First, the story...
Prepare for a long post- but I wanted to share how this image was made as it was quite fun both in and out of Photoshop. My wife and I wanted to come up with a fun way of sharing the news. After hours of looking through 500px, Pinterest, and Google image search for inspiration I thought the glitter reveal could make a fun photo. So after a quick stop at Michaels for the confetti we were set. I originally wanted to shoot it outside, so when it came to the day I wanted to shoot we waited and waited till about 2 hours before sunset (the best light to shoot in) to take the shot. However, as I knew it was still super hot here in Arizona and i figured I would get a very short time period to shoot before my wife got tired, I made a last minute game-time decision to shoot in our house instead. This way I could utilize our table for both composition and easy clean up for the confetti, and most importantly AC and a comfortable area for Mrs. Lange. ;-)
Setup-
After moving all the chairs and stuff off the table I set up my speedlights, I love the 3 light setup so I set up 1 speedlight on each side of Shana ( my wife) turned to about 1/4 power. I then set up a half opened umbrella on a C-stand in front and above Shana as a Key light. I think it was on 1/2 power. I had the umbrella half opened just for space wise and so that it wouldn't be in the shot. This setup is extremely popular and people like Joel Grimes are masters of it.
Camera wise I set up to ISO 200, F4 for decent focus, and 1/125 sec to cut out all ambient light. I used my 70-200 2.8 IS lens with IS off and at 70mm on a tripod for easy masking later on.
The Shoot-
Once I had the lighting setup I brought in the model. I had her blow into her hands and shoot the confetti up in the air a bunch of times, it was a challenge to get a good shot of the confetti and Shana not looking weird when blowing the confetti in the air. Once I got the shots we liked I then had her stand to the side of the table and through the confetti up in the air over the table and i took multiple shots. It was a lot of fun making a bit of a mess! Below are screen shots of what I took.
Confetti!
Once I was comfortable with what I had I took some close up shots of the confetti. I had seen some cool shots of playing cards coming almost out of the screen and thought it would add some good dimension to the photo. Below are the shots I took. I used one of my flashes on low power up close and just experimented until I liked what I got.
Photoshop time!-
Once I got everything into lightroom I narrowed my shots down to two shots of Shana that I really liked and couldn't tell which one was better. When I really looked into it I loved the face of one and the body and confetti of the other. If only there was a program that could do what I needed... ;-)
So I brought all my files into Photoshop and started masking out the one face onto the other, I then had to clonestamp out a bit of her fingers as it just didn't fit right. After a simple crop to my favorite aspect ratio (16x9) and I had everything in place, I dodged and burned the light and dark areas to really make her "pop." There are a million different ways to achieve the D&B effect. I like using curves. I make a curves layer, either drag a mark higher or lower depend on which on I am doing, invert the mask, then paint with a brush on around 8% flow. Dodging and burning is one of the best things you can do your image to make it look amazing.
Before DB
and after.
After Dodge and Burn
Once I had Shana Completed, I moved on to the confetti, I used the Color range tool to select all the purple out of the images and it makes selections from it, added a mask and then just cleaned up the mask as it only really got me half way there with the selections. This was the most time consuming part as I had to go around and clean up each confetti piece on each layer.
After masking all the confetti. Almost there!
Next I did my first round of styling. I added a vibrance layer to really make the pinks and purples come out. Then added a vinette to draw your attention right into Shana's eyes. Next came a high pass layer, inverted, then put on vivid light. This is my preffered way to sharpen the image. I added a mask and selectively sharpened her eyes, face, and confetti pieces.
almost done!
I wasn't sure how good the extra pieces would look added in so really this could be the end image. But I went ahead and added in the some of the close up shots of the confetti. After masking out all the white, I rotated and moved the pieces into place, then used the perspective warp to give them more of a 3d look. To finish each piece off I went into the layer style and added a bevel and emboss, and inner glow.
Once I liked how each piece looked I then went into my final styling. I added another vibrance layer. Using the Camera Raw filter I added another little vignette and a pop of light on Shana's face. A curves layer to burn down the left side of the cabinets as they had a bit too much light on it and then decided to clone out the separations on the table as they were a bit distracting.
All done!
In conclusion,
And that's it! Again most of my time went into masking out each confetti piece, I didn't need a perfect job on each as they are small, but needed to make it look good enough. Also I couldn't do any of it with out the lighting the way it was. I love using speedlights and love the challenge and creativity you can come up with when you make your own light. (Check out the Yoda and Obi Wan of speed lights here and here. I really enjoy doing projects like this and have a few more ideas that I hope come to fruition. Those of you who made it to the end of this I applaud you. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will be happy to answer them.
Thanks!