Gritty Portrait Technique

Hi there,

This is my 1st post of the blog so I thought I would kick things off with a nice PP technique that I discovered in the Lightroom 2 book by Scott Kelby. This technique doesn't work well on all photos choose wisely. It tends to work best on portraits that are dark and have a lot of mood. But I have had success on photos that aren't. Just test it out!

Right here are the steps..

1. Enter the Develop module of Lightroom 2 and crank all these sliders up to +100.

Recovery, Fill Light, Contrast, Clarity and Vibrance. Now things look a little funky and not very good to be honest. But don't worry there is more to it than that.

2. Now lets get those over vibrant colours down a bit but keep the nice vibrant high lights. Do this by grabbing the Saturation slider and bringing it down to a level that looks nice to your eye.

3. Finish up by adding a nice Vignette effect to your picture. Do this by going to the Vignettes panel and adjust the lens correction amount and midpoint to a place that looks good.

Done! Hopefully your satisfied with the effect, I really like how it turns a somewhat boring portrait into one with a gritty vibrant look that belongs in a magazine!

To the left is a sample of the settings I used on one of the sample pics below.

- Craig