Most of the time when I shoot portrait photos, the client want med to use a white background. Personally, I think completely white backgrounds make the photo look too harsh. But when your client wants it white, white it is…

So when I shoot photos like this I always put one flash behind the person or object. I set this flash to a high power value in order to simply blow away all possible shadows and colors on the wall. If you’re in a hurry and perhaps miss something during your setup or your location for the shoot isn’t large enough the background might not end up as white as you thought. This happened to me on my last session. I didn’t have time to measure the light the way I wanted and the room was very small so the person had to stand very close to the wall behind him wich also made him stand very close to my flash. To make a long story short I just fired off my camera and was prepared for that I had to fix the background later on when I came back to my office.

Even though the background looked white in my display on my camera ( I didn’t bother checking for over-exposure detection at that point) it ended up being a bit gray in the corners.

I sent my final photos to the client. They shortly came back to me just to inform me that the photos backgrounds didn’t look completely white on their website.

In this video below, I will show you how you can change the exposure of a gray background behind a person in a portrait photo so that the background instead turns completely white (overexposed).

Case closed – Client happy!

I hope you enjoyed the movie. What would you like me to show you the next time?

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve been doing anything on this site.
I’ve been busy with family, house building and other jobs around + the lack of time and interest made me take a long break from this.

I still have thoughts about stepping up again to start deliver presets and tutorials for Lightroom. I think I just need to push myself a bit more to be motivated. Running a site like this on a regular basis takes time and effort, something I’ve been short of lately.

But now when Christmas is knocking on the door I thought I might just pop up with a revamped version of an old preset that I made 2008 (!!!). Back then It was made for Lightroom 3. This version is based on the same preset with some minor adjustments to fit Lightroom 5+.

Basically, it works fine for Christmast photos where trees, gifts and other colourful items are visible.

Hope you enjoy it.

Here’s the Before and after.

It’s been a while since last time :-/ What can I say, I’m a busy guy doing lots of things while being a father of two kids. :-)

Anyway,
Recently I received an email from Tiffani asking me to look over a favourite preset of her. She was referring to a preset called Wedding Look that I published some years ago. I’m just going to let you read what she writes before I continue…

“I downloaded your present “weddinglook” about 3 years ago and I REALLY love it.  I find myself using it quite a bit but always editing out the vignette from the action.  I also tend to make the temperature a tad bit cooler and closer to skin tone.  There is something awesome about this action that keeps me coming back to it, even though I tweak it so much.. 

I was wondering if you are aware of another preset that might be similar to wedding look but with those tweaks to it?  No vignette and a little closer to skin tone (this one is really warm). 

I know it’s a long shot, but I thought I would ask.”

Well Tiffani, It’s your lucky day and all others out there who are looking for the same style!
I’ve made some adjustments to your favorite preset and added 2 extra variations of it: Wedding Look Cool and Wedding Look Cool Bright.
Since this preset was made in LR3 at the beginning, I’ve now ALSO made a new version for LR4 and LR5. All can be downloaded in the same package below. Enjoy!

SOOC / ORIGINAL:

Wedding Look (The original version)

Wedding Look Cool:

Wedding Look Cool Bright:

I’m still glad I did it, since it has put pressure on myself and motivated me to keep doing it each day.

So here is the final before and after photo for this time :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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I really look forward the day when this project ends so that I can focus on something else for some time :-) . But before that happens, I still need to do another 9 presets :-)

Anyway, here is Lightroom preset number 356 of 365!

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Here comes Lightroom preset number 351 of 365.  Enjoy!

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