Lessons

Lesson Info

Image Post Processing for Boudoir

I am excited to show yourself today this stuff today I've actually never taught this before anywhere so this is my first time so please feel free to ask questions in the bonus week we are we are showing a fly on the wall shoot basically what creative life did is they came into my studio and they just watched me shoot they just take me shoot no discussion no talking through it no teaching just me and the client so you could get an idea of how I work and instruction that I give so I've decided to use that shoot as my example for editing today these are actually the raw photos from the shoot our client's name was amanda she's amazing and I'm going to show you how I work once I get the picture is now I took about one hundred fifty for pictures of her and which is a little less than usual like I said in the opposing segment I like to take about let's say girls wearing three outfits I'll probably take about a hundred pictures per outfit and show her between thirty to fifty pictures per outfi...

t that makes sense so I'm showing her between let's say one hundred one hundred fifty hundred fifty's a lot I try to go for one hundred two hundred twenty five if I'm showing if I'm selling an album and I want to sell about thirty twenty to thirty pictures I I feel like I need at least seventy five photos to show her right we need to do at least half, if not more so I feel like one hundred twenty to one hundred twenty five is a very good number for me to show her to get enough variation to feel like I've shown her enough pictures because if you show, if you take five hundred pictures and you show her thirty she's going to know what happened to the other, you know, I don't remember what number I said, so what? What happens there? Four hundred or whatever it might be, so I feel like I'm showing her a good number, and I'm reinforcing that you did a really good job. I'm showing you a lot of pictures and you'll see some of them have very slight variations, okay, aye, this is like, really, I'm really showing you this in the very beginning how I choose images of how I call so we're going to start with that. Now these are raw images. This day was extremely sonny in my studio, and I will admit to you on days that are really sunny and my studio, I don't worry about white balance in the camera because I will tell you why, and we actually all experiences the the whole crew experiences when they're taping my studio goes from blue to green to yellow to blue green to yellow as it reflects off the buildings as it moves in different parts of the day and I am so focused on her that I don't have the time to switch it every single second I mean, sometimes it varies by literally the second, so I'm just focused on trying to get, you know, good exposure on her sometimes it's a little brighter than other times, so I'm trying to to minimize how much of that today I need to do, but I'm not always worried about absolute perfection in that minute because by the time you get to that perfection, the sun could be gone and then you're in trouble, right? So I'm really trying to stay in the moment with her, so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to go through and I'm gonna call and you'll even see, like some of these pictures start really bright and then they get really dark because that this this light in my studio only last for about fifteen minutes thes lines and if I wantto use them, I need to work really fast. So again, I can't be worried about changing the color balance every two seconds. I don't have that kind of time, so as we go through, what I'm going to do is I'm in light room and I'm gonna press p for peck p for flag flags of api for pick that's how we'll remember and any picture that I see that I like you can see it even changed there a little bit any picture that I like like I do not like that one right? So we're just gonna go right past that I'm gonna pick the ones that I like or that I think I like even if they're similar and I'm really going through this quickly you guys um make some decisions here okay? And then I'll see like oh, you know what I really like this one more than this one I know that right off the bat I might go back and press you, which is unflagging unpack okay, but I don't know I only do that if I'm really really sure about it um so if I think I like it I think it's usable I'll pick it that shouldn't be in there a sneaky little thing let's get rid of that excuse me that was easy um maybe I'll take that one I'm not sure I'm not making definite decisions here, ok? I'm just kind of going with my gut quickly do I like it or not like it somebody talk to me while I do this when you call is it fast like this or you going slow talk to mae me about two hours took cole to call yes okay girlfriends, you might want to sit right here and we need to talk about that. How many pictures are you talking about calling here? Usually I guess in a boot to our session I might take I overshoot which has one of my problem how many images of your getting per about five hundred okay look terrible. It amazes me how fast you're doing this right now like my mind is blown I go back and forth I was just looking at some images we took of cindy and I went back and forth between two just with her sitting there and we just kept going back and forth and back and forth so perfect so you know what you do next time just include them both that's all I've done that on dh I do like even like a tiny little movement in the head something like that you go oh my god she looks good here it looks good here. I just put them both in and I let her choose. And the best case scenario is that she can't choose either and she buys in both because now don't forget based on the price that we discussed I sell by image not by album, so I want her to actually buy them both, so if I can't decide I let her decide and if she can't decide she gets them both that's awesome right okay, so I'm just going again quickly go through this and I'm just looking for a couple of basic things here I'm looking to make sure like in this image versus this image I have a little more room on the side all right? So do you see here how there's like more room here than there is here? So like, I immediately I don't like this picture is much I'm just kind of scanning do I press the same thing to get out of it? Yes, so I'm just kind of standing the photo and, um, I'm sort of using that same premise of the eight points of posing in my calling I'm going through and I'm just looking at every single point really fast um and if I see something I like better, I'll just take one out did you see that? I'm really I and this is really how it happens in real life now obviously she's like half blinking here, but I'm gonna in a second I'll show you some other images and why I took one over the other will talk about sort of that learning from your bad images um and this is gonna be harder because I took a whole bunch of these I am making sure that I'm getting looking up, looking down, I'm getting different variations here close up different angles and then I can call them up together, and I could see which ones are the best. Now, I remember from this shoot, I remember shooting her, and if you call your pictures right after you shoot it really a good advantage that I'm not gonna lie, there are times when I don't load up my pictures right away. I'm busy with the kids or whatever I hate that I like doing it right after because I know I took this picture and she looks pretty good, but I remember I told her to stop playing with the strings, and I like those better, so I know immediately right now see even better, like, I know I'm not gonna take this one because I know the next one's better because I just took the pictures and I remember, and I also told her to move her hair out of her face and see how, what a difference that isthe so I remember that I did that irony of a question, I think the fact that I'm not looking at the back of the camera, I don't know that there's a difference between her holding that and not so another reason to stopping through down, looking at the back good, so I just called the whole session. Okay, done. And I'm going to show you a couple things let's just come kind of come back. I mean, this one is pretty obvious, let's see why I would choose one and not the other? No, no, I didn't take this one. I'm gonna call this one too, but, you know, going back I look at this, I feel like she was so bored, so I'm gonna take it out. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just trying to find a good example for you. Why okay? Like here for me she's too laughing here. I don't like it as much. I need I want her to be smiley, but not that smiley. Um, see, I like her laugh there and, oh, I don't like it here. I don't like her mouth there. You see that woman? Just take that out. Here's the thing this is funny because sometimes I'll have my assistant call images for me when I'm really, really busy and she'll be like, jen, I can't call it down to the right number. I'm like diana, just get rid of them. They're not your baby's just divorced that like it's. Okay, if you're not like if if you're not sure if it's a good picture it's probably not a good picture just to get rid of it, just cut it out, you really want to get to the best of the best. You don't wantto have second best images in here, you really don't, and so I'd rather show her less images and make sure that they're better quality and show her more images or not is good. So as you're changing that around, don't be afraid that you don't have one hundred twenty five images. I'd rather you show her seventy five really good quality images instead of putting in another twenty just to fluff it that you're not really sure about. Um, so something like this, for example, like, I think her head is too dark, uh, I'm looking for hand placement, like here, I like her hand place and better here than here, so I'll take this one out, but I'm going to go through all of these a second time, um, like I don't like her hand placement here, I'm going through the eight points is your hand placement, so I'm not taking that, okay? But this one is much better. This is sort of that movement like cindy. I know you like to shoot with movement. So this is a big thing for you. You're gonna have to keep looking at those eight points, all those little things, and especially with movement, you might not get as much variation. You know, you're gonna get as many good pictures compared to him and you take the ones that you really now we're going to be good. So going to go down here to the filter area, and I'm gonna look for all the flagged photos and out of the hundred fifty three eyes chose one hundred that's, a pretty good number for the first round. Okay, I took out a third of the photos. Um and what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go through once again, and I'm just gonna go through pretty fast. And when I start seeing similar pictures, I go back and forth. Now I'm gonna take this one over this one because in this one is so it's life that her eyes are actually closed. She's not looking down when you close your eyes I mentioned this before it changes the lash line and I think it makes somebody look dead versus keeping it if you just keep it open just a little bit you can see there's more volume in her eyelashes it's really small but you guys will see this in your own pictures when you take it so I'm going to dump this but I'm just gonna press you for on pick and I'll probably keep this one also cause she's smiling she's not smiling in the other one um these two are very similar I'm just going to choose one over the other but I'm not overthinking it I don't like this one is much I don't like this one that much this is this is like one of those even just could go either way it's not a bad image but I don't think she looks is how does she looks in some of the other images so I'm just gonna get rid of it um just going back and forth again and again just kind of checking these two were very similar so I'm just taking one over the other uh this one's too laughing for me remember we talked about the pose and the lighting and the expression matching I don't feel like this works for me the laugh might work for you it's just my own personal decision um I don't okay, let's talk about this one like you see how her leg is more bent in this photo than this one. Slight little change. Good. We're dumping it, just dump it. Ok, but I learned from it, but then I'm gonna dump it. All right. Um, these two are very similar. Keep that. I don't think this isn't focus. Focus is important, but here's the thing I'm not going I never took a picture. I never kept a picture. It wasn't lately and focus. Remember that picture I showed you of my model camera with the big hair flip? That picture is not one hundred percent tax sharp because she was moving. It was a tiny little bit blurry, but man, I love that picture and I'm keeping it. I don't care if it's a little blurry. Sometimes a little bit of motion is okay to show not when you have one of those, like super still pictures and it's blurry that's your fault. But if she's moving where she's doing something and it conveys an emotion, emotion for me is higher priority than technical perfection. I feel people out there hating me for saying that, but it's true, it is true isn't especially in boudoir if she's laughing and you're capturing that she's a little blurry. A key just keep it certainly find it in that foot in that image I didn't like it I don't like her hands out here I'm not sure but I know what it's doing she just played with her hair but if somebody just saw this picture they wouldn't know what the heck her hand was doing there and it's really breaks I'm going to get rid of it I like this one more up close than this one. Well got a bit of that she's well, smokey here, get rid of it. Um huh tio either way I think I like the other one better. I don't like how flattered hair is here to see what I'm saying I'm picking little things that I'm just going through real fast. I don't sure I love that better you don't like her hand this is better for may so maybe I'll go back and take that one out, okay? You see, I'm going back and forth I know moving fast but this is real life. This is how I do it for real I don't like that one. Um I actually think I like her head up better than sideways so we'll get rid of that these two are similar, you know you see the light change like this was one right after the other the light totally changed so saying bye um these are a little bit harder because they're very similar so let's go through but here I chopped off her finger by by now I don't take every I don't take out every shot where I chop off a finger or something it's not perfect but I know because I stopped and I looked at the back of the camera that I have pictures with her finger in it case in point so I'm just going to take out the ones where her fingers are chopped off because for me in this pose I think it's important these two are like exactly the same so I'm just going to take one ah little finger chap but I got it without it so here I don't like this one there would be much better again these two are totally similar I'm going sorry I'm going to take the one that's straighter because it's less work for me um I don't like this one I think she looks depressed okay so here's one of those examples there and they were talking about you see her face here and in here it's so slight you see us light it is but I like that one way better it's teeny tiny so you have to pay tens will take that one out okay here's another example I shoot her one side then the others are going to keep this I'm gonna take this out and I'm gonna keep that one one side and the other depending on your album designed sometimes one side looks better than the other so I tend to switch it up a little bit just to see because I'm selling album here that's what I'm shooting for him shooting for an album um there's a lot of these so let's just go through fast I think she looks kind of mad here mad here I don't like her smile there much better there um okay I like this one better than this one that's just me personally taken it out does to exactly the same here's another example a little further away little closer up I'm a little mixed about her pink shoes how you're popping out of the picture so if I don't have enough pictures maybe I'll leave this one and let her decide with because I have other ones I'm just gonna take it out because I prefer it without the shoes behind here's one that's not super well maybe it isn't focused but if it wasn't in focus and be okay because she's laughing okay so when I can't decide between two that are very similar ah highlight both of them and then you press this little button and you can go back and forth between the two and I think I like this one better yeah so we'll just leave that one oh these two are very similar to I don't know, I'm just going to take one out, not married to them remember, we're letting it go so here's another one, I might grab a whole bunch of images because they're all similar, and I'll say, you know what? I just want to look at all the ones with her eyes open, so I'll take the ones with her eyes closed out, and now I can sort through them very easily. I don't like this, I don't like this that's better, better? I think this is better than that. I liked the angle better, so I'm just going back and forth, I think I don't like it with her eyes closed, her lips close, I feel like it's a little bit. I'm just gonna take that ad. I like him better with her lips open, and I think I'm going to settle on this one that's the one I like now I go back and I collect them all again and I only want to look at the ones with the eyes closed because I'm gonna offer her both options eyes closed, eyes open and I think I don't like this one and I don't like this one. I like that one, the best, okay, so now I'm down to two of these why not want open one closed, okay, sometimes I show one with the lips a little more open I'll give her some variation you know why? Because this is my top selling pose this right here is probably my top selling post if I think there's more than two good ones I'll throw a little bit more in there because I want to make sure I sell that one also if I think that maybe this will make a good centerfold I want to make sure it's one with a little more negative space like all these issued it further back to so there's more negative space because you know the centerfolds kind of cut off top bottom so if I see a good centerfold I'll make a mark to myself mentally and I'll say to her you know, man so this would be a really good centerfold or something like this would be a great centerfold I love this you know that's another way of selling without it being high pressure because you're being honest you actually do think it's a good centerfold and you you shot it that way you thought about that ahead of time um again here eyes are looking down here and closed here do you see the difference between the two it's so slight let me see if I could zoom and actually let's give it a go your pictures and it's hard to tell but you see I changed the last line it's much shorter here. Um, so we're gonna get rid of that one and those little things, they're not something that I see when I go through really fast. So these are the things I'm really detailed looking for. I don't know which one of these I like better. I think this one. All right, so I'm making sure here I have looking down, looking up, I don't like this one as much as this one. There's another there's a lot of looking down this is to laugh for me. So I'm going to grab these all, I'm gonna look at them and I'm going to say, ok, I have one laughing looking down, one laughing, looking up so I'm not gonna take any of those out and here's one with her eyes open, but these three all look similar to may, and when you look at it close like that, isn't this one way better? So when you go through all kind, I'm gonna take this one out and these two are basically the same, so I'll just take one out, okay? And then I'll probably go through it one more time just to make sure I really like everything, but at this point, I'm down to forty images, okay, and this is out of one hundred fifty and that's pretty much the ratio that I'm looking at here, you know? And I'm I'm really calling here, you know, and this was not like even though it was flying the what wasn't like, a real real shoot, you know, we didn't do as many poses as I normally do. We tried to get as much as we could in the short period of time we had, but now I'm down to forty images. So questions on the calling, I don't know how long that took, but I don't think it was terribly long, uh, questions on that? Yeah, yeah, do you feel like you need a break? Like, maybe do one part of it, and then I gotta come back look at that later sometimes if I have a lot of pictures, like if I shoot a model and I have a thousand pictures, I'll just do a quick run through in just grab everything I like, and then I'll come back to it and I'll come back to it with the client, I try to just bang it out because I feel like the faster I turn her around, the easier it is for me to keep up with my work. Slow but yeah it's not a bad thing to walk away from it and it's certainly not a bad thing to have somebody else called your images either because they see something differently than you do so often times I'll take the first rounds and then I'll have my assistant diana go through the second round and I'll say you know just just do me a favor take anything that you think doesn't look good teo um and she'll see different things than I see because I'm emotionally connected to her and the images in a way that diane is not so it's not it's not something I do very often but if I'm having trouble with a client she will help me it's a good point and yes sometimes your eyes are crossed like right now I definitely feel like a little burning in the eyes you know and your legos all right so now that I have the images that I'm I'm working on okay you could do a couple different things you could make a separate collection for this I just kind of keep moving okay they're flab so I'm good and the first thing I'm going to do is just check my white balance I go to the develop mode appear and I pick up my little white balance dropper and I just looked for a spot on the wall this is one of the advantages of having white walls and like gray bedspread is you kind of use them as a great card, but for me in the scenario I know because I shoot in a studio all the time if I grabbed that part of the wall it's going to give me a pretty good white balance and I think that that looks pretty good now I don't want to have to go through and do this to every single picture, so what I do is I grab all the pictures in that scenario, I'm assuming they're all around the same exposure level they're all about the same and I'm going to sink them and you have all different choices of what you can sink I haven't set the way I like to set it for this and it goes through and it sinks them all okay, so now every single one is set to the same temperature balance. Yes, lauren, I've never done that in light room with the white balance, so you pick something on the image that you know to be white it's so this is where my lack of editing is going to come into play here like I know so little about lighter and photo shop it's like if I could do it, you could do it too so here's the beauty of it when you pick up the dropper and you move it around, you'll see in this little box up on the side over here what it's gonna look like I find that if you pick you're not really picking white see if I pick a white it looks kind of green I'm looking for a gray I'm looking for that mid tone grey okay yes greg I need greg isn't adobe experts to give me like yes I'm on the right page or not the only way I know this lauren is by doing it by experimenting with it so it's almost like a great card I'm looking for like that mid tone grey yes, you're hundred per cent right that's exactly how I do it and that's the simplest, easiest way you just looked for gray I mean, normally you would shoot a great card before what if you don't have that option where you see you have a isolated gray just pick it right? So I really felt sort of like a faux tog ra for for a long time because I don't shoot the great card I don't use a light meter, I don't have an extra disk or any of those other things that people use that are like, you know, real things of photographers use I just wing it and I've just taught myself how to do it along the way, but I think I probably represent a lot more photographers then not because I think this is how most people do it now you can hand adjust if it's still a little blue or whatnot, you put the dropper down, you can, you can adjust it here, okay? You can you can make slight adjustments, but for me, I just think it's easier just kind of picked that gray spot and then sink all the images together other questions because that I know mind that you guys were talking amongst yourselves, but I want to know if you think I'm what's going on because I'm sure if you have a question somebody out there does too well, not really a question, just one thing that I wanted to say about doing that you don't necessarily synchronize all of your shots, just all the similar shots. I don't like shot, right? Well, that's what I said, I picked up all the shots from the set. Now I'm not going to assume that they're all correct. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to just look through and I'm going to say, hey, you remember, at the end when my shots were darker, let me make sure that those air, right? So I go through, but before I do that, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure that my exposure is correct, I'm really happy with my closure on this picture I actually did a pretty good job nailing it right so I don't need to make very many changes and I'm just going to go through and make sure that the exposure on these is correct it's funny cause it even this picture you can see the color's a little bit different than that picture I don't know if you guys can see but I can see my monitor is a tiny bit pinker than the other one so maybe I'll go and correct that a little bit but I'm pretty happy with the exposure on a lot of these until I get here and then I go this might be a little bit dark okay so let me see if I change my exposure just a little bit I'm going to do that by hand okay I'm not losing the detail this this little arrow if you click it up here do you guys see that on the history ram it will show you any area that has blown out detail the only area that has it is that top line right there that white line I don't really care because there's no detail in there for me to see so I know that the picture is not too bright and it's the same thing here the only thing that's so dark that I lose details a little tiny bit on her course it but I don't really care in that spot okay, if my blacks were all the way down and I was starting to lose the powder on her course that I wouldn't be happy about it. But right now, the exposure looks pretty good. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick the rest of them that I know of sort of in that same area, and I'm going to sink it again. And now it's gonna also change the exposure for all these other ones, and I just looked really fast. This one looks like me and it's a little bright, not were good. This one is definitely a little dark, this one. Maybe what I'll do is I'll increase thie highlights or the or I'll drop the shadows. No, I don't like that. So this is just a matter of playing. This is sort of just, like adding a little fill light, okay, so I didn't I wasn't able to do it there, so I'm just gonna do it here, so I'm just going through, and I'm making sure that these look good, same thing here, I'll probably raise the lower the shadows a little bit. I always go the wrong way. Um, this is just practice, you guys, this is just figuring out which knob does what, and that's it okay, so now that I have all that and you see I'm working one outfit at a time because I don't want to go into the second outfit because they might be shot in a totally different area of the studio and the exposure and the white balance and everything else is completely different yes so really quick about the white balance again are you shooting it on like otto? I probably shot these either on auto or daylight. Okay that's usually where I'm at in the studio so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go through I'm gonna make sure my crop and my straightening gets done here okay? So I like a little tiny bit of a crop tighter crop on some of these I make sure that the crop is in the place I want it and I go through and I just make sure that it's straight and my crop is good um I am an in camera crop ear's you'll see a lot of them I don't actually touch but I do want to make sure I straighten this one versus this one this one is not a straight so I'm gonna straighten it out a little bit and it does change your crop all of us you have to be careful and I'm just I'm just kind of doing this fast argument's sake but you get the idea much less dizzy now than I was before same thing here and it gets a little confusing especially with the lines you want to make sure that it it it looks good um and I'm just going to go through real fast and do this questions while I'm doing this you guys shut him out this is sorry let me show you one other thing this is where it gets a little harrier um I guess I've already straight in this one but because we have all these lines I remember I told you is a lot of lines my studio what you could do is you could tell a little ruler and go okay I want this to be the straight line and it'll automatically turned the picture for you to make that a straight line um and that's that's really helpful um something like this like I might want her to be more like this I want to give a little more negative space I'm gonna come in a little tighter here and now she's more like in the thirds okay, so I'm just making various late adjustments I know there's a lot of people who do like a ton of cropping I'm just not one of them there's nothing wrong with it you can shoot it how you see if you can shoot it in crop it later uh I prefer just to kind of make minimal adjustments because you can see I'm not spending that much time doing all this okay, so I'm going to go to these really fast this is a harder space for me to straighten them because you see all those lines in the background gets so confusing they're not all going to be straight so you have to just kind of pick something that you want to be straight usually I kind of go with like, this line right here or this line I find that that the best even if this window isn't straight I think that she looks better tiny bit angled than if she was straight and everything else was off it just kind of looks confusing um so I'm just gonna make sure these air straight now I'm working backwards here because I'm sort of already in that straightening mode oops, sorry I'm in that straightening mode right now so I'm just gonna keep going with it on at least these window pictures I don't like this picture I'm dumping it okay, I'm still making decisions and this is partially like if I can't fix uh, picture or if I'm just like oh, this's just giving me a headache I'll just dump it I don't get married to it um we were talking about this yesterday with the male versus female like shooting on the brick wall, you see how harriet gets with that all right so now even though this is this is actually this is a different outfit, this is a different set than the bed, so we're going to treat this separately and I'm going to go through again. I'm gonna pick up my white balance, baby, and I'm gonna drop it right there. That's the greatest part and I think she looks pretty good she might be midge warm, but I don't mind necessarily maybe I'll drop the blue a tiny little bit. Um, that looks pretty good. I'm going to change my exposure a tiny little bit. Here we go and I'm going to grab these other ones. I'm sinking and I'm good. I'm done with that. I'm just double checking. Oh, this one's a little darker than the other one, so I'm gonna bump it up a little bit just making sure everything looks good exposure straightened color good. All right, let's do it fast on the bed to best thing ever. Great car built right into the bed right there. Okay, um I actually like to make them a little tiny bit blue or on the bed. I find it's a little more true to color and I'm gonna bump up the exposure just a bit and that's it and I'm just going to grab them and do it all going to do them all let's see what happens now any time you change them like linking down on your stomach to laying down on the back and you change with the light is you're just gonna want to double check. Um so I'm just gonna go through, make sure these air good. Erin, how you feeling about this right now? Since, um it's not what you normally do and it's working much faster than where you are. I feel good e but I think, um just need to be more aggressive and not I mean, I think I spend a lot of time looking at facial expressions, and another thing is that I don't do in session or in person and if I consejo es, I love all of these, but I want to know what you love she is going to do have two calling herself that and that's going to take so much off of my plate so that's, why I don't make the hard decisions I wait for her to make the hard decisions I take out the stuff that's pretty obviously not something I want somebody to see. I always look at a picture I goto I want a client to put this into her album. Does this represent who I am? And if the answer is yes and the next picture next to it is yes, but hurt mouth has moved a little bit then I'll go ok I'll show her both of them owed her make the tough decision maybe one face she recognizes more than the other so I'll leave it up to her to do that love that cray yeah erica I was just curious whether you'd so you do the in person sales and you show her everything does she pick for the album or do you is that something that you do? We're going to discuss that in like two minutes okay can you hang on okay I just want to show you one other tool it's the grady in school and I do use this sometimes you see see how in the background it's much darker than it is in the for but in the foreground because she is really liked by the window and this is a really really sunny day so it's not as bad but on days where it's not as sun eight sometimes this area back here can get really dark so what I'll do is I'll fix it with the grady in tulle and this is exactly that changes it makes gradual changes. So for example, if I want to change the exposure back there I could make it really dark I could make it really bright but for me right now I just want to brighten it just that smidge so it looks a little more even okay, and I'm going to sink that with all of these pictures because I know that it happens and this is one of the advantages of actually having a studio is, you know how your studio works again and again again. So you know what editing you have to do on which shots going through? Um, so I just I'm going to make sure that she's straight and she looks good. Oh, I must have cracked this one already a little bit, okay, I tried to get all of the things off of here, ok, good. So I'm in a good place with all these images right now, okay? I'm happy with all of them. I'm going to gather them all. I know that this is probably like everybody has their own way of doing this. This is my way, I think it's a backwards way. I've told it to myself, but it works for me, it's, just my flow to do it your way that you're comfortable. I'm just showing my way. I'm going to go toe, go to edit in and I'm going to say portraiture. Portraiture is a skin softening software it's a plug in for light room and photoshopped photo shop is probably the better way of using it because it creates another layer and you could take it off or you can put it on or whatever I don't know it sounds very time consuming to me, so I've just decided to do it in late room and ali we were talking about this in the group the other day, so I press do it, edit it in in portraiture and now it's going to say edit a copy and light room adjustments that's what I do because it doesn't let me choose the others which I don't even know what they do so it doesn't matter I just press yes, I mean this is like serious this is how you teach yourself you just go, okay? And if it doesn't work you figure it out back up your image is guys um and so what it's doing is preparing another image next to my original image my original images the raw I do shoot raul let's talk about that for a second I do think it's important I'm not going to kill you were just on your hate you if you shoot in j peg for me, I just find that the color variation is much better in raw and I can shoot without having to worry about my white balance every single second, because I shoot raw, have that like that little cushion right there. You guys all understand that. Lauren. You're looking at me like you're not really sure you understand. Um, raw images are they have more. How do you, greg? Why don't you explain it? So now when you shoot raw, ok, you'll notice that the file size is a heck of a lot bigger than jae pak. You know, most people shoot j because it's a lot smaller, but the advantage of shooting raw is that you have more control over all that information because that big file sizes all information. So if you need to, like, bring up shadows, you have much more control over that. You could still do all these things with j peg rodgers gives you much bigger cushion. So it's a lot more forgiving because you have, you know, like, if you shoot j peg, you get an inch, but if you shoot well, you get a mile to play with. So it's just, you know, it's better to do that. Image and you had better control over what the data is doing, what I recommend if you've never shot and raw shoot in ron j peg, if your camera allows you to do that and see what the difference is, when you're editing and the changes, you can make them both and decide for yourself what works I probably could shoot in j paige, get this point because I especially my studio because, like I said, I pretty much know what's going on, but just why, you know, like I like I just like shooting and raw it's what I d'oh you had a question, brian, okay, you just like to hold the microphone for fun, okay? But for me, I just like shooting run, I do recommend that it gives you more variation, especially if you're into editing. Look, I'm not into editing at all, so I just really want my changes to be like white balance exposure, whatnot, but if you're into, like, serious editing and you want to do tons of moore creator it's off, you definitely have the shooting raw. Um all right, so please don't ask me what any of these things mean here because I really don't know, but what I dio is I just kind of move it around so it looks good. That's being self taught, um, I moved around so it looks good and usually what I changed the most is the threshold. I think somebody out there is going to be laughing at me, but I think that the threshold is really just kind of how much skin softening you put on there, and I prefer texture in my skin. So I'm not going to go very high with my threshold, especially with a man's up, because she has freckles and portraiture will get rid of the freckles. So she's, actually a really perfect example. Why you should probably do this and photo shop, but I'm going to show you how I do it in my room anyway, because I'm not making that exception. I want to get through this quickly. I'm actually gonna drop her down so almost like in eight, and I'm going to blow this up high boobies and you see, when you click on it, it's a before and after and it's actually still getting rid of a whole bunch of you freckles. So I'm just going to be really careful with that and that's okay, a little bit of it is okay. All right, I like how that looks and I'm just going to say ok and now what it's doing is it's going through all my images and it's finding the skin and it's softening any part of the skin in that way that defines okay, I know you girls your mind's ability we've a mop because we just blew their mind over here um and it saves you all that time now here's the thing I don't go overboard with this and sometimes girls still need a little skin softening after which I will show you how I do in photo shop but this is for me enough for a client to see it this way ok? It's enough it takes that little tiny bit of like maybe if they have some cellular later they have some uneven skin it'll just take that little bit off and I'm not sitting and brushing by hand every single image I only have thirty nine or forty images here. Can you imagine doing a client a hundred twenty five and doing all that editing? Now I know that there's a there's a theory out there that you want to show your clients that you're a photographer, not an editor, so you want to show them fully edited images so they don't know that they didn't come out of camera exactly perfect I do not work with that mine's at all my feeling is I have taught you guys how to take good pictures in camera I have taught you posing, flow and good posing and I think that you saw, like, even my bad pictures still not awful, right? They were still not terrible. Awful. So this is I mean, these air solid enough pictures to show a client without her freaking out if she has a giant's it if she has a big scratch on her face if she has really dark bags under her eyes she's paranoid that I might go in and fix it, but I'm basically going to show you now how I show the clients their images. Okay, this isn't as much editing is ideo once this is done working and I'm trying to stall so it will finish faster, but once this is done working that's pretty much how I show an image to a client for the most part. So anyone have any questions for the seven seconds we have left here? Yes, yeah do you ever find that? I'm not familiar? I mean part of pork? Sure, but I've never used it. Do you ever find ever goes like too far when you automatically process everything in which case you just delete those images and you start over? Um it isn't it is a a a typical newbie mistake to over edit pictures for boudoir and that is because the lighting is not right where the poses not right where something is just off and we take out all of the skin texture and we take out these these things they're called eyelids they exist under the eye also for some reason a lot of portrait photographers thinks that we shouldn't have those so that you have like the alien eyes you know, over editing is a huge compensation for under education and had to take a good picture, right? So just be really careful of that um and as you can see, we can go through I don't think she's over edited in my opinion she's softer for sure, but I don't think she looks fake I don't think she looks plastic right? And this is why sometimes doing it in photo shop is an advantage because you can undo it from certain areas of the picture. I have a little less flexibility here, but I've sort of I'm an under softener, so if I I would rather like under softened her completely and then go into photoshopped and soften her a little bit more in the final at it where it needs it that's how I view it so I go really pretty low on this um you can see hopefully I could do this and then we'll do the before and after so this is before and this is after it's really hard to tell in here but it's just a little bit under her eyes I could just kind of smooth it out a little bit let me see if I can go back to okay, so now I have all these images highlighted that are all the tips that change it into tiffs I've done this to different ways now I'm gonna be really honest with you have exported them is j pegs and then just worked on them is j pegs at that point I'm sure most editors out there like you did what? Because it's not a good idea so I've started exporting them is as psd files, which stands for what photoshopped document I just learned that right just now okay, so let's do that and I'm gonna show you how I do it so I export them and I'm gonna find a folder. This is from lauren I was doing you yesterday so I already have a folder obviously for a man to hear and it's under creative live day too. But we'll make another one so I'm gonna pick the main folder where her images are going to choose it and I'm gonna put it in a sub folder called creative live boot camp holy not being able to spell right I'm going to copy this and I'm gonna rename the files the same thing so I can easily find them so everything is very organized but just in case I put it in the wrong place or if I need to find it really fast I know that was created by boot camp we're gonna put that in and I started with number one and it's going to go automatically um I am going to export them is psd files and I'm gonna export them a bit I'm not doing a ton of color correction like it's sixteen bit will give you a lot more color range eight bit for me is enough I'm happy with a pick greg agree so therefore it's right on um oh you know what I forgot to do? I'm going to cancel this for one second and see if I can figure this out live right now maybe greg can help me if you notice but you know what I never did when you let me see if I can oh, maybe I have to do it great hat into the metadata and so here's the beautiful thing about metadata presets you can actually have your metadata put right into your images so that when clients put them up on facebook, your metadata will show up I forgot I posted about this on facebook to tell everybody changed or cooperate information but I didn't do it so I'm gonna do that right now so I changed its two thousand fifteen um so every time I expert in image it has my um oh wow sorry okay so now how do I change the metadata that I I want hear metadata status is that right? See you learn something new every day here we're just gonna change it here okay all right anyway that I just wanted to kind of show that I'll figure that all out later but it's important to imbed your copyright information into your images this way when clients use them where they put them up somewhere often on facebook like your copyright information will just pop up they have they don't even have to do that for you all right so we're gonna go back to the export and created by boot camp crayola bootcamp e s t a bit uh no no no we'll just leave that there because I don't know how to do it I'll figure it greg you'll show me later how to fix that and I'm gonna export and now it's just taking the thirty nine miles and it's making another folder on my computer that says creative life boot camp and now what I could do with those images as I can call them in one by one into photo shop and this is exactly how I would do it so this is task complete and so what I usually d'oh is it gonna open up photo shop and I'm gonna go to her folder. Lauren, everyone seeing your pictures right now, um, which is okay, because you look amazing and we're going to go to creative live day two, and we just had created by boot camp and hear the images and rps teas, and what I'll do is I'll grab like, you know, four or five at a time, and I'll open them up and I'll just give them a quick check, quick, okay, this is a good spot to, like, take out like a pimple, like I said, or, um, like so for amanda, she had, like, a little blemish on her chest, so I'll go in really fast, and I'll just heal it out, okay? Now she'll never see it, I save it, close it done, and I'll do that for all these images. Save it, you know? Do it close it done. But you see, I'm not dealing with like, these marks on the wall. She has, like, a little bit of other even skin tone here. I'm not bothering with that. This is a good enough picture for her to see she's happy with this. Okay. Um, let's, go into some of these just for an example, just calling up. Some randomly this's a good spot like if there's something that the client really doesn't want to see if if the bra strap was really too tight and she was overflowing she needs a tiny little bit of liquefied this is the time to do it tiny bit um in fact let me show you one of the images from the hotel shoot that we did that I was playing with yesterday on dh is this one I believe yeah okay, so this is this is straight out of camera this is not straight I cover story this is out of light room ok, this is how it came out of light room this is the spot where I might go in and I might liquefy her a little tiny bit right in here ok? Because I couldn't really fix that and so I'm going to come in teeny tiny little bit that's it that's like the extent of the liquefying that ideo maybe a smidge here maybe I mean smitty's because I cannot fix that imposing I just can't no matter how hard I try okay, unless her arm is down but a farm is down I can't see the shape of her body and I'm making a compromise here like okay, I'm willing to liquefy her a tiny little bit in order for me to see the cover her body so basically it's just just here and here okay, because this will this will sell an image a tiny little tiny little bit of liquefy. Okay, and she doesn't really look much different than she really is. Right? So that's the kind of liquefying that I will dio then what I do is, after I'm done with all that, I will re upload those final images toe late room. Okay, I don't have a lot of time here, so we'll just pretend like I just did it. Okay? And I will sit with my clients. I have two pictures per right now, so we're just going to ignore them right now. But I will sit with her, actually let's do the flag. Sorry, I will sit with her and I will say okay, let's, go through the pictures and I'll have her sit next to me and I'll go ok, round one. I want you to tell me yes or no. Fair be picture. Yes is yes, I like it. And I want to see it again. No was I never want to see it again in my entire life. I absolutely hate it. But if you're not sure about a picture and you think you might like it, just leave it in we'll go through this again question to use light room for that the reason I use light room is because its small and I'm sitting right I want to be sitting right next to her I want to have that intimate connection with her. Um, you know, I could I could make it a little bit bigger by getting rid of all that the information on the side. But the other thing is I'm selling albums, so I want her to see it small because it's going to be small when she gets it, if I projected onto a wall and his thirty by forty and then she gets an album and it's this big she's gonna be like with the hack, so I do it on the laptop on purpose. Okay, so if she says yes, now, when I call these back in, they're not flagged, so I have all on flagged it's, like, starting from scratch again, and I call it with her exactly the way I called it. Yes, no. And I'll flag every single one that she says, yes, I flag and then we see how many she has and let's say she has, you know, from here we have, uh, forty photos let's say she flagged thirty five of them and then I'll call up similar photo so I might say, okay, well, let's, look at, you know, this one in this one let's compare them okay, this when you're not smiling this when you are, I think that we should keep both right now so you have a variation, this's a difficult choice. We're not up liturgical choices, yet we'll go through difficult choices at the end get the obvious choice is out of the way and then start making the tough choices so I let her decide, but I do guide her raquel and I will say to her, you know what, it's really important. You take this picture because you're laughing, you don't have any laughing pictures in there I love your smile so yeah, you know what? That's, right? Till maybe let's get rid of the one where I'm not smiling on, we'll take the one, you know, this one because I'm more serious and then I might say to her, you know what? You should take this one and you should take this one because one is up close and one is far away now we have two different angles. We're creating an album and I'll be honest with her and I'll say, listen, you know what you this like, album wise, these two rugal really nicely together, you know, album wise, I would love to see something like this and something like no, no all right, whatever it is these are all the same thing you know, maybe one looking away and one looking down let's try it this way instead she have one looking down here no look at that she should maybe we do this one looking down and then this one looking up and so she has variation I'm designing an album for her did you see what I'm saying? That was a mistake the fact that I have a picture of her by the window and she doesn't have one looking down that's a mistake that's my mistake I should have done that I should know that she should have a looking up looking down on the laughing for almost every single post questions are doing the light room catalog for when you are showing them do you create in totally new counter I have just one catalog for everybody but I create a different folder for her in the light room we're gonna need greg teo again specify on the wording but I don't create a new catalogue every client I know some people do because it's safer whatever I have one main catalog but you'll see like on the side for example groups on the side here you see I have all these different folders so I'll create collection is that those air collections? Yes so yes I create a separate collection for her viewing these and then when she he picks off her pictures let's say we pick twenty pictures I will export them again as her final choices so I have a folder of her raw a folder of her proofs and a folder of her final choices okay this way if she comes back and she says you know what I want more pictures I could just call it the proofs for her I don't have to first go and dig which ones did I show her again? Right questions no questions. Okay, so this is pretty much how I'm showing her the pictures it wasn't a ton of work we just really did all of that like that's really what I would do we really did all that in about forty five minutes to an hour and I mean, I've been talking over it so if I'm not talking I could pretty much do it for a smaller job in about a half an hour for a larger job it takes me an hour and a half from beginning to end picking, editing everything ready to show a client a fair okay. Any more questions from anybody about anything all right does this yeah go ahead. Do you do the slide show as well though, right, yes, I will use these images for the slide show correct so smart and you do that before you go through each image with them? No, yes so what I will do is yeah, let's talk a little bit about that you're right, so when she comes in, we'll sit her next to me. Are you ready to see your pictures that you excited? Yes, I'm excited. All right, what I want to do for us to show you a little slide show and this will just kind of give you a little warm up. I tell her what it's for and she sees the pictures and I'm looking for her reactions and what's so great is sometimes the picture will come up in chicago. I love that one mental. No, she loves that one. We're going to sell that one. You know, I'm looking for the, uh, you know, like whatever it might be. I'm looking for that from her, you know? Or even I will plant my opinion. And sometimes I go oh, my gosh. This next one is my favorite one of you plant that seed. You know, they believe you and it's. True, but it's true, I think it is true, right? And then after she sees that we start going out so okay, you ready to see all of them now? Because you have about one hundred pictures that I mean, that is a great number. I'm assuring her you killed it. I'm coming very happy with what we have here we go through the photos, I export them, and so when I'd finally get her down to a number, usually below forty, unless you really can't gets up with. But if she's like a thirty seven pictures, I will then take my priceless out again and show her and say, okay, here's, where we're at, if you want thirty seven pictures, you're in this range and then she'll decide. Okay, you know what? I am comfortable. I love all these pictures. I want to buy this or she'll say to me, you know what? I'm more comfortable being in, like, twenty to thirty range, and I'll say, ok, no problem, I will go through them with you and let's take some of these out, and then I will say to her, listen, I have to tell you, you have, for example, this picture and this picture, they're really very similar. They're the same pole is just one is looking upon one's looking down. So why don't we choose which one you like better? That will help you narrow it down a little bit and I will help her get to that point. Then what I'll do is I'll take all the pictures that she's chosen usually it's only twenty so this looks like a lot and I'll call it up together and I'll say, okay, this is what it looks like is a collection what do you think she'll just kind of okay now if she's in a moment where she's like I don't know what I want to do, I don't know what I want spend all say to her, you know what? Why don't you sit and look at it? I'll be right back I'm going to run to the ladies room and I step out I give her a few minutes like in her own space to trying to just look at the pictures, say to herself in that moment, can I take some of these out or do I really love them enough to keep them like, do I love them enough to put them on my credit card and pay for them for the next six months or so? I want to take him out, right? And so either I'll come back and sugar, you know what? I just can't part with them, I'm sorry just write it up or she'll come back trouble, you know what I looked and these four are the ones I want to take out and I'm giving her a little space to make her own decisions okay I do have a form that she fills out that will say that her purchase is nonrefundable non cancel non returnable once we start we start this is that you can't change your mind especially if you're delivering digital images that's really important because the second you deliver digital and then somebody says oh I didn't really want them I only wanted ten you gave me fifteen you know whatever you're gonna have a problem so make sure you have something that they signed this is it's not refundable not returnable I do take payment plans just so you guys know I will take a minimum of thirty percent but I usually try to get fifty percent that day and then I will take the rest of it at the balance of it will come when I show them their album design once you approve the album design I need the rest of your payment before I order the album so before it order any product I make sure I have all their money yes I just want to say you're the one that suggested I have them sign an order agreement form that says it's not refundable um that has saved my life so many times and I and I don't even feel bad about it because they did there's no pressure in myself sessions so taking the retainer and having them signed that form and they have a copy of the form so I have no buyer's remorse anymore, right? And it's it's just it also seems from the credit card company. So if you have a sale I know for me and my credit card company, if I have a sale over, like twenty five hundred dollars or three thousand dollars, they will hold the they will hold the money from me, and they want to see something signed from the client that the client agreed that they were going to pay for it, especially if they haven't gotten the product yet. So I have to produce something for my credit card company to show them yes, this client did agree to it, they signed something, and the credit card companies are much more comfortable with that also, and then they'll release the money teo so it's to protect yourself in that way also because even if the the payment does go through, they don't always deposited into your account until they know that the client got the product or whatever question, lauren actually think you're you already mentioned you'll get to this about, so you do show them the proof of thie album layout? Yes, we're going to do that next. Actually, we're going to do final edits and album layout, yeah.