Processing Wedding Photos

[mrskiss]

Hi there,

So I have taken a few wedding photos for my sister and now brother in law. I also plan on getting the photos that others took during the day, so should have a good choice for an album that I want to put together, and maybe a canvas print or similar if they want.

With some practice, I think I have gotten the very basics of photo editing (I try to use photoshop)- but am looking for more info on more complex editing, obviously at the moment geared towards wedding, but would like to learn more for my other photos in general as well.

Is there any failsafe processing tips to help humble photos look as good as they can (I realise they won't look professional) that you are willing to share?? Any websites/forums that have this kind of info??

My photos are in canon RAW, and the others just in jpeg.

If you don't want to part with your hard earned knowledge then thats alright too, I understand :)

[Smorter]

The worst wedding shots are those where the photos have been overedited. Piled on saturation, piled on vignettes, a lot of "dreamy" looks added to it. Selective Colouring. Made black and white. All looks shocking and horrible

Some of the best photos can be made with just the incamera processing and the RAW file in DPP. You don't have to do complex editing.

[habro]

tutoralized.com is one that I used to use, but there's a lot of good ones there if you Google it, especially if you know the effect you're after. Another thing to try is searching for PhotoShop Actions. Though these aren't very good for learning, it's a quick way to see what effects work & don't work

[Photogenic]

I'm not really into a lot of post processing for the majority of my images I will do minor colour correction using curves / levels (using the midtones, shadows & highlights).

When I want to add something special to an image I usually use an action - I have a couple of favourite actions and only use them on images that really benefit from it. I use a mixture of free and bought ones - for what you are after you should be able to get by with the free ones.

Here's a site for some free actions http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm I have used some from here in the past - Soft Light Portrait is one I have used for some maternity portraits. Have a look around there are lot's of different types of actions on there.

You can also buy action (depends on how much you plan to use them) from these sites
http://www.gettotallyrad.com/#download-a-sample-2dc7ae
http://www.kubotaimagetools.com/actions.html
http://ittybittyactions.com/sweet.htm

It really depends on your style and what you want to bring out in the photo.

Linda

[mrskiss]

Thanks for the help so far.. I am aware that if you can take a good photo and only do minor processing that is best, but I am not a pro, and was very very rushed to do these photos. I will post up an example so you guys can get an idea of what I am working with. I am looking at how to get the most out of these shots which aren't the best. I had bad light, no flash other than camera and as I said was very rushed so a bit of blur in a few.
If you have time, let me know what I should be doing to make these photos more usable.

[mrskiss]

Just bumping this one as no replys since I posted the pic...
Also, how does someone edit their post?? I can't seem to see any where to do it...

[habro]

I think there's only a limited window of time that you can edit a post, not too sure though.

As for the pic I think you've done quite well for on-board flash asides from the hot-spot on the guy's forehead. Have you had a look round for diffusers you can use? Try cutting the handle off a 2L milk carton & slip that over your pop-up flash, it makes a world of difference.

Composition-wise you'd be best off avoiding messy backgrounds like the plant in this one, it's very distracting.

I can't pull exif data at work, but what shutter speed were you using? Looks like you've dragged the shutter a bit which is good to get ambient detail, but maybe that's what caused what appears to be a bit of blur in the girl. If your flash isn't powerful enough to freeze the subject then anything ambient will be blurred with any movement [including yours]

[XCracer]

1/15
F/4.0
iso 400

shutter might be a little slow for handheld.. but turned out pretty good..

[habro]

Hmm f4 may be a bit slim, would probably go f6.3+ unless you're intentionally trying to separate the background. That would explain the out of focus girl