Fix-It Friday #69 – Julie Rivera’s Tutorial

Written by Julie Rivera of Julie Rivera Photography

Now this is a picture that every couple would love to have of themselves: a happy, handsome, casual man standing as the anchor, with his gorgeous bride snuggled up to him, smiling so perfectly at the camera. What I wonder, though, is how on EARTH Rachel got over there in time?! Was this a self portrait or was someone else clicking the shutter? Whatever the case, this is a fabulous image.

I am having a bit of a “dreamy” period in my work and this image is so well suited to something without the bold brightness of most of my edits. I tried to apply Jessica Paige’s presets, but they are not designed for JPEG files, so I had to figure it out on my own. So let’s give it a whirl…

We started with this SOOC image:

Considering this was taken at f/2.5, the focus is incredible! The setting is wonderful, with the path drifting out of the frame behind our couple. The picture really is lovely, it just needs that touch of finesse.

I opened it with Camera Raw and made these adjustment:

Exposure +0.30

Luminance to 23

Yellow Saturation to -28 and Orange to -2

Vignette -70

Split Toning (this is where I tried to copy One Willow Presets): move Highlight’s Hue to 39 and Saturation to 19, Shadow’s Hue to 39 and Saturation to 9

Open image and find this:

And now for the fun. I used a 4×6 crop to recenter the couple and make a more creative composition.

I used Totally Rad Action‘s Pro Retouch (which I think is available as a free download) on all skin areas with a 45% opacity brush. For the eye layer, I reduced the opacity of the layer to 60%. When I left it at 100%, Rachel’s eyes looked really alien. Not at all attractive nor natural. I flattened the layers, then used the Dodge Tool on the teeth and whites of the eyes with a brush at 27% opacity.

I applied a curves layer, pulling the midpoint and the upper area of the slope upwards to significantly brighten the image.

Apply TRA‘s Green with Envy to all the background areas with a 45% opacity brush, which adds a boost in color.

Apply TRA‘s Yin/Yang, using the Darken layer only along the brush with a 45% opacity brush to create a vignette type effect. Flatten.

Finally, add TRA‘s Flare Up (Golden), reducing the Flare layer to 26%, the Warmness layer to 50% and the overall action opacity to 35%. Flatten.

To show on the web, I cropped my fully edited 4×6 to a 5×7 because I like that crop ratio best. I resized for web and added a web sharpening action from TRA. (Yes, I LOVE TRA actions. Love them.)

And here is the end product:

I am an on-location, natural light photographer located in Central Texas who hopes for every client of mine to see their images and say, “Ah, she got us! That is US!”