Editing in RAW

I edited 2 images. I edited them as a jpeg and then as a RAW file to see the difference.

The top image is the RAW edit and the bottom image the JPEG edit

RAW edit at the top, JPEG below that.

Three close ups on RAW (the top images) and JPEG (the bottom images)

You can clearly see that RAW edits retain so much more detail than JPEGs which appear to have a soft blur over them due to the decrease in detail lost after editing.

I will take and edit my final images for my show using RAW to keep sharp detail.


SPLIT TONING


First of all I adjusted the basics like temperature and highlights/shadows to give a more cool, contrasted look to the image.

I clicked the graduated filter option from the tool bar at the top and created a start point to the left of my image, going horizontally down to the right, finishing halfway through the image. This meant the fade would go from full effect on the left to fully faded in the centre.

I changed the tones so that the left side of the image was a lot darker than original so it looked as though there wasn't a lot of light getting to the subject, making the background darker. I did this increasing the contrast and shadows of this graduated filter and made the blacks stand out more.

As I'd made the left side darker, I wanted to emphasise the light that was potentially lighting the subject so I made the top right hand side a lot brighter with a gradient travelling towards and through the subject. This gave the appearance that the light source came from the top right side above the subject when in reality the light source came from the whole right side of the subject.

I did this by increasing the brightness and highlights to this selected area.

I made the left side appear darker by also doing a gradient coming from the bottom left going horizontally towards the centre of the image, again, emphasising shadows and contrast to give the effect little light was getting to the subject.

Original image

Image after using split toning and desaturated

I tried this process again with a different image:

I changed the temperature to give the image a better white balance.

This time the gradient went from the right, right the way through to the left. I increased the highlights and decreased contrast and shows to make it appear as though a light source was coming from the right side of the subject.

I then created a gradient going from the top left down towards the middle right. I increased the exposure in this gradient and the highlights to light the subject a lot more clearly.

I tested out a radial gradient on the face just to add a few yellow tones to the face to make the skin look less pale.

After playing around I desaturated the face a little so that the tones were not too contrasting.

Original image

Image after split toning

My image went from a dark, tungsten lit image where you couldn't see much of the facial features, with only light coming from the left, to a bright image that appears to have light coming from the left and the right.