Tim Schooler's custom color spaces for faces
Tim Schooler Photography is an award-winning photographer specializing in high school senior photography with a cutting edge. He always shoots in RAW mode, then converts the files in Phase One’s Capture One. His work is noted for the “pop” in the eyes and for the generally incredible way that he treats the faces he works with. He says, “I am not a fan of over-softening skin, I think it is done too much these days. But with digital, and the high-resolution sensors we’re using now, you have to do a subtle amount of diffusion to take the edge off. But I still want to see detail in the skin, so I’ll apply a slight level of diffusion on a layer, then back if off until I can see skin pores.”

Capture One has four options to emulate the “look” of film. According to Tim, “I use a custom profile from Magne Nielsen for skin tones. In Capture One, you can set the default film type to Linear response, Film Standard, Film Extra shadows or Film High Contrast. I used to use Film Standard but found I was tweaking the curves a little for a bit more punch in Photoshop. Now I use Film High Contrast and I find its a lot closer to Portra VC, which was my preferred film before we went digital.” The net result is a little higher contrast and about a 7% increase in color saturation that gives Tim’s finished work the look his seniors are after.

Another interesting aspect of Tim’s work is that he shoots everything as a finished image. He says, “In fact that’s how I proof. Nothing is edited or retouched before the client sees it. Then we retouch only what they ask for. I have always felt that Photoshop should be icing, just a finishing touch after first baking a good cake. A corny analogy, but I really think it fits. More and more photographers seem to just shoot and fix it later in Photoshop. With the volume we had this year, there is no way I can spend that much time in Photoshop on every image even if I wanted to.”

Tim Schooler’s senior portraits have marginally higher contrast and about a 7% increase in color saturation due to custom color profiles he applies in Phase One Capture One RAW file processing.

Noise
Noise is a condition, not unlike excessive grain, that happens when stray electronic information affects the sensor sites. It is made worse by heat and long exposures. Noise shows up more in dark areas making evening and night photography problematic with digital capture. It is worth noting because it is one of the areas where digital capture is quite different from film capture.

This image, by Yervant, was shot with available light on a windy and overcast day in Melbourne, Australia. The bride’s veil was a very light silk and kept flying in the wind while she had fun under it with her bridesmaids. Yervant chooses a few images that he works on in Photoshop, even before showing any proofs to the couple. These are his “signature” images. Yervant copied sections of the image to make a new layer—the veil. Once he had the new layer, he then added Motion Blur in Photoshop in the direction of the veil’s natural flow to boost the extra life in the moment. He then selected a section of the background and applied the purple hue to make the background less demanding, tonally. After he flattened the image, he added a bit of Photoshop grain [Filter > Texture > Grain] to make the image grainy to suit his own personal taste.

Sharpening
Often in your camera’s presets or in your RAW file processing software you will have a setting for image sharpening. You should choose none or low sharpening. The reason for this is that sharpening can eliminate data in an image and cause minor color shifts. As mentioned, sharpening is best done after the other post-processing effects are complete.

Bob Coates’ Unsharp Masking Method
Bob Coates, WPPI member and fellow Amherst author, has a very cool system of Unsharp Masking that he gave me to sharpen an ad he did for WPPI. It goes something like this. In Photoshop, go to Filter > Shapren > Unsharp Mask. Set the Amount to 500, the Radius to 1.2 pixels, and the Threshold to 6 (levels). At this point the image will look absolutely horrible. Click “OK.” Then go to Edit > Fade Unsharp Mask. Change the mode to Luminosity and the Opacity to between 20 and 30%, depending on preference. The results are staggeringly good. This process works so well because by using the Luminosity blending mode, you are essentially only sharpening the black-and-white image, which serves as a background of sharpness for the color components of the image.

Bob Coates’ portraits display an almost extreme level of sharpness, even in the softer image of Heather (left). This level of sharpness not only imparts information but character in the portrait, especially in the portrait of Randy (right) with his weathered skin and rough hands.

Metadata
DSLRs give you the option of tagging your digital image files with data, which often includes date, time, caption, as well as camera settings. Many photographers don’t even know where to find this information, but if in Photoshop, you go to File > File Info you will see a range of data including caption and ID information. If you then go to EXIF data in the pull-down menu, you will see all of the data that the camera automatically tags with the file. Depending on camera model, various other information can be written to the EXIF file, which can be useful for either the client or lab. You can also add your copyright symbol (©) and notice either from within Photoshop or from your camera’s metadata setup files. Adobe Photoshop supports the information standard developed by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) to identify transmitted text and images. This standard includes entries for captions, keywords, categories, credits, and origins from Photoshop.

Tips and Hints: If you perform complex manipulations to an image in Photoshop, the only way to preserve the history of operations is to save the file as a PSD (Photoshop document) file. Then, under “history” in file info you will see every operation performed to the file.