thing I think when I see this photo is low contrast. Like the others said, you can lower the contrast. And in addition to the other advice in this thread, have you ever tried using a diffuser lens filter to soften everything? I use mine on a lot of portraits. Some diffuser filters are softer than others. I use a $16 HOYA filter off Amazon, and it works well for me.