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Post Processing

Lesson 12 from: Commercial Photography: Thriving in a Competitive Industry

Joel Grimes

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Lesson Info

12. Post Processing

Lesson Info

Post Processing

Here we go. Ready? Okay I'm gonna bring this into raw converter command are takes me straight there right or I could go up here and hit this little this little irish thing right here command are takes me into raw so I'm gonna do my joel grimes magic which is um I often thing here shadows to the right highlights here I'm going to bring too much because that she's there's nothing really blown out contrast will pull the contrast of back a little bit exposure wise I might bring it up just a tad on my monitor here okay just to make sure I have it clarity I wouldn't use a lot of clarity here but on a lot of the grungy portrait I do clarity all right? So I'm saying ok, it looks pretty good I say open now here I have got a defaulted to open as of smart object because I love smart objects so let's do that right now I'm going to just say open if not I get hold of fifteen it will give you a non smart object so it's now going over the photos job can hit the key which brings it into the center and ...

I can move it around by holding the the space bar it's bringing up here a bit um okay, so what I normally do is I'm going to make a duplicate of this really fast ready so I go control right click new smart object you copy? We're going to double click that and I'm gonna do this so fast because I don't have much time we're going to now convert this to black a white were in the hse l great skill and I'm going now manipulate her skin tones a little bit so look, how look how it smoothes out of face a little bit by going to the left to see what this does brings out a little more detail to go that way too dark ok, so we're going to pull it this way just a fraction, no blues well, a little bit the background a little bit of blue, so we say ok, now I'm going to get goal and take it this to a luminosity and then I double I do command j, which gives me a duplicate its now tied these air tied together, but I'm going to convert that one to a soft light and then I'm gonna pull that back fifty percent roughly that's the joel grimes kind of way I treat all my images, so that gives you now the luminosity doesn't probably do a lot here, but what you normally do, my athletes and stuff definitely does a lot, so we're flatten that we'll keep move that was that was my shortcut to flatten you it's just basically creating my own my own flat here his flatten damage down here by creating my own little shortcut all right so let's bring in my texture ready this is the magic right so I had to get out of here to find it which is right here so let's bring this one in so I'm going to the cool that's the tool that's a pickup the select drag pick it up lips didn't pick up come on is locked how gonna be locked let's flatten it no it's good command jay and then flatten I don't know why I was locked different that's okay different bit depth I don't know why it was locked never seen that before all right so look at the difference in size so no problem we we um we're in the digital age and things there pretty cool here is we're going to command t is free transform where is gonna drag and drop it and fill it up okay now if I built my own I wouldn't have that problem so now we have this on top and I'm going to take and set my blending moment so let's go to start with soft light so now that background and again let's just say we blow up it's a little dark oh it now is can it's completely attached to the background you see that it's a little dark on here we're going to fix that so watch so we're going to go let's go back down now covered her face don't panic folks ok, so we're gonna go and I'm gonna take and put a levels right on top of here so we go down to adjustment layers we go to levels and I'm gonna clip that level are clipping path I'm gonna I'm gonna attach it on lee to the levels so by doing that I take my option ault button and I go now my levels will only adjust the background not her right so now let's just fix the background little bits we could see it a little bit more right there okay and still to cover her face don't panic okay, now let's do another one let's just make sure that we we like that one let's try one that's a little warmer ok, so we're gonna pick this up let go. All right, so now we have the ft and we're going to rotate this so um actually we're just going to command t and I'm going to rotate I think I could just do rotate let's just get it right about there good enough mole cricket okay? And then we're gonna go over here and just cover the whole thing ah, and we're still on rotate ok, sorry folks ok, we're just gonna go scale let's go back to here okay, now I haven't a second option let's turn in return so just take a look at what a warmer one will dio right? So let's go to soft light and then let's take a do a levels there too levels we're gonna clip it hold this option key down and then we and again she's covered but don't worry about it so let's go I kind of like maybe that right there okay, now let's let's go back to this one and now we take and build a mask so that this is gotta pull punch to it so we go down to the mask and I'm not going to extract her I'm gonna take the time to extract her that's too much work, right? So we're going to take it easy this is this is like a ten minute retouch ok, so we're gonna make a black brush so we get the black selected black brush and let's go you know you know let's not go do one hundred percent yet, okay? So flow maybe take it back a little bit and I want a soft brush so yeah, it's about right? Ok, now all I do is watch this magic I just paint her along like this and I don't have to do it a perfect extract I'm just taking that background off her skin and areas that um I don't really want to deal with it coming through so can you see this here we go she's already out of the out of the background standing there anymore now if I really want to go and you know fine tuning come a little bit close but I don't want to get into here I just want to come right up to the edge and literally and I could think thirty seconds I could literally take and make the mask and his cleanup now if I go down here hit my tab key again okay so we still have the mask right there and what the reason want to show you that watch I just take this mask and I'm going to bring it up here and now I also have it it should have it oh joel joel joel going the mask and I could just use it sort of use it again I guess here that was pretty that was pretty thin on the because I have a seventy percent but basically I could reuse that mask on any background that I have does that make sense ok but now we got both of them there is my problem all right so there's the warm look right so we have a warm look actually if I make this I think duplicated their win it can be duplicated by holding down the option all ok so let's take that one off. Take this one back on so let's do this we're gonna go above that one we're going to do a levels and then we're gonna go over here to grady in't we hit the circular grady it which is the second one and this the round one I let go it'll tell me radio grady and I pull on the black I pulled from center toe out there's my soft grady int and I just pull this and maybe make her pop just a little bit more there and then if I don't like the color balance and go over here to photo filter um I can change that that's giving her a little bit more warmth uh maybe not quite that much warmth. Um I can go over the levels here too on her and then I can say let me give you a marked contrast here there again, I'm looking at you guys, the monitor over here minds a little different, so I probably wouldn't, but I'm using my history graham I do use my instagram and photo shop, so I'm just pulling my history ramp up over to the edge of the highlight and I haven't any re touching her face yet, but I would also do that with like, say, frequency separation or something go on their black I still do that because she's just down here I could just do my my action or not even you know action button just build it so let's go and take a look here we're gonna take this one off but this one on there's the warmth still have the vignette here I could say you know what? I like a little more vignette on this one so maybe something like that do you see that? So now I have a texture on the background connected to straight to that and it still gives me a little bit of the shadows on that silhouette already had a little bit of you know let's take that off so see how it did there was dark over here the soft light or the overlay picks up the shadow part of it so it's just it looks like is there so if she cast a shadow on the wall, this shadow on the wall would still be there does that make sense? That's the beauty of this you're just you're just like big you're like throwing paint on a great you know background just like that. So um I don't know if I like the warp looks pretty good I think I liked the other one better, but I'm not limited I've got a whole library of these I can pop in once I make this little simple mask I could drop in thirty of them and try each one, said the client a version of him and so some of those backgrounds have doors and jams you could do that now to do this with a a full fledged background like a scenic background you probably would have to cut her out that makes sense, but I've even done it with, you know, like really light backgrounds and I just kind of pain in real soft and it's there so some of the stuff that even showed I showed you on my opening website where this technique but it's not it's, not a full cut out that make sense so there's a lot application for this so let's do this I'm gonna hit that button there were to make this big and there she is. Look that amazing. Any questions on that I went through pretty fast. Um, remember this that you gotta have a medium gray background, but nothing perfectly medium, you know, exactly, you know, but by snapping my history, graham I kind of saw where it was sort of falling, right? So, uh, that's number one, um, if I'm in a studio's environment and I've got this re cleo gray that happened to get a little water damage, humidity or whatever and I look at it go darn it I should about a new gray and the clients here at the door and I go, no problem, I have a little technique it's over there is called a three stop andy filter so what I do is I take my strove output is the exact same right so I got everything perfect was great and I go I don't like the little wobbles on the gray I take my three stop I opened my camera up three stops aperture take a picture now she's focused perfectly right here in the background soft with their one little three stop so that's little trick I've been using in a studio environment so if I have even if I have some skylights and stuff like that now I have a pure dark studio I just power down my stroke but if I have skylights which in my studio and fixed had skylights I couldn't do that because in all the ambiance shows up so I three stop boom I'm there so that's a little trick I want to show you too to take out wobbles in the gray um but you understand the principle right I'm just getting getting to shelve that the field so my background doesn't get him focused so it's a great little trick for that um do you have a question you will bring it back around tio thriving in the commercial photography and can you talk a little bit about cameras and what it takes to sort of be a have a professional camera what sort of letter is is that within the world today what made how many making pixel do you need to to promote to get a picture on a web site to promote a website? How do you make the cd three megapixels so you can literally rocked the world and get national ad campaigns with the three megapixel camera and theory right now if you want to be on the website the more make megapixels right so um but I could be able assistance so I mean an assistant and I say oh hi you know how long you been assisting twelve years nothing wrong was assisting twelve years I always say though, what would do you want to be an assistant rest of your life to go? No, I want to shoot I go what's keeping you or they go I only have a six megapixel camera that's all you need what do you mean? I only have one lens, so you need we'll have one stroke that's all you need. So I guess the point is is that if you have a closet full of all the lenses and all the strobe in the world and people do, they still don't become successful in photography it's so take what you got, get out and create a body work so I have this fifty megapixel camera unbelievable. Why what I want fifty megapixels well, so here's my theory is that if you take a really lousy picture it looks worse than fifty megapixels so fifty megapixel doesn't guarantee you get a good picture but when you get a good picture fifty million pixels is amazing because then you can go and put on the wall so it was a big, huge fine art print or the agency that you're shooting for love bigger megapixel files to do ad campaigns and stuff like that but the point is is get what you've got shoot with it, bill the bodywork and then when you get hired if you don't have it rented and we have we have some amazing outfits today that you can just drop ship your rental right to your doorstep and you shoot and then send it back so if you go I needed eighty five one point two lens for a project just rent it and if you love it then save your pennies and buy it later um and so might my thing is it just keep keep shooting repeat it don't get kind of but you know what? I'm human just like you are human and you know what I look at? I was watching super I shoot and she was shooting this beautiful portrait natural light and she had a fifty megapixel fifty fifty one two on her camera the cannon fifty one two and is a big old ones and you're looking at that going drool drool I think I need a one point two and so I have one point four okay and so she's sitting there talking and she's shooting and the pictures are coming up and then you're going and she looks down she was told by the way I'm a set at one point eight aperture so what does that tell you? Well, I went out and bought just for fun the cannon one point eight fifty mega picks a fifty millimeter lens for one hundred and twenty five dollars deal that lands rocks it is tak sharp so for one hundred twenty five bucks you could put a lens on your camera and do everything that soup rice was doing that day you know san so that's what happens as we're human we think we need some we don't have just like if you have straight hair you want curly if you have curly hair you wonder straight so what? Just go out and create images and repeated over and over grab people so so the records aren't pretty so people ask me how do I get models? How do your subjects go up and ask now if you're like me a male it's you know kind of creepy looking and if you go up to a sixteen year old on the mall and asked to take a picture not a good thing, you know so there's limits right? So my wife's with me a lot of times and if I go it's a beautiful girl and I go hey by the way I'd love to portrait of you but I obviously want to get permission from your parents tell out do that here's my card and so I recruit but usually it's with my wife when I do anything like that so and when I do models folks guys if you if you if you do it ah you know a portrait of a sixteen year old beautiful model don't be alone have a makeup artist there the parents there somebody there and so just think about that but go out recruit and so usually if you have a half decent body of work and cliff and I were talking about that he said it's easier now to recruit this year that it was last year because he's got more images now to show when he's recruiting hey look what I'm doing right wow when we shoot so go out recruit get subjects and then build your body work and you don't have to have all this client work in your portfolio to go into an ad agency we're gonna be all one percent self assignment so don't be intimidated by that get out show your book and make a living in and you know someone asked me how would you define success in photography? I said you know what for thirty years I've raised a family with my craft said raised a family I was able to go out and buy that the things we need to live with my craft so that's success for me and so with that that joe stand up let's give you a run you guys but you know standing ovation is fabulous still thank you don't where can people follow you? Where can people find you? Okay, so joel grimes dot com is my web site and then of course, if you can't remember a thing else have a block. Joel grimes workshops dot com I sell the little things, you know, just stuff I do on their butt. The key to my block is I'm giving a lots of free information away. I have articles, I have things I talk about, I have free stuff that you say this is me behind the scenes doing what I love go to youtube I have facebook I don't know what my handles my people yeah so you can find me just about anywhere and we had some comments about your youtube channel and that people are really like in those videos are you doing paris folks now too? Yeah, so my wife is the queen of social media and so she, you know, got on the parents or periscope set up and now she's always taking that camera talk talk but it's fun because look if you go on, create video content and then at that goal edited, clean it up. Put it on that's. A lot of work, right, but periscope is instant, so the cunt, the content, if that's, good, outweighs the production value, right? So it's, a little lean, a little chicki and whatever, but people like, wow, that's. Great. So take that. Take advantage of those little things, because that's, how you build your following and you never know the person is watching. That could be an art buyer at a huge I ad agency.

Ratings and Reviews

James Munroe
 

Very good course. Joel tells it like it is. Very cool photography & Photoshop tips that I'll use in my business. Thanks Joel and Creative Live for an awesome course! James

a Creativelive Student
 

Commercial Photography: thriving in the competitive industry is a very straightforward class. Joel is clear and to the point, breaking down step-by-step how he did it. From developing a portfolio to getting your name in front of people; from setting up the light to the post-processing thinking. I am so happy I bought this course. Thank you Joel Grimes for your time and expertise.

Student Work

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