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Lesson Info

Sue Bryce Photoshop Workflow 2

The next images I've chosen were all shot for the Couture Manual, so I just chose my top selection, top four, and I just want to show you how I finished all of these off. For the girls, I've selected my images. I open my images in raw, they needed very little raw adjustment. Straight away, I go in with my clone stamp. Now, when I'm cloning, always 20 or 30 percent, again, so keep it really simple, always cloning from the highlights up under the shadow of the eyes, the highlights, to the outside of the forehead, just keep it really simple. Lots of taps. So we're working on our clone stamp. We are at 100 percent opacity, we're at 20 percent flow, we're just tapping around the face. Have a look at how big the face is on the screen. I don't make my images too big and I don't clone right up close. I'm trying to do a two minute clone, as fast as I can, so that I can then show my client to buy portraits. I always choose my dodge tool right here. Always dodge between 10 and 30 percent. Usually...

20 is perfect, around the iris only, not to the corners, and don't over-whiten the eyes. It looks really, really bad. I just try and keep it really, really simple here, and I just don't, just don't sort of overdo that. What I'm doing here, is I notice that her little corset had slipped down, and so, before I would clone something like this, I simply copy and paste, then I right click Free Transform and I'm going to use the warp selection. You are stretching pixels here, so you do have to be very careful, but I would take a cut and lasso and paste and move it around and then warp it around over a clone, any day, because, even though I'm stretching pixels, I am using real fabric, so, I go to my erasing tool, I feather this edge nice and gently, just to take back that edge there, make sure I've got it right, and when I'm happy with that, I'm just gonna turn this layer on and off and flatten it. It's very good. Okay. The reason I'm cropping this image, (Laughs) I'm cropping this image because, for those of you who are laughing at me, including Simone who is sitting here laughing at me, I recorded this video as I was retouching and now I'm doing the voiceover for it, so I'm like, why am I cropping this image? Okay, I just cropped the background out because I was lazy and I didn't want to extend it. The next image I've chosen here is of Rose, and you saw the shot when you were watching CreativeLive, so right from here, I'm just gonna change my raw setting to auto, just gonna go through this list here. And, very little adjustments, you can see, actually dropping the contrast down, when I shoot natural light, I tend to shoot a little high. I always check out the auto and default setting, also check out the as shot, and auto selection in raw, because I want to see what it picks up, and I always choose something. I love the recovery tool for any highlights. Straight away, I use it all the time. Yeah, just gonna drop my brightness down, and I often drop the contrast down. I never really have any reason to use the bottom three slides in raw, open these images here. This was actually one of the first three images I took of Rose and the 100 poses, and that one was halfway through. Love this one of Alex. And that was Alex's sort of dark fashion shot, which I really loved. These are beautiful too, love both of those. Those black v flats just photograph so beautifully in natural light, they just throw that nice navy blue, and I'm really happy with that green-gray on the poly staring v flats that we painted. There is not a lot of work that needs to go on on this face here. She's absolutely perfect, in peaches and cream. But I always hit that line under there, just be really, really careful that you are not taking off the bottom eyelid. You always want to see a bit of movement through there. Make sure you just smooth out, where the cheek line goes up into the eye line. 'Cuz it's often a ridge there. Looks like a bag that can pick up a little bit of shadow. Nice and soft through there, sticking to your highlights out. Down, down into the cheek line, and these little shadows here, they can cause, an image to look like puppet mouth, so just take those little shadows off, really easy. Again, we're cloning twenty percent, one hundred percent of opacity. Move around the image, and see, just have a look and see if you're happy. I'm just gonna take those, the whole lot down in curves. Just because I like to be a little bit darker. Happy with that. This is where I sort of gonna have a look through here. What I do is I go to my brush tool, and I select this lime green color in my swatches. There, just a lime green, and at one percent flow, I just tickle around the eye, very very gently, and just remove that magenta, back to my clone stamp. 20 percent, nice and easy, beautiful flawless skin, down onto that shadow, between the eyebrows, 'cuz it can look like a mono brow. Just stay on the highlights going out too, see I was cloning my stamp back to the center. Take those little ridges under the mouth, they smooth out beautifully, but don't flatten the face down too much, 'k so. No flattening the face. Now what I want to do is, just go to this again. This is my brush tool. So B for brush. Make sure you get that. Select a nice little lime green swatch, and just put a lime green swatch into the wee corners of the eyes and then dodging. 20 percent, nice light dodge, around the bottom of the iris, make her eyes pop. Now there's absolutely no need to use any portrait software on this girls skin so I'm gonna keep it really simple. Just kinda go down there, to smooth out a little bit of discoloration there, make sure I get that nice and smooth, I'm still cloning, I'm still on 20 percent. I honestly think cloning would be 90 percent of what I do, so, I use the cloning tool for everything. I very rarely use the healing tool, stray hairs, any dots or strong dots I want to remove. Its good to any lines. But clone for me is just the fastest way to do all of my retouching. Remember the idea here is speed. We want to take away the little bits that girls don't like about it, don't like about themselves, don't like about the image, we want to take away shadows under the eyes, we want to take away double chins. We want to slim down arms if they need to be slimmed down, and just check waistlines and tan lines and things that people pull up and say, "Oh I don't like this image because." But we don't want to spend too much time retouching them, because at the point of viewing we want people to be really happy with what they're seeing, but not feel like that they're over retouched, so keep it simple, keep it real, watch those highlights. Now, just gonna smooth through this here area. Do you remember when we shot this we were actually sitting on the floor, the light source was very very high, it was throwing quite a lot of contrast into the image. So what I'm gonna do here is, I'm just gonna smooth down make sure the arms, 'k. I feel like the dress at the back is bulked right out and it doesn't show her true shape. So I'm gonna lasso this entire area alfa lasso. Edit copy edit paste. I command copy command paste or you can set it up as a reaction. Right click free transform right click walk. I can move anything I want now within that lassoed range. But I don't want to slim the arm down. The idea was that I just wanted to just bring the back line ends up, it more accurately showed her body line. So what I'm gonna do is, I go to my erase tool, e for eraser. It's a short cut. And I'm just gonna erase back down this arm line. I didn't need to slim the arm down, I just needed to pop that shape in nicely through the back. When I'm happy with that, I'll just turn that there on and off, make sure I have no break lines, and I'm just feathering that erase down 60 percent. When I flatten that, oh quite heavy there, it's gonna come up here, just take that small line up through there 'cuz it bothers me. I do often go through and highlight the makeup when I do the eye dodging beam. If I feel like it needs it. I fill in that nice dark line as well. Through the center of the eye, make sure that's nice and smooth. I go to my dodge tool, I'm dodging at 20 percent around the iris, around the pupil, never to the corners. There, happy with that. Brush tool, green, just to take that corner down. Just pops that magenta straight out of the eye. Perfect. One percent. Okay, put a dodge there. Now, too easy. Alright. It was so great shooting all of these in front of you guys. It was such an incredible experience actually. I, you know, I very rarely have people watch me shooting, and it was quite odd to think that there were so many people watching. This image here, if you remember, she was standing up straight into the light. See how the magenta's picked up right through the bottom of her eyes there? I'm gonna remove that. Very little cloning needed, young skin, beautiful nice and sharp to the eye. This shot was, I think I was at 2. I think you'll find the metadata. Just come down into that brow. Nice gentle clean up in the skin. Down this arm. If I'm going to just keep it really simple on the arm, I want to keep it real, I want people to see their skin. 'K I'm just going to touch this here. My brush tool again, I'm just gonna sweep under and just take off all of that magenta. It doesn't look like I'm doing much, 'cuz it's at one percent so, it's very very subtle. But it's fabulous. Dodge the inside of the eye. Sorry first what I'm doing is I'm actually burning in that line that we talked about when we were doing makeup. This is probably the most important line on the face when we're doing makeup, is I go to that burning tool and I just go nice small brush I just go right up and I burn in this line here. And I fill in between the top line and the eyelash. Then what I'm gonna do is just get my cliantstamp, just clean that little dot, perfect. Now as you can see, I didn't realize at the time that Alex's eyelash is actually lifting off. So I've burned in that little black line to her pupil so now I can just clone up into that and just take it down, because otherwise we had an eyelash malfunction. Okay Rose's last shot. What I actually chose to do was just lift the contrast up in this little wee bit. 'Cuz I feel like it's gonna look too dark. I'm going to, remember this was a hundred poses in an hour so I'm just gonna crop out that backdrop again. I definitely take a little bit more time, not just shoot off the edge of my back drops when I'm shooting clients. But when I'm trying to pull out a hundred poses and impress the hell out of you lot. It was starting to get a little bit um, a little bit full on I was sweating and (laughs) But I wasn't worried, I knew I was gonna do it, right? Okay, so just a nice gentle clone, always at 20 percent. I'm sorry if this is getting boring, it's actually really really neat to see that I just really repeat the same process over and over and over again. I do the most basic climb, 20 percent, nice and light, through the face. You can apply portrait software, automatically to the images but I just feel, that it looks so much better when you are just, I don't know, I just think it looks so much better when you do it yourself. So here we go, love it.