Monday, May 18, 2020

Shooting a unique graduation photo and color swapping in Photoshop

Yesterday afternoon I had a request from our neighbor to take their son's graduation photo. He needed one right away since his school was putting something together last minute.

If you have been reading this blog for a long time, you may recognize Jeffrey. He has been my subject for many blog posts, including this one where he walked for the first time without a wheel chair. The following image is still one of my favorite photos ever...


Well...Jeffrey has grown up a lot in the last 8 years, and is graduating high school.

His mom (Becky) asked if we had any caps and gowns at our house (for props) but we did not. Being resourceful, Becky was able to round up what she needed, but only in the color blue. She told me that his school colors were burgundy, but that his real cap and gown would not arrive for another week. Well after the photo deadline.

I told her not to worry.  I figured that I might be able to work my magic and do a color swap in Adobe Photoshop.



Here is the original photo that I took in their front yard. I used my Canon 1D X Mark III with the Canon 70-200mm lens and the Canon 600EX-RT flash.


I took the image with the burgundy (gown) that Becky had sent to me via text and added it to the image so that I could pick my target color from it. 

I went into the Adjustments panel of Photoshop and chose "Replace color". I then selected the target color (the blue from the gown) and the replacement color from the burgundy gown image. And voila... 



It was really simple to do and quite effective.

After doing this, I realized that this may be a common situation right now in this Covid-19 world, and thought that this might be of help to others out there.


I took images of Jeffrey in portrait and landscape and did the same color swap to all images for them.


For all those kids that are graduating right now, I wish you all the best, and I hope that you have great photos to show for it!

Oh - and speaking of portraits, I just released my 2 minute video tutorial on focusing on the eyes. You can watch it here.

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1 comment:

  1. I looked at these photos about 10 times and they are all marvelous. Only thing was the 1st. kept bothing me. I could not figure out why you would take a photo with someone gardening behind her. Finally I showed my husbasnd and he said it is not someone else, it is her. This is what happens when you get old, yours eyes are squarely. Sorry!

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