One thing that can be confusing for clients in terms of searching for a photographer is that everyone can have different “lingo” for the same service or product. So I wanted to make a post to explain one of my products, the Jared Rey Signature Image. A signature image is simply the journey each of my images go through before ending up on your wall, in your album, or on a CD/DVD. All images that are given to my clients in a collection(package), as a print, or as a digital file are edited with my signature “touch”. No secrets, no strings attached, what you see on my site is what you can expect to receive for yourself.

So what is this journey exactly that each image goes through? I would love to share that journey with you to educate my readers and shed a little light on the editing process with 3 wonderful images. If you are a photographer who is interested in additional “nerdy” details behind how these images were edited, feel free to click the link below the entry. Let’s get started!

Each image goes through about 3 phases, 2 of which are always the same and the 3rd phase can change depending on my artistic preference. Here are the phases:

Phase1 - Straight out of the camera(SOOC)/Lightroom : Once my images are downloaded and backup on my hard drive I will go through all my images and narrow them down significantly. I choose to show the best of the best and don’t waste time with the rest. Once I have my favorite images narrowed down I will import them into Adobe Lightroom, all of my images are batch processed through this program. It makes editing a ton of images a breeze because I can adjust white balance for multiple images and add a bump in contrast/saturation to all my images. You can see by looking at the images below that the SOOC images can be quite dull and boring but once they leave Lightroom there is a vast improvement that really makes each image much better. Sometimes Lightroom can be all an image needs to look great and I can stop right there for lots of different types of detail shots, but if it is a portrait there is a 90% chance I am going to move it on to photoshop.

Phase 2 – Photoshop : This is where the real magic happens! During this phase all my images go through a similar batch action that gives my images an extra kick in the pants. Take a look for yourself, you can see there is a little more contrast/saturation boost, details are enhanced, sharpening is applied. Photoshop also gives me the chance to fix minor details like blemishes, hot spots, stray hairs, etc. Images look awesome and are ready to print after they leave this phase.

Phase 3 – Photoshop Creative : Although images are ready to go after phase 2, the artist comes out of me on many of my images and I want to continue to push them further and make them more unique. This phase continually changes and is solely dependent on each individual image, because they can all speak to me a little differently. On the flipside I also group images together that are similar so they can be unified. This is my favorite phase out of my process because it allows me to be creative and to really make the images my own. Sometimes the tone/effect can be very subtle and other times it can be very dramatic, the experimentation is so much fun.

That is my process! Hope you didn’t find it to dull to read through! Enjoy these images and getting to see a little glimpse of the journey. Photographers remember to click the link below to get additional details.

Alright time for the good stuff, for all the photographer out there! Now the information I am going to share will only be a starting point to encourage and challenge you to experiment and find your own style and action recipe.

All of my images that are processed through photoshop go through one big master action that is filled with various actions from the Totally Rad Action 1 & 2 set. The image below is a screenshot of what this master action looks like so you can see each of my actions. You will see that it is broken up into two main folders, Boost 1 and Boost 2. Boost 1 is used to add contrast, saturation, and sharpening. Off the bat each action is set to a low opacity and that folder really comes into play with backlit images, it really brings out my subjects and makes those dull images pop. The Boost 2 folder just takes everything one step further and really brings out tons of details and colors, many of the actions in this folder are set at a low opacity as well to not make anything to crazy saturated. I have all these actions grouped in folders so that I can lower the opacity even more if I want that additional control. The name of the game is just to experiment and find out what you like and start creating these master actions to save you time.

Before I go any further let me share something about actions. There are a ton out there, my favorite after experimenting with so many have been the Totally Rad Actions and the Jesh De Rox Colorshift actions. The reason I enjoy these actions so much is because of the amount of control they give you, it isn’t something that is run and you get a result, all these actions finish with folders and they don’t effect your original image. Because these actions leave you with folders they allow you to open them up and make adjusts to fit your style and taste for that particular image. They give photographers the ability to make the action their own. So I highly suggest investing in these actions! Now in regards to the images below, let me share how what I used to get the final result.

Right now I find myself finishing off my images by experimenting with the Jesh De Rox Colorshift Actions, I am loving them right now. I would share what exact recipes I used for the images in this post but I can’t remember, ha! I did use the Jesh De Rox actions and did much experimenting with them to get it just where I liked it, I also love to add one of the Get Faded actions from the TRA 2 set to finish off an image. If I can remember what I did to the images I’ll update this post for you!