ginnydi

Before & After: a simpler Holiday Jester edit!

Added 2019-01-08 17:34:05 +0000 UTC

In sharp contrast to the composite before & after I posted two weeks ago, most of the holiday Jester stills I shot were edited in a much simpler style! Here's how this look was achieved:

Background color

I always shoot photos in camera raw, which is an image format that retains a lot more data about the image, so you have more freedom with color, lighting, and grain correction than you would with a JPG. Normally I would've adjusted the ton of this image in camera raw to make the background more neutral, but this time, I kept the background warm-tinted so that I could use color replacement to tint it purple. If I had toned the background cooler, the color replacement tool would've also tried to select & change some of the white tones on the dress. By leaving it warm, the background remains different enough from the rest of the image for Photoshop to easily identify it.

Snow bokeh

I'm a sucker for kitschy bokeh effects, and a snow theme was a great opportunity to use it! For this effect, I look for a stock image of bokeh lights/snow on a black background. (This one is from Pixabay.) I pasted that layer over the entire image and then set the layer to "screen" so the black disappears and the white snow effects remain. Then I just created a layer mask and masked out most of the effect over the figure, so it wouldn't be distracting.

Normally my edits require a moderate amount of beauty touch-ups (removing blemishes, reducing harsh shadows and undereye circles, etc.) but Jester's makeup is so extreme that it basically makes my face into a blank canvas, and a lot of the "flaws" that normally bother me are pretty much invisible beneath the blue. Score!