The original image is shown above—that’s Photoshop User Managing Editor Issac Stolzenbach, on his classic Honda Shadow Sabre (click for a larger view). The Lucis Art plug-in interface (Click for a larger view). The grittier, hyper-sharpened, high-contrast image after applying the Lucis Art plug-in (click for a larger view). YOU’VE GOT THE LOOK Photography, like fashion itself, seems to go though periods of time where there is a certain “look” that everybody wants to have, and right now the hot look for portraits is what you might call the “Dave Hill look” (I blogged about Dave’s photography last month—here’s the link). His trademark look is gritty, sharp, yet at the same time I’ve heard it described as almost “painterly” in nature. Whatever you want to call it; every big celebrity and rock band wants him to shoot them, and even big business magazines are calling on him to shoot their covers. He’s the “it” photographer.

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Now, after researching the living daylights out of this topic, I can tell you this: I don’t believe Dave Hill’s look comes from a plug-in, or just a Photoshop technique, or just a special way of lighting. It’s a combination of all three: • Lighting.

His lighting is a key ingredient and without the right lighting look; what you do after the fact in Photoshop won’t get you there. He uses a lighting set-up that creates lots of contrast (he uses anywhere from four to six lights on average). He often uses two bare bulb kicker flash units (with reflectors) behind his subjects to really rim out the sides of his subjects, which helps add that bright highlight contrasty look. He also usually uses a Main Light up front (sometimes a Ring Flash), and a Fill flash as well (You can see this in the “behind the scenes” video on —I’ve watched every single one). • Photoshop Techniques. He mentioned in a recent interview that he does a lot of dodging and burning (I believe he makes his highlights much brighter and his shadows much darker to create maximum contrast before he adds special effects), I think he does some Shadow/Highlight moves, along with some High Pass sharpening, or a series of Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen applications.

He said recently that he doesn’t use HDR for his images (and I agree), but I do believe he “double-processes” his raw images (exposing the same image twice in Camera Raw; once for the foreground, one for the background, and then he combines the two). He could also be doing a lot of this right within Camera Raw, but then again–I could be totally wrong. Calculator. (Matt showed a Lightroom technique on Photoshop User TV for achieving this type of look in Lightroom’s Develop Module or Camera Raw). • Composition. It doesn’t matter how much Photoshop and lighting you throw at a scene, if it isn’t composed well and exposed properly; it’s not going to work.