Before and After Photos

Lately I've been experimenting a bit more than usual with my editing. Most of my photo editing is general cleanup work, but I've been trying to be a bit more creative. Some of my pictures have taken on a more HDR-like appearance, some look more like paintings, some times I add textures. I wanted to use this post to give you a sense of the changes that have been made by giving you a Before and After look at the images.

All of the effects are done in Photoshop using various plugins. I have found that I'm rarely satisfied with the output of any given filter or plugin. Instead, I usually have to create multiple layers and layer masks in order to keep the parts of each layer that I want while revealing other parts underneath.

As some have asked what plugins I use, the following are my most used:  Topaz Labs Adjust 5, Topaz Labs Simplify 3, Alien Skin Snap Art 3, Nik HDR Efex Pro and Nik Color Efex Pro 3 (I have version 4 but find it is much slower than version 3).

To view the BEFORE image, roll your mouse over the image and wait a few seconds for the image to load.

Before and After (Lightroom Only)

I just thought I'd share one of my favorite photos as a Before and After set.


(click the image to view large)

All changes to the above image were done via Adobe Lightroom only (i.e. no pixel editing has been done via Photoshop or any other software - only Lightroom has been used).

I first straightened the image by simply clicking on the Enable Profile Corrections option. Then I converted to B&W using the Creamtone Preset that comes with Lightroom 3.x. After that I used the graduated filter coming in from the top left and top right corners to add my own vignette to the image. Then I darked with ground with the brush tool. Then I played a bit more with the colors (split tone), contrast and clarity to get to where I liked the image.

And here is the Before image (no specific changes were made for this image, just my regular custom import preset):



In the above image, the couple is being lit by an off-camera flash to my right.

Utah State Capitol - Before / After Lightroom

I love Adobe Lightroom and use it on all of my images. But most of the images I produce are probably closer to straight out of the camera with small tweaks rather than highly modified representations of the image.

Well, tonight I was playing around a little bit with the gradient adjustment layer in Lightroom and thought I'd show off the results of a before/after edit session. It's still nothing too fancy, but it's certainly different from the original:



Both of the above images are from a single raw image processed by Lightroom. The one on the left is just a standard conversion of the capture. The one on the right contains a few more tweaks:

- A couple of gradients were used to lighten the center and darken the top and bottom.

- Another gradient adds some blue to the sky

- Yet another gradient adds some yellow to center of the image (from the capitol building on down)

- While the first includes some Clarity and Saturation, the second uses a lot more Clarity and a little more Saturation.

The images were then brought into photoshop to resize and place them side by side.

Whatdya think? Do you prefer the more hazy picture on the left? Or the brighter, more well defined picture on the right?