Today's Image: "Toy Man"

Good afternoon and welcome to Impacted Images. This post features my newest image, "Toy Man."


This is the original image:

I took this image using a Canon 7D and 18-270mm lens zoomed in to 270mm. I used 1/250th shutter speed to eliminate shake and f-20 for best sharpness and depth of field. I also used ISO 125.

A Canon Speedlite 580EX II was at subject left, camera right firing at 1/64th power.

First, I used Adobe Camera Raw and adjusted the Exposure, Brightness, Blacks, Contrast, and Clarity. I then imported it into Photoshop CS5 and started to work on the photograph.



In Photoshop, I first selected the subject and set it on a black background. This allowed me to freely move it around without needing to crop tightly.

Next, I used Alien Skin Exposure 's Color Film filter and chose the Kodachrome Skin Tone preset. I chose this preset because it gave the toy some warm skin tones. I adjusted the Cooling/Warming slider in Exposure because the picture was too brownish. I lowered the opacity of this layer to 75%.

However, the Exposure filter darkened the left side of the subject's face too much. I used a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer along with a layer mask to brighten up the image.

Finally, I used the Shadows/Highlights adjustment to bring back the highlights that had been blown out.

This is the completed photograph.

Thank you for visiting Impacted Images. I will post more images soon.