Lin and Jirsa Post Production Styles
Digital photography doesn’t end with the camera shutter clicking shut. Similar to the days of the darkroom, each digital negative must undergo post production development in order to arrive at a final professional-quality product.
Furthermore, post production is more than just correcting and slightly enhancing images. When done with care and expertise, the right post production technique can add character and life to an image. In some cases, it can turn a basic image and transform it into a work of art. In others, it can take a certain emotion in a scene and enhance that emotion to create a powerful image. With this understanding, our studio has developed a unique style of post production that is done in-house by trained professionals and not shipped off to a batch processing company.
NOTE: For those who received our “Post Production Catalog,” we have since merged the premium styles into the advanced styles to create the list that you see below on this page.
Outline
Here is an outline of our styles:
I. Basic Post Production
II. Advanced Post Production
- 2. Vintage Wash
- 3. Fine Art
Basic Post Production:
* Included in All Packages
We perform basic post production on each and every delivered image at no additional charge. The goal of basic post production is to create print-ready, professional-quality imagery that is vibrant yet natural.
Included in basic post production is the following:
- Color Correction – We make sure an image is corrected for temperature and tint, ensuring that the image is not too orange, blue, green, pink or anything in between.
- Exposure Correction – We adjust the exposure and brightness to ensure that an image is not too bright or too dark on screen and in print.
- Other Adjustments – We apply a variety of effects and tools to get our end product, including recovery, vignetting, noise reduction, sharpening, contrast adjustments, and other techniques.
- Black and Whites – We use our judgement to determine which images should be in turned black and white based on a variety of factors and guidelines. These are done as a part of basic post production.
Advanced Post Production:
*Varying amounts included in all packages
*Pricing – $50 per Image if purchased individually
Advanced Post Production Styles are styles of processing that take the photograph one step beyond photographic art and in the direction of a graphic art. Advanced styles of post production involve much more expertise and in depth development that can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. These techniques require expert level post production knowledge and are extremely time intensive.
One of our many past occupations involved print design for billboards, buses and posters, so we’re very familiar with Photoshop and other Adobe Software. This knowledge allows us to apply custom effects that complete and enhance our images. As mentioned, these are all done in-house from styles that were also developed in-house, providing a unique, one-of-a-kind look. In contrast, many photographers purchase popular Photoshop ‘actions’ that create nice effects but ones that are inevitably cookie-cutter, commonplace, non-customized, and limited.
1. Vintage Black and White
Vintage Black and White is a processing technique familiar to many. It involves taking an image to black and white and then using specific color tones to bring it back to the popular hue. Vintage Black and White images are often further exposed to blowout (over expose to lose details) the highlights and give it an increased vintage look. The overall effect of vintage black and white effect creates an antiqued image, like that of what you would find in the early 19th century.
2. Vintage Wash Advanced Post Production
The Vintage Wash processing technique is characterized best by de-saturated (dulled) colors with slightly blown out (overexposed) highlights. While the image still retains some of its original color, the overall effect of this technique creates an image that looks as though it was faded, worn and aged over time.
3. Fine Art Advanced Post Production
The Fine Art processing style takes a color corrected photo and adds several layers to the image, boosting overall saturation as well as adding several texture layers used to further push the ambiance of the scene. Typically vignettes will be stronger, while the textures and layers added are used to draw the viewer’s attention to the subject. The overall effect is an enhanced artistic piece that still retains its roots as a photographic work of art.
4. High Dynamic Range (HDR) Advanced Post Production:
IMPORTANT NOTE: This effect cannot be applied to every image. An HDR image must be shot with the creation of an HDR image in mind, as it involves taking multiple images of the same scene at different exposures and combining them in post production.
HDR, or High Dynamic Range processing, is used to bring out details in both the highlights and the shadows when there is a strong contrast in lighting within a scene. HDR processing typically involves combining three nearly identical images exposed at three different exposure levels, otherwise known as AEB or Auto Exposure Bracketing. The combination results in an image that retains all of the detail in the highlights and shadows, while also highly saturating the colors.
Click HERE to see a few more examples of HDR images or browse our blog and see if you can point them out.
5. Dream Blur (Tilt Shift)
The Dream Blur creates a focus for the image by blurring out other parts of the image. The result is a dreamy effect for the image. This style of post production emulates the photographs taken by tilt shift cameras and lenses.
6. Artistic Discretion
As we mentioned, we often shoot our photography with our end product in mind, meaning we most often have an idea of what we want to do with any given shot in post production. Not all of these styles necessarily fit into any of the above categories. For example, we may feel like the sky needs some enhancement for a more dramatic effect. This would involve dodging and burning in Photoshop, selectively increasing the vibrance and saturation, and other advanced techniques. While this doesn’t fit in any of the styles that I mentioned above, it is still considered Advanced Post Production. If a room has very uneven lighting or mixed lighting, we may correct these aspects of the image. The resulting image will seem like a natural image and therefore it may not seem too far from Basic Post Production, but because of the amount of advanced work put into creating the image, it is also considered Advanced Post Production.
Custom Post Production
*None included in the packages
*Pricing – $50 per Image purchased individually
Custom Post Production is creating, altering, or removing anything from the scene. This includes removing objects from an image, retouching skin and eyes, and adding objects to a image, covering up anything in the image, and applying any other techniques to significantly alter the image.
These are not included in any of the packages; and they cost $50 an image. However, if you order large prints (12×18 or larger) directly through us, we include this style of post production and apply other techniques to prepare the image for print at no addition cost beyond the cost of the print.
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