Photos: Editing the Imagez "Decades" Shoot

[jordax]

Following on from my previous post about Stu Maschwitz's blog posts, I wanted to share some before/afters of my recent edits, in particular my subtle (or not subtle) plays with colour. These come from the third of this year's lighting workshops at Imagez Camera Club; I did the edits a few weeks ago but Stu's blog encouraged me to revisit them

Comments

[reznorsedge]

Very interesting Mr Jordax. Will have to re-read in front of an image editing program ...

[mrsneeze]

All very interesting. Reminds me of my issues scanning comics, trying to get a decent colour balance to get the things looking like they do on paper...

Without trying to sound too mean, though, the only one where the after looks definitely 'better' (to my mind) is Greg. That one really brings out the detail of the shirt etc - it looks more real than the original. The others mostly look a bit washed out. And very blue ;) Interesting the effects you can get though. I wonder if you took the Cheryl one a bit further and took out the redness of the cheeks and lips you could get a decent zombie out of it (although I'd feel a bit mean doing that to her!)

[jordax]

Fair comment, Sneeze. I think I'm actually going in the opposite direction - trying to move to less real. But you're right, I have gone a bit "blue".

I like the picture of Tom personally, but I think that started with the best lighting too. There's never any substitute for getting it right in-camera first.

[mrsneeze]

I did wonder if I was missing the point a little :) Although that probably means you were doing the right thing really... it definitely changes the feel of the shots. I'd be interested to see if you can get a different feel to images of places rather than people - mostly for game related things, such as the background to an adventure game or a spot the difference story. I'd imagine you can get a forest to look more sinister or give a 1950s magazine feel to a room with this sort of technique, perhaps?

[jordax]

That's a good idea. Historically my attempts to edit landscapes haven't worked out so well, but mostly that's back to not starting with a very good photo to begin with.

I did have a go at fairytale-ing a wood of bluebells once - I'll have to dig that out again and see if I can do it better since I levelled up in Photoshop.

If you can find them, it's worth looking for some of the discussions of the visual look for the TV series "Mad Men" - in particular some of the advertising images. I saw a few which talked about lighting/editing to create a slightly antique 50s/60s feel. (Lots of yellow, not much blue.) If I can find them again, I'll link them.

[xanadu_nox]

Hey, I am glad you liked my new images :)
Interesting colourplay here, it really does make a difference to images!