How was this achieved?

I am aware that lighting is involved, as well as typical beauty retouching, but I swear there is something else that the photographer did to get the image to look like this. Any ideas?

https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/s720x720/531064_10151105894554361_762455887_n.jpg

(Photo by Moti Malul)

I know what they did.

I can't tell you explicitly what they did, but in knowing the tools of the digital darkroom (i.e. post-processing) you can achieve a myriad of effects that will enhance your studio shots.

The most obvious thing I see here is a softening of the subject. This was achieved in the film days by shooting through gauze to get a soft focus effect, filtering out imperfections and smoothing lines. This can be achieved very quickly using the Clarity slider in Lightroom/Camera Raw.

Here's a portrait of Bill Murray I pulled off the web (first image in a Bing search for "Portrait", nothing special about it). The original photo is in the center, the one to the left is simply a pull back of the Clarity slider and a slight bump to Sharpening to keep sharpness. The one to the right shows what you get when you bump Clarity up. One tool. I suspect that there was a lot of other things done (there's a "Glow" tool in Nik Color Efex Pro 4 that allows you to soften while retaining sharpness that I use a lot for people), but it could be as simple as just Clarity.

I definitely see some softening, though whether through "Clarity" or a filter I can't say. I also see what to me look like some levels adjustments being done to make the shot more high-key, some color saturation and a deft, global, color-balance in each shot, cropped and uncropped.

If there's some specific "trick" going on, I'm not seeing it. The shots look a little over-processed to me, definitely on the ragged edge for my tastes, but at the same time they "come together" somehow at the very end.

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Yep, I'm inclined to agree with the above. Most likely some high-key lighting, skin re-touching (via clarity and softening), and some saturation adjustments on the colors...especially the red. Holy cow, that red.

A wasted opportunity IMHO. A model that looks like that, who clearly had a MUA and hair stylist, this would've been an ideal candidate for a 50's style pin-up shoot with a bit of vintage processing. Instead, it's got this weird cotton candy/Pokemon looking crap going on, and it ruins what could've been a great shot.

Browncoat said:

an ideal candidate for a 50's style pin-up shoot with a bit of vintage processing. Instead, it's got this weird cotton candy/Pokemon looking crap going on...

Click to expand...

My thought's exactly.

Awesome model, hair, makeup, sense of style... In the right hands, done pinup-style, this could have gone FULL freakin' EPIC.

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I was being sarcastic as this was the posters first post.

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