Firstly the finished shot, so you know where all
the steps are going.
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This is the Original where it came from.
70mm lens, 1/1250 sec, f4.5 (full open for the
lens), -0.7 Exposure comp.
One 580EX strobe with a shoot through a soft
white umbrella.
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First step, minor crop, (not shown).
Then Make a complete copied layer and add a
large gausian blur (about 60).
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Next, copy part of hand over the top but apply less
Gaussian blur (30).
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Again more soft blur for the back of the hand,
this time 10.
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The above have all been just blur, now to add
some soft focus effect which is both sharp and
blurred at the same time.
Firstly add in the fingers as sharp.
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That’s the sharp bit, next add in the soft bit.
This is another blurred selection but as its
another layer on top I’ve made is about 50%
opaque so the sharp images still shows.
You may also notice that the selection brush I’
ve used is not as soft, and I’ve not softened
the nails to keep the edge.
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Next Add in the key bit the ring. This has no blur
and the diamond part is also selectively
sharpened using the un-sharp mask.
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Now we’ll start the fine tune tweaking. As this
is going to be black and white lets help the
manicure ;-) This was a soft white brush with
the edges cleaned with a sharp eraser, then
used with overlay blending but the layer made
40% opaque.
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If you noticed on the sharp ring there was a bit of
shadow, lets fix that, particularly as it would show
up in the B&W conversion. A bit of selected
cloning, with a soft blur back and then a fine brush
to help the texture.
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There is quite a light area front right so going
to burn this a bit to darken it. Make a new layer
and paint in the area black to darken. Then
use the “Soft Light” blending mode and
opacity to fine tune the results. Also once done
the painting I like to use a Gaussian blur to
soften the whole layer and makes the effect
more even and blend better.
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Next the style that Steven and Imogen liked was
high contrast with a lot of noise, time to add the
noise.
Make a gray fill layer and add lots of noise, and
give a blur to soften the noise.
However as we want the ring to pop still, erase the
noise around the ring.
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Next convert to black and white.
(I find the colors work better if you do the
conversion at the end, hence everything
above, even burning and noise, are before the
conversation.
Add a new channel mixer layer and select
Monochrome, adjust the sliders to control the
“color” balance.
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However this leaves the image a bit flat and gray,
not the High contrast the Steven and Imogen want.
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This is where curves come in
The top and bottom adjustments control the
black and white and also the angle increases
the tonal range (which is good). The spot in
the middle adjusts the mid range highlights.
For more info on these check out cromasia on
tonal range.
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Then just to help again highlight the ring, use a
hard white shaped brush to add a highlight and
then adjust the opacity (used about 15%) so the
effect is more or less invisible, just a hint.
(Again background just to show effect).
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It all then adds together into this.
Hope you like it
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