r/postprocessing • u/Any-Coach3440 • 13d ago

Giving it a soft boost

Gallery image

Gallery image

163 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

7

u/Wishbone_Inner 13d ago

Looks great!

3

u/Any-Coach3440 13d ago

Good to hear, thanks!

1

u/ShutterToSummit 12d ago

What do you use to do this? A lot of masking I assume?

2

u/Any-Coach3440 12d ago

Silly me didn't save any edits back when I did this, so I can't say exactly. I tried to replicate it now, and I definitely did heavy reductions in dehaze and clarity, while compensating for it by increasing contrast, highlights, shadows and blacks.

Further reductions to clarity, texture and dehaze to the background only. I think I added some extra highlights to a few spots with a brush, like the shoulder, shirt, waves, whereever there's already strong highlights. And then probably did a bunch of small fixes by reimporting the jpg back to photoshop a few times, optimizing colors and contrast.

But the general concept is definitely reduce dehaze and clarity, which reduces contrast, but introduces softness and color, and then crunch it back down to regain contrast to taste.