Lessons

Lesson Info

Retouching an Outdoor Image

We touch base on some retention of studio images in the last part of the workshop, I would love to edit one of the photos that we took outside and show you guys how you can approach the same techniques on a photo outside and how they work for that shot as well. So quickly show you here. I took this image yesterday, and this is how the final came out, so as you can see already, the comparisons and it's a bit like spot the difference here, so you've got you see how this is missin in the shot here. I've just gone in, I've improved the composition and this particular shot I've cropped because I felt that the top of the thing was distracting to the image. I feel that this was one of the better shots that he took from the day because of the way the girls laid out on the page is the hero is the clothes again. We've got that beautiful kind of feel of the angles of the body coming to play with the hands and the arms. I know I feel this is the shot that kind of speaks for the entire shoot, so wh...

en I was kind of imagining this on the sofa outside, this is the kind of shot I was trying to imagine. When I got that, um so what I want to do is show you how I got to that approach within photo shop and it's just gonna be a quick ten, fifteen minutes. I'm just going to go over starting techniques because we have done them in the last few shots, but I know that this wasn't lead, so it's always a good idea to show how I can apply that a swell so you can see here on the skin I've gone in and added worked with the skin tided up the hair added that highlight to the skin just on here to make it look like maybe there was some light that make it look like maybe there was some diffuse, like coming for self bugs. I'm gonna show you how I approach this. So the first thing I did make my background well, sorry, I made a layer at the top goni layer new layer gonna call this one clone in again. What I'm going to do with clone festival is go in and get rid of distracting elements, because often, when you're on location, there's always gonna be distracting element that maybe you can't move, maybe it's a public space, and you've got a tree or a fence in the way, but you like the background. On that you don't have an option to me. So it's, always good to think of ways and how easy it is gonna be feed approach that as well. So the clone tool is this left hand tool on the left hand side here we talked about this earlier. I'm going to go in with something around it, something just over the size of what I'm trying to get rid of it. So I'm just struggling through here trying to see what would work to get rid of this element in the background here. So again, the clone to what we talked about earlier is something that will clone a part of the shot and place it and sound hold that over to that. So this is not something that will be fixed easily in one click. Um, it's something that you have to go in with and kind of perfect and fix afterwards as well. So I'm gonna go right ahead and show you some gonna go on old sample, some cooking out on the keyboard and sampling from an area that's near the no the same and then I'm just gonna go over that. Now I'm gonna work with a smaller brush to tidy up those areas that may have not worked. Just here, just here here as well. So I'm just going in a working with this and you can also work with and I know we touch base again away, but going into the spot healing brush and the healing brush tool and going over destructive elements like this in the background and it's just a quick fix and you consult see how now the focus is not on this part of the image it's no one her and when you do in fashion photography and when like, on this photo there's a lot of destructive elements, I feel it's important that the focus is here because the composition is already kind of thrown off a little bit by this thing going on in the background and the war here. So I want to focus in on the girl's face is I want focus on the clothes are in focus on the glasses, the accessories in the shot. So I did this, however, all of these on the top of the show right here, and I'm not gonna touch meat on their skin too much because it might take a little bit of time, but we went over that in the last one and basically was just again that clone in the healing brush on the spot healing brush combined on an invisible layer on top of the background so what I want to do now is show you how I can add that beautiful light to the photograph, so I'm gonna go in again and we're gonna do a nondestructive dodging burn, so layer at the top new player, we're going to go in with highlights, we're gonna color it with gray mode is self flight and you're going phil with soft light, neutral color gray. So again, that gray layer is giving us that kind of it's kind of a protective layer, so whatever we do on that is on top of that, we're protecting this background there. We don't want it destructively bone or dodge on this so again, going into here and looking at the dodge tour, so we're still using like, a traditional way of doing dodge, but we just got that protective layer going on, zooming into the face a little bit and then using that dodge tool, and I'm seeing here that what I want to bring out is the mid times there's already highlights there, but we just want to add some more. So going between the range at the top here, when you choose my mid tones, my exposure at fifty percent because I only want a subtle change, and we want to protect times even further up here. I'm gonna go in with a brush size a little bit more than it's probably around to hear I'm starting to use the dodge tour to bring out that light on the forehead and then going from tumbling through my sizes of my brush for the nose, maybe on the lips. So what you trying to do is essentially figure out whether the light would falls. So what is your light source in the shot? The light source with the light that was coming from this corner, it was slightly diffused where the girls were sitting we had a b flat at the side, so airplane with diffused light so what we want to do is not to make it look like we've gone and faked the light. We just want to add something to bring depth into the shot. So whenever you're doing this, think about source source was up here, the light needs to look like it's falling down here he starts put life up here, but this area underneath where the shadow should be it's gonna look wrong, okay? So I'm gonna go through and just start working with this. And again, don't worry about being perfect immediately and in the same on the other goal, a swell, so I'm just going through again, going for any consult to the shadows here. So what you want to do is change it to the shadows here again, you consult, see how that's bringing the light out, but very subtle changes. I would also do their son things like legs, and you can follow the way the light's falling already you can start to see here, here on this shot, parts of the hands where the light's hitting, but maybe wanna hands even further to add that death to kind of really bring out that soft tone in the images. So I'm using a mid tone here again, going in with my brush a little bit bigger this time to sample and just painting on the legs like this the same with the arms just hear and what I want to do now is show you by changing this and you see how like a parent, that is what I've done right now I'm just bringing that down until a level I'm happy at and again, another way of approaching this image and how I achieved the final one. I showed you recently a selective color layer on the adjustments layer at the bottom here going in going free the neutrals, whites and blacks to achieve a certain tone. You can see that's how coming overto a blue tone here yeah going through to the neutrals doing the same thing and then going into the whites to tent the whites because I'm going for that fuel at the era of the clothes I'm trying to get that retro feel to the shot that's the main reason that I used this scythe little change I've made down to before and after and if this was for product for the glasses or it was slightly out of focus, I'm just gonna much my layers here because for me this would be a good place to end right now I'm just going to match my legs to show you exactly howard possibly do something like the shop in so there's a few ways of sharpening images and I always do sharpen like noise once I've managed my images save a psd so I've got all those late falls and then you seize his finals to them make j pegs off to make websites fall is that kind of thing so I'm going in and I'm going to make a background where so duplicate that as a background copy I'm gonna go on filter at the top we're gonna go in other and then I'm going alone high pass okay so high passes great because it allows us to sharpen our images without using yet for shopping tour because sometimes it can be a little inaccurate this kind of brings out the depth of the sharpened within the times of the clothes and you can control this well, so going for the image like that, she can start to see where the lines in the photos, how much you want to sharpen. So I'm going to go on something of about eight just like that and for this to be viewable and you see it I'm gonna click on the mod here and I'm going quick on stuff like so what that's done is if you see it's just brought out the depth it's brought out the model's face is from the background it's poured out the detail in the clothes again you could selectively do that on the glasses you could do that on a piece of product um and for this image I wouldn't have used shopping for safer this or the high passed because I like that self feel if anything, if the eyes were showing in the shot again because I like to engage viewers for the eyes of my models of my subjects, I would've sharpened eyes, but that would have been in so I hope that that has been something that has been helpful to you guys I know there's a lot of techniques this is pretty much the way I do my work flow of a seat with the black and white I change it with maybe a grading math a black and white being a hue saturation always working with separate tonal layers um but don't be afraid to experiment with we touch in no way is right like if everyone's kind of retouching technique is true to them and I would say that the only thing he would be doing wrong if you were doing something is maybe over process in on dh maybe using things like non destructive techniques so like dodging burn always make sure you've got that protective layer that you're working on adjustment layers that you're going in and figuring out how you shot the image what was the light source? How is that gonna work when you retouch the image afterwards whether you adding back plight with you in handsome what's going on whether your enhancing the tone in the skin it's always important to know exactly what you want when you shoot in it, but it's always okay to change it later as well. So if I plan to shoot this in color later took it into photo shop and said, I want to do a black and white for some reason then that's okay too, because I've tried the colorado and if it didn't work I've moved on and made the best for the tonal range or whenever suits that image too so another thing and I think the main thing with retouching is to know exactly what your client wants if it's for a client know exactly what they're looking for and they don't use techniques that might distract from the product or the main or the hero of the shot. Any questions from that that's? Great. Um, this is going well, uh, we have a question over here or not, okay? Um now you did talk briefly overpass two days about how you would bring back blown out white sky blue. Kelvin c is wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. Well, the same thing I would go in and I would make a selective color adjustment I would go in with the whites here and then I would go on the whites, I would tend the whites. What I think that people are trying to I think I'm trying to say is I wait out a completely blue sky which could be possible with then you knew more, going more towards like photo manipulation, you're bringing cowards and extra pictures and if you're going for that that's great, but again, it needs to look really so when I'm doing something like that again, I would do thie selective color I would then go on with my mask and just pull out the sky so that it is just affected you can even do that by maybe doing something like a filled layer so going on layer at the top new phil layer a solid color so I'm going in and I'm doing color fell I'm choosing something like say a blue like this I'm putting that on to something like multiply so the blue is in the sky taking a pass to be down in just a little bit like this and then I'm clicking on that color fill and then I'm going to raise you know, the areas of the picture that I don't want to be blue okay and this is also a good thing if you wanted to do this with the color say it like a yellow this can add like a very aged field to the image as well so this is another way of approaching color so there's so many ways of approaching color that's useful and combining these different techniques like the selective color the curves going in and using your mask to select certain areas of the photo when using this just experiment with different techniques um and for this kind of blown out things that kind of works really well like phil color or the selective college because it enables you to kind of it doesn't make it look blown out it kind of adds that neutral tone to the image so we have a look see okay perfect um from uh milan how do you know when to use shadows or mid tones or highlights for dodging and burning that depends on the tone you working on. So for the face for me now, if there was some shadow on the side of my face and some light here hey will be highlights mid times shadows. So whenever you use in the dodge tour the burn tour, be aware of the section is and kind of judge from the tones what that would be in relation to the brush of the thea, the mode that you use in do you ever wish we saw you shooting at small avatars quite a bit? And so that are open after sorry wearing, uh, question from the v a rela is, do you add an extra soft focus and photoshopped? Sometimes, you know, I never had the soft focus, I think people think I'm a do, but I do that soft skin technique where I'm adding the light or I'm going in, I'm working to the skin to that point where it almost looks perfect, because I've got rid of all the blemishes on every move, that kind of thing, so I never do soft, um, in father's shop techniques just because of the reason it's a filter or something that may be far from what the industry kind of x specs so things like that people don't really want to use, like in magazines, I would say, like I would get when you use himself filters. The best thing to do is do it in camera so things like lens, baby or that kind of thing. That would be a great way of achieving that no dobby from israel is wondering if the picture has too much rain in the first place. I know that you like rain, but you ever have to remove grain from the picture in order to have it done publicizing the magazine presents uh, when I first started, yes and there's some noise programs out there, but I found that they made the picture very blurry. So you're getting rid of that detail, which is really important in the skin in fashion photography. So I find that just try not to shoot on a really high, so I know like things like the new hand in five team are three can handle low light situations very well, so you can afford to go to ojai. I s o, but you know you can afford to go to a thousand above that and still get away with it and that's fine. And I don't think that grain is a bad thing. I think it really depends on the image you're going for. Every photographer has their own technique, and what works for them do. Did you talk about content aware and from j b? A question was, do you ever use content aware instead of cloning? So content aware is not something I'm not familiar with right now, because I'm a little bit behind in my techniques, I get so into what I do and familiar with what I like to use that content aware. I know what it does, but sometimes it's better to do things manually, I find, rather than a same with skin retouching it's, better to do those things overall, rather than just relying on something to do something for you. And, you know, for the shop is a big thing for me and my style. So I want as much control over that kind.