Final post in A Picture A Day, and the original photo.

This was shot with my Olympus point and shoot while sitting at my desk late at night. The lighting was from a halogen desklamp tilted sideways and very close to my face to get a dramatic feel and strong highlight in my eye. Unfortunately, the camera didn't get the white balance even close.

In Adobe Lightroom I first adjusted the temperature to get it close to real. I then bumped up the exposure a bit (+0.33) and brought up the blacks a lot (15) which made my hair fade to black. I like contrast.

Continuing with the contrast, I adjusted the Tone Curve pretty radically, a trick I learned from the built in Direct Positive preset. I brought the Highlights and Lights way up (+62 and +20), and the Darks and Shadows way down (-25 and -27). Pulling the Darks down accentuated the blue eye quite impressively. I don't mind blowing out the highlights on my face, I think that helps put the focus on the eye, which is the most interesting part of any face.

Finally, I took the Vibrance down (-25) to soften the colors a bit. This gave me a stong contrast without accentuating any of the ugly parts of my skin, except for the bitchin' scar (insert vanity slur here).

As a last step, I used the spot remover to get rid of the light in the background and a few unsightly hairs hanging off my ear.