#13 – Before/After: Nikki Sofie
Lucky 13? Unlucky 13? I don’t believe much in superstitions?
Do I know what I’m doing yet? Nope!
Am I trying my damndest? Yep!
Will I one day know what I’m doing? Well… I sure hope so. But for now – things are still stumping me, and it’s mostly still pertaining to colour grading!
I do think that I am finally starting to get my speed up and settle into sort of a routine in what I’m doing – I’ve been working on this image over the past week or so, catching time here and there. I just do wish that I understood colour more – and I have been reading and watching a lot of source material on colour theory and colour psychology, as well as grading. It just hasn’t sunk in quite yet, I guess.
This photo of Nikki Sofie by William Clark was a tricky one. When I imported it into Capture One it was bright red! After I colour corrected it and moved it over to Photoshop, I think I may have pushed it too far in colour grading it, possibly sending her a little green. Maybe?
While working on this image, I continued to follow Pratik Naik’s beauty retouching course – especially when it came to the hot spots. I also tried a few different ways of toning down the texture across her shoulders (burning: too long, was making me cross eyed – frequency separation: operator error maybe? Just couldn’t get it to look natural – layers on top set to either darken, colour etc: just didn’t work out the way I planned? Covered the texture or it too didn’t look right), and so in the end, I just left it as is.
What would you do in that situation? Comment below and let me know your thoughts! I welcome constructive feedback.
Have a great day, whatever you may be doing.