Another before and after of a shot I made last night. Like always for portraits, I capture in RAW. This was aperture priority at f/5.6, 1/40, ISO 250, auto white balance. Important to note the +2 exposure compensation to help the matrix metering better account for the bright sky. Could have also used spot or center-weighted metering on his skin. Always more than one way to skin a cat, as the (oddly gross) saying goes.
In Adobe Camera RAW I cropped and straightened just a bit, adjusted the white balance for warmth (5550, -10) and to remove some of that redness Nikon seems prone to, took the exposure down 1/3 stop, recovered some of the highlights (53) and bumped up the contrast (+48).
Once in Photoshop I did a little standard noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise from within Topaz Adjust and added a bit more contrast and saturation. I ran three ColorShift (Jesh de Rox) actions: Color of summer (50%), Memory of a Friend (40%) and Rainforest (40%) which I then masked, leaving the warm tones on his skin and the cooler rainforest tone everywhere else. Sharpened to taste for screen presentation. Took about 5 minutes total. Not a huge transformation but a nice one I think.
