In this chapter we start by using Nik Color Efex Pro for skin softening and then back to Lightroom briefly for cropping and rotation. Finally we get into Nik Silver Efex Pro to start the black and white high key portrait conversion. We begin with presets that get us quite a long way towards where we want to go.
In this tutorial we'll take a nicely lit studio portrait and turn it into a dreamy high key image fit for a magazine cover. We'll start off using Lightroom 4 in this first chapter to fix some levels and colour issues and produce a rather nice colour version of the picture. Then in chapters 2 and 3 we'll use Nik Silver Efex to turn that into a bright, clean high key black and white image.
This tutorial was recorded in 2012 but not released until 2013. When it was recorded Lightroom 4 was still pretty new and Google hadn't bought Nik Software yet.
Part 2 of our tutorial on shooting smoke pictures shows you how to edit the pictures once you've taken them. I'm using Lightroom 4 for this tutorial but the same techniques could be applied in just about any photo editing package. I'll show you how to improve contrast and tonality, how to get a clean background and then invert the image and add vibrant colours. After that it's all down to your own creativity to see the possibilities within the picture and bring them out.
[Update 17/2/2012: Modified the script slightly to fix a path capitalisation bug]
[Update 22/3/2013: Re-recorded the video to explain the process better]
I've been shooting a lot of model sessions lately and one of the things I always need to do after these sessions is put the processed pictures into my dropbox where the model can see them. These pictures are for a variety of different uses including Facebook, 500px, Google+, various modelling sites and, of course, print publication.
These sites often have different size limits and requirements so I usually need to export versions with and without watermarks and at various different pixel dimensions. So it's always been a pain in Lightroom that I can only export images at one size. Here's what I export by default:
full-size clean
full-size watermarked
2000px watermarked
1000px watermarked
That's 4 separate exports and of course I have a preset for each. It's not a *lot* of work but all those clicks bug me so I set about finding a way to export multiple different sized versions in one step. I tried a number of different approaches but the one I settled on was to write an application. Steady-on, it's not as scary as it sounds. My plan was to set up an export preset to save a full sized watermarked version then my application, called automatically from Lightroom, would take that full sized version as input and create 2 more smaller versions and save them in the same folder. The problem now, was writing the application.
I'm on a Mac so I started looking at Automator and when that proved too limited I looked at Applescript and when that proved too hard to debug I did what any reasonable, right thinking person would do and started whining on Twitter. I have a background in programming so surely I could accomplish this apparently simple task but no, I'd wasted a whole day on this so finally I asked for help. And to my great joy a couple of people did try. I posted my broken Applescript on pastebin in a huff and the next morning John Day (@johneday on twitter) had completely rewritten and simplified it for me. Thank you so much John - you're a superstar. Here's the script he wrote for me:
on open of myFiles
set newSizes to {1000, 2000}
repeat with aFile in myFiles
set filePath to aFile's POSIX path
set bPath to (do shell script "dirname " & quoted form of filePath)
tell application "System Events" to set fileName to aFile's name
repeat with newSize in newSizes
do shell script "sips " & quoted form of aFile's POSIX path & " -Z " & newSize & " --out " & quoted form of (bPath & "/" & rename(fileName, newSize) as text)
end repeat
end repeat
end open
on rename(fName, fSize)
do shell script "sed 's/fullsize/" & fSize & "/' <<< " & quoted form of fName
end rename
If you'd like to use this yourself run "Applescript editor" on your mac, create a new script and paste the above code into the code window. Then from the file menu choose save and be sure to save this as an Application, not a script. There's a drop-down box in the save window that lets you choose to save as Application. Save it in a folder somewhere and that's it, you're done. You just wrote an application. Congratulations - you're a programmer now. :)
Finally create your Lightroom export preset to save a full sized version, watermarked or not as you prefer. Then look at the bottom of the export dialog. You can choose post-processing actions. One of those is "Open in other application..". Pick that and then just below you can choose which application to use. Simple. Set your new application as the post-processing action and you're done. If you want other sizes instead of my 1000px and 2000px versions you can just modify the numbers in the line near the top of the script where it says, "set newSizes to {1000, 2000}". Add as many sizes in there as you like, comma separated.
So this solution is not mine at all. This is all down to John Day. If you find this useful please follow John on twitter (@johneday) and check out his website at https://www.johneday.com/.
This is obviously a mac only solution but writing something similar should be quite easy on Windows. SIP, the Scilab Image Processing toolkit, is pre-installed on the Mac but it's free and available for windows too. So is ImageMagick, which does similar stuff. All that's needed is a little code to wrap that up written in C#, Python or even a DOS batch file. Let me know if you do something like that and I'll be delighted to add links to it from here.
Today we've got another free video tutorial featuring Color Efex Pro 4 from Nik Software. This multi-part tutorial will cover a variety of filters, old and new show and ways to use them creatively to take an image from the original camera RAW to a finished version ready to print.
In this first chapter we look at Color Efex Pro 4's integration with Lightroom and examine the user interface before using the Skin Softener filter. This is the first chapter of a multi-part tutorial. Find all the chapters and loads more free video tutorials on Photoshop and Lightroom at www.photowalkthrough.com
Monday, June 10, 2013 at 5:36PM 
