ColorShift,,, (expose)

hello wonderful friends,,,

i've been working on projects on several fronts and am excited about where each of them are in their various stages of growth. i'm so excited to share them with you over the coming months,,,


up first: Enlighten: Experiential-Post Processing

as you may know, the finishing of my images (also called post-processing) is a part of my work i've always been fascinated with. i have found it to be an incredible avenue for exploring the people i work with, myself and what i see - specifically because so much of what i am interested in portraying in my work is invisible to the naked eye.

my philosophy and approach toward this kind of exploration i call experiential post-processing. very shortly, i'll be releasing a tutorial for ColorShift, my experiential actions for Adobe Photoshop, which along with detailing the power and versatility of the actions, will go more into depth about what experiential post-processing means to me.

as beneficial as it can be, exploring is not a time efficient thing, and is rarely an investment that pays an immediate return. with the demands of my business and life, i had to find ways to maximize my investment of time by increasing the rate of discovery while decreasing actual hours spent searching.

through countless hours and sleepless nights i developed several tools that greatly improved my efficiency, enabling me to skip much of the menial, technical aspects of post-processing, and focus more of my time on doing what i really loved: creating work that felt true to me and touched the people i made it for.

these discoveries enabled me to reduce the amount of time i spent on the computer by 70%, and greatly enabled me to give a superior product to my clients. no small victories, lol!!!


though originally created just for myself, i have recently begun to share these tools with others. why? two reasons:


a) i believe one of the greatest gifts we as humans have is the ability to share our experiences and knowledge with each other, being able to absorb and continue from a point it took someone else a lifetime's worth of journey to achieve.

Isaac Newton said "If I have seen farther than others, it is because i have stood upon the shoulders of giants."

this well describes my feelings on the matter. i have learned much this way and love being able to continue the cycle.


b) i am taking a sabbatical from shooting weddings to focus on building my Beloved project. my dream is to inspire a new genre of portrait photography that focuses specifically on celebrating and expressing the genuine relationships between people in love, for couples of all ages, types and varieties.

i have a plan for how i am approaching this, and will share more with you over the coming months. if all goes to plan, i'll officially showcase the project at the next WPPI convention, spring next year.

the Beloved project, which delves into a lot of uncharted territory and implements ground-breaking research in several fields, represents a significant time investment on my part.

to help fund that transition, i created Enlighten, which is the umbrella encompassing the post-processing tools i already have released, ColorShift and the Fine Art Textures, as well as the ones currently in production (at least two more planned for release by end of year!!!)


i have been overwhelmed with the response and positive feedback for my Enlighten releases and so very much appreciate all the amazing word-of-mouth referrals i've been receiving!!! love you guys, you know who you are ; )

i sincerely thank each and every one of you who has invested in me and my work. i promise i will do all i can to repay you manifold with the sharing of new discoveries and freshly-blazed trails to explore,,,


* * *


as a prelude to the ColorShift tutorial, i wanted to post a few images from a portrait session with a model, shot while i was teaching with my amazing friend Jose Villa in Guadalajara.

all of the following images were post-processed with my ColorShift actions.

i limited myself to a SightSeeing level of use, which means the color affects were achieved using one-click only from my actions. the actions were designed to go two levels of interaction deeper when required or desired, but i wanted to show that great color affects can be as easy as one-click : ) find out more on the tutorial!




this image was post-processed using BlueBerry Night from theDream set. i feel that the the soft pink and blue shift throughout the image looks lovely with her skin, and matches her innocent expression.




this image was post-processed using Color of Summer from theDream set. this action is a tribute to what summer means to me: warmth, playfulness, adventure, friends and the joy of love. it's yellow/orange warm wash i find very conducive to images of people and bright scenes.




this image was post-processed using a special sharpening action i have called Edge of a Leaf from theReal set which highlights and accentuates tiny details such as strands of hair and the earrings.




this image was post-processed using Light From a Star from theDream set. this is one of my most used actions. i love how it gives images a light, and clean feel.




this image was also post-processed using Blueberry Night from theDream set. i usually find that, because of their different color combinations, different shoots will tend to gravitate towards a heavy use of certain actions, though in another shoot, it will be others that are dominate.




this image was post-processed using Evening Obscura from theDream set. easily my favorite and most-used black&white action of all time.

i'm kind of a color super-fan for the most part, but i designed this action in honor of my longtime attraction to old wetplate photographs, low contrast with a very shallow, sometimes non-existent high end of the range.

i love how this action will simplify an image, blending in a lot of information on the high and mid-high ranges. it can be very flattering for locations that aren't ideal, or really strengthen ones that are.




this image was also post-processed using Blueberry Night from theDream set.

theDream set of actions are all predesigned to be color-related and harmonized. i wasn't going for how-many-drastic-differences-in-effect can i stick into one collection. remember, i designed these for myself. i wanted to deliver completed Collections to my clients that felt like Collections, not a patchwork of different directions.

the actions are designed to work best when subtly accenting an images strengths, not distracting from an image's core communication. more on that in the tutorial!




this image was post-processed using Warm 70's Love from theDream set. this action draws from the faded yellows, browns and oranges that were staples of 70's design. that retro look feels human to me, and compliments the warm gamut of human interaction.




Blueberry Night from theDream set was used on this image as well. i love the soft blue tint it gives to the shadows.




mmm. lovely creamy skin tones courtesy of Light From a Star from theDream action set : )




this image was post-processed using Weathered Rock from theDream set. this is a purplish duotone image that adds an incredible ethereal quality to the right kinds of images. also a good action for simplifying busy images.


so much more to come, amazing friends!!!


ColorShift has its own Twitter account now, so please follow @ColorShift to get hooked up with supafine tips, tricks and advance notices of product releases, as well as the chance to be a beta-tester!!!

lots of love,

jesh ; )

p.s. in honor of you reading through this long freaking post, i'm giving away 25 promo codes. the first 25 people to use the code sunday will receive 10% off their ColorShift and/or Fine Art Textures purchase : )