Jennifer Welch Photo wrote:
She just has this dark sort of look that I've been trying to achieve for a while and I was just curious about how to do it. But thanks anyways.

Dark has to do with lighting, not curves. Shoot natural light without sun. Brooke Shaden has several videos on youtube.

Jennifer Welch Photo wrote:
Yeah, I know she sells them. I'm not trying to copy her work or anything. She just has this dark sort of look that I've been trying to achieve for a while and I was just curious about how to do it.

I assume you're asking about how to do this in post. Can you post one of your attempts, before and after?

EDIT: Techniques will depend on the image. In many (probably most) cases, you'll want to mask out the subject so you can work separately with subject and background.

Darkening and tinting can be done with hue/sat adjustment layers. One way to get your head oriented is to first make the background uniformly very dark, then envision where you want the light to fall. You can create the light by knocking out parts of the mask with a soft brush. Example ...

Jennifer Welch Photo wrote:
Yes, I want to get the look in post processing. I did not use natural light in this photo. I used a flash. In the after I added a vignette and changed the leaves colors, like sospix said, and brought up the blue curves just a bit.


beforeand after by jennifer_neptune, on Flickr

Tulack wrote:
Dark has to do with lighting, not curves.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Curves can produce lighting effects.

Jennifer Welch Photo wrote:
Yes, I want to get the look in post processing. I did not use natural light in this photo. I used a flash. In the after I added a vignette and changed the leaves colors, like sospix said, and brought up the blue curves just a bit.


beforeand after by jennifer_neptune, on Flickr

You're absolutely on the right track, but I think you're missing one last adjustment:



Darkening the midtones in the input levels and lightening the deep blacks in the output levels will give it that "soft, dark look" you're after. You could also do this with curves, of course, but I decided to go with levels.