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Photoshop Video: Girl Power Demographic (18-30s)

So here we are with our 18 to 30 shoot and I chose for this shoot to go down the track of the young woman that brings in her boyfriend. Now we could've done mother and daughter, but we'd already done that as a challenge. We could've done her and her girlfriends, but we already did that as a challenge. And we hadn't done a lot of couples posing other than Tiff and Mark's more transitional posing. So what I did was I photographed this gorgeous girl, Cheri, and her partner. And this is exactly how it would roll out for this age group. Basically I really market to this age group as bring in your best girlfriends as a group, paint the town red as you know, or I market to them as a mother and daughter, so mum can pay for it, or I market to this as a gorgeous makeover and photoshoot and bring in your partner. Because often with this demographic, in fact, 99.9% of the time, they love coming with their boyfriends and their boyfriends are young and in love and quite happy to spend the money on t...

hese beautiful photoshoots with them. And this demographic of boys always really enjoys this shoot. In my first scan I chose 42 images, so let's have a quick look at those, that I will present to her as a folio package. And I would never show more than 40. And usually never more than 40, but there are two of them, so I'm quite happy to push that out to 40. Although we can have a look at any we wanna delete now. While she did her hair and makeup he was present, he stayed, like most of this demographic do, they stay during the shoot. And then I put him in for some more Calvin Klein funky shots. This girl just lights up when she smiles. I mean, her face is so magnificent when she smiles. She just comes to life and I love all of her smiling images. We're going through the shoot. With Cheri you'll see that I constantly am asking her to relax her eyes, so she was opening her eyes up too wide to me throughout the whole shoot and I had to keep bringing her back to an eye smile. And I had to keep saying it over and over again, notice this is our new backdrop, and I absolutely love that pink vintage backdrop that we made. This here is a laughing shot and it's moving. There are others in the sequence. I do love this. I'm gonna do something arty with this. And even though it's a little bit out of focus and I probably wouldn't push this, I wouldn't give it to my client, I would pull it out, I'm gonna leave it in just to show you the final sequence. I love this. I feel like through this image this area of her arm is too big, but you know what I'm doing, I'm creating the perfect line in the front and I can warp through this line, because I don't want her to look at this and go, ew, you've made my arm look fat, 'cause clearly it's not. But that's what happens when the arm presses up against the body. It pulls back and as you can we thicken up the arm. So we need to deal with that, so I'm gonna show you that. As she got through her outfits she went more evening and I love this shot of her in the black dress, it's gorgeous, I can't wait to put a beautiful Alien Skin filter on there. And this is where I introduced, I started to include, I felt like I'd taken enough shots of her to build a folio to give her and while she was in the black he had kind of a formal shirt and so I started with the more traditional poses, like I did with Tiff and Mark, exactly the same. And I'm gonna move into a little bit more young Calvin Klein than I did with Tiff and Mark. So I got the good shot that mom and dad will like, grandma and grandad will like. And then I started to make them interact together, which is always beautiful. And as you see, you'll see in this shoot when you get to watch it, I did shoot quite a lot with this shoot, because I had to keep returning Cheri to a relaxed eyes and I had to keep stopping John from blinking. And watching two people blink as well, I tend to have a higher shoot ratio when I'm shooting a couple. And I know that they'll love those, 'cause they're very much in love. This I'm gonna push to a real gutsy black and white Calvin Klein. And I love that and all of these were beautiful. These are gonna go into really dark black and white, real grungy black and white. I like this whole series here. Shot nice and low. Love that, love that hand around, love that arm across. It's protective, it's beautiful. She's curled up in there. That's beautiful, love that, we'll crop that tighter. This, not so much. I'm gonna keep it and see if I can work it. If I can't, not sold on either of the expressions in this shot. Love the pose, don't think I nailed their expression. Quite happy to lose both of those images. I'm quite happy to get them down to 30, so if I have to lose those two I will. I'll do them anyway and see where I go. I'm sitting on the fence there. This last sequence I adore and I'm gonna show you, that's straight out of camera, what I'm then going to do is I'm gonna show you how I retouch those. And there's something about that I love. I love that upside down. It's beautiful, there's good connection, I love their hands, that is just, the shot that I was looking for. I'm gonna drop a texture and an art background into this, I'm gonna show you how to do that and take that to the next level. And shooting it that way, not so much. I think I can can that. I like that, I'm gonna leave it. I like that upside down, I'm gonna show you why. That's fantastic. Absolutely love that. All I had to do was fix through her neckline, her armline, change that background, and make that gutsy, beautiful, great connection between the two of them. Ah, love that too. Very good. OK, so there I am. So I'm sitting at 42 images, I just deleted one. I've got a lot of similarities here. So let's have a look. I think we can afford to kick that one out in favor of that. Absolutely like that. I'm not gonna keep the upside down, because to me I like the last one more. This is fantastic. Oh, OK, I'm gonna do something just different enough to sell both of those images to them. Love that connect, well there's something about that that I really love. This one's not gonna make my final cut. And I'm gonna keep that one, 'cause she looks so beautiful. I'm actually decided now I'm gonna kill both of those there and there. Don't think they've made the cut. Love the pose, don't think I got the expression. I think I can definitely choose between this one and this one, because love his connection there, love her connection there. No, definitely the second one. She's really locked down there. He looks great. I love both of their connections through there. And then there's this one, which I think is just sexy hands, she's got her hands around the back of his jeans, I can see Calvin Klein. I love how he's got his hands around her. Good, strong arm in the front, which is what we want with this pose. We want the boys to have that strong arm. Love that. We can definitely choose between that and that. I'm gonna chose the second one. And in fact, when I look at the other three I think they're stronger. So I'm gonna kick both of those. Love both of those, I love all of those. I think they're just really strong, even though they're quite traditional, they're beautiful. And let's have a look at this, 'cause I love that and I like this and I like this, but the truth is is she's not going to buy both smiles. I like the different body line here, but that is her most dynamic smile. She looks absolutely incredible. So I'm going to, oh OK, I'm gonna keep that and show you something to do to save that series. So there I am there, I'm going to select all of those, I'm happy with them. I'm going to save them off and then I'm going to open them on Photoshop and show you a full edit and then an art edit. So let's get going with this folio, because I absolutely love them. And we are currently saving 33 images. So I'll be showing them 33 images. I don't wanna show more than 35, 40 ever. So that's perfect amount. I love this series and we'll see if I can cull down another three in the post-editing, which we'll do now. OK, here we go. Here we go. As you can see, one of the benefits of photographing this age group is flawless skin. My two minute edit is going to be significantly less than two minutes. So I go through, as you know after seeing my Photoshop video, I'm gonna show you one whole sequence. Which is the one, two, three, four, five images that I've chosen from this section here. Not too worried about that seam. As you know, when I built this background after watching the video that it's one of those that you saw that I actually created for, to have those rough edges. But when there is one that close, oh, and hello, my Healing Tool didn't work, so I'm just going to. Remembering the Healing Tool is not my choice. Sometimes it can be a little bit temperamental. I get annoyed with the Healing Tool, because when it doesn't work I think, why did I use the Healing Tool? OK, and this is one of those moments. So I know that I can produce exactly the result that I want with my Clone Stamp at 60% and there I am there, yeah, done. See, saved myself the time. Shouldn't have used it in the first place. All right, I've slimmed down her arm and her body in posing. This here is making her front arm look chunky. I've slimmed down her arm and her body in posing here. Just gonna hit that one stray hair with my Clone Stamp. I'm gonna go along, I'm gonna pretty much do the same correction on each one and the same correction on each one. Now, see how this pose instantly gives her the waistline that she has. This one here, she's a tiny frame in real life, but any tiny frame that doesn't have a really large hip waist ratio is going to start looking boxy if you're not careful. So the only time I would ever contour a body that's this small is if I feel like I haven't got that. It's pretty easy for me to bring in this section. I want her to look more like she looks in real life. I don't want her to look at it and feel like she looks boxy. So what I'm gonna do is pinch in there and really just enhance this hip waist ratio here, because that's how she looks in real life. And I know that she's a tiny frame, so unless I can really define that beautiful hip waist ratio I don't want it to look like that she has a wider waist than she does in real life, 'cause she certainly doesn't. So a simple pinch like that very quickly is more in keeping with where she's at. And even though I've cropped this wide very rarely do I crop after I've shot. So I'm always cropping in-camera, but every now and then I do get to the stage where I'm cropping after in post-processing. So this is one of those moments. I'm gonna crop those hi res at eight by 12, so I can keep the ratio that I want. Whoops, better do that the right way. And there it is. I'm gonna take it to there. So slim first, contour second, keep a little space above her head, and I'm gonna take it to there. So I'm very happy with that. And I'm gonna leave her there. Right, so with this one, two, three, four, love that, love that, love that. See how bringing her closer to the light just instantly bounces up that contrast, the background changes color, so it's quite neat, 'cause it gives us a little bit. Just gonna take that little contour shadow off her chin. So we call that shadow a bum chin, 'cause we don't want that to stand out. And it's just about hiding that shadow, but not flattening out her face. I mean, she barely needs a second of retouching, she's so beautiful. Perfect. And we there, now here's the image I was talking about where I feel like turning her that way and pushing her arm flat has not helped her at all. I'm gonna run down, I'm gonna come up. This is where I have to be careful. I'm gonna choose to stay inside the shadow line, because I feel like if I go outside of it I'm gonna warp this line in and I don't wanna do that. I'm going to copy and paste there, I'm going to right-click Warp, and what I'm going to do is move in this area into here and then I'm gonna pull in this one here. Now remembering, we are stretching pixels here, so I don't wanna overstretch and I don't wanna lose the integrity of the shape of her arm by slimming it. And I also don't wanna overslim it, I just need to bring it to more of a realistic where it is in real life. So if I take it to there the only line that I have to deal with now is this line here. So what I'm gonna do is go to my erasing tool and just very gently feather that line. So in my erasing tool I'm actually at 80%, which is getting a little bit ambitious for you guys, I want you to stay at around 10 or 20, so I'm gonna drop back. I tend to work a little higher. I'm gonna flatten this down. I can still see a shadow here and I just wanna make sure that I just go up and clean that out, because I don't want any break lines. And remember, once we slim, contour, or change anything the first thing we're gonna do is go back and take away, sorry, go back and look at the area. And as you can see, it didn't like we moved it much, but we actually moved it quite significantly and that's more in keeping with what she is in real life. Now I can decide whether to keep her on the right side of the frame or bring her into the crop here. Because once I've got the arm in a position that I want I don't necessarily need that big piece at that back. I just wanna bring her into where I want her. So that's about where I'm going to do it, where I'm gonna keep it. And now I can keep a sequence in the same outfit of five images. I always wanna change my pose five times, as you all know, 'cause I'm trying to flow through at least five different crops and poses if I can. The more variety I give here the more she's going to buy. I don't wanna stay in one pose and just have her smile and not move, 'cause it's really important that I keep different poses and that I mix it up enough that she has five different shots and she wants all of them. Notice when I bring her to the front here she suddenly lost, she gets more contrast in that background, we've suddenly lost that pink red. So I'm just gonna drop a red and a yellow into that just to lift it up a little bit more. These are nice and soft. Now I haven't even enhanced her eye yet and already I think I could take her to a sale point, but I'm going to go in and do this and where I'm going to do that is I'm just going to go around, so we're at 20% dodge, I'm just gonna dodge around her iris, pop that color right up into there. We don't really need to do much burning in on her lash line, because it looks really great. I'm gonna come up into here. I wanna keep this looking as naturally glamorously beautiful as I can. I'm happy with that. Just wanna smooth out that little forehead line. There's a shadow there that bugs me, looks like a little bruise. Not overdoing that there. And chin looks beautifully defined. She's pushing forward. This one, there it is, not so much. So chin is not defined, she's gone into a full smile, people often tuck their chin in when they smile. I can just clone down that line and clean up that chin there and just pull away from that line, so it doesn't connect, so it doesn't look like a double chin, but it's just a natural smile line. Clean up that hair line and then we're there. So I'm happy with that. Really simple edit. Let's open this in Alien Skin and settle on a filter that we like that we can finish with. At this stage here, if this was all you had, I'm happy with you to leave it there. I think it's naturally beautiful and it's quite easy to leave it at this stage. I could open this and see where I'm gonna take it, 'cause you know I love to edit in Exposure 4. OK, here we go. Now ironically it looks good with a cold shot through it. I like the inclusion of the cyan in there, but oh, then I go to here and I'm loving what's coming up in here. I love the Color Photo Fading, but I don't want the dust and scratches. Oh, there's so many choices. The editing choice really comes down to your final choice of what you love and why and how you like it. So this pink backdrop is throwing very blue. A lot bluer than I considered that it would when I chose the color. I guess I chose the vintage pink, because I wanted more of a rose effect, so the filter I've chosen, which is Color Photo, is obviously gonna put more of a yellow rose onto that background. This is just personal choice. What you're going to do is you'll play with them, you'll play with all of these edits, you'll go through, if you get Alien Skin, you'll go through and you'll start finding filters that you just love, that suit you, that suit your brand, and you can, of course, bring your Opacity down. Here's a little, a trick for you, I'm actually just, when I come into Layers, I'm swiping the word Opacity. You don't actually need to go into here and slide down the bar. You can, but you don't have to. You can just swipe the word and that's a little tip if you didn't know that. OK, so we're at 50% now. And have a look here at this stage where she's at in terms of it being quite candy floss. Whoop, sorry. Turn that top layer on, and we there. All right, so now I'm going to apply that. And I'm going to apply this filter to all of these shots. And I can do that with a batch. If you wanna batch that you can. But, oh I like this. I like this a lot. And this really just gives her a beautiful blonde tone through her hair. It's fantastic. That's where I'm gonna go. Sorry my computer is slow, 'cause I'm recording. I'm just going to swipe down and take this filter back. And I'm gonna drop it right down to about 50. Yes, that's where I wanna be. Around there. You can also do this if you just hit there, you can just make it quicker, go 50. I just think it takes away that candy floss. Let's see what it does to this bright one. There, it's just applying. Nice and slow for you. This gives us an opportunity to chat. How are you all doing today? I hope you're enjoying the 28 day challenge. I can't even describe to you the incredible experience that I've had as a photographer and the incredible experience that I've had in getting to actually shoot all these people live and show you. It's such an amazing experience to do a shoot and know that people are watching and learning from it. And gosh, I've enjoyed this so much and I'm gonna miss you all. I feel like you've all just embraced it 100% and that's blowing me away. So my choice is to chose this filter. As I've said, you don't have to look at this image, it needs nothing, it's straight out of camera, just abosultely perfect. She is such a beautiful girl. And when you see her photograph live you get to see that this just popped straight up out of my camera and how lucky to be able to shoot someone this beautiful and easy to photograph. OK, so once we're done I'm gonna save those and then I'm going to create a new series with a couple shots and then I'll tie them all in together and I will show you the final result. One of the most important things I think with the boys is that we don't retouch them too much. We don't want the guys to look like they have got makeup on, 'cause it just looks wrong. So retouching is the same. Be very careful with the boys. You might remove more under the eyes in the girls, but with the boys you want their face to remain quite strong and masculine. And if you retouch them too much they tend to look too soft and you don't want to do that, you want them to look strong. I'm going to chose a swatch, as you know, because I always put a green brush in here at 1% and I do that just to remove the red around the eyes. So John's got a little bit of red there, so we're just gonna take that back. So from here that's as much as I would do. Interestingly enough she looks fantastic. I've flattened her arm out again, his hand's around here and I don't like that. So I'm gonna show you how I would use that Warp tool to bring in her upper body line, because I don't want her not to buy this image, 'cause she thinks her arm looks big, 'cause it's not. And that's me, I've done that in my posing, I've flattened her out and I don't wanna do that. So just gotta watch this break line down through the hand, 'cause I wanna keep the arm. And then watch you don't ever make the arms bigger at the bottom than they are at the top. I call that Popeye arm. And I want to just accept that there. Come into here, just erase this back line. So that's a really simple blend. If you find yourself unable to get enough of a movement through here you can come through the front. Remember, when we extend the arm backwards this way we make the breast line bigger, which is fine. Nobody usually complains about having bigger boobs, so I'm gonna flatten that. And then I'm just going to just clean up this edge, 'cause I've gotta watch this break line through here. So yes, I would do that with this image, and this image, and I'm even gonna do it there, because I don't want, she looks so fabulous and her body looks great in this shot, but she's squashing her arm against her body and I don't want her not to buy these three shots. So I'm gonna show you how I do that that is more in keeping of what her arm looks like in real life than that. And it is something that'll kill a sale straight away if she gets it into her head that she doesn't like it. And you see how fast I can remove it. Why would I wait until she complains about it before I can tell her that it can be done? It's so easy for me to fix prior to them seeing their images. These are simply things that I couldn't have got right in the posing, because I couldn't have extended her arm over his, it would've looked wrong to do that. And I'm not going to have her not like an image simply because I didn't move it. So I would much rather take the minute, or less than a minute that it takes, the 30 seconds it takes to do that. I hope if anything with my retouching videos you have been seeing how quickly I do everything. And this is really just a matter of practice and you've got the skills now, so you can just practice it and just make sure that you're just making just little wee changes. This one is as simple as going along the shirt line up into here. Now I can extend the line at the dress or the breast line in order to take this arm line back and it's only the illusion that her arm is pushed down there, because he's squashing it against her body. And that's something that we've done to get this pose. I didn't look at it at the time, because that wasn't what I was concerned about. Her body looks fantastic. So that there just makes such a big difference between her thinking, ew, look at my arm, and her not thinking that. So I don't have a problem with that whatsoever. Both of them look gorgeous here and their connection, they're parallel to the camera. I'm just gonna hit that neckline there. Let's make sure I've got that. Yes, now I'm flat. And then on there. And I'm just gonna make sure I've got that. Again, just with that red eye just in there. I'm just going to lighten through here and here. There, there are, and there, I'm just gonna hit that, nice, blend, blend, perfect. OK, so that simple. That's where we're gonna go with this. Again, I seem to have shot that nice and high, I don't quite know why. Maybe I was directing and there. And then I'm nice and close here. So I wanna make these look like two completely different images, even though they're both, (phone dinging) whoops, and my phone is not on silent again. Sorry about that. So there we go. Pulled back there, nice and close. I can definitely bring this in. Crop it nice and low, 'cause we want it to be funky. And then there and there, love both of those. Full frame. Let's come in tighter on this to the bottom of his arm, enough to see hers. Love her expression, absolutely gorgeous. So there it is, my series. Now this is definitely a series I'm gonna do two things with. I'm gonna pull this one down and I'm gonna choose this one. So the others I will close and I'm just gonna do those two for you. So what I'm gonna do here is, oh yes, I like that one. The same frame to all of them, so I love this laughing one, it's gorgeous. And again, I'm recording and because I'm recording my Photoshop gets a little bit precious, it starts giving me the rainbow wheel of death, which we've all had before, but panic not. Final edit and I'm gonna open this in Alien Skin. This selection I'm gonna choose a filter that matches the whole set. I do like to filter the whole set, but I'm gonna do something a little bit different with this one, because my go-to is that yellow green, which I definitely love. There's another one there that's a little bit more desaturated, but I'm gonna go here and I'm definitely gonna take that fine dust off. I'm going to open that and there, off, OK. Now what I'm gonna do with this one is I'm going to give them a selection of black and white through this one. I wouldn't have put Cheri's pink selection into black and white. I'm at 50% there, I can take it up to 55. It's giving just a beautiful pop. I'm just going to put a lighter, just a little Curves adjustment in there, and that's a basically just a tiny pop. And I'm just gonna go up one. I love that. Now what I'm gonna do is apply that to this whole set. And then I'm gonna save a couple of them, the first two that I picked, because I love the mood of them, into a gutsy black and white. And in order to sell it I feel like I have to show it and a lot of my clients just can't imagine what something is gonna look like. So I feel like what's really important is that we take it up to that next level. So from beginning to end we're from there, straight out of camera, to there. I love that. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to save off that selection. I'm gonna duplicate. This time I'm going to reopen it from that selection, so I'm not gonna go back to it's original form, because the black and whites that are in here, there are so many great black and whites. I'm gonna go to the more vintage, the more hardcore, sort of gutsy straight away there. It's too much, because obviously there's a color filter on there. I'm gonna come up to Films and just work my way through the Films. Obviously I don't want it too high contrast, I don't want my blacks to be too black. I'm really loving through the Kodaks. See, that lifts them right up. There it is for me. So I pushed one stop in the Kodak Panatomic. Too grainy. I can take the grain away. Too bright. Yeah, so how about we come up to there, I like that, push it one stop, open it. And because I'm going into such a gutsy black and white and I've copied this off as an extra, so I will show them the color version and the black and white version. This can work against you. It works against you in the sense that sometimes you're just confusing your client too much. You know, when I open an image like this if I feel like it doesn't enhance it by being in black and white I simply don't show it in black and white. I sell 90% of my work in color. I find with glamour photography color is definitely something I go more towards. I'm just gonna pop their eyes out, because I want this dark, gutsy black and white to just jump. And this is a time where I make a final decision. I've got my colors here. I can either put a stop of color in or go Command + B or Control + B to get my Color Balance. And I can add a bit of yellow. Because I definitely like taking my black and whites away from the blue. Or for the third time I can go back into my Alien Skin. Now if you're not editing on Alien Skin you can use any of your action software at this stage to create really good black and white. But at this time I'm gonna go back into my Color Fading, I'm gonna go into my Polaroid actually, and I'm gonna see if there's a color strand in here that I really like. So that's going back into the colors overtop of the black and white just to put a tone in. Oh, I really quite like this. But I can see where I want to go with that, but it's just a little bit too deep. So let's put it on and then adjust it and if I can't get what I want then what I'm looking for is to go towards that yellow. This is my kind of, I love this black and white here. How about we open Curves, Command + M, and we lift our blacks up, so that they're not so intense. And then we enhance the fact that we're going more of a yellow green. And we're there, I love that. I'm happy with that, I'm gonna stick with it. So that's my series. I'm gonna apply that to my series. And then we're getting into the white Calvin Klein from here. What I'm trying to do with the final image of this viewing is this. A couple of years ago I took this image here, exactly the same way that I photographed Cheri and John. So over them, holding my camera out, and exactly the same thing. I'm just gonna do those two next, and I'm bringing this one forward. And I actually photographed this one and then in my retouching took it into a very dark black and white. So there it is there. And I'm gonna do something very similar there. I've also replicated this image many times and put a background in that is actually ground. So I went into the woods and I photographed sort of a grungy, sort of dirty little bit of grass, twigs, and I actually just dropped the layer onto it. And both of them look really good. What I love about this one is they kind of look naked, so the skin shoots definitely suit this. This one I'm probably gonna go more Calvin Klein. Now this is the angle I shot it on the camera, so I'm not gonna turn it up this way, it's meant to be this way. So I'm gonna leave it here. And I'm just gonna take it into a little bit more film noir. So what I'm gonna do is just get rid of this line here first. I'm gonna go to my Healing Tool, and I'm just gonna zap that. I'm gonna keep the background and just bring it in. So really what I have to do first is make sure, before I start putting any color filters on it, I need to even out their skin tone. See, I've got a little bit of too much highlight here, so I need to warm up and darken up John's arm and neck first. I need to take down the highlight on the breast line, so it doesn't pop out too much. And I need to make Cheri's hands warmer, so that they're not so white. So I even first and then I start to play. After I even all the skin tone the second thing I do is make sure that she looks great, he looks great. OK, her first, him second. So this first thing I'm going to do with that is just take that arm line in and do a very basic cloning on the face. So if I go to here now, I'm just gonna go to there, just gonna make sure I, and I'm not removing their freckles or anything like that, I'm just doing a basic clone just to clean up any distractions. Now what I'm gonna do is just warm up through this area. I love this look on her face. She was in the hardest position. He's side on, so he's pushing forward, she's on the hardest position, 'cause she's lying back. And whenever anybody lies back the first thing that happens is that neck pushes back and it's really hard to push up. You can support by putting a towel, roll a towel up underneath their head, just to push their head up. But he's already quite a long way off the ground, and so I didn't want to elevate her head as well. So I'm just making her really push through the chin, as you'll see in the video when you watch the shoot or you've already seen it. So after I do a basic clean up, no different than my normal two minutes, I do have a couple of filters that I've worked on. One of them is I've always called tan lines. So tan lines for me is about taking a layer mask and then putting a cinnamon toast, like a warm toast through there. And then putting the other layer back on. And so I go to my bottom layer and I take the highlights down in my mask, so that I really can just drop back all of those highlights through there. And then on my top layer wherever I wanna warm it up, this is how I get rid of tan lines, I just go to 10% on my Erase Tool, and then I just erase back like this and then I get a nice warmth coming through wherever I want to erase back. So it's like a spray tan, perfect spray tan. And you can do this simply by dropping a layer mask over the top, warming up the underneath layer, and then erasing back. Now if that goes too orange and you want it to be a little bit more red all you have to do is go back to your bottom layer, so I put this here, and you can go either to your top layer and make your top layer a little bit more yellow just to match it and then you can go to your bottom layer and just make that a little bit more magenta or red. And it's instantly going to start turning through exactly the same. So it's a very subtle shift. We'll take it back. It's colder, it's uneven, and now they're starting to even out. Of course, we're trying to do this as quickly as possible. Because this is a dark image I'm just going to take down the Calvin Klein there. So I'm just gonna hold this down. So let me just remove that, hold down my Alt button, and I'm burning in. OK, now I'm really happy with that, I love the expression, I think it looks really beautiful, I like this. If I feel like the highlight is too strong here I'm gonna take it down. I'll go to my burning tool, I just dodged again. Go to my burning tool and I'm gonna take Highlights. OK, so I've selected the Range, Highlights. We're at 20%, we'll go 20. And I'm just going to head around here just to take the highlight down. I feel like there's too much of a highlight on him. There. Just gonna take that down all the way around, because I want this too look really strong. And I'm just gonna take that down. All right. I'm gonna go 30 and take it down even more. And if I'm, see it's just taking that bite off the highlights, which is really good. Now I'm gonna go a little stronger along here. Just wait for that to catch up. There. And this is very subtle, but have a look at the difference. We're already up to there. And we're coming back down to here, so nice and dark. We can go through our Midtone and then keep burning in, just so I get a nice, dark ground behind him. Done, we're there. And from here I can then start applying a filter. So from this and my crop. Where do I wanna crop? How do I wanna crop it? What do I wanna see in this image? Is about here. Love this. OK, now there's one thing here when I see it like this, two things that bother me. One is now you're confused about the fact that they're in an upright position. So I can do two things. I can either choose to present the image this way, or, sorry, whoop, the wrong way. Or what I can do is just do a couple of little tricks to counteract the fact that they were lying down. And a couple of those little tricks would be to bring in this neckline, because I love the connection and expression on her face and I want to bring her neck in just a little bit. Because she's lying on her back, obviously, and we'll get rid of that, make sure that that blends in nicely. OK, and then flatten that. Now this bothers me, definitely. I like the breast line, I like these covered hands coming in over her boobs, I love the connection that they have between their hands. There's a little rough line or (mumbling) there, I'll get rid of that. And I'll even take that buckle down, 'cause, that little dot down, we don't need that. And I really just need to do two things. Let's have a look at, this is a fun little trick, I love doing this. How about we make his arm bigger and hers smaller at the same time. So we're just gonna shift this gap between the two of them and create a little bit more line between the two. Much better. And then you'd be amazed at what you can take from someone and add to somebody else. You can always make the boys bigger and the girls smaller. And I'm just going to clone in here, 'cause I just wanna take this back to what her real arm is, I don't want her not to like this. There, love that. Happy with that. And just make sure there's no corners, 'cause I can see a corner there and nobody has corners. And there we are. We went from there to there. Just a slight shift across. And now let's apply a filter to this in Alien Skin. So what I'm gonna do is I'm actually going to just quickly save this and in Alien Skin I'm going to try multiple filters. So let's have a look at how artsy we can make it and then I'm gonna show you how to dodge and burn to make it look really funky and dark and gorgeous. I guess my go-to is going to be the black and white. First thing I'm going to do is I feel drawn towards putting it into a very dark, gutsy black and white, like I did the very first image. I feel like this is how you create this film noir look. There's something about that yellow tone there that I just absolutely love. So I'm definitely always gonna move towards that. Oh, there's something in there I like too. The hardest part, of course, about using a program like this is you get too many choices. And lots of favorites and it's a little bit difficult. Oh, I love it when it goes to, like oh, I even like the Color Fading. OK, let's have a look at the Kodachrome with no dust. So I just wanna take that top filter off. Oh, there's something yummy in there. Wow, OK. So we wanna tweak our settings, take it, that's our Overall Intensity. OK, so the Overall Intensity is low, so then take it down too dark. Is it making my image, oh yes, that's very cool, I love those subdued tones. And then I pop some sharpness and contrast into there and I think some dodge is going to look incredible. So I'm going to accept that. I'm gonna leave it up at 100% and take it back in Photoshop. So I'm gonna take the layer back as apposed to taking the overall setting down in Alien Skin. So take it down to about 50%, which I love. At this stage here I can flatten this and now what I can do is bring up my lights and darks and then I can put a tonal range. In fact, this is where I go back, this is where I start going back into Alien Skin and double filtering. So I'm a one layer retoucher, I'm a one layer illustrator, so when I illustrate on Photoshop I work in one layer only. I save off every single layer as I create something, which is really neat when I show you how I illustrate something. And when it comes to, I don't work in multi-layers, I don't work in layer masks. Never had to, don't, just my personal choice. I know everyone's saying why? Why would you do that? But that's my reasoning. Remember, this image is supposed to be a dark, gorgeous silhouette. This is not just a portrait. This is a piece of artwork. And if I can make it something that blows them away, then they're gonna put it on their wall. I've applied my first layer, which gave it that dark tone, I've applied my second yellow, so I'm really in the darks now. I have to bring it up. But I'm loving that at about 75%. I'm gonna go to the next image here and just apply the same filter without the original Alien Skin filter on there. What I'm trying to do is just find a look, OK, and this is wonderful too, I'm just finding a look that really suits this image and then I'm gonna work it even further. So I'm gonna put that at about 60%. And this one is every darker. And then this one I'm gonna go towards the black and white, so let's have a look at what else I can find. I'm gonna go straight away for my favorite, love this dark, gorgeous, take my grain right down there. And I'm gonna lift up through my Shadows. And maybe even a little bit further. OK, so that's putting grain in my shadows. How about we go into here, it gets the entire. I could put my tonal range down to about there. OK, let's try that as my dark, gorgeous black and white. Wow, love this. So I hope it's not getting too dark on the video for you, because I'm seeing, what I'm seeing on my screen is looking good. I don't wanna, for you not to be able to see that. All right, now when you go to the dark, grungy black and whites if you haven't spent any time playing around on the face obviously imperfections jump up. Hairy arms look hairy. You've gotta be careful there. What I wanna do now is I'm gonna show you how I do my film noir editing. So after we get it to this point here I've gotta be careful of these highlights, 'cause I don't want them to be too strong. And I tend to just put a dot clone over them. If I burn them then they get muddy and I don't want muddy highlights, I just, in fact, I wanna keep my highlights, I just want them to be really subdued. So at this point I'm going to bring down those highlights and then I'm gonna bring them back up by dodging them up. Just watching there, it looks like a little bit of a, a shadow under there. I'm gonna take that. So I'm starting to lose any highlights on his face. So let's go to Dodge here. We're in our Dodge Tool, we're on 20%, and now I'm just going to bring out what highlights already exist. So I'm painting now with light. Imagine that I'm simply just touching any highlight that I can see and do not overdo it. OK, if you overdo it go backwards. I want to make his arms look great, I want her arms to look gorgeous. That line's already perfect. That line there, that line there. I'm just sweeping around her highlights. It's just a wash of light. I can go smaller and pick up any highlights in her hair. These are very subtle and they look really great. I wanna get that highlight there. I wanna get that highlight there, that little highlight there. Anywhere you can see light I want to extend it and make it look good, like that. So a little tip brush, select here and there. Nice, nicely done. There too. And I think I can bring up his highlight in here a little more, 'cause I've just lost a little bit too much of his face. So bring that up there. OK, I'm loving that. Beautiful, strong neck, strong arms, she looks hot, I love their connection. It's beautiful through here, I like this highlight. She's gorgeous, she's turning her face up to him, it's beautifully connected. I like that light. Let's go back and have a look pre-dodge. And we just brought out everything, just so we wanna look at the right places. And we're done. So at this stage here I will save the black and white and my option is to put a color tone in there and then lift it up. So I can just take it back into Alien Skin. So I went from black and white and now I'm going to choose a tone. And I'm gonna go to my Color tones to do it. You can see the top left box there moves. Oh gosh, there's something beautiful in there. So you can come up into the oranges, you can go into the pinks. There's so many beautiful tones. I just wanna take a slight off that black and white. So even in the Color Fading I really enjoy all of the color fadings. And you can drop that back. I love this. Oh, I love that. Always go towards this, it's one of my favorites. (hums) Like that. OK. And go down. All right, so let's. Ah, even that's fantastic. Oh, I get so excited playing with these. The trick people, is not to play with them for 100 hours, because we have got to have a life (laughs). I love how it just picks up that dark woman there, so let's see if we can't, I'm gonna turn off that, that aging there, and then I'm going to reopen and what I'm gonna do obviously is I love that image, I love this connection. Gets you a totally, you could've created this, I could've created this image standing up, but isn't it funny that I've ending lying down and then turning it upright. But the thing is is at the end of the day it's just absolutely perfect for the connection. And I love the way her body is shaped and you couldn't have got that curve around them had they not been lying down, so. All right, there it is. It's nice and dark, it's gutsy, it's right where I like it. I'm really happy with that and I'm gonna save it off and that is my image. I love that. That's the black and white. I don't think I'll keep the color. The black and white definitely won me over. And just the difference in the highlight shift, I'm gonna take that dark off. We're there to there. And I love that, perfect. Enjoy playing with that. I have two more images to go and then their viewing is prepared and ready for sale. A little bit more Calvin Klein. This was about taking your editing to that level and just shooting to that place where it was younger and a little bit more hip and funky and as I said to you before, I had a Calvin Klein shot in my studio for a long, long time and it was one of my most requested couple shots for years in fact. This one here I shot on the white background. Traditionally I shoot it lower, I shoot it funkier, and I definitely don't do the smiley thing, but this is the image that I chose to work on anyway. So let's do exactly what we did with the lying down shot. Let's go up here, let's just go down through this line, let's make her arm look fantastic. And if we bring his forward then that's fine with me, that doesn't bother me at all. I'm sure it won't bother either of them. In fact, neither of them will know. So there we go. There just making sure now flatten that down, no break lines. OK, from here I shot this quite high key, they're just right by that white window there. I'm gonna bring down that highlight behind him. And what I wanna do is just do the quickest, quickest retouch on both of them, because I don't like to over-retouch under guys eyes. I like it when they look strong, but I don't want them to have a bag or a rug mark under their eye. And I always hit that line under girls, I don't like them to have that, I don't want them to have that. And that's gone. We'll make the eyes pop and we're ready to go, right. So something this simple really comes down to how I filter it and I guess ultimately I'm going to go towards black and white again. But let's try one color and one black and white. This image is about simplicity. If you can educate your client to bring in just the white singlet, the gray singlet, the Calvin Kleins, the jeans. I reference Calvin Klein to my clients. I'll say, let's do something really Calvin Klein, let's make it fresh and really gorgeous, and et cetera, et cetera. Like I want to reference that, I want my clients to think Calvin Klein when they're preparing, I want them to have that simplicity. I want this image to be up in here. Like I definitely want, oh, and I like it towards cyan too. So I'm gonna choose the creamy brown and then I'm going to pull that cyan back through it, because I really like that. John's got a gray top and he's also got that blue coming through his eyes. I love the contrast that's hitting Cheri and I think it's really cute, so let's go with that. And I wouldn't drop this back too much, I love this filter. So many filters look like this one and that pulled that highlight up and save that there. And then I'm going here. Now in hindsight and that's why we have hindsight, we live and learn, I've made a mistake with this image. And the mistake that I made is that I put him into the light instead of her. I should've turned her to the light and shot them towards the light. Then this light would've come into her body line instead of his. Because what you probably can't see on the video is I'll show you, is his arm is here and I potentially have not been able to show the full potential of his body line, because he's in that highlight. So I could bring the highlight down in Photoshop, sure, but what I could've done is just turned them around. I always put the women into the light. I must have got a little bit carried away with the posing here and that's something I missed. Now if somebody as experienced as me misses something that simple, I mean, my option yes, is to create this in Raw, bring down and show the arm, because I want him to have a good arm, not a slim arm down here, like this. I want him to show his arm line. Then I can definitely fix that. But that, again, I'm fixing something in Photoshop I should have got right in my first shoot. So it's a learning process, it's something you should always watch out for, it's something you will always learn, you'll always learn something about yourself. Trust me on that one. And keep learning. So a simple mistake, I made it, anyone could make it. And I'm just gonna pull up the cyan from this image. That's as far as I'm gonna take that. I love it. I wouldn't take it any further. I definitely, with this shoot here, OK, instead of reopening it in Raw and fixing that arm, just pretend for one minute that I've just gone and fixed it. So you know I'm gonna do that for the viewing. I'm just gonna enhance his arm. Let's go into the black and whites and see what we're getting up here in the black and white. We always want the boys to have a good, strong arm. Here we're gonna go up into, I go to my Vintage first, 'cause that's my go-to, my go-to get to black and white with my grain down. And if not I can go up into black and white films and just tap through. Let's have a look at all films on offer and see if there's one here we like. So traditionally Calvin Klein was up around here, they were in the lower contrast, nice clean lines, black and white. As they progressed over the last 10 years of their advertising they got grungier. They were up in there. And now they're sort of in that sort of really grungy black and white, like that, that makes skin tones nice and dark. But all I'm looking for here is simplicity. And that's a gorgeous shot, so. Oh, this is nice, I'm liking that dark. Oh, OK, do I push it that far? These are the choices we get. I like the old push two stops 400, lock the grain on there though. Let's see if we can't, I'll drop that grain back in and see if it's what we like. I don't wanna put too much grain in my image. And we'll open that up. And yes, I'm gonna go towards the yellow. I'm actually really enjoying seeing that shot quite natural. Maybe won't put that color filter on it. Maybe I'll give them the option between black and white and color, or I can go back to here and just drop my Opacity right back, so I can keep that highlight and then keep that natural look. I really like that. OK, I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna sit there and I'm happy with both of those. And then I've my CK, my CK white look. Now totally different look when I put them into the black background. And the whole point here is that I really pushed them back into that dark, dark. So this is kind of film noir again, this is about taking it just a little bit further out of the clean whites and the clean color lines and putting it more up into, let's see, I'm just gonna hit John's eye there, there. Nice and low, perfect. We've got a strong arm, looks good. Her arm looks good there. This line, these lines don't bother me too much, I don't really hate them. Two things I can do in this position. One is the top is poking out there. The first thing I'm gonna do is copy and paste that and push that in there. And then I've got that and that's flat. I'm just gonna clean up this line here, just making sure I've got that. And the second one is the boys don't need a waist trim, well, some boys do, but this boy doesn't, but what I'm gonna do is watch his body shape. His weight is on his front foot. It could've been pushed more onto his back and I could've had him pushing his body line in. So the boys don't have a waist, so much as they have that beautiful line through their back there. And that back line just enhances their back muscles, it enhances their sort of those wings, what are they called? The muscles under their arms. So if I take that to there then obviously I have to deal with this section here. And I'm just going to make sure first. OK, so what I've done is I've just got this little bit here, I need to deal with that before I do anything. I've gotta watch, you gotta watch when you're contouring bodies. And now I'm gonna have a break in the word Calvin Klein, which I definitely do not want. OK, so there's my break line there, I'm gonna go to 80% on my Erase Tool, I'm just gonna erase back and I'm gonna erase that back until I get the word Calvin Klein back in there. 'Cause let's face it, that's where our eye's gonna be drawn. I told this couple that I wanted to do a Calvin Klein-esque shoot with them and they turned up with Calvin Klein boxers and that's so cool people do that. If you reference something like that they understand it. And then you can get something that you really want and you can also really communicate with them the look that you want, so that they get it, they're prepared for it. And remember that the more committed they are, then the more committed they are to buying their images, because that means they're turning up with all the right stuff. OK, now I'm just gonna make that darker. So I just copied and pasted that instead of cloned it. If I can use real part of a backdrop I'm always going to do that, it's always going to be easier for me. And what I did actually then was just a simple shift in his body line just to curve his back in, make his back look great. She looks awesome, she's wrapped up. He's got his hands over her protectively. Both of them have a super sexy look on their face. So let's have a look at how I can make this work. I'm just gonna come up into this neckline very, very quickly. And there, there, and there. And then there and there. Perfect. Yeah, I'm gonna put this into black and white, but before I do I need to hit, and this needs to be at 1%, that Brush Tool around the redness of his eyes just to take it right down. And then I want to swap that over and I'm actually just gonna bounce the Brush Tool up under her eyes, because she has dark eyes, he has blue eyes, but he's holding a bit more highlight in his eyes than she is. She's further from the light source. But I'm just gonna bounce it up, because I know that when I put it into black this is what's gonna make it look the most Calvin Klein-esque. Oh, I love the look on both of their faces right now. It's so beautiful. All right, let's go, don't need to pump my contrast, I just need to up my brightness. Now I'm gonna go into Alien Skin and I'm going to choose my filter based on this dark, grungy. So too dark, don't wanna go that dark. I'm gonna start off with my Polaroid, I'm gonna go to my yellows first, that's my go-to. Oh, I like this. And then I'm going to take that aging off that. I'm going to accept it. And then move my contrast here. Sorry about the little time delay there. As you know, I'm recording, slows me right down. OK, I'm gonna go into my dark and gutsy there, but I'm gonna have to bring up the highlights in their eyes, because I really love how dark this is, but I've lost both of their eyes. So I can take it back that far and then I can even take it into black and white. And then I can, OK, too dark for me. So my option here is after I've done this I'm going to go, OK, let me see, I'm going to bring up the eyes on this one, I'm gonna duplicate this one off. I'm going to come back to here. I'm going to turn off that filter. I'm gonna take them up in their contrast first. So this time I'm coming down there with my lights and I'm going this way with my darks. So I'm lifting my contrast, making my darks darker. Then I'm gonna go to black and white. So first I'm gonna drop it into black and white, like that, and then I'm going to reapply the black and white and see if I can get a better jump. I'll reapply, sorry, reapply that dark yellow. So from here it's gonna take a little while. Another fabulous opportunity for us all to chat to each other. What are you all doing today other than watching my video and learning some Photoshop skills? Hope you've made some big plans. I woke up this morning, wrote down a whole lot of big plans, very excited about. All right, so I'm liking the yellow black and white and I'm definitely feeling the whole Calvin Klein, but now I need to bring up those eyes. So let's see how I'm gonna do that. I've got two choices. OK, the first thing I'm gonna do is copy the layer mask and I'm gonna go to the bottom layer. And first of all I'm gonna go to the bottom layer, select the bottom layer, go to my Actions, and I'm gonna lighten up through my Curves. So basically that's what you're seeing. I'm gonna show you the bottom layer. So I can lighten up through Curves, or I can go Control + M, I can bring up my contrast, and then I can lighten up through here. There, and whiten that more and more. So as much as I wanna do I can take that right up. So that's my bottom layer. OK, then underneath there I'm gonna go on that bottom layer, I'm gonna go to my Dodge Tool, and I can cross over when I'm doing film noir like this, this the same as when they were lying on the ground and I dodged up their highlights. I can put as much dodge in there as I want, because this is my bottom layer. So I can overdo it. Put a little dodge on her lip. And then I go to here, go to my top layer, my top layer can come back just a little bit to there maybe. Yep, perfect. And then I go to that top layer and an Erase Tool at around 10%, I'm just gonna flick that over the eye and just jump it up. OK, I don't wanna go too far and I've gone too far. So I'll take it back and I just wanna go around his iris there and there, I wanna go around her iris. Remember, I put a dodge there. Nice one down there. And you can bring that up as much as you want, so that it stays dark Calvin Klein black and white. Very serious, this shot. I do like it. And I can put any tone on that I like. So I went through their dark, gutsy series. I'm gonna close that one, I didn't like it in color. This was shot for black and white. I actually preferred the color, slightly desaturated on this one with a little bit more vibrancy. Absolutely loved that. And loved that. And then their lying down shot was their Calvin Klein series. So that's where I took that couple shoot. I'll save that off now. And I hope you enjoyed that editing and I'll post, when I present the images to these clients I'll post their final choice of images. Have a great day.