Dragan Effect

Sorry I didn't post yesterday like I said I would, but I was at an awesome concert by the Diplomats, Brian Free, and the Perrys. Take a listen to the Diplomats, deepest bass I've heard sung by anyone. Computer doesn't do it justice.
And I will attempt to repost a pic of my daughter after eating her cake on her first birthday...

And now for the Dragan Effect. I finally found a video that sums it up pretty good. I followed his directions, and created a set of actions so now I just hit my action #1, then burn in shadows, increase highlights, hit action 2, paint on a mask, hit action 3, erase mask to sharpen and then hit action 4, then I am done. A draganized photo in about 5 minutes. I split the directions into four actions. I actionize until you get to a direction that requires you to perform an action on the photo such as brushing the shadows. I start a new action when it becomes repetitive again such as flatten, duplicate, decrease saturation, etc etc. After working on a few photos, I find photos that are sidelit seem to have the best effect. Front lit, or flash seems to hide the wrinkles, which dampen the effect. Here is one of my favorites I worked on this morning... (before and after)

The Dragan Effect is named after Andrzej Dragan of Poland. I saw a tutorial for 300 Style effects, and I may play with that for awhile.

Don't forget the Oscar challenge coming up for a chance to win a framed 8x10 from my Shutterstock Gallery.

And if anymore of you would like to play with the Larissa photo to see what concepts you can create, email me for the original photo and I'll attach the file back.

Also if you would like to participate in the Piedmont Park shoot on April 10th, still a couple slots open.

Here's a photo I was just goofing around with the other day. I call it "Morning Exercise in the Future"