Camera ReviewRonMartBlog

Kyoto Girl 2026 Edit - Revisiting old photos again

For those of us who have been editing photos for a decade or more, there are countless images we once considered finished masterpieces—judged by the standards and tools available at the time. As editing software has evolved, it’s often worth revisiting some of those favorites and starting fresh, using modern versions of the very same tools we relied on years ago.

I decided to do exactly that with this image, which was featured on the Imagenomic website for many years.

I hope you enjoy this refreshed look at how I originally edited the photo, along with a quick comparison showing how today’s improvements to those same tools can deliver dramatically better results.1

Table of Contents

1. Video review
2. Closing thoughts
3. Related articles

Video Review 🎥

If the player doesn’t load here, watch on YouTube.

Closing Thoughts

Thanks for checking this out! I’m curious—what editing tools do you think have changed the most over the years? Are there any products you’d love to see me re‑edit past photos with or dive into in a future review?

Related Articles

Imagenomic Portraiture 5 Review (2026): Pro-Level Skin Retouchinghttps://www.ronmartblog.com/2026/04/imagenomic-portraiture-5-review-2026.html AI Editing: Cheating, Tool, or the New Normal?https://www.ronmartblog.com/2026/01/has-ai-made-photo-editing-obsolete.html

Imagenomic Portraiture 5 Review (2026): Pro-Level Skin Retouching Without the Plastic Look

Software ReviewSkin SofteningPortrait Enhancements

Imagenomic Portraiture 5 Review (2026): Pro-Level Skin Retouching

Imagenomic Portraiture just got a major upgrade. Its intelligent auto‑masking speeds up the workflow by accurately identifying where skin softening should apply with minimal manual input. New features like Fill Light make it easy to brighten faces without complex masking, while Uniformity helps balance facial tones for a more polished look. Improved sharpness tools bring texture back naturally, and the upgraded shine‑reduction effectively eliminates harsh hotspots—making the overall retouching process faster, smoother, and more professional.

Imagenomic Portraiture 5 Review & Discount — click to check current price / availability

TL;DR ⚡

The new Imagenomic Portraiture is faster and smarter. Auto‑masking needs almost no manual input, Fill Light brightens faces easily, Uniformity balances skin tones, improved sharpness restores natural texture, and shine‑reduction removes harsh hotspots.

A smarter, faster Portraiture provides realistic skin softening that brightens faces, evens tones, restores texture, and removes shine with minimal effort.

Table of Contents

1. Who it’s for and who should skip
2. Pros and cons
3. Video review and tutorial
4. Before & After
5. Closing thoughts

Who it’s for

• Studio Portrait Photographers
• Wedding Photographers
• Commercial Photographers
• Anyone who wants skin and hair to look magazine ready

Who should skip

• Photojournalists who rely on authenticity

✅ Pros

• ✅Can purchase as a subscription or one-time price
• ✅Achieves smooth skin without blowing details — even on high contrast portraits.
• ✅Softens while still providing features to preserve sharpness and texture
• ✅Gives hair that shampoo commercial look
• ✅Powerful AI masking makes fill lighting on the face trivial

⛔ Cons

• ⛔Expensive one-time price
• ⛔Still easy to make people look like they belong in the wax museum if you don't use as intended
• ⛔Warmth, Tint, Brightness and Contrast Enhancements are better left for other photo-editing products

Video Review & Tutorial🎥

If the player doesn’t load here, watch on YouTube.

Before & After

Before | After Final Before and After taken with a Canon 5D Mark III using a 300mm f/2.8L IS II at f/5.6 for 1/1250sec @ ISO 800

Before | After New Fill Light feature - On (before) and Off (after)

Before | After Uniformity Feature - 0 (before) and 40 (after) - pay attention to the shadows by the mouth

Before | After New Reduce Shine feature - Before (0) and After (40)

Before | After Get smooth hair with the Hair Mask - Before (Mask hair - 100) vs After (Don't mask hair - 0)

Before | After Return face texture with Sharpness - Before (0) and After (Max - 40)

Closing Thoughts

Nearly 20 years ago, my mentor insisted that if I wanted the best results for skin softening, I should use Portraiture—and they were absolutely right. Over the years, I’ve spoken with many top‑tier pros working on high‑value projects, and Portraiture was one of their “secret sauce” tools. Meanwhile, countless tutorials claimed you could get the same results manually. What I learned is that Portraiture was always a step ahead—delivering next‑level quality faster and with far less effort. Getting perfect skin in seconds became a no‑brainer.

Fast‑forward to today: at first glance, it may look unchanged, but under the hood it’s faster, smarter, and loaded with improvements in object detection and workflow efficiency. It’s still a world‑class leader—and now it’s better than ever.

Although my review focused on using Portraiture in Photoshop, it performs just as seamlessly in Lightroom Classic.
If you’ve used Portraiture—or tried alternatives—I’d love to hear your experience. What tools are essential in your portrait retouching workflow? Drop your thoughts or questions below!

👉 Click here to learn more

Imagenomic Portraiture 3 ai Discount and Video Review

Check out the latest tutorial using this image and more

Video Tutorial

Check out my latest video tutorial on Imagenomic Portraiture 3 ai:

Before and After Images

Click to view the full original unedited image

Click to view the full image after Portraiture 3 ai editing

Conclusion

I've been using this product since it first came out and still to this date there's nothing I like more. Check out the free demo for Photoshop and Lightroom to see for yourself - it really makes skin enhancements a simple one minute step in your photo editing workflow.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today.

Enter the code and click update to apply the discount

Enjoy these and more on the Reviews tab as well as Ron's Recommendations.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

REVIEW: Imagenomic Portraiture 3 (DISCOUNT OFFER) - Video Tutorial

Imagenomic Portraiture has always been my favorite skin softening product because it does a wonderful job of softening the skin without obliterating the texture like most other products (and techniques shown on YouTube). It's the secret sauce use by a lot of high end fashion and beauty photographers, so it's been a key part of my digital workflow for nearly a decade.

Buy and SAVE now using coupon code RONMART20

One of the big new features of version 3.0 is how the user-interface scales on a 4K UHD or larger display, like the NEC PA322UHD that I use.Here's the old UI which looks tiny both in thumbnail and when you click to view the 4K screenshot:

And here's the new UI which scales beautifully to any size:

The heart of the new user-interface can be found in the left panel which is functionally similar, but now just bigger and easier to read:

The new user-interface is significantly more responsive thanks to hardware acceleration, so zooming is now instant with no painful minute waiting for the softening effect to be applied.

The user-interface does lose my beloved tabs feature which allows you to experiment and see the results of different settings spread over multiple tabs, but that was a geek feature most people didn't know exist so I don't think most users will miss it.

Skin Softening Results

Original Image - BEFORE Skin Softening (Zoomed to 111%) - Click for larger version

Portraiture 3 Normal Preset AFTER Skin Softening (Zoomed to 111%) - Click for larger version

Video Tutorial

My previous tutorial on Portraiture 2 had nearly 150,000 views and the advanced techniques tutorial was featured on the Imagenomic support website. In this all new for version 3 review, I focus on both a face and full body with basic and advanced techniques with improvements that hopefully address user suggestions for my past videos:

Conclusion

If you have a high resolution display, the upgrade is a no brainer because it's so much easier (and faster) to use. However, if your budget is tight I can honestly say that I don't see any improvements to the skin softening algorithms that make me prefer the new version over the old version.

This is still a great product that I highly recommend, especially for those who are disappointed by the wealth of terrible skin softening products and techniques currently available today. It's fast and easy to use and a must have for anyone who edits a lot of photos with people.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today, and be sure to use my coupon code RONMART20 to save 15% on one or more Imagenomic products as shown below:

Enter the code and click update to apply the discount

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Imagenomic Noiseware Discount & Tutorial (iOS Version)
• Imagenomic Portraiture 2 Tutorial
• Plotagraph Pro (Discount)
• Perfectly Clear 3 by Athentech (Discount)
• Scott Kelby's Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop - My favorite portrait editing book
• Topaz Labs Impression 2 (new review 11/23/16)
• Topaz Labs Texture Effects 2.0
• Ron's Recommendations
• Home Studio on a Budget

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

Imagenomic Noiseware & Portraiture Advanced Techniques Video Tutorial

ISO 6400 Edited Image (Click for Full Size)
Original Full Size –> Click here

Here’s a video where I demonstrate some of the more advanced techniques of the Noiseware user interface:

View Full Screen for 1080p here or on YouTube

Page down for more articles about these products and special discount offer.

Conclusion

Noiseware has been my favorite noise reduction software ever since it won my noise reduction roundup in March 2009. I use it all the time, but a little less so these days as cameras are getting to be so good and sensor level noise reduction. 

Portraiture is the only product I use for skin softening, and my Latest Version Tutorial I did for it shows more examples of how I use this awesome product.

I hope you enjoyed this and if you need either product, please support this article by using my purchase links below.

Special Offer – Save 15%

See the Discount Coupon Code page for the latest code if this doesn’t work

CLICK HERE to use my coupon code RONMART20 when you check out.
Want to get rid of noise from your images?
Noiseware is the king of noise removal while preserving detail – period!

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Noiseware for iOS
• Imagenomic Noiseware 4.1.1 Professional (Latest Version)
• Imagenomic Portraiture 2.x (Latest Version Tutorial)
• Noise Reduction Software Comparisons - CONCLUSION (5 products)
• HDRSoft Photomatix Pro 4.x (4.2 Update)
• Which camera should I buy?
• Which Printer Should I Buy? Epson or Canon?

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

Imagenomic Portraiture 3 Discount & Tutorial...

This article has moved - CLICK HERE to see my new review of Portraiture 3 or save and buy now using coupon code RONMART20.

Imagenomic Portraiture 2.3.4 Skin Softening Tutorial (October 2016 Version)

Screenshot of the Portraiture User Interface

Despite 114,000+ views as of the time this was written, my Imagenomic Portraiture video tutorial received some complaints that it was hard to see the before and after because the model I used had such perfect skin. As a result of that feedback, I'm doing another version where it is much easier to see the before and after results.

Before and After of the video tutorial image - click the image for a larger version

I also got some feedback asking me to "just get on with it", so this new video starts off with the quick and dirty version and then has something extra afterwards for those who want more details about how to use my favorite skin softening product.

Video Tutorial - 2016 Edition

Without further adieu, here's the new video tutorial with my same boring voice:

Click here for the video page on YouTube

How does this compare to...

As of October 2016, I still think this is the best product on the market for skin softening.

Sure, you can find tutorials that show you how to do your own skin softening without a plug-in, but the power here is in the great defaults and the masking feature. I also find the results to be more pleasing than any other product I've used including Color Efex's Dynamic Skin softener, onOne Perfect Portrait, Portrait Professional, and more. I also have more high end professional photographers tell me that this is their go to product of choice more than any other, so I'm not the only one who swears by it.

Special Offer – Save 15%

See the Discount Coupon Code page for the latest code if this doesn’t work

CLICK HERE to use my coupon code RONMART2012 when you check out for a discount on the following products: (click banners to learn more)

Get all three products below at a discounted rate in this suite.

If you see a photo of mine that has skin, Portraiture
is the ONLY product I use for skin softening.

Want to get rid of noise from your images?
Noiseware is the king of noise removal while preserving detail – period!

Miss film and want to get that classic look and grain back?
Realgrain might be just what you are looking for!

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Original Imagenomic Portraiture 2.3 Review
• Imagenomic Noiseware 4.1.1 Professional (Latest Version 5 Update Review)
• REVIEW: Imagenomic Portraiture 2.0 -vs- Nik Software Dynamic Skin Softener
• What Photoshop books should I read?
• What plug-ins should I buy? (for Photoshop & Lightroom)
• Imagenomic Noiseware, Portraiture & RealGrain Updated (15% Off Coupon Code)
• Portrait Professional 10

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

I am a featured photographer for Imagenomic. I did this promotion because I love Noiseware and Portraiture and because Imagenomic was an early supporter of this blog. I do not get compensated for being featured photographer, and I did this article without any solicitation or request from Imagenomic.

YOU DECIDE: Traditional or Fashion Processing?

Copyright © Ron Martinsen – All Rights Reserved

I thought I’d try something new today to try to encourage some reader involvement.

The photo above is processed first as I’d normally process my photos – the clean and safe way (A), but on the right I process it using a technique that I see fashion photographers doing more often these days (B).

Which do you prefer and why?

Post your preference here as comments, or on my Facebook or Google+ pages.

Processing Details

On the left (A) I played it safe and did my standard workflow of Imagenomic Portraiture and the Nik Collection, but on the right (B) I used combination of filters in Perfect Effects to get the popular washed out / dated fashion look that has become rather common these days. Topaz Restyle was originally used to get the look on the right, but I misplaced my product key so I had to use something else to publish the article. Both are able to produce the same look.

Where to order

Visit my review of Portraiture to learn more, watch a video and get a discount on my favorite skin softening product!

Click here to learn more about Perfect Effects (new version 8 review coming soon).

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Imagenomic Noiseware Discount & Tutorial
• Imagenomic Portraiture Discount & Tutorial
• onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7 (B&W Products Comparison)
• onOne Perfect Resize 7.5
• Topaz Labs Restyle 1.0 – very cool, check this out if you haven’t tried it already!

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

REVIEW: Arcsoft Portrait+ (Discount Offer)

Arcsoft Portrait+ Makes Image Editing Easy

One of my favorite books is Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop because I think it does a great job demystifying the subject of portrait editing. With that said, there’s still lots of grunt work involved so I can easily spend 5+ hours editing a single photo. This of course begs the question, what if there were a product that could simplify that process?

Portrait Professional is probably the product most people are familiar with due to their extensive advertising, but when I used it I felt very disappointed. onOne tried to tackle the problem with Perfect Portrait, and they got closer to my desire to have “automatic” enhancements that didn’t look cheesy. There’s also Portraiture and Nik’s Dynamic Skin Softener that can be used with more grunt work to get results that more closely align with my preferences, but both are going to be too tedious to use for an entire face, eye, teeth and lips edit of the average face. This is exactly why ArcSoft created Portrait+ to make auto retouching faces much easier and more  comprehensive in very little time.

Features

Plenty Sliders are available

Overall, I found the user interface to be clean and straightforward. It features some test images you can use when you first start, or you can use your own image. It features automatic face detection, but like most implementation of this technique – it often requires some user adjustments to the default wireframe.

Above average facial part recognition and a wealth of presets are some of the strengths

Once the face has been detected, you simply use the presets or sliders to get your desired look. Simple retouch brushes are included as well.

Bulk Edits with manual settings and presets are first class features

One of the highlights of this product is its excellent batch editing support. If you do lots of editing of similar types of images, this can be a huge time saver.

Conclusion

While I like this product better than some that I’ve used in the past, I’m still a hard core do-it-yourself portrait retoucher who prefers to use Portraiture. I’d place this product ahead of the results I’ve obtained using the latest version of Portrait Pro 11, but similar to what I’m used to getting from Perfect Portrait.  This product seems to offer better bulk/batch editing of a large number of photos, but I can’t edit faces that way so I didn’t really test that feature.

Where to order

Click here to learn more or order and use my 15% off coupon code, RMARC , on any ArcSoft product. You can also save 25% off Portrait+ for a limited time when you use the coupon code RMARCPP. Here’s an example that shows how your cart should look (please note, codes and discount amounts may change from what appears in this image):

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Imagenomic Noiseware 4.1.1 Professional (Latest Version)
• Imagenomic Portraiture 2.x (Latest Version Tutorial)
• onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7
• Portrait Professional 10
• What Photoshop books should I read?
• Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

I was provided a copy of this product to review.

PhotoThoughts: Contemplation

Contemplation – Copyright Ron Martinsen – All Rights Reserved (500px link)
Model – QaioQaio Jade

This shot was taken back in 2011 with a Canon 5D Mark II at 1/100 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600 at 70mm (70-200mm f/2.8L IS II) on a Manhattan rooftop. The model is also an incredible wedding photographer based out of New Mexico who happened to be in town at the conference we were both attending. She was kind enough to nearly freeze to death (this was late October) on the breezy rooftop while we rattled off a number of shots.

What I love about this shot is the expression of the model’s face along with the light that grabs your attention to her face and incredible stomach. This model has no major skin flaws and there’s no digital diet going on here, so editing was pretty simple. Here’s the before (from in-camera RAW) and after:

Here’s my layers that show what I did here:

Here’s each layer explained:

1. Noiseware Default – Noise reduction using Noiseware using the Default setting.
2. Hairs – Content aware healing of stray hairs
3. Portraiture – Skin Softening using the Medium Preset to help tone down the goose bumps
4. Brilliance / Warmth – Color Efex 4 effect to warm the skin tones and background lights
5. HPF Eyes and Teeth – An overlay layer with High Pass Filter set to 3 to make the eyes and teeth shine a bit more
6. Fix Background – Remove lines and spots from the railing
7. Darken Background – I used Viveza to darken the background and then selected the railing areas using the blue channel to create a a simple mask that only got the areas I wanted. I applied the mask to the image to avoid making my file overly large since I didn’t need that extra Viveza data. I also noticed that I missed a little underwear imprint on the belly so I removed that on that layer.
8. Only apply Tonal Contrast to the skin above the waist and the city lights. I could have applied the layer, but I was done so I just stopped there.
9. Not shown here, but I did output sharpening using Sharpener Pro on the image uploaded to the web.

Conclusion

This editing could have been done in Photoshop Elements, but I used CS6 just because that is what I’m used to. This is a pretty basic edit that took about an hour with most of the time spent on the Hairs layer.

The lighting was one Westcott Apollo triggered using a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1, Flex TT5 and AC7 with a 580 EX II flash. I’d like to thank Clifford Pickett for getting me access to the roof and providing the lighting gear, as well as assisting. Kaethe Mari was also an awesome assistant on this shoot who also doubled as a model (see Travel Photography: Photographing People At Night In New York City (Manhattan)).

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Nik Collection for $126 USD “RONMART” 75% Off – Worldwide
• Nik Software Color Efex 4 Video Tutorial (Review)
• Nik Software Sharpener Pro 3.0
• Nik Software Viveza 2.0
• Imagenomic Noiseware 4.1.1 Professional (Latest Version)
• Imagenomic Portraiture 2.x (Latest Version Tutorial)
• What plug-ins should I buy? (for Photoshop & Lightroom)

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

TUTORIAL: Using Portraiture 2.3 by Imagenomic (Discount Offer)

CLICK HERE for my October 2016 new and improved video with more obvious before and after!

Imagenomic Portraiture 2.3 (Build 2308-01) using the Smoothing: High Preset
Canon 1D X 1/200 sec at f/10, ISO 100 at 160mm (70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM)

Skin softening is a touchy subject because some people look at the shot above and screech “oh her skin looks like plastic” or something along those lines. That level of skin softening might be appropriate for certain target audiences, but skin softening doesn’t have to be that harsh. Here’s an example of how I typically do skin softening for my own taste:

My normal skin softening workflow as shown in the video plus a couple additional healing edits

Now even that might be too much for some people, so in my tutorial video in this article I show you how to use Portraiture to get the right amount of skin softening to suit your own personal needs.

Now this model has the best skin I’ve seen on an adult human being in all of my life. However, with today’s high resolution lenses and cameras, studio lights, and makeup that started to fail during a shoot even this models skin can look pretty rough:

Original image from camera with only minor blemish touchups

This woman is in her early 20’s and has wonderful skin, but even the best skin has blemishes – that’s reality. The makeup cracks make look much older than she really is and it causes some unnatural lines on her nose. As a result, the camera captures an more harsh version than the reality that existed before my eyes. This is where skin softening comes in, and it’s for the reality of scenarios like this that I always use it when I have skin in a photo. The difference is that I’ll use a lot more here than a casual shot, so always adjust the amount to suit your subject, the conditions and your artistic intent at the time you edit your photo.

Imagenomic Portraiture 2.3 User Interface

Imagenomic 2.3 User Interface

For this tutorial I’m using 2.3 and I’ve created a Skin Tones Mask similar to the one shown above (but more precise) and I’ve left Enhancements turned off. I love this product, but I find Enhancements to be redundant so I prefer to do them in their own layers in Photoshop so I can decouple that work from my skin softening work. As a result, I don’t really discuss this feature in the tutorial.

NOTE: At the end of the video there’s an error where I name the layer Portraiture 5 for the version, but I meant to do 2.3. Noiseware is version 5, so that was a typo.

Video Tutorial

CLICK HERE for my October 2016 new and improved video with more obvious before and after!

This video was recorded at 1920x1080, so it’s best to view it full screen on a HD display. Be sure to also set the YouTube controls to HD via the gear menu button as the “auto” setting doesn’t always do the right thing. If the iFrame above isn’t working, then click here to view the video in a web browser.

Conclusion

This isn’t really meant to replace my old Imagenomic Portraiture 2.0 -vs- Nik Software Dynamic Skin Softener review, but I never had a chance to put an in-depth video tutorial in it. This article makes up for that shortcoming and hopefully helps you to become more productive with skin softening.

See the end of this article for more related reviews.

I’m also well aware that great books like Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop demonstrate how to do skin softening without a third party product. However, like all plug-ins what you from a third party solution that you don’t get from Photoshop directly is the ability to rapidly try different things and build a complex mask in seconds. As a result I’ll say that it might be possible to get identical results without this product, the fact is that you’ll get more control with faster results than Photoshop alone.

I highly recommend this product because I use it on every image I edit with skin. It’s that good and I wouldn’t want to work without it!

Special Offer – Save 15%

See the Discount Coupon Code page for the latest code if this doesn’t work

CLICK HERE to use my coupon code RONMART2012 when you check out for a discount on the following products: (click banners to learn more)

Get all three products below at a discounted rate in this suite.

If you see a photo of mine that has skin, Portraiture
is the ONLY product I use for skin softening.

Want to get rid of noise from your images?
Noiseware is the king of noise removal while preserving detail – period!

Miss film and want to get that classic look and grain back?
Realgrain might be just what you are looking for!

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Imagenomic Noiseware 4.1.1 Professional (Latest Version 5 Update Review)
  
• REVIEW: Imagenomic Portraiture 2.0 -vs- Nik Software Dynamic Skin Softener
  
• Imagenomic Portraiture 2.0 (Latest Version 2.3 Update Review)
  
• What Photoshop books should I read?
  
• What plug-ins should I buy? (for Photoshop & Lightroom)
  
• Imagenomic Noiseware, Portraiture & RealGrain Updated (15% Off Coupon Code)
  
• Portrait Professional 10

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

I am a featured photographer for Imagenomic. I did this promotion because I love Noiseware and Portraiture and because Imagenomic was an early supporter of this blog. I don not get compensated for being featured photographer, and I did this article without any solicitation or request from Imagenomic.

Discount Coupon Code Changes for onOne and Imagenomic–Act NOW before they drop!

Sorry, these offers have expired

Photo Thoughts: Childhood Happiness

Childhood Happiness by Ron Martinsen

In 2012 my blog became very focused on product reviews and less about photo editing, so I’d like to change that in 2013. I put photos on my photography notebook and 500px, but I didn’t really focus on the photo editing aspect of this blog that made it popular to begin with. With that in mind, I thought I’d try to start sharing some photos again.

About this photo

This is a photo I took while on a subway train in Seoul, South Korea. It was part of a deliberate series of photos I took with my Canon 1D X using the 24-70mm f/2.8L II lens. I wanted to capture my youngest son’s enthusiasm for life as I hadn’t seen him in over two months (due to his extended visit with his grandparents in Korea).

Here’s the original image created from the RAW with an 8x10 crop and no other processing:

f/2.8 @ 24 mm,1/250, ISO 1000, AWB, No Flash
Original In-Camera Photo with no editing (but cropped)
Click for original – for personal use only – DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE or UPLOAD

I was a great shot of my son’s laughter (and I had plenty of shots to choose from), but my desire to avoid the flash and my shutter speed needed to freeze his animated body meant a high ISO.

How I edited this photo

I started by editing the RAW image in Lightroom 4.3 with the following adjustments:

As you can see I started by cropping (which I don’t usually do and typically don’t recommend), then I brightened up the dark exposure. I experimented with some of the camera profiles to get the Canon look that I like, but for this one the nasty lights made the white balance a little gnarly. After some experimentation I decided I’d handle that problem in Photoshop (more on that later). I finished up with the Punch preset which I like a lot but I thought it used too much clarity for this shot so I toned it down a bit.

After Lightroom I send the file to Photoshop for the heavy lifting:

I started off using Vincent Versace’s white balance action from his book Welcome to Oz 2. With the white balance finally fixed I fixed up some skin blemishes and then took care of the noise problem with Noiseware.

My son is young, but I still wanted a little skin softening so I threw that on there with Portraiture’s default setting. I also wanted to brighten his teeth a bit so I used the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

To warm the shot up I used the Skylight Filter from Color Efex Pro then I applied my Tonal Contrast filter with the mid-tones set to 0 and the method set to Fine. Next I added my secret sauce Silver Efex preset and reduced the opacity down to 60% to give it that desaturated look, but I did a Tonal Contrast again with saturation boosted to 49% to give it some color back but to also emphasize the darker look I was going for with the processing.

The dark look begs the question – why dark for a shot of a happy kid? The answer is simple – it’s just a photo editing style that I like and thought felt right with this shot. I could do bright colors, B&W and a variety different styles of editing for this shot but I liked this color newspaper processing style. Some will like it, some will hate it, but that’s the way things go with photography. This shot is for me, not a client, so I get to enjoy doing it in a way that suits me. I encourage you to do the same!

I finished up with some high pass sharpening and masked out the face by ctrl+clicking on the portraiture layer and doing a black fill on my mask. I always do this to avoid sharpening skin that I’ve softened.

When the file got back to Lightroom I made a slight adjustments with the highlights slider to get rid of a hot spot and then I tossed the preset Vignette 2 on it to help hold the viewers attention into the frame and on my son.

Conclusion

This was a quick 20 minute edit of this shot. If I were to stare at it and analyze it I’m sure I’d probably get in there with Viveza and work on some spots and I’d probably experiment with some different color enhancements.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the before and after and hearing the how and why behind the final image. If you want to see more articles like this, then let me know in the comments below.

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