What is high key?
A picture is worth a thousand words - so a thousand high key pictures should speak volumes!
Check out the amazing photos tagged with highkey on Flickr.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/highkey/
You'll notice that some of the 'most interesting' high key photos have been added to the High Key Society Flickr Group http://www.flickr.com/groups/highkey/pool/where high key has been defined as:
| So what is high key? High Key images are those where contrast and shadows are supressed, while the levels of exposure and brightness are high. It can be done in camera or more easily during post processing in Photoshop(or another image editor). Source |
I have always liked high key processing even before I knew what it was called. One of the reasons is due to the fact I have freckles. I know there are many people out there that like freckles - I am not one of them! Unfortunately I am very sensitive to makeup so covering them over with foundation or pancake powder isn't an option so I have to rely on the magic of Photoshop to save the day - or the photo as the case may be. The photos below are a good example. The first shows all my freckles and uneven skin tones. I always wished I could have porcelain features and thanks to a few steps in Adobe Photoshop I have something close.
Image>Black and White> Maximum White preset
Image>Adjustments>Curves>Custom curve manipulation
Then apply a photo filter if you want to. It may be too much processing for most but I think that the end result is striking. But wait - there's more! If you prefer a little colour and details in your photo then one option is to copy the second photo and add it as a layer over the first photo and create a mixture of the two photos as in the example below.
More High Key
  
  
 
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