Help Recreate This Look

[drisley]

I have been shooting boyduilding/fitness/figure shows for quite a few years now, and I've really been loving the look of the pictures froma certain website out there. I've been trying to emulate their look for about a year now. I emailed the photographers and asked for tips, and they said they use proprietary photoshop actions. Very nice chaps, but they don't want to share their technique (I don't blame them)...

Anyway, here are some examples of their images. You can spot them from a mile away. Lots of contrast, but without blocking shadows or losing highlight detail. The colours are VIBRANT, but the skin is never oversaturated (and seems to have a glow to it). Blacks are BLACK, whites are WHITE, but not over contrasted.



sample 1
sample 2
sample 3
sample 4
sample 5
sample 6
sample 7
sample 8
sample 9

More from their site

I hope you can see the similarities in the tone of all these. I LOVE it. Their B&W images have the exact same tone too. I can't get my images to look like this by spending time processing each image individually, let alone using a BATCH action!

Below is a link to a raw file of one of my fitness pictures. Feel free to experiment and write down your technique. If somebody can reverse engineer this for me, I would be SO grateful!

My 1D2 RAW File

Thanks

[LESider]

The images you are comparing to yours are completely different, I understand that you are looking for skintone and contrast but your photos are in a competition setting and the other photos are in a more controlled portrait setting with better control of light and quality of light. Do you have some samples of what you like in the same sort of setting?

[miguel]

here is a very quick go at it - dodge and burn with level, curve, and hue/sat adjustments - with more time, a more detailed job could be done.

[drisley]

Thanks LESider.
They also have fitness shows shot on stage that also have the exact same process/look to them.

I've updated the above link to my RAW file so now it's an outdoor portrait.

Thanks Migel, good attempt, but not quite there. Also, keep in mind they use a photoshop action on all their images. They don't do any custom tweaking on a per-image basis.

[Godmother]

How do you know they use a photoshop action on all their images???

I don't think there's an action that can give you those perfect skin and those nice highlights.

[miguel]

i'd have to agree with godmother - just cause they say they do doesn't mean they do -- seems unlikely.

[drisley]

Because, I contacted the photographers that run the site.
They said they use proprietary photoshop actions to batch process their images.
The webmaster has one set, and the photographer has his slightly tweaked set.

Also, in their members area, they have hundreds of photos from the different fitness/bb shows, and they often have them posted within 1 day of the show (in addition to all the private shoots they do the weekend of the show). There is no way they could process them all individually in such a short time, with such consistent results (it usually takes me 1-2 weeks to process all my images from a show, and I still can't get that consistency).

[Ziaphra]

Lovely photo...

[skydog]

Not sure if this is what you had in mind or not?

[solitear]

This was the only picture I had handy to try this on (my baby girl)...... are you talking about something like this....... the tone color is easy to tweak.... it's a particular method of using a dupe image..... change to grayscale.... change to duotone..... blur...... paste over original .....set blend to overlay.....?????

Beth

[solitear]

Thought maybe it'd be better to show the before and after for a better comparison...... these are so smashed because of size limit but maybe you can get an idea.....

Beth

[NancyJ]

Not time to say much (late for work) a lot of the colour seems to have been lost in saving to jpeg so the second less saturated version seems unecessary now.

Not sure exactly what you're looking for, it may be becaue its early and my eyes arent fully awake but I dont see anything special in those images other than, good lighting, sharpen and correct white balance - I'm not seeing any 'glow' to the skin - but like I said - its early

These attempts are more based on your description than on the sample images, if its close to what you want I'll write up what I did but I have to get dressed for work now

[drisley]

Originally Posted by solitear

Thought maybe it'd be better to show the before and after for a better comparison...... these are so smashed because of size limit but maybe you can get an idea.....

Beth

OMG!!! Solitear! I think you have almost got it! Great work!!!! Thanks SO much!!!! Can you give me the detals of your method (ie, what duotone to use etc).. You guys are the best! (Ps. awesome picture)

NancyJ, although I dont think yours is exactly what I was looking for, very good attempt! Thanks guys so much for trying! Also, great attempts Ziaphra and Skydog, thanks for taking the time to help. I love this forum.

[Cassidy]

Keeping in mind that you are looking to automate the process, my solution was to;

firstly change the background colour of the palette colour to white,
Filter ->Distort ->Diffuse Glow (Graininess = 0, Glow amount = 4, Clear Amount = 17,
Image adjust - > Levels, 20, 0, 255
Copy Merged to New Layer
Filter->Highpass = 20
Set Blending mode to Soft Light

You could record these steps as an action, but naturally, in order to get the best results across a number of images, you would have to compared the results across a number of images and adjust accordingly. Other adjustments for levels or curves should also be able to be incorporated.

[drisley]

Cassidy,

Thanks alot! I have considered the diffuse glow filter as being a possible part of the process. I think I will give your process a try and let you know what I think. It looks pretty good at first glance.

After all is said and done, maybe I should offer those guys money for their action I'm sure they would say NO, or demad LOTS! hehe.