Before and After - SOOC 1

Ever wondered what the photos I take look like before I process them? Well, Thao suggested we might post up some SOOC (straight out of the camera) shots next to our processed shots for the month of February.

I thought I might start off the month sharing the last shot I took for January, because I think it's a great example of the illusion that can take place with a bit of photoshopping.

The first photo shows the pullback shot of my "setup"... it's dodgy and makeshift and consists of a single bed sized flannelette sheet draped over two of our dining room chairs.... but hey it does the job. Notice the massive wrinkles in the backdrop... I didn't have the time to iron it (I had only thought of using it on the spur of the moment and had to capitalise on having a happy Catherine on my hands). What this photo doesn't show, is that I had given Catherine a zip lock bag filled with colourful ribbons to play with (one of my bags of misc stuff from the sewing I've been doing) and she had managed to bust it open and had ribbons all over her lap and was playing with them! I took away most of the ribbons, but she still had a couple in her lap to distract her and I had to keep putting them back in the basket in her lap to hide them when I was taking the photo!

You can see in the finished product, I have cropped the photo and really lightened/blown out the background in an attempt to disguise the wrinkles (I did have give the healing tool a bit of a work out, especially across that horizontal crease close to Catherine's head). I would have liked to have been able to keep more of the pink colour in the background, but it was a choice between having a pink backdrop with wrinkles or white with no wrinkles! As for the actual processing... I can't remember exactly, but generally I use curves and levels to brighten up Catherine's skin tone and run one of my own actions across it to boost the colour a little and that's pretty much it.... oh and I may have used Dandelion from Sheye's Eye Candy Actions to warm it up ... and also the sharpen action from the same set too.