Here is what the edge artifacts look like:

The edge near the hat is the easier of the two to fix. It can be done just by cloning the forehead area below. But I’m going to start the process by fixing it the same way I will with the harder-to-fix neck shadow. And the same way I will restore the background to a nicer darker black.

I’ll do this by dragging this modified version on top of the original file, and adding a Layer Mask, resulting in the two layers you see here.

By painting on the mask (it looks and feels like you are painting on the image, but with the white rectangle selected in the layers panel, as you see above, you are actually painting on the mask) I blended those areas with the more natural edges on the original layer below. The area by the hat, I used a small brush at 50%. I used a larger brush, but at 25% to blend the neck shadow. The next image shows you the resulting Layers panel and what the mask looks like (greatly magnified so that you can see how I went over the area several times, subtley building up density.

So here is the image with the edges fixed:

Continuing with the same mask, I painted in the background. Below is the image, and what its Layer Mask looks like:

Next, I used Shadow/Highlights (Image—Adjustments) to bring back some highlight details on the chest and abdomen. Here is the result and the settings:

You could stop here, if you like the color version. The next step was a conversion to B&W, a raising of contrast, and elimination of banding in the background—but that’s a tutorial for another day.

But I feel it is an expensive plugin, when I use it so sparingly. So it’s nice to know that there are ways to achieve a very similar look, with the programs you already have.

Here is my final image. In Part 1, I am going to show you how to get most of the way here. In Part 2, I will show you the steps to refine and finish the image.

To do this effect, you need Photoshop CS3 or CS4 or Lightroom 2.x. I used a Raw file. You could use a JPEG as well, but because of the extreme adjustments for this effect, you are better off with a Raw file.

Open the image in Photoshop or Lightroom. A Raw file should open automatically in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) if you doubleclick on the file. Once open, you want to start with the following settings. I am showing Lightroom, but the settings and the order of the settings are exactly the same in ACR—it just LOOKS different.

That is your starting point. You can fiddle with the settings until your particular image looks right. But those are the setting that took the following image . . .

. . . and made it into this:

That’s the first part. Unfortunately, these settings often cause unwanted edge effects. I will point those out and show how to fix them in Part 2.

See you next week!