Before and After Processing | Flower Mound, TX Photographer

Processing images is one of my favorite things besides taking portraits.  I shoot in Camera Raw, which is a file with minimal processed data.  In other words the camera isn't choosing the colors for you like in a jpg. file.  

Here are the steps I use to process an image.

1. Select my images to process.

2.  Pull the image into Adobe Camera Raw.

3. Choose my white balance.  I prefer images on the warmer side for the most part.  Especially for outdoor portraits, it brings out the golden colors from the sun.  

4. Next I tweak the exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows as needed.  Depending on the image I may add a touch of vibrance or saturation.  All of these things can be done in more detail in Photoshop. 

5. Crop the image if needed.

 6. Pull image into Photoshop.

7. Next I run my own action I created for other adjustments which include a warming filter, levels to add black in areas where it's needed, curves adjustment, and a 2nd levels adjustment for midtones if needed.  I adjust the opacity of each layer as needed.

8. Retouching the skin as needed, which includes removing blemishes, scratches, or bruises.  I leave scares, birth marks, and freckles as that is part of the person.

9. Then I take a look at the background if there is anything that is distracting that takes away from the subject that needs to be removed. For example a person in the background that wasn't part of the shot, trash, a power line, etc...  I will remove any of these things as needed.

10.  Then I check for any more added pop that needs to be added to the image.  Such as a vibrance to pop the color, edge burn, etc...

11. The final step is to prepare the file for web sharing and printing.  I run an action for each as web files need to be resized and sharpened differently than a file for printing.

 As you can see I can spend 15-20 minutes just on one image!  Imagine a full gallery of images. 

Here is a Before and After, as you can see it makes a huge difference in this image!

Before/RAW image without processing

After Processing