Archive for July, 2009

amy dresser & retouching

Ok, so what I’m going to share with you today is hands down the coolest tutorial I have ever found on retouching and commercial airbrushing. I found it years ago on a site  called Retouch Pro but it comes originally via an amazing photographer and retoucher named Amy Dresser.

I don’t even think the original content is still up at her site, but luckily I saved her instructions in a text file so that I could refer back to them. I’m reposting her instructions because I think her methods produce amazing results and people always seem to want to know how to get this professional, commercial look. I’m not going to lie, it’s difficult and definitely requires more of an advanced use of Photoshop, as well as a lot of time spent working on each photo. But if you’re up for it, you’ll definitely learn some new and useful techniques that you can even take and modify to your own workflow.

Before we get to the tutorial, here’s a before and after of one of her images, so you can get an idea of the kind of results it can produce. The before image is obviously shot well with professional lighting to begin with, but this tutorial can work with images that are also a bit more raw. Of course, it’s much easier to start with a good, well lit photo!

The following is the tutorial, posted by Amy Dresser. At the bottom, I’ve also included the original pdf which goes along with it and further illustrates her techniques. It’s extremely helpful in understanding her instructions and giving an example of how the layers are going to look.

For the record, I get asked about my methods pretty regularly. I’m not opposed to sharing my them, but i think most are underwhelmed by my approach. They expect me to say “blippity blap layer at whatever mode= voilà!” When in reality, i don’t have much for short cuts. The images i work on i purely labor over.

There’s nothing cool about clients showing me a blurry raw image and saying “make this look like THAT” while pointing to a photo that has completely different lighting and shot with a super high-end camera. My approach is far from beeline, and much more touchy-feely and gradual. Unfortunately, the more a photographer gets used to the idea of retouching, the lazier some of them get. The example I’m sharing was a fantastic photo to start with, so it didn’t need any damage control– just the fun stuff.

before i do any retouching…
I adjust the overall color of a photo (no point in retouching anything that will be blown out or hidden in shadows in the end). Most of my color adjustments are through curves (i adjust the individual channels) and an occasional hue/sat layer— just personal taste. typically desaturate the reds a bit… as most peoples’ flaws are reddish in nature, this diminishes some the areas vs. actual bumps. Also, i’m a bigger fan of desaturated images vs. saturated ones… i think i can control the shape of things better when i don’t have to worry about weird saturation drop-offs.

I usually work an image up in an all over and gradual manner… kind of general to specific. I refine color as i go along, carve features and remove blemishes sort of all at the same time. This way, if don’t spend as much time as i’d like, the image should be fairly presentable if the deadline is sooner rather than later.

Here are the general things i do:

Rubber stamp out major stuff (on a copy of the original layer of course) at 100% on normal mode. I make sure that all the cloning i do is completely unnoticeable. No big blur blobs all over the place or step-marks. Not a fan of the healing brush either.

Dodge and burn small light and dark spots and areas… anything that distracts and jumps out at me– always set on midtones at about 3-4% with the fuzziest brush you got with “other dynamics” selected so the pen pressure is in effect. This is where i spend the bulk of my time. To speed this up, i have programmed the 2 buttons on my pen to be the short cuts for decrease brush size and increase brush size.

Even out the skin tones to be basically the same hue, saturation through out a figure/face/image. i’ll use the lasso with a fat amount feathering on it and circle/trace areas that i want to adjust. Again, i favor curves. These typically will be very subtle in nature… with the middle of a channel’s curve just pulled up or down a notch or 2.

Carving and painting highlights:
I refer to already existing highlights and exaggerate and/or simplify them. This is one of those things that will come naturally if you’ve done a lot of figure drawing, otherwise, it just takes practice. I have a few methods of doing this and sometimes i use one… sometimes more.

1–more dodging and burning! I almost always do some amount of carving directly on the retouched image by dodging and burning– pure and simple. 0% hardness brush, still at about 3%. It’s a good idea to do this on a second copy of the retouched layer just in case i get carried away and something starts to look weird. In case the client says “woah, too much!”– it’s easy to lightly mask out what’s overkill.

2–make 2 curves layers… one curve pulled down, the other pulled up. I fill both masks black and then paint in areas on the individual layers that i want to carve down or up (0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow). This is method make a low-impact on your file size, but i dislike it because i have to switch back and forth between layers.

3–make a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set that layer to “overlay” and paint black or white (again, 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow) to carve down or up. This method sometimes adds more saturation to the carved shadows than i would prefer.

4–plain old painting white on an empty layer set to “normal”– 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow, “other dynamics” selected. I do this to every image i work on.

5–this may possibly be my only “trick.” This has to be done as a final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select > Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit.

And that’s it.

Download the psd

strobist

The key to good photography is simply one thing: lighting. You have to know how to use the light, or your flash, to make your photos look the way you want. Otherwise getting good photos is hit and miss. I love fine art photography a lot more than commercial photography, but I do often find that artists don’t know all the same techniques that the commercial photographers know, and sometimes their photos could be a lot better if the lighting was improved. If lighting is mysterious and confusing or you don’t even know what I really mean by “lighting” then the website Strobist should be your new best friend. No matter what type of photography you’re interested in shooting, you’re going to have to know how to light.

Basically Strobist focuses on teaching you how to use your small off camera flash.

The Canon Speedlight is an example of the kind of flash that they specialize in teaching how to use. These are pretty affordable compared to larger strobes, not to mention extremely portable. Strobist’s philosophy is that bigger, expensive equipment usually stays packed away or in the studio. At the same time, smaller does not necessarily mean limiting, and they want to show you how you can take less powerful equipment and use it to light any situation.

There are over 1,000 articles on how to light with small strobes, as well as a ton of lighting techniques using non- professional lights.

The website is divided into two parts, Lighting 101 (and Lighting 102) which is like a course you can take that “begins with you getting your flash off of the camera. Learn how to position it, clamp it, synch it, bounce it, soften it, snoot it, cookie it and balance it with ambient light.”  The second part is On Assignment where they take commercial photos and break down exactly how to light them so you can learn all the professional lighting techniques that commercial photographers use. Sounds amazing, right? And the coolest part is that it’s all free information.

The only real difference between an amateur and a pro is knowing how to light. Check out Strobist if you want to learn how to get the photo you want all the time. It’s a resource I constantly browse through and I am always learning new things!

natascha libbert

I came across photographer Natascha Libbert’s site today and I wanted to share her photos. Here’s some of my faves from the photos series “Mystifying”:

vice photo show

Vice is having a photo show tonight (July 23rd) in Toronto at the Lennox Contemporary Gallery (12 Ossington Avenue). The event goes from 7-11. It’s in honour of the 2009 Photo Issue, which you should check out because it’s pretty cool.

They’ll be featuring the work of two photographers, Dana Goldstein and Jamie Taete.

Check out some of Dana’s photos from the series “Jailbait-Core”:

shannon taggart

I loved this portrait series by photographer Shannon Taggart.

Check out some of my faves:

francesca woodman

Francesca Woodman is my favourite photographer of all time, and I know I’m not alone in that. She is the reason I got into photography in the first place. She shoots in black and white, mostly self portraits and portraits of female models. A lot of the time they’re nude and parts of their body are either off frame or blurred.

In 1981, when she was 22 years old, she committed suicide by jumping out of a loft window in New York.

There is a comprehensive book about her, featuring most of her photos that I’ve been eyeing for some time now, and I’m going to have to purchase eventually. She’s a lesser known photographer, mostly because she wasn’t around long enough to really produce the amount of work that a lifetime of shooting would, but the photos she did make are amazing, and the people that know about her agree she was genius. Only about 120 photos of hers are out there, but it’s enough to see how great her work was.

Here’s a few of my favourites, I’d love to post them all, but there are too many:

polaroid :(

I love polaroids. Who doesn’t? I was shocked and sad when last year it was announced that the instant film would no longer be produced. I ran out to the store and bought a lot of boxes. I now only have one box left and I’m saving it for a little while. I’m going to have to use it on something special.

There are a lot of people that feel the same. Check out savepolaroid.com where people are looking for ways to bring polaroid back, and polaroid.net which is trying to amass the biggest collection of polaroid photos on the internet. A friend of mine is even involved in something called The Impossible Project, where they’ve purchased an old polaroid factory and plan to reproduce a film that has the same look as polaroid, under a different name of course.

If you didn’t manage to grab any film before it was gone, you can still simulate the look of polaroids at rollip.com, it’s probably the best resource I’ve found online for creating digital polaroids.

I do use and love digital photography, don’t get me wrong, but I’m kinda mad at it for killing instant film. There’s something about polaroids specifically that you can’t help but miss.

Here’s a few random photos from polaroid.net. Go there and check out the thousands of photos that people have submitted. Remember why you loved polaroid.

afternoon, monday

Walking around the city you live in and taking photos is a great way to spend an afternoon. It may seem familiar to you, but to someone else it could be an exotic and interesting place. I like seeing a city through someone else’s eyes.

loretta lux

One of my favourite photographers of all time is Loretta Lux. She photographs children exclusively. She makes photos that I cannot stop looking at, they’re so strange and surreal. The first is a self portrait, the rest are a various selection across her collections. Check out her website for more.

super secret spy lens

Street photography is one of my favourite genres, seeing people in their element, candid and natural is always so interesting to me. The problem with street photography though, is that it’s next to impossible to get people to actually be candid and natural. If you’ve got an SLR with a big portrait lens, it gets even more difficult.

It’s possible to make people feel comfortable, to warm up to the camera and eventually you can get some great shots. But sometimes there’s a moment you want to capture that you can’t prepare for. You just have to catch it as it’s happening. The Super Secret Spy Lens can help.

The way it works is there’s a mirror and a cutout in the lens. It reflects the image through the cutout, and onto your lens. It swivels around so you can shoot in any direction, all with the appearance of shooting straight ahead. When people see you pointing your camera away from them, they’ll never know that you’re really photographing them.

Sneaky? A little. But it’s a great tool to honestly get some amazing candids. As far as I know you can only get it at the Photojojo store, I have never seen it in stores. Check it out, it’s reasonably priced at around $55US.