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Day 20: Photoshop - Warping & the Two Minute Rule

Today's challenge is more Photoshop. I'm gonna get you down to two minutes blending a face, dodging and burning eyes, and making people look fantastic as fast as you can. We don't have time to waste doing Photoshop for hours and hours and hours. We need to shoot properly, reflect properly, retouch quickly, and then sell our work, because we want our production in our studios to be effective and make money. Today it's about the two-minute rule, and we are going to do warping, more controlling of body contouring so that we can help make everybody look fantastic, and you know my rules and you know why I love doing this, so let's get started. I do not use Liquefy, but let's look at why. When I open Liquefy and I hit Always Use Warping and Liquefy in terms of contouring the body, meaning I haven't always used it, now that I just told you I don't use it. I feel like the control that you have when you liquefy is limited, and even when I'm up here, I know that so many people use this tool and ...

I've always found it limiting in the sense that, you know, how I use it, and one of the most interesting parts about the liquefy to me has always been about how long it takes to process. See, for me, I have always used the lasso tool, like that, and I've preset my actions here on the right to go copy and paste. Now, if I look at that layer, see that layer exists right there, let me make that bigger for you so that you can see. I don't actually think I can make it bigger. I'll take that back. And so obviously if I was to pick that layer up there it exists as, you know, the layer that sits over that I just lassoed. So I go Command + T and then I right-click within that box, and I can move that whole arm, and I just feel the speed with which you can move that is incredible. And so you get the option to move all of these points, you see, and you contour the body. So this is why I use the Warp tool. So if I feel that there is an area of her body that is disproportionate or an area of her body that I think could use a little nip and tuck, I don't have a problem using that tool. Once you accept it, it still exists as a layer, but it's now a warped layer. So what you need to do is consider that these break points, which is what you've moved pixels, and you don't want to stretch too many pixels, but Liquefy is just the same, it's about stretching pixels. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn the layer on and off, and you see very quickly where my arrows are, you can see where this break line is here. So there it is, and you can see a little break there in the dress, and I don't want that. I don't want to see this, because this is obviously not good for my client. So I go to my erasing tool, E for erase, it's a shortcut. And at 30%, I just erase this edge here, and then I have to make a decision as to how far I erase here. And so I'm just feathering it very lightly. So I'm at 100% opacity and 30% flow. So I'll just feather up there, and up that edge, I will check that layer and say yes, that looks more in proportion to how she really is, she's a very lean body type. Um, this is just an example, though, so this is not how I would change her body at all, but I am just gonna use her as an example. So if I was to give her a waist here, just as an example, I could go up into her hand line here. Now, what I'm doing is I'm slimming her waistline, sorry, but I am not, I am not slimming, I'm not worried about her hand. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lasso the area, copy and paste, and not looking at her hand, I'm just going to bring her waistline into giving her that little curve in the waist. Now, obviously, she's just lost this area here, but the whole point of that is that you come back to your erasing tool, and this time, at 30%, I'm just gonna erase the arm back and if you're very, very careful just on this edge I can just erase it back to here. So I guess a lot of people argue about how fast the Liquefy tool is and they compare it to the Warp tool. I know it's a personal choice, but I just think I have more control and more speed with Warp and obviously I just check that layer on and off because I don't flatten anything until I check it. And see, I've missed this little bit here, I've missed this little bit here, and there's still part of her hand there that needs to come forward. So erase back, erase back, and erase back. So look for break lines, there, there, and there, blend them in, just with your erasing tool, and I can move full sections now. So there she goes, she has a little bit of a waist. So anything like that, pinching in a waist, you know, making an arm smaller, so easy to do. If I was gonna move an entire area, the Warp tool is really good at this. So I would go to that break line there and I would copy and paste, I would go Command + T, right-click Warp, and I could just bring in the whole dress area here and bend that out. And then I want to try and make sure that they line up, and that's it, just like that. Fast, really really fast. Now, let's keep going, I'll show you how many different ways I can use it. So always checking my lines, always checking for break lines before I flatten. Okay, let's have a look for eyes. There's just so many different ways to use this tool. Let's have a look at her eyes. All right. I'm going to give her, for starters, I'm going to give her one eye bigger or smaller than the other. Now, I would never, ever change that unless somebody wanted to, wanted me to, so if somebody had a little bit of a droopy eye or a significantly different-shaped eye, which does happen, and they wanted me to fix it, like this, and I see this a lot, I'll show you how I do it. The first time, just creating it for you, because obviously she didn't have a smaller eye. So there she is there with her smaller eye, and I'm simply going to go into here, I'm going to go into the iris, up over the lid, and I'm gonna give her an eyelift up through here like that. And make your eyes the same size. So I can lift up lids and then transfer the eyeball, so I'll show you how I do that. You have two choices. You can lasso the center of the iris, copy and paste, and then put it over here, because the eyes do match each other and they are connected to each other and they look in the same direction, so it works. So if you do have somebody with a very lazy eye, that's how I use my Warp tool. Also, if somebody doesn't like the shape of their jaw. I had one girl who said to me, I hate this part of my jaw. I look like a man, I don't like it, can you trim it? And yes, you can trim jaws. You can change the shape of somebody's face, but I would never do that unless they asked me to. So I can pretty much change the shape of anything. It's fast, it's easy to use. Here, I can make areas of here, if you photograph somebody, I have photographed somebody and then noticed an entire area of their hair is missing or you want to make it bigger or you want to make it smaller, I can use the Warp tool here. So the rule of thumb with the Warp tool is it's about not moving too many pixels, which is exactly the same as Liquefy. You can stretch pixels, but you always have to look for break points. You always have to look for the break point that exists here, and so that's why after, before I flatten anything, I always go to my edges, like that, and I make sure that they blend in, and then I turn that layer on and off and I make sure that there's no break points and that it blends in. So blending in, and your erasing tool, anywhere from 10 to 80% depending on how much you need it. Now, in the same sentence that you would make somebody, that you would make somebody thinner, you can make somebody curvier, so let's have a look at that, because that's a good one. I'm just going back in my history, I'm going to keep the hip and waist shape. I'm just going back in my history into her arm area, there, 'cause she did have that extended strong bicep which looked a little bit dominant and masculine, and I'm gonna take that back as well, there it is. And with that, nope, I'm not gonna take it back, I'm gonna leave the waist in, I think it looks good. That's enough for me. And take that one back, and that one. So I'll leave this here, I'm just gonna go back to this arm. Now, because she is a very lean body, one of the interesting parts about this, about the shop, is that arm is dominating, but she also has small boobs, 'cause most lean bodies do. So instead of bringing her arm in, because this arm is very solid to the camera, what if I was to bring it out? Let's try. So I'm gonna go instead to there, I'm gonna copy and paste that layer, I'm gonna go Command + T, I'm gonna right-click and then Warp, and this time I'm going to extend the bra out this way and I'm going to give her a shape of bigger boobs there. So I've photographed lots of curvy girls that say could you make me slimmer, and I've photographed lots of lean girls that say could you make me curvier, I.e., could you give me boobs? So you can go that way instead of this way. Now when I slim the outside of her arm, I'm really only slimming this bit here, because it's, well, and that little shoulder knob, let's just take that in a little bit, like that. Okay, so one is, I would bring this area in, and then two, I would take this area in. So does that work the same as what we did before? Sort of. I think it's probably, let's have a look. Hmmmm. So there, we were there, with a straight arm and a smaller breast, and then we were here, with bigger boobs, hmmm, yeah. I think we could probably work on that outer shoulder, but in terms of extending her upper body, I definitely think that that works better through there, at her breast line, and so just to remember that it's not always about going in, sometimes it's about pulling out. And let's go and look at some curvy bodies and see if we can't make them slimmer and how we use the curving tool to do that. Right, let's have a look at this. As you would have seen in the Curves posing, this is gorgeous Tamara, and that was normal standing position to the camera, and that was elbows pinned in, chin pushed forward. So obviously our posture counts for definitely 60% of the posing, and yes I did crop into her bust line, but even if I had cropped up to here it still would have dominated, this part of her body would have dominated, and of course as she tips forward her eyes come closer to the camera, her chin is defined, her eyes are bigger, and of course that's now where you look. So there's three things on this image that I want to show you in terms of retouching. One of them is I often get asked how I would deal with this line here, so remembering that everything we do needs to be fast, I've got two choices. I can put a marquee tool like that, copy and paste, free transform, Command + T, and move it across, so I still have the line of the wall. I'm just gonna erase this bit here. I still have the line of the wall, but I don't have the black line, which makes it, you know, a lot less obvious. That doesn't bother me, I don't mind having movement in my background. I'm just gonna flatten that, my option also is to go to J, which is the healing tool, and the healing tool I can pretty much just run up here. But the healing tool can be inaccurate. It is a little bit temperamental, you don't always get it the first time. Sometimes you have to apply it twice, and then I would have to clone this are here. Either way, the cloning tool for me is the fastest way to do anything on Photoshop. It is definitely a tool that I've mastered and I've used it for skin, so I would use the cloning tool on the background. As you can see, I'm at 100% opacity and 30% flow. So I use the clone stamp for pretty much everything, including the backdrop. So that's two fast ways that I would remove that, and do I need to, no, that one was fine, and fast. Now, I've pulled another image of Tamara. She's a perfect face to retouch in under two minutes, because she has a natural freckle and I want to keep that natural freckle 'cause it's so pretty and it looks gorgeous, so this example was really just showing the arms pinned back. Now, pinning the elbows back, I cannot do this in Photoshop the same way, even if I was to warp that in. She still looks like she's dominating in her bottom half, so getting that posture right right from the beginning, very, very, very important. So let's close this one and have a look at one where I've just got her gorgeous face. This girl is amazing, and I've got lots of fabulous people to work on over this next hour, so you get to see a really good broad range. Now, the idea of this video is that I show you the two-minute Photoshop rule, and the two-minute Photoshop rule means I have to open an image, prepare it for my client, within two minutes. So all I'm gonna remove is shadows. So this is how I work. The size of her face on my screen is about the size of my fist when I put my hand into a ball, and then the size of the clone stamp is around the size of my thumbnail. So I'm always working about here. I see a lot of people cloning up into here. You're wasting your time, okay? Come back, work light. So here I'm at my clone stamp, it's a shortcut, 100% opacity, 30% flow. All I'm gonna do is hit the highlights first and take away the lines we don't like, that was the little frown line. I'll go down the nose to even up that shadow. I come up into this bag line, and that is one, two, three little taps, and then I go one, two, three, four. Now, you keep seeing that I keep returning to the lightest area, to lighten, to go up and over. I do not worry about stray hairs. This is not really for printing, this is simply ready for viewing. I take the biggest freckles, okay, only the biggest freckles, 'cause I don't want to take more. I go clean up the highlight first, and then I go up into that shadow under there. I click there, there, and there to even out that line, and there, I don't want to lose the shape of her face. Always clean up the neck, one two three four five, tap down into there, and then we're here. Now let's look, okay? So we're still under a minute right there. I just want to clean up this area and of course I want to make sure she looks gorgeous, no contouring is necessary 'cause I got her in the posing. Let's do the one thing that everybody's gonna love to finish off our two minutes, and that is to make her eyes look incredible. So two things. You can see in her eye makeup there's a gap between her lashes and her eyeliner, that's a bit of a naughty naughty, so I'm gonna fill it in with my burning tool to make sure her eyeliner is complete, there. And I also use that burning tool, at 40%, I am right now, 20, 30, or 40 is good. I'll go around her iris to define it, and then you can simply go to 20%, hold down your Alt button, go to Dodge. I dodge that half-moon in her eye and just the outer piece around her iris, so from here, she's there, we'll go back to the start. She was there, whoops, sorry, didn't mean to go back to, and then the eyes just went pop, and there it is, okay? So that's our two-minute rule. Now, that's keeping her freckles, keeping it real, we don't want to lose, we don't want to lose her, and it's really, really important, so. There are two minutes, let's do another one, okay? Exactly the same. There she is again, right. Two things that bother me about this image. One is this line here, so I have to work out how I'm going to deal with it, by either making that lighter or that darker. That's not the shape of her face, those are smile lines, so if we remove it it's definitely going to make her face look wider, so we may need to remove that and bring the shadow in, so let's have a look. We have to do this in two minutes. Her body doesn't need contouring, and I pretty much need to hit these dark lines around her, dodge those eyes, and fill in that eyeliner. So I'm always working fast. If the tool I just used, like the burning tool, is still here on my, it's still here on my brush, then the first thing I'm gonna do is go to that tool, because it stands to reason that it's gonna be faster. I'll bring her face up so you can see it, let's mark our two minutes and go. So the first thing I'm gonna do is just use the burn-in, because it's the last tool I used. There, and I'm just gonna pop it up to 60, nice and dark, I wanna define that iris, fill in that little space there, define, define, fill it in, perfect. I want to go to my dodge tool, so I can either hold my Alt button down or just go to Dodge, I'm gonna dodge her eyes up, pow, just like that. It's such a subtle move through the eyes, but have a look at what it does. So it goes from there to a pop, and that's the part we wanna look at. We'll go to this, which is, we clear the area first, the highlight, I'm gonna get just the big freckles through there just to keep her beautiful freckles, love them, but I don't want to smooth them right out. I'm gonna go up into that shadow line under the eye, down the bridge of the nose, same pattern, from the lightest area up until under the eye, but I'm not gonna remove everything that's up and in there because it's natural and we don't wanna remove right up in there, it looks wrong. Now, I do not use any retouching software to the face. The body yes, the face no. I'm gonna go up into that shadow under the lip, 'cause that's an important one, and when I clean up that chin you no longer look there but I don't wanna overdo it, and then I'm gonna come into this line here. I wanna try and keep that shadow, but just minimize it, so I'm cloning on 30% and there, and there's my two minutes. So keeping it easy, keeping it clean, just go into that line there, gorgeous, all right. So from here, if I just come down, all right, there we go. I'm gonna show you how I then open this in Alien software and give it a filter that I really love. So I'm loving that, quite happy with that, two minutes. So just like that we've gone there and there, that's enough for her to see. If she feels at this stage that she wants more retouching, if she feels that there's something she doesn't like or stray hairs or she purchases the image or when she purchases the image, then I can do more retouching, okay? I can do more retouching before I send it away, but right now I want it to look natural, I want it to look real, and I want it to look like her, and I want to just take away the bits I didn't like. Okay, here's another one, absolutely perfect example from our 50 and Fabulous, and Eileen is so gorgeous, she's got such perfect lines. We don't want to take away her age, 'cause they're age-appropriate, so let's just look, I'll take away the big freckles, like that. So just nice, quick quick quick, tap tap tap, my clone, 30%, now I want to take away the frown, I want to take away the line going down the bridge of the nose. These are not aging lines, these are frown lines, and we don't want them. Okay, but under her eyes and around her mouth, we'll take them right back too, but we'll be age-appropriate there, and then up under here I'm gonna go 20%, nice and easy, I'm gonna tap along, no sweeps, just little wiggles. Taps, taps, I'm using my Wacom tablet. I'm just going to lighten all of those lines, but not remove them, it's really, really important. At this stage here, I don't like this little arm wrinkle, and the first thing I would do is remove that. That is enough. Now remember, she's not expecting you to come up with anything other than a good photograph of her. We'll fix that eyeliner there, we'll dodge that up, opens her eyes a little bit, 'cause she's in a full smile. Then we're gonna put that eyeliner back into there. Perfect, and we're done. There's our two minutes. So keeping it really, really simple, let's do some more. This is an absolutely perfect example of what I talk about. I always say to people, this is what it considered a bag, okay? So when people say I've got bags under my eyes, this here is what is considered as that bag. And I know there is a lot of confusion around what is a bag and what is a bottom eyelid, so that is the bottom of the eyelid. So most people, particularly with darker ethnicities, have larger, rounder eyes with a larger bottom lid. But this here is the part that we refer to as remove my bags, so I think the biggest mistake most people make is they come in here and they remove everything up under here like this, and what happens is that strangely changes the shape of Robin's face and instantly looks over-retouched. Now, she has remarkable skin, and all I have to do is not remove any of that, but just remove the shadow around the eye. So all I do is I go to my clone stamp and at 30% I just tap along there. So all I'm doing is tapping gently. I don't sweep it, because if I sweep like this I'll get a big smooth smooth-out line, I don't wanna do that. I want it to still be there, I just simply want to lighten along that line and always around the naso-labial, which is that shadow there. If you lighten that shadow, then it makes the nose look slimmer and it makes the face look slimmer, so I'm just gonna tap up into there very gently. Now, at this stage here, that significantly changes her face, and I don't want it to be too different. We always take away the line that connects from the smile to the chin, because I call that the puppet line, that's the puppet mouth. And if you need to, just quickly define her neck and chin because everybody wants to have a good neck and chin line. At this stage here, I see three very tiny lines on her forehead, yes, I always remove forehead lines. So just a quick clone here, down the bridge of the nose. Always cleans up the bridge of the nose, and that is it. At this stage, all I need to do now is dodge and burn her eyes, I do not need to do anything more. Now, let's have a look at two things. One of them is she has uneven skin here, here, and here, and if I start cloning this, I'm gonna get away from my two minutes very, very quickly. Also those things that personally annoy me, when I see light through here like this, and it's pretty easy just to clone here at 60%. So it has to be quite high on your flow, 100% opacity and 60%. Now, I could go just along her arms, and remember, I've got to do this edit in two minutes, and just remove her biggest freckles that stand out and just clean it up a bit. I could do that, or I could use my editing software. So I use Portraiture, and then I erase back around the face and go in, but all I wanna do is keep it really simple. I have a little bit of a line to walk here and I have a decision to make about this arm. So I have to get this done as quickly as I can. Also, when I go to my Dodge tool, so O is for dodge, and I'm gonna dodge up her eye just to make it pop out at you like that and then dodge that one, and then I'm gonna hold this down and burn in that line there because that should have been done better in makeup. But as we showed you, makeup does blink off, so that's a line I always touch. So now my decision to be quick has to be this. This little line here I can deal with in two ways. I can simply, let's, actually, I don't want to do the red part of her dress, I just want to do this little bit that's sticking out. Nobody likes any form of muffin top, and I really would detest it if my client went I love that shot of me, ooh, look at my muffin top. Because you just don't want the girls to be focusing on things like that, so I can just clone that in like that, and my option, if I go back one, my option would actually be this. If you go to your clone stamp on your background, and go up as high as 60, 60 or 80 will get you a really sharp line, then I can just bring that in really quickly, and it's not really a big deal. It's just a tiny bump. What I need to decide is whether I keep going down here, and you can get lost in this. You could get lost in this for hours, shaping the body, shaping the waist, but all you want to do is make it beautiful for her to see it so that she wants to buy it. Let's have a look if I want to trim this down. It's either gonna work or it's not. I'm gonna come up there, I'm gonna take half the arm, halfway round, I'm gonna copy and paste it, I'm going to Free Transform, Warp, and then I'm simply going to pick it up and push it in. Now I don't want to slim it down too much, I want it to look real, but I want her to like it. I want to reconnect the two little areas that I saw disconnect, which is the arm and shoulder and there on the dress and there on that arm, and before I accept it I am going to turn my layout on and off a few times and make sure that there's no disconnect in the pattern of her dress or the seam of her dress. Now, I can see a disconnect here, when you turn it on and off, the disconnect jumps up and that's there. Okay, and then I flatten it now. Then I'm at three minutes, so I have broadened the arm and I have retouched the face and I'm just going to duplicate that off for you so that we can compare it to how quickly we changed that, let me crop that smaller, and, oops, sorry. I wish you could see me right now. I'm in my pajamas, so I just want you to have a little laugh about that. If you're in your pajamas right now... (laughing) That's the best part about being a photographer, isn't it, that you get to retouch in your PJs. Except for I've got thousands of people watching me. All right, here you go. So just like that. Another really cool way to show you the difference between what I've done is if I drop this onto here, like that, and I'm going to put that there. I'm simply gonna slide down, you watch her face. Such significant changes for so quick. This is where we wanna be. We wanna be selling our portraits, we want the best version of ourselves, and that's it right there. Let's do another one. We'll do another one of Robin, perfect bag line there, and we've also got, oh, we'll do this beautiful one. Perfect. Absolutely beautiful, elbows pinned back, standing nice and tall, chin towards me, and down beautiful open eyes, tiny little smile, and her body looks magnificent. I love the top she's wearing. Let's go, we're at, timer's on, we're gonna go here. First thing I'm gonna do is clean up that neck. The first thing I do when I see that neck is instantly want to go in there and clean it up, so I'm gonna come up from that lightest part here, there, that, that, and I'm just gonna come up and tap along there really quick. Now, don't let the neck get away on you, very, very important. We do not want this to go flat straightaway. I've overdone that, I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna do it again. So don't ever think for one minute that I don't over-retouch. We are all guilty of over-retouching, and I don't just mean doing more than, I don't just mean taking away too much. I mean doing more than we need to. I always challenge my retouchers, when I taught them, go back, retouch that again, try and do it in two minutes, because if you're spending 10 to 15 minutes on an image you're daydreaming and you're getting lost and you're not fast and you're not focusing and you're certainly not being productive. All right, let's get up under here and let's just take this bag, I just wanna wiggle my clone stamp up and under there 'cause I don't wanna completely remove this area, I just want to lighten it back to there, to there, to there. Now, what if I wanna lighten further up and under here? I can still tap along there, but I am not to remove any of it, I'm just to lighten it, just like that. Then I wanna open that line there, remove that little puppet line, of course I wanna lighten the naso-labial, so I'm coming at a 45 degree angle right there using my clone stamp. All I have to do now is dodge, dodge there, dodge around there, there, and this is perfect to show her we were at, and just like that, we're still on two minutes. We're at one minute 40, it was pretty easy. I feel like she's quite bottom-heavy through, so I have a choice that I can either crop this tighter, so take it just below the breast line so I can see the shape of her waist, and I like that, looks fantastic, I'm gonna show you how to open this one, how I would open this one on Alien Skin and what I would choose, I love that, very good. And last but not least, let's try this one. So I'll reset my clock. Here I've got two things that bother me. I'm gonna just lighten that and lighten that, don't have to remove it. Little scar there, lighten that. I'm gonna come down, clean up the forehead exactly the same way, down the bridge of the nose, I'm gonna come up under this bag line, tap tap tap. Oops, a little bit of an overdo there, easy to do. Tap tap tap, there it is. I think that looks gorgeous. Done, done, done, da-done done, done. Clean up the chin, clean up the elbows, 'cause nobody likes to have a wrinkle on their elbows. Dum dum dum, do we wanna remove this? Sure, let's have a look. A nice, easy white background, slide it straight up. Maybe you don't remove it, maybe you just lighten through, I don't mind having some movement on the texture of my wall. Okay, and then we are here, now I have to decide how to do this, I'm gonna come up the median shape of her arm, through there, down at the bottom, I'm gonna copy and paste, I'm gonna go Command + T, I'm gonna pick that up and I'm gonna bring this up, I'm gonna user her dress shape around there, looking for that little break line there, we've turned that arm, she looks gorgeous, pulling this corner down so we're matching all of our break lines, I'm going to erase that there, I'm going to go to my layer and turn it on and off. On, off, on, off, looks good, can't see any break lines there. I'm going to flatten this image, and I'm at one minute and 23, so let's have a look. I'm going to come into here, I'm going to dodge, dodge, dodge, just very gently, do not over-whiten the eyes, you do not need to. Dodge dodge dodge, and then I'm gonna put it down, we're at one minute 40, thank you very much. Let's make it lighter. Perfect, this is enough for your clients to see. This is enough for your clients to purchase. This is enough. And you don't need to keep overdoing it. What's really, really important is that you know when to stop, and that we're not overdoing it, that we're really being time-effective here but we're making our clients look good, we're getting it right with lighting and posing, and then we're selling portraits. Let's do some more. All right, with this one, let's have a look at more two minutes on lots of different type faces. Straight out of raw camera, we want everybody to look good. So exactly the same rule. Now, you'll notice that I'm following a pattern. Let's have a look at that quickly. I start 'round this area here and I retouch out. I then go down the nose, I find the lightest part under the eye bag there, and then I go up into there, okay? And then I hit around the chin, so I go from the lightest part out and up. I often lighten those, and I lighten those there. So that's my little pattern, my face pattern. Let's go. I am, and my cloning stamp, 20% flow, 100% opacity. I clear the area that I want to stamp first, and then I go, I keep resetting back to that center, okay? So for the people that are really struggling with the clone stamp. You keep something back to the lightest part and go out. So I'm on nice, light flow, then I go lightest part up, down the bridge of the nose to clean it up, lightest part up, and to the eye bag there, there, there, there, and I'm at a minute. Now, we need, if I want to make it look like there is a shadow over the mouth, 'cause that looks like a mustache, and we don't want that, no woman wants a mustache. And the eyes are quite significant here. With Sal's eyes, she's throwing quite a lot of pink around her eyes, so this is a little hard case trick that I've used for years. Brush tool, shortcut B, I want you to go to your swatches and get a green, like that, a lime green. And at 1% flow, 100% opacity, 1% flow, I just very gently flip around there, tap that out, and it just takes all the pink away, just like that. Now, dodge, O, shortcut, we're at 20%, we dodge around there, pop her eyes out, and we're still hitting the two-minute mark. So there you go, just like that. This is enough for her to see, perfect. Now, does this bother me here? Two choices. Yes, I can crop that out, absolutely, or I can darken it. So that did bother me and I didn't like it, so yes. When I removed that shadow on the wall, not for the viewing, for the printing, yes, I may smooth that out with the clone stamp or even lighten this area here, but I would not do that until she's committed to purchasing it. Right now I've just made her look good, as good as I can. So her next shot is here. This is a great shot, because there's quite a lot of shadow on her face which is making it look like that's her skin, and it's not. So because I have already got my clone stamp set, I'm just gonna come up under the eyes there, so, and then smooth out that cheek, up under there, and then up towards the center of the eye, taking that highlight down in one sweep. Coming down, chin line up, chin up, chin up. Let's come down into the shadow, 'cause I don't want that shadow on her face. I'm gonna go across that highlight, which is coming through her here, because she's almost in a backlight. So the lighting situation changed. So potentially an image that she could have looked quite hard in, because the line, sorry, the light is uneven to her face, we have just made her look really great very, very quickly. So with our brush tool, just taking that pink around there, nice in there, we'll go to our zero, in there, we're still under two minutes, easy easy easy, there, there, and there, and that's enough. That's so simple, and that's enough to make it pop. So we'll come out to here, let's have a look, and that is where we started, looking uneven through there, there, and there, and that's where we finished, right here. Okay, next shot. We've got Nicola, Nicola is in a perfect body line, everything looks good there in the background. She doesn't need any retouching to the body. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do the same map as Sally, I'm just gonna lighten through her highlight, I'm just gonna give her a soft sweep over her forehead. I want to keep the natural skin on her forehead, but I'm just gonna soften it in one sweep. I'm going to go to the highlight area and I'm going to go up into her crow's feet, I know, horrible names we have for all of these, I'm sorry if you're watching, girls. Your own face, that is. Um, but we all have them, sadly. Smile lines. (chuckling) Okay, here we go, we go up into the, up into there, no putting bruising on the cheek and no flattening this area here. Okay, let me show you a big mistake that people make. What they do is they take this highlight off, and as soon as they take this highlight off it pushes the cheek in, and I see it all the time, this flat base on the cheek. Her cheek is meant to have that highlight, it is meant to have that shape, it is meant to pop out there, so make sure you keep it. I want to keep her age, I want to show that she's in her 30s, I don't want to blitz her under the eyes, she's a beautiful woman. She doesn't need to be completely smooth, okay? She wouldn't need to, so also, I'm gonna pick that eye up, there it is, two minutes, and making sure that you're burning in through there, just like that, gorgeous. Now, next shot, Nicola. Exactly the same face map, okay, but this one's no smile. But this is a good one, and let me show you why. First I'm gonna take the line off the highlight, then I'm gonna use the highlight to smooth the rest of the forehead, just like that. Clone stamp, we are at 100% flow, 20% opacity, as usual. Always the same. Then I'm going to come up into here, I'm gonna come up into there, now she's got no crow's feet 'cause she's not smiling, and she's got two great things with her face other than being extraordinarily beautiful. But she's got two great retouching things. One of them is this line here makes it look like that she's scowling, okay? So does this little shadow here. So let's have a look. If I take that little shadow underneath and then I lighten this one here, and in order to lighten it I have to darken that bit there, 'cause there's a highlight. You watch the difference. She's no longer got that look that her lip has picked up, okay? So that's very interesting, how you can change the shape of the mouth by taking that off, but again, do not blitz that down. I want you to look at her eyes and I want you to be drawn up there. Okay, this is a really perfect example. She's turned to the side, I'm gonna clear that line in her highlight first and then I'm gonna smooth her forehead with that highlight, returning to that highlight every time, going down the bridge of the nose, exactly the same pattern, through there, through there, through there. Now, let's smooth out that little chin line. She doesn't have that shadow there because she's smiling, with no teeth, just come up into that shadow, perfect. And take this one here, always, but don't flatten the chin. Okay, what bugs me about this shot is she's got a beautiful long lean body, and in order to arch her back and push her bum back, I asked her to push forward through here. And if she's not gonna like that, I'm going to deal with that now, so I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go right on that sequin line to there, I'm gonna hit copy and paste, I'm gonna go Command + T, right-click inside the box, Warp, and I'm just going to pick this up and take it back to what it really looks like, there and there, remembering if we're stretching pixels we have to be careful when there's a pattern or a sequence, so let's look at that up close and see how we can make that better. See this break line here, so I'm just going to erase, but this time I'm going to erase at 60%, because what I need to do is not feather it but keep a sharp line. And so I'm going to go to 60%, I'm going to come up to here, I'm gonna use a sharp line there, there, and there. And then I'm going to delete back through here, and let's have a look at this little layer. Okay, so in order, what I always do is I pose for the back line and I get them to push that belly forward in order to push that back out, okay? And I don't care about this line. I can see it when I'm photographing them. All I wanna do is make sure I've got a perfect back line through there, and what I do with this front line afterwards is not her business. She'll never see it, and she will never know. That's part of the tricks and part of the magic, okay? Shooting knowing that this stuff is going to happen, right. Let's do some more. As you know, I absolutely love editing with Alien Skin. Ever since I found it, as Exposure 4 is my absolute favorite, I haven't used anything else. I'm gonna show it to you today because it's a really big component of how I finish my images, and I know that a lot of people wanna learn how to Photoshop but they also wanna learn how to get my finished look. So let's have a look. I've just emailed Alien Skin and said that they need to get you all a discount code so that you can buy Exposure 4. So Filter, Alien Skin, we're gonna go in there and you open it through Photoshop. You can also open it independently, but at the end of the day when I found this software it changed by world. You can buy actions, layers, filters, all the rest of it, but what I want is something that weighs in. I love that I can change the look of my image so quickly and then I can control it by how much that I put on there. Also, I have the option for multiple banners. Aging, dust, you know, water, backgrounds, I mean, there are just so many beautiful resources here. So what I'm gonna go with is just show you how I would finish this image. I very much love, love, love how strong this image is, so let me have a look. There's two that I love. I love going into this dark purple and then bringing the overall intensity down. That, to me, really just picks up the magenta of her top, the steel gray of her hair. You can go to the Before button down at the bottom, that's how subtle it is. So pretty. And also, another one of my favorites is I love going through the stronger colors that exist through Polaroid and the yellows, always go toward the yellows and greens, which are my favorite. So here, that's where I wanna be, and I would definitely take any aging off there, that means any dust, et cetera, and I can either bring my overall intensity down here and then add another filter, or I can simply open exactly like that at 100% and it sits over here as a filter, so I can turn that on and off. And instantly that takes me somewhere that I decide, so I'm just gonna drop down the opacity to 50%. So I'm just using the opacity instead of the overall intensity. And then what I'm gonna do is I can open and turn that off exactly as I like, and I can also bump that back up, and just like that I've created a gorgeous image. Now, let's say I really, really like what I've done in terms of this filter, so I can go to the next image and if it was the same girl, let me try and find another picture. No, no. Okay, let's say I had another image or a series of images with this color, I could just keep applying this filter, I don't have to keep going back. So let's try and apply it to this one. It's exactly the same filter. Now, not all filters work on each image, because this is a lighter image showing, it has a completely different feel to it, it has a completely different retouch, that doesn't work for me. Maybe if I take it right back from, and remember, we're looking here. Yes, that works for me, definitely. I do like that, however, maybe, let's pick this one up. We go and we do something completely different. Let's go back in and look at a different film. Now, I don't mind having different tones in my images, because that there is very dark and it's very yellow for this image. Let's go to the before. Right, so maybe I go up into my color fading and I start with the lighter filters. See, I love it when it starts going into the cyans. As soon as I start going into the cyans, and I can bring that intensity down, she instantly starts getting softer. Now we're getting into the luxes and the pinks, and all of these work right down to here. So I can take that right down, maybe that's what my image needs to exist. So the mood that each image, how you retouch it, really is about the image, the look you want, the final look you want, what you're gonna end up with at the end, does it suit being dark and strong like this? Is that where she needs to be, or is it there? You know, so that's the beauty of it is just there's multiple, multiple uses for it, and I love, absolutely love the black and white. Let's have a look at the black and white. So there she is, taking that off, perfect. Putting it back on. Let's have a look at what I can do. I'm gonna take this filter off, and it's going to flatten that layer down. I'm going to come back into here, and this time what I'm gonna do is reopen Alien Skin and go to my black and whites. The black and white films here are unbelievable, they have so many multiple choices that replicate real-looking film that I just adore, and you can remove the grain. So that one's one of my favorites. TXP 3200 is actually film I used to shoot on, in my early days as a photographer, and I can work all of the grain out of that and keep that contrast, which is just perfect. There's also faded films, low-contrast films, vintage films, and there's really beautiful dark type like that, and I love that, I'm gonna take my grain strength down and open it up. These are intense, rich black and whites. I have never been able to get black and whites like that on my own, and I love, love, love using this software. Because of the last action I applied, it's still sitting at the top of Filter, so if I want to apply image and I pause, I'm also filming, I'm filming my own computer, so it's just running through a large filter, it's taking it a little while. But when you're not filming it should be better. Now, still, at this stage I can drop this back, but just watch this. Because I've left the image color underneath, as I take back the opacity, it's gonna go half desaturated, so on this layer here you would have to make that black and white first in order for that not to happen to you so that both layers are black and white. I don't actually like this image like that, so I go back to there, and I think you, not happy with that. Let's try this one, absolutely gorgeous shot. I think it'll look great with an intense black and white. I love the black and whites on the black backgrounds, I think they just work. So let's see, oh yes, beautiful. All right, so now let's take back that top layer just a touch, because I wanna feel like it's not so burnt out, and then we go, remember, to that one, and we put the black and white, just a plain desaturated black and white, and if you feel like it's getting too dark I will bring up the curves, my darken curves, so I can get that gutsy, beautiful black and white that I love, and I'm gonna flatten it. I could go lighter, but I'm just gonna keep lightening her face if I do that. But I can bring up my blacks that way on my curves. Now, gorgeous, love that. Let's go to this one of Tamara, and let's open this one. I'm not gonna do this in black and white because I want a beautiful color look. Let's find another filter that we really like. This one here, ooh, let me see. Out of the black and whites, into the colors. Now, what I love about the prints, the Polaroids, oh, look at that. Okay, just pops her red hair straight out of there. Oh, look at that, there it is again, and the yellow tones, nicely done. So, and there, oh, I like all of those. I like the contrast up through there, brown highlights. This color here, let's accept this, and let's pop some contrast out of it. So let's keep the intensity, but let's take this down this way. So how about we lift up through the darks, and then we accept that. And then we come down through the lights. Now, if that's still too strong, 'cause that looks just a little bit too animated to me. We'll come back to here, we'll apply the filter, and layers, we'll take the layer down first, okay? So now it's starting to look a little bit more real, but it's still got the punch. Then you can go to your curves, lift up through there, dark, lifting your darks, taking down your highlight, there, perfect. That's where I wanna be. And this image here, big difference. So it just popped out the highlight on her face, it's enhanced the red. I feel like two things bug me. There's quite a lot of pink going on here, so let's deal with that. So I want to keep the intensity of this color, but I have to deal with this little hard bit here 'cause I don't want her to not like that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to my clone stamp, I feel like there's a hot spot here and I'm just going to lighten that hot spot so my eye does not look there. Then, I'm just gonna lighten up into those hot pink spots there, just like that. Love it, beautiful girl, absolutely gorgeous shot. Just like that, a finished image for me, thank you very much, perfection. And I just take that right back, let's take that out of camera to there, and we'll come back to here. I'm gonna open it back up and do a side by side for you, right there, and then here. And take that back in my history. All right. And let me just drop it on for you, and then I can print these out as a PDF for you all to see and look at. There she is, just like that. Beautiful, beautiful finish, gorgeous woman, gorgeous. Okay, there. You've got that down, let's have a look at this one here. Same rules apply. Let's just drop straight in and see if this filter matches Nic. No, it doesn't, it's far too magenta. Definitely don't like that, so we'll go back. This is shot gold on green, so obviously I'm going to go towards my greens. Instantly I want to go towards my yellow and greens. Oh, I like this a lot, so I'm gonna take my aging off and I'm just gonna drop that overall intensity down, absolutely love that. Perfect. And then I'm going to apply that filter. So watch this pop. I love that, and then her other two images I just simply hit there, Filter, Exposure 4, at the top of Filter, because it was my last filter applied, so it's just going to drop exactly the same filter onto one, two, three of her images that are all shot in the same sequence. So there it is, I've decided on a final filter and I've chosen one, it's gorgeous. Let's see. The very common and terrifying rainbow wheel of death. When you work too fast, film your screen recording all at the same time, and then apply large action filters to your images. Let's see if we can clear that, and we're out of here. All right, let's look at this one here. Amazing, the difference between these two images. Okay, the only thing that changed in these two images was my camera angle from horizontal to vertical. Now, she's straight out of camera. This girl has absolutely nothing going on on her face that I could possibly remove other than a highlight, okay? So there it is there, that's it. Too easy. Although there it is there, I do have to take off those little dots there, with her shoulder dominating in the image they definitely stand out. So I'll just quickly clone them out, seconds. So this is really just about showing you, as I was opening all of the images to pick which ones I was going to show you and which ones I was going to retouch, I was just going to show you how I would fix this image here in Photoshop. Not only does her arm look bigger, it's dominating, it looks whiter than her face. She actually, would you believe it, looks wide through the center of her body. This part of her arm is large, and it's dominating. So how would I fix that if I hadn't have shot it like that? Because the one thing I know I cannot do is crop here to here, because I know that that's not going to work. Although, strangely, it kind of does, but. Okay, I take that back, but let's have another look. What if I wanted to fix it without doing that? So what if I wanted to take it, say, to here? So two things about this image bug me. One of them is it's not doing her any favors for her body, for her slim body, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take that to there and just gonna quickly hit that skin line, there was nothing else other than that highlight that bugged me on her face, and then of course the old dreaded armpit line, easy to remove, just a little bit of a clone. Okay, here's my choices. One, the arm is humpy there at the back. So I have to pick it up here, I have to take it to there, I have to copy and paste it, and I have to warp that in there. So I'm gonna straighten the arm first before I slim it, because if I was to just slim that arm down I would not have been able to get that shape there without doing that a little bit first. So now I can take that whole arm, three-quarters in right up, back through there, okay, and notice how I did a squiggle because I don't want to get any break lines through here so I'll show you how. I'm going to copy and paste, I'm going to warp, and what I'm going to do is just push this down. So I'm pushing the whole area down, and I know that I am moving a lot of pixels here so I have to be careful, I have to make sure that her strap lines up, I have to pull this bit back here so that I line up the top of her scarf, and remember, we go to our layers, we turn this on and off, on and off, and make sure that we haven't got any break lines. So once we're at that point there, where we're happy with no break lines, I'm just gonna tickle in there, I'm gonna touch through here, and just blend my erasing tool, okay? Then I'm going to flatten this down. Now, if I want to define through her breast line, I have two choices. I can come in, I can make her boob bigger, or I can make her torso smaller, so I can go into my warping tool, I can pull, but here's the cool thing about cutting is straightaway I can go into this line here and create this line. Now, that's not a real line, it's an artificial line, and, but I want to do is I'm going to show you I'm gonna bring this up, so I'm just gonna make sure I've got no break lines in there, see, there is a break line here, we don't want that because we definitely don't want that to look fake. I'm just going to bring that up to there, done done done, that looks fantastic. Flatten that, and now with my clone stamp on the background at 60%, I'm simply going to cut that line nice and simple and then just fill it in. Okay, now, she has a larger breast, she has a trimmer torso, and we've gone from defining that a little bit more and now I can, after I've done that, crop a little tighter, and then I have the shot that I wanted that wasn't about that cross section of a thick waist and a dominating arm. So that was a really good example, I'm gonna get that down. What's, oh, I wanna save, actually no, I want to save it for you, don't I, because I want you to be able to see that. So let's go to the finished one here, and here. And let's duplicate that, and I'll save that for you. I'll save the original for you so that you can have a little video, and then I'll show you that one. Okay, the next great shot here, this is a perfect example of why we light in the studio with polyboards. As you know, we shot Amanda's shoot outside. There is so much that I don't have control of, and the difference is is the light on the face. And that makes a huge difference as to how the finished product comes out, because I've got so much reflector coming back. In fact, if you have a look at Ariella's catch light, you can see the large white reflector in it. And this is such a good one, too. How about we go to J, go to our healing tool. I don't remove hairs on the face unless they cut into the eye like this. I make it as small as the hair, I just draw one line down, and it's gone. I like the healing tool for hairs and large freckles, and I don't really use it for anything else other than the background, because my clone stamp, for me, is easier to use and it's definitely stronger. But I can use it for a frown line, I can use it for hairlines, and it works perfectly. Remember, when you go to go through eyebrows, it doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to go back and do it. It is a little bit temperamental there. So we'll make that happen, we'll put that in there, there, there, lovely, perfect, done. Just like that, and we're off. Now, love that. Now, let's look at the difference between the two. So up close, Amanda's got so much more shadow on her face. We need to create eyes for her. So we've got two choices. One is we could have made this easier on ourselves by taking more reflectors on location. But it doesn't always work like that, as you know, and this is the reality of shooting is let's look at how we can fix it. So we'll put a timer on Ariella's and then we'll put a timer on Amanda's, and we'll see how long it's gonna take me to retouch Ariella's and we'll see here, so I'm just gonna put my timer on. My timer, stop, reset, start, here we go. With Ariella, I've already done her hair, so I'm just going to smooth out that line on her nose because nobody needs to have that, a little crooked nose, even though it's her nose, we'll just take away little stuff like that, it's simple. We've gotta break up these puppet lines, okay? So just a bit of putting a light blend into them, because I don't want to remove them but I don't want her not to like them. And this doesn't bother me at all, it's part of her little smirk and it's part of the smile line, which I like. Right, that's good, so there we are, there. 30 seconds, she doesn't need any contouring, I'm not gonna remove her freckle, I'm just gonna drop it down. This hair annoys me, but I'm not gonna remove it because basically it's not gonna stop her from buying the photograph. I would remove it afterwards. And the hairs on her face probably wouldn't have stopped her from buying the photograph either, although it's definitely something I would have done. Always bringing it back to the fact that we are trying to achieve our two-minute edit, we are trying to achieve a two-minute edit so that we simply are efficient in making money and not sitting at Photoshop every day and every night when we could be with our families and loved ones. All right, there she is, she's a minute 14, too easy. Let's go up to Amanda's and see the difference with the outdoor lighting. Straightaway, she's got a lot of shadow coming into this eye, so I'm gonna come in here and I'm gonna follow the same face map as all the other girls. I'm gonna lighten up, highlight, and I'm gonna go up and down the bridge of the nose to clean that up. Then I'm going to take any lines, smooth them here and here, and I'm gonna take any line here and here, okay? Now, from this point, I'm going to go to here, I'm gonna take that in, and then I'm gonna go to here. There, there, and take that little naso-labial shadow. There, there. Okay, so even though it's a lot darker, it's not a lot different in terms of time, because it just, just because she's darker doesn't mean it was like, oh no, I'm gonna have to spend hours retouching this. It's exactly the same pattern. So that's a really good one for you to see. We're going to significantly change the shape of her mouth if we don't hit those shadows around her mouth. So let's have a look at that, we'll go to here, and straightaway I really need to pop her eyes up out of this image in order for her to be seen through the eyes, okay, 'cause you've got a lot of light in here, in her eyes, and I needed to do that, so let's have a look at how we can do that. When I come up into here, the first thing I can do, and they're quite pushed back, and in the next shadow her eye is, so I can dodge across the eye at 20%. I'm keeping it, it's nice and light, I'm gonna actually bring up the whole eye, okay? But what happens is we're gonna start getting some white burn on her eye, and that doesn't even look real. I can go back and say yep, sure, I can take it back to the halfway point, I can even take it to there. I like that highlight on there, so that works. Let's try something a little bit different. Let's try putting a layer over the top, I'll do this with her other eye. I'm doing a whole layer on top, let's try going to the bottom layer, and I'm gonna turn that off so you can watch. I'm going to lift up the darks, so I'm gonna lift up the contrast and then I'm going to lighten the image there, and I'm gonna push it right up to the edge of her face. Now it looks too light, okay, but when the layer goes on the top, all we have to do is hit our erasing tool and we erased back here and then instantly what's light underneath jumps forward, okay? Sorry, I'm erasing the wrong layer and you're saying, oh, it doesn't look any different. There it is, there and there. And so you can just do a layer mask, you can lighten that through, but at the end of the day, it's going to have a completely different look than inside the studio, and lesson learned in terms of reflectors. I'm actually going to open some more of Amanda's shots so that you can see how I retouched them all, because she's from my outdoor shoot, so I'm actually gonna pick the top 20 images and record that as a bonus video for the outdoor shoot, which is fantastic. Okay, I'm gonna open that, I'm gonna keep that on for you. Let's have a look now at, before we go into our curves, sorry, I've got lots of fabulous curves to show you. Let's have a look at one more thing in this video. We talked about the eyes being different size with Andrea, before, but we didn't have, Jessica, but we didn't have it, so this is Andrea standing normally to me. She's got her normal relaxed neck and chin, her arms are by her side, and this is her reclining forward. Now, I can crop this right-hand image wherever I want, okay? So I can now crop into this image top here, top of the head, and cut down into her body line. In fact, that is a very common crop for me when I shoot curves. But the thing is, is it's very hard, I can't slim this side of her body if I don't shoot her whole body. And also, just because I'm slimming her in camera doesn't mean she has to be slimmed down. You know, remember who you're photographing. Just because you want to make people look good doesn't mean they have to look a certain way. I'm gonna take this entire section, I'm gonna copy it, I'm gonna transform it, I'm gonna warp, and I'm just gonna bring this in and down at the same time. I want her to keep her curves, but I just want her to look the best that she can look. And if I have to pull that corner out so that I match up here, what I've done, let's have a look for break lines, is I'm gonna turn this on and off. Is I've pulled that up and down, so I just have to make sure there's no break lines in her here. So there it is there, make sure there's no break line there 'cause I want to keep that real line. Now, I'm getting away on myself here, if I keep going. See, it gets dangerous, and then you're there again. So let's go back and let's go back one more step, and this time what I'm gonna do is come up to here and just gently erase back there, yeah. Nope, did it again. Okay, how is it there? Okay, just checking those lines, checking those lines. How about I flatten it, and I go, take that line off. And then instead of trying to fix that break line there I just come up into here. So just checking always that your break lines are there, check that your break lines are being seen. If you leave a break line and it gets printed and your client sees it, that stands out like anything in a print. And now let's have a look at the difference in the shots. So we want to define her chin but keep her shape. We want to pull in her body line, but not overexaggerate it. We just want her to look as good as she can look and bring that back line in, and we do that with that Warp tool, because we can move an entire section like that and it makes boobs smaller. And now, obviously, we want to remove this bit here. At this stage here we can just come in, just find this little line here. But I actually opened this image to show you the eyes, so let's do that. It's got a bit away, I do get carried away with myself. So now I'm simply going to lasso through this area, I'm going to take the whole iris, I'm going to go up to the top of the eyelid, I'm going to copy and paste, I'm going to Free Transform, right-click, Warp, and now I'm gonna lift up the eyelid. So this is a complete eyelift, and it absolutely works perfectly. So there you go, we're gonna lift it up, I'm gonna erase back through here, and if I feel like there's still a dip there I've got two choices. I can clone it, or I can just go to my Burn tool at 10% and I can hold my Alt button down and simply put that top line back in there, and I'm at 30% in my burn and I'm just gonna touch up the makeup just like that, and her eye has gone from here to here. So a simple lift using the Warp tool, a simple lift, a push in through the breast line, and her before and after there is there and there. Just like magic. Let's do some more. Oh, I could just keep doing these all day. All right, here's two shots that I took straightaway, and, you know, this is a really great way to slim down the wall, pushing down, opening up that neck line, pushing her chin forward and down. You saw this on the video, so now what I wanna show you is the mistake that we make when we are slimming curves, and that is to always come into this crop, because we don't need to come into this crop. We can push down and then use L tool here. So something else that really works well for curves and that is when you have a line of clothing like this, you can just clone into it, so that takes away a cut line that cuts into the body like that. Now, it's very hard to use the warping tool or the Liquefy tool when you're up against the edge like this, so I'm gonna show you how I would do that. First of all, I lasso and I copy and paste. Then I bring the area into where I want it to go. So I've gotta keep it real, I've gotta keep it a good shape, those are my rules, and I've gotta keep it looking real, just looking good. So I've lost my balance, let's go again. I'm going to go Warp, I'm just gonna come in, and so what I'm gonna do is just bring it in to here, okay. Now, I didn't go low enough, but instead of pulling this down like this and losing my shape, I'm just gonna stay here. Now, two things, now. When I accept that, I'm only looking at this line here, and I have two choices. I'm going to flatten it, and my first choice is gonna go clone, and I can go about 80% and I'm gonna cut into this line, remember, I'm not feathering at 20 or 30, I'm cutting into that line there, and then I can fill in that area, that's my first choice. My second choice is to lasso, lasso there, take there, pick up the lasso, come up to here, copy and paste this area, and bring this down. Now, that works really well if it's the same color, and if it's not it doesn't. So we've gotta make sure that that lines up, and then I can change the color of this, make it darker, I can go to my dodge and burn, I can dodge an area back and burn it until it blends. So all I've done, and then I can feather that eraser, feather that edge, 'cause it's the edge we got perfect. And all I've done is, let me pick that up, is I've put this here over the top of that. And that keeps a real line. So that one works better for me than anything else, and that is showing her body but keeping her curvy but still flattering her and making her look really, really good. So from here, what we did was, Andrea was sitting back against the wall, and what I don't do with curves is put people back in the wall where their neck goes short, they can't stretch out their arm, and they look bigger through the middle because they crunched up. I could recline her and stand here in every way, or with this one, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to copy this out here and I'm just going to take that off so I've got room to move. This annoys me, when I run off the end of my background, so of course whenever I run off the end of my background I just come up over here. Okay, her face is perfect, we don't need to retouch anything on her face, so really all we're dealing with is two areas. One is that back line, which is very hard to achieve, although see this white square? I'm gonna show you how I do this. Firstly, I'm going to come up, I'm gonna go under the breast line, and I'm gonna go to here, and I'm going to move and straighten down this line here. Now, I can take this line down as far as I want, I don't want to cut into the breast line. Okay, and once I get it to here, I can move that to wherever I want. So I'll go right up into that breast line there, and then I'm going to accept it, and then I'm going to come up into here, there. All right. Now I can use that line there and shape that any way I want, so that's the first one. I'm gonna flatten that, and then I'm just gonna clone out that little bit there. Or I can darken through this area, that's another thing I can do, because what's light comes forward and what's dark goes back, so I can just push back that highlight and instead of warping or dodging and trying to create a shape here, let's just go crazy. I'm just going to draw the line of where I want it to be, basically it's just routine for one minute, then it's here, and I'm gonna draw a fair waist and I'm gonna come in, let's just try this. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come up to this white area, I'm gonna copy and paste, I'm gonna pick that area back up and put it down here. And what I've done is I've created a fake background through there, and this can really work. It's kind of awkward, but it does, that works. 'cause it fools the eye, and the eye can be tricked so easily. You can create a completely fake area like this, and then all you have to do is feather around the edge with your erasing tool and make it darker. And you watch this, because as soon as you make it darker the eye believes that it's there, just like that. Just like that, and there's a gradient in there, and you've forgotten already what that shape was through there. Good trick. Fun trick. Works really well, and also then at any time I can crop down to the area that I want and it is bigger than what I would have got had I put her here and just cropped down. So there's my difference, right there and there, let me put that side by side for you. And I can put that in the PDF as well, oops. Make sure when you're happy you flatten your images. Just like that, good shape. And you take that as far as you want. You take that as far as your client wants, you take that to a place where your client feels good about it, and that's the most important part. Lastly for our curves, I have this beautiful line here to show you, in fact, let me see. We've got this, we did our red, yep. This is our last one. Okay. This is Andrea standing completely straight to me with her normal rested neck and chin forward, and then we have pushed her chin far forward and just come above the eyeline. So one of the most important parts about this is yes, it slimmed her down through the arms and shoulders, much better, a much better line, much better bodyline for everybody. Let's do the quick clone map on her face, so first thing I'm gonna do here is get there, I'm gonna take that to three, I'm gonna clear that area on her forehead and then clear that whole area. I'm gonna go down the bridge of the nose, I'm gonna go from a light area up and out to there and there, and then I'm gonna come up on the highlight, up, there and there, and then I'm gonna go to there, there, there, there, clean up that shadow, beautiful. Perfect, perfect. Now, remember with Andrea we had a little bit of a droopy eye on this side, so let's quickly recap on that. Squish, copy and paste, Command + T, right-click, Warp, gonna lift that eye, perfect, through the air, really easy, we're gonna flatten that down, we're gonna go to our burning tool there, we're gonna go across the eyelid, perfect. Perfect, perfect. There, there, and there, let's lift that up, we're just using a little burn tool just to, it's almost like contouring with makeup. That's why our makeup artist absolutely love learning retouching. To them, it's no different. You're just putting light and dark on the face and making it come forward. Perfect, that looks great. Absolutely perfect, love that. Right, now. Let's just say for one minute that you did photograph that chin, and that was what you got, and your client is gonna be unhappy if she sees that. Let's have a look at how I would do that. I would take my lasso tool, I would take it all the way around there, I would take it right to there like a smiley face, I would copy and paste, and I would lift the chin, lift, lift, lift. Just like that. Then I would come back to my erasing tool and, at 20%, I would erase back that line to where the top line of her chin is, and I have two choices now. I can keep lifting that line, so I can keep pushing this up here until it sits right up under there, or I can push it right up under there like that and then I can bring that line back. All I did was took that line there, copy and pasted it like a smile, and just lifted it up through there. Just make sure you are using that there, that you're not warping pixels. You can clone through there, and that's your image. So if you do get the double chin, the best way to do it is to use the warp tool, and same with bringing in the boobs and arms, keep it simple. Muffin tops, warp responsibly, do this for your client. Embellish, don't go crazy. Never lose the true shape of somebody's body, which is the proper line, whether they're curvy or not. Just make people look good. Take away the parts we don't like so we can focus on what we do. I hope you enjoyed your Photoshop today. I'd better go and make you a PDF. Ciao.