Step-By-Step Retouching of Sol

Yesterday I asked you on Facebook and Instagram to choose (from 5) which photo you wanted me to explain the retouching process of. And the photo with the most votes was the golden hour shot of P.R.E stallion Sol :)

It's funny actually, because this is out of the 5 featured photos - the least edited! Allthough, it's not completely natural.. I will take you through the steps explaining to you what I've done, and as I bonus I will do the same with the second most voted photo - the portrait of Shanti, the grey pony! But first; Sol!

The picture above is the original, out-of-camera photo that was taken. I have done nothing but add my signature. The sun was behind us, but not completely. That resulted in a lot of rays shining into my lens giving the photo a very bright, low contrast feel. The first thing that catches my eye is the disturbing elements. And to me in this photo, is the right rein (left in the photo), the hair from the other rein and the fence in the background. So basically, I always start by sharpening the photo. First the whole photo, and then the parts I want to enhance. Like for example the eye(s). Secondly I start removing the disturbing elements by either using the makeover tool or the clone brush.

Here is the first verison of the photo (original to the left, first edit to the right). If you look a little closer, I have muted the green tones on Sol's neck and chest. When you photograph in summer and the sun is shining, the colors around you will often reflect on your subject. That happened here :) I have also brightened the photo just a tad.

After editing the first obvious steps i still wasn't satisfied. I wanted the photo to have more soul and warmth. By playing with selective colouring (you can read all about how in my previous blog!) I chose to go with a more yellow/orange tone, and I ended up with the final result:

I played with the contrast back and fourth, but ended up with this soft, warm, low contrast feel. To me it's not as powerful, but much more dreamy :) To sum it up: here you have the progress: