My Photoshop routine

Recently I've developed a routine (action :D) in Photoshop to post-process my pictures. Nothing really fancy, but it gives me the results I want :)

The whole thing is based on layers (what a suprise) and the Overlay blending mode.

This is the image 'straight out of camera', which -in this case- was a Nikon D5000, with the kitlens.

The photo itself is good, nicely rendered colors and contrast... so all in all the D5000 is not a bad camera :)

But it's just too raw...

So I run my Lightroom template "_t_PSPreFlat" which makes the picture look very flat.

This way the picture looks rubbish. No contrast, no colors...

But this is exactly what I need :)

So I open the picture in Photoshop as a Smart Object.

To do so: Right click the image -> Edit in -> Open as Smart Object in Photoshop

And then comes the Post Process.

First of all I make 3 copies of the layer, but not just normal layer copy. I use 'New Smart Object via Copy' 2 times, so I have 3 separate Smart Objects and not just 1 but 3 times. The reason why I need it like this, because with normal Layer duplication you will have the same Smart Object on the 2 (or more) layers and once you edit the object on one the changes will take effect on all copied layers, while if we have 3 separate Smart Objects the changes will only apply for the actual layer (and it's duplicates).

My first layer (the bottom one) sets the very basics for the picture. It can be a little bit oversaturated.

What I usually do on this layer is setting the Vibrance to +75 to +100 and the Saturation somewhere between -75 and 0. This will set the 'extra' color on the picture by 'oversaturating' the parts I want to be very colorful.

As of brightness and contrast I keep the contrast -50 but adjust the brightness to have the desired 'exposure'. If needed the Recovery and/or the Fill Light can be used to get a bit more flat picture. Same applies for Clarity, if I want a bit more 'creamy' picture then -75 to -100, if I want more contrasty picture then +50 to +100.

The next one (middle) is a grayscale layer to set the contrast of the image.

First of all I convert the picture Grayscale on the 4th tab of ACR (remember it's still a Smart Object!). Then I set the White Balance to something totally crazy: +50000 / -150.

This will set a bit flat but still contrasty image I can finetune for the contrast I want. Usually I don't touch the contrast slider, but play with the Blacks and sometimes Recovery and Fill Light as well. Clarity can go from min to max depending on the picture's need, but usually goes +50 to +100.

Depending on the picture I add some 'sharpening' or 'detail enhancing' layers. This is basically 2 High Pass layers created from the Grayscale Contrast picture. It's important to set the Clarity 0 for this or else the High Pass layers will go crazy :)

I use a High Pass (5) layer to enhance the fine details of the picture or just parts of it. To strengthen this I use a Levels layer together with the High Pass layer making it very contrasty.

On this picture I wanted the eyes, the hair and mouth to be sharp, so used layer mask to achieve this. The transparent part is what's green on the picture on the left.

The other High Pass layer is a bit stronger, I set the High Pass value to 25 on this one. It can come handy when I want to make the picture very strong in hard details and I don't have too much bokeh, just like I had it with my picture of the old homeless woman: Juli neni

On this picture I only wanted to use it for the eyes and the mouth and some parts of the hair as well.

Of course to strengthen the effect I use Levels on this layer as well.

The last one from the 3 Smart Object layer is the one on the top which sets the overall color tones for the picture.

The first thing I do is setting the Clarity to -100. This will already make the picture a bit creamy... For the colors I set the Saturation high (+75 to +100) and to control extreme oversaturation or just want a bit 'washed' picture I use Vibrance to control the overall saturation of the picture (-75 to 0).

As I want a bit more creamy effect on the picture this layer gets a Smart Filter as well with Gaussian Blur set to 25

As you can see the layers on their own look terrible but combined with Overlay can give me the final result I want. And yes, this is the steps I use with almost all of my pictures I post-process in Photoshop. I also have some Lightroom Templates... but that's an other post :)