How did you learn/develop your processing style?

Devrij

Devrij

Devrij

Soldato
Joined
23 Jul 2009
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Bath
Obviously, this is a personal thing, but I feel like the PP I do doesn't really get the most out of my images (particularly with portraits). They also lack a sense of style, and tend to be more documentary than artistic (not always a bad thing, of course), and I'm not sure what sort of thing I could do to make that jump from tidying contrast and colours to being creative.

Generally I'll make adjustments in camera RAW (don't have LR) and then if it's that kind of shot I'll do the skin smoothing/cloning etc in CS5, but I have no idea what else I could try to mess around with different looks.

I feel like I'm missing a trick somewhere. So how did you guys learn the techniques you currently use to produce your "look"?

I'm not trying to copy anyone's style btw, but the tutorials I find tend to be quite basic, and I'm looking for something a bit more advanced to add more polish to my shots.
 
I always used to just bump up clarity and vibrance and tweak the various tone sliders on Lightroom, emulating people on here like Raymond. I've always admired Jaime Ibarra and the like's cross processing style so I've played with that in photoshop with lighten layers etc. Then I went through a phase of clipping blacks as greys by having a kinked tone curve, though nowadays I just push the curve up a little bit as I find it works well on internet presentation to soften the blacks a little bit.

I think Lightroom is a very good program to experiment and learn in, because of the way that they set it out most things can look good in comparison to Photoshop where it's much easier to feel lost. Photoshop I use for specific manipulation of layered work.
 
Cheers. Typically that's all I do myself, so at least Im not alone there! I think I may just need to spend a bit more time reading about photographers whose work I like and try out more techniques. I follow a poop ton of togs on Gplus so hopefully I'll find some tips on there.
 
I keep things minimal, play with the sliders so shadows and highlights are right. My work needs some contrast and vibrance.
 
I like contrast. B&W I find much easier as well. Contrast is something I am a particular fan of here.

In colour I tend to boost sat in a few places, and love the adjustment brush

kd
 
It just depends on the picture really. Sometimes I want more colour, sharpness or contrast and sometimes I want less... Sometimes I want a random mixture of them all lol :)
 
I'm going to spend some time while I'm off work in 2 weeks, for 2 weeks, trying to sort my processing. I seem to be destroying images, more than adding to them lately. Something has broken in my brain and it's stressing me out no end :(
 
ElDude said:
I'm going to spend some time while I'm off work in 2 weeks, for 2 weeks, trying to sort my processing. I seem to be destroying images, more than adding to them lately. Something has broken in my brain and it's stressing me out no end :(
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I made a short thread recently about just this.

There are so many photographers I follow, with such a distinct style. I can't seem to create that - and don't want to simply copy everything they do!
 
In 99% of cases it seems the same few lightroom presets (with very minor adjustments) constitute a style!

Personally I think the idea that the majority of your style can come from processing alone is a bit of a falacy for me the key is being consistent in your processing but even more than that being consistent in your approach take the photos that you want to take and process them to look the way you want them too and this will give you a style as you will invariably lean towards certain framings, lenses, angles etc etc etc and consistent processing will give them the same feel.
 
I think it just depends on the picture. Often I will try and process to match as closely as possible what I remember seeing. I'll also mess around with various styles and crops and so on. A lot of my photos will have quite a few snapshots saved that can be quite different.
 
First, "normalise" the photograph, so it is correctly exposed, correct white balance.

After that, then play with the sliders to get the effect you want, stop when you are happy.

The thing is knowing what you want, not play around with it endlessly with different settings for every photograph. You will end up with loads of incoherent images if they are taken as a set. Don't be afraid to try different style in the next set of photographs but consistency is the key.
 
Raymond Lin said:
First, "normalise" the photograph, so it is correctly exposed, correct white balance.

After that, then play with the sliders to get the effect you want, stop when you are happy.

The thing is knowing what you want, not play around with it endlessly with different settings for every photograph. You will end up with loads of incoherent images if they are taken as a set. Don't be afraid to try different style in the next set of photographs but consistency is the key.
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You've said exactly what I was trying to say only better style is simply not possible unless you are consitent which is something I'm just staring to get to grips with.
 
Outline said:
I made a short thread recently about just this.

There are so many photographers I follow, with such a distinct style. I can't seem to create that - and don't want to simply copy everything they do!
Click to expand...

Ignore the processing for a second, and think about how they shoot, where they shoot, the lighting they use etc. - all this should come long before processing. There are very few photographers whose processing style genuinely ranks highly in what makes an image theirs, Jaime Ibarra and Aleksandra Kinskaj being the only ones on the top of my head.
 
When I import, I have set a preset in LR to be automatically applied. This is to fix Lens distortions vignetting etc.
Once I start work on images I first normalise as Raymond described, with maybe also a bit of straitening. To help adjust wb I use a preset that set's saturation and vibrancy to 100%. This helps with identifying colour casts. If the light is the same in a series you can then copy that WB to other images until the light changes (just be careful of lenses with different colour temperatures).
Then I use one of 2 presets on every image depending on scene. These presets are the 'style' portion of my workflow. They kind of evolved over a long time in incremental steps. One preset is black and white, the other is colour. Finally I use the recovery brush to save any highlight detail I want or to minimise eye magnets. I also lift any specific shadows, usually peoples faces.
Then I move onto the next image and repeat.
 
I simply had to stop being so obsessive. I would find a new method and then start going back over old images. I would individually go over each image and tbh that put me off pushing the shutter button because I would shudder at the thought of the time I would spend on the pc.

The only thing I have presets for now is football, I'm happyish with the final product and can process 100 pics in 20-30 mins.

Other than that when I'm bored I tinker, I've used a lot of Kelbys and Freemans guides in books as starting points when learning LR and made my own adjustments. I now no longer fret about the amount of time processing mught take me and try to enjoy it more :)
 
The learning and development never stops. Each shoot gains better fine tuning of processing skills.
 
mrk said:
The learning and development never stops. Each shoot gains better fine tuning of processing skills.
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Yep and my problem was I was then looking back over old pictures and re-developing. That became an endless cycle of pain :D

Where in reality unless I was printing or showing them off it really wasn't worth the extra time and effort. :)
 
With colour photos in gigs I'm struggling at the moment and I'm changing what I'm doing as a result. If I convert all to black and white I can get a consistent-ish look but I'd rather keep black and white for portraits really. I know what I like with b&w but seem to be letting my stressing over colour processing rule my head and its starting to bleed into b&w.

I actually set out in the last gig to stick to ISO5000 to have a similar grain throughout. 3200 worked occasionally but within an hour it was 100% artificially lit so from the last gig I knew what to expect in the pub.

I think I prefer a wider area to shoot in so I can get more done. Limited experience is killing me too. Still I have one more gig to shoot of another band in the same place on the 16th. I know they'll suit b&w so not an issue really. I think I'll have to look around for some ideas, although I doubt I'll find much where people are photographing all night from under 10ft away!
 
My processing style is Diafine + Tri-X pushed to 1250, Neopan 1600 in Diafine or Portra 160/400 at various speeds. My digital processing follows on from that. I've experimented with other styles of colour and B+W, but they were quite gimmicky and draw attention to the processing rather than the image as a whole.
 
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