Retouching a Snapshot

One of my favorite things about Photoshop is that it gives you the power to fine-tune an image and really make it sing. With a bit of extra time, you can make a good image, great. I'm a sucker for a good before and after. 

A friend of mine took this photo at a wedding, and I was drawn to it because of the interesting geometry. The angle of the windows are mimicked in the sharp angle made by the people. Your eye follows all these lines right to the girl in the middle, pointing up ahead to the patiently-waiting groom.

I thought it was worth some extra effort. The first thing I did was an adjustment to bring out more of the detail in the shadows and improve the contrast. Next I decided to play around with faux HDR Toning. Being new to CS5, I had never had the opportunity to try this feature out. Playing around really is the best way to learn.

I made sure to duplicate the file because The HDR Toning feature flattens it. I tested out several of the presets and decided that a Photorealistic toning would work best. It gave the image a nice overall lightness and warmth, added a creamy, dreamy quality, and really helped the individual faces stand out. I then did a curve adjustment to darken my darks just a hair more.

My final step was to blur the background so that the focus would be primarily on the people. You still get the nice shapes in the background, but they don't look so severe. I duplicated the HDR toned layer, and then gave it a Gaussian Blur. On a layer mask, I then painted back in the areas of the people closest to the camera, revealing the most detail in their faces, as well as the pointing hand. Your eye now follows the faces more easily back into the distance.

 
I think I succeeded in turning this spontaneous snapshot into a better version of itself.