ImpossibleFX - photography | filmmaking

May 11, 2008

Wanna know the secret to great photo processing?

Well, here it is: capture a great photo first.

Great photos are 90% great lighting. The other 10% is an oscillating mixture of subject greatness and camera angle greatness. But if you have a great angle on a great subject but the lighting sucks then your photo is only great by 10%, which isn’t great at all.

But how do you take a great photo? After setting up the lights to taste (that includes controlling the sun if you are so inclined), the rest is flat out stupid luck. That’s it.

Then the post-processing is easy: just sharpen it up a bit, make the shadows not so contrasty while keeping the photo from looking milky, smooth out the skin a bit without losing the natural texture, remove any dust bunnies and straighten up the background if it needs it. Takes a few minutes, really. Well, less than an hour.

You can speed things up considerably with a little product called LucisArt, but it won’t save a crappy picture. In fact, you could even ruin a decent picture by applying too much of this plugin.

So that’s the secret. Learn how to use light — both found and artificial — practice composition and be awesome with your subject. After that, modifying your stuff in Photoshop is easy.