EDITING TIPS HOW TO PROCESS YOUR CAPTURES

A few simple principles will get your silhouettes looking sharp and graphic

Make basic adjustments

In your raw image editor of choice (I’m using Camera Raw) start by adjusting your blacks, contrast and brightness settings. Don’t be afraid to push the sliders to extremes. You can go as far as +120 for Brightness and +40 for contrast to boost the white background. Use Blacks and Shadow to further darken your object, until it is completely darkened. Each image will be different, though, so you may need to make some local adjustments.

Strengthen the silhouette

With the image now open in Photoshop, select Adjustments > Desaturate – this will produce a strong, completely dark silhouette. Occasionally, if the flash or lighting effect is too strong, red and blue lines may appear around the object you’re photographing. To make these disappear, change the image to black and white, again via Image > Adjustments.