Lessons

Lesson Info

Editing Senior Girl Shoot Part 2

Do I use parents in my session to do anything? So would I have a mom move a reflector? What? I have a mom fix the hair? What I absolutely, absolutely because it's free labor, I have to pay you it makes you feel like you're involved in the process now, a lot of times, like if you're dealing with bad lighting outside or something you use like a translucent panel, and I know you know what a translucent panel is, but those big reflectors it's the same thing, but it just creates shade it's a semi sheer material, so it helps you softened harsh light, and I use that a lot like if I'm at a location and maybe, ah, high school kids like, I really want a picture here and it's just so awful like the lighting's just disgusting, but they insist on doing the picture there was going to copy that folder, pace that folder, rename that folder, opened that folder, select all of those images, and we're going to drag them to the photo shop. So ah lot of times, though, all have parents that were like, hold t...

he reflectors, and I'll have if I have a mom who's really kind of like in the way and if I have a mom who likes to coach my posing or stuff ah lot of times I'll give her a fake job and I'll be like mom I really need your help lighting this image take this reflector I need you to get the sweet light now it's way over there keep going mom keep going now hold it and the mom's like for like ten minutes holy those avoider and you're like you're helping we couldn't do this without you but I've created a job and removed her from that negatively but it also it does make them feel good to get involved in it they feel like they're helping and it gives them a better experience and it helps me get my images and and especially things though like where it would be touching a kid like with her hair like I did I would have asked for mom to do it if that was I would have asked her mom touch her and if the mom was like whatever do it find that I would but most of the time I would ask a parent to go in and do that so really quick there were a couple folks who had noted that you left a lot of head room like kind of on the images that we're looking at right now is that something that you do intentionally what's what's your thoughts on that composition we sell a lot of like you can always crap and you can't drop out and so I always want to leave room for cropping and if we sell eight by tens if we sell things like that it's easier to crop in than it is for me to expand a campus content aware filling a background make it look real it's easier for me to just have it and one of our most popular products is this ten by twenty portrait panel and it's an action that I got from the pro forum, which is corporal claims website everyone should go check out the pro form I'm going to talk about that a little more with the guy session but it's just that I just click run in it put an image on a ten by twenty background and then it crops in five square images. So with that square crop like if we go to square lose a lot of head room it's gone but it's gonna have because I can always and realistically like I shoot, I try to get my crop where I like my crop, but I know that I can I can get anything out of this I get I mean there are rings wallets I can shoot a full body from half a mile away and print a good wallet out of it you don't need that much of amazing that this big so having the information is better than not it's better than needing it and having to make it up just shoot up so you have it so the session that you just shot that would be similar to kind of your beginning first package that's the amount of things you would shoot yep, this would be our smallest package this would be are you pick okay, so obviously you're not in your studio with all the backdrops and things, so would you have done a little bit more variety with backdrops to backgrounds just to to backgrounds, okay to backgrounds and that's because they don't want to, um what ends up happening you shoot too many backgrounds is that the kids will ultimately they don't like seven different backgrounds, and so if you're giving them two shots on six backgrounds and then like I really just like this one background, then you're in trouble and it's also just one of those things where you need to pay the premium price to get me to if you want me to work more in the studio, I need more money and it's just it's just a time thing like it's a time in an experience thing, I want to reward the clients that spend a bunch of money with me and I don't want and I want them to have a better experience then what? Um then what the other clients like I want them to have ah mohr involved experience than just some guy that's not gonna commit to spend any money who were not on her skin tone at all so just going in we're gonna brighten those eyes up just a little bit again don't make him look like vampires and I am gonna get rid of that little hair flew up to do you there and that's mostly because I told her about it and I made kind of us think about it so so that kind of gave me like a funky edge right there so what I would do then I'm going to my patch to kind of smooth it out that way pull way out it looks good okay close it so obviously like a girl like this she's a very like she's a pretty girl so I always feel like it's kind of not a fair example to retouch people that I like are not gorgeous are like that was like well my clients aren't that pretty the lot of high school girls like I want to show you guys some editing of an image like hopefully the guys breaking out today and I could show you some great like how to get rid of zits and all that stuff is well so go in and you'll see that I mean I know you guys can see all of my key strokes online but everything is I mean, the whole way I'm navigating around photoshopped you aren't see me goto windows you won't see me click on tools you aren't seeing me do make unnecessary movements in the program it's just what it iss we gotta get this going you know what I mean? Run my actions rama portraiture! Yes, sir. The buttons on your wack and tablet. What are those program to do? I exported so I have through the action dashboard if you run the dashboard which is what I was telling you guys all about, kevin, cambodia made this and it's free. You can go in and pick and action and click customize and export it as a batch action and when you do that it takes the same action and creates that puts it here like a regular one. So then what I've done is I went in and created my super mega action and that's because I know I'm going to run power out and k p d magic sharp on everything and know I'm going to do that. So what I do is I ran those actions in order with merge so it goes in and does that and I just push one button and created a hot key for it it loads that when I pushed about don't even know what it isthe only isn't it I walk him and that runs those actions and flattens it for me so I don't even have to go up and type in the stuff that I know I'm going to use every time like I said it's all fast, fast fast see what we did on this we're good good good let's work those eyes zoom and no not a lot of eyes because she's just laughing and you gotta admit for a totally fake laughing picture that's not incredibly awful considering that all I did was say laugh through it all I had to dio that's a pretty good shot and it doesn't scream fake but what an awesome chance to sell the mom and image it feels real it's ann and you could spend your whole day trying to capture that laugh or you can create the moment and sell it so shoot with a purpose alright let's liquefy this one just because I know every woman hates this part so we're gonna push that up remember not a lot we don't want to make it look obviously fake and since we're in here that's kind of pull her hair out a little bit who got her face there oh my gosh you're harris so volume this oh I wish I had hair like that alright matthew do you talk to yourself? Is your editing in studio as well? I uh I usually call my friends on the phone what's up alicia just editing a session davey you want a happy hour? No, um all right yellow my employees like what you guys doing? No, I watch I listen to music hey, blair, I told you guys I listen to hip hop I like blair drake and I'm just like started from the bottom biggest I really have such a nerd just like any illusion of cool has been ruined by this creative live everybody knows they like like my facebook image like with my iife was one image is an amazing image my friend juliane tickle me with my shirt off and I looks like I don't even care about sounds naughty I look amazing in that photo I look so good and so I took that shot and I had like a massive canvas printed of it and hung it above my bed my wife's like that's gotta go so then I got moved to another portion of the house I'm gonna run it on two sides of her face just because there's a a big difference from the shot on the highlight so we're running that from baghdad I'm remember all this stuff is to taste so if you don't want skin this move don't run it that much if you want skin smoother running a bunch so this isn't a uh in no way am I telling you do this exact steps I'm telling you that have an exact workflow and if you want to use line I like the way they look I like my pictures if you want a new year's differently I respect that but make sure that you have a system that's working for you and it's giving you consistent results so oh so going back to this picture with my shirt off it's amazing so that thing is photoshopped like like nobody's business and it used to be my timeline photo like so if you clicked on my profile and I'm sure that if you saw that you'd be like and this guy's in good shape turns out that this is a very flattering pose use this makes you look very skinny and then if you photoshopped the heck out of it it looks even better and so now I'm sure like all these people that have never met me and they're on like my facebook and they see me on creative live and I'm like oh he's such a cute little chubby boy we enjoy him so and again we're just using the healing brush and like some of this stuff don't get hung up on like this little hairs and stuff because when we run our actions and we run the portraiture allow that's gonna get smoothed out the small things aren't gonna matter so no I'm not going to take care of every single imperfection because a lot of that's just gonna be done by this well but too smooth quick question while you're working, there was some curiosity of why you are working in j pegs instead of like tips or something exported from light room. Why are you using the j pegs in? I haven't found like you can get big massive files and get big tips and it's great, and if I was doing like a commercial job or something that was working where they might need incredibly like detail in high resolution images with a lot of information in those files, then I would do that remember we're working portrait studio my job is to sell eight by tens five by sevens wallets gallery blocks in j pegs are great for that and it doesn't slow down my system by having a massive file and it doesn't take up more space on my server. I didn't print anything I'm going to need for a client off of this and it works faster and photoshopped, so the reason is simply I don't need to and a lot of times I find photographers do things like you yes, you can what's that nikon camera that she's like thirty seven meg files d eight hundred I mean, that sounds like incredible that you have a camera that she says you do not need that much horsepower for a baby session like it's overkill, so just cause you can have it doesn't mean you need to use it and a lot of people get kind of hung up on that and they want to run at full blast they want the biggest file possible they want the biggest they want the biggest ralph out then what the biggest image that they're working on and then this kid orders a wallet he's been all this time doing all this work that really has never utilized so really quick just cause I asked the question and they kept working what were you doing on the eyes there were you know you really I just thought it's a dodge burn jewel and I'll brighten it up now one thing I learned I'm talking about him a lot today one thing I learned from my friend kurt go clean is that this definition right here this black line that is when when somebody has really pretty eyes it's because that line is a hard defined line now she naturally has this so all I'm doing in her eye enhancements is just adding a little bit more like I don't want to go in and brown I'm up more I don't want to go in and in crazy sharpened because they look good so I just want to add a little bit more life to the eyes but if that was really really faint I would dark in that line we don't need to do that on her and it would just look weird because it's a it's perfect, like that line is good on her. So you didn't. You wouldn't wantto overwork the eyes, but yeah, it's, just the dodge parental so and this one I will get yelled at at the studio for doing because I got the soft box in the corner, so I just took the marquis tool copied a small section of the background, pasted it, flattened it, go right over this little section because they're still that line. And is it gonna work with the? Nope, I just turned something off we have of this other stuff going on so that it, phil content aware, done, and that is actually like that was bad photography on my part, I shouldn't have had that in the image it's like that is the stuff that annoys me is when I have to go on and do that, because that was an unnecessary step that I didn't make any money off of doing didn't enhance my image, and I'm stuck in photo shop doing that drunk, so just going through, like I said, we're just doing the healing brush, getting rid of all the stuff right up the eyes when we're here cool gives us swipe, give it us why, so for someone who is, you know, has, like, more near were skin or whatever, you just do the same process but more yeah, the only thing that would be different if somebody had, like, really, really aggressive you had a big honkin zit if you really were struggling with acne one thing that is different is that because you're changing mohr of the skin a lot of times I'll do it fade it do it again so it kind of gets not just one change and kind of blended in better it's going to give you a more riel result then just doing it with one click so if you really have to go after like massive acne which which happens and I see people sometimes complain about this on facebook or they'll talk to me about like my my business because we say we re touch everything so like when a girl comes in like this I'm like jackpot man like this is lucky this retouched going in no time and then you just kind of have to remember the kids like this when you get a really, really, really that face kid that's going to take a lot of work because sometimes they take more work to retouch I mean, that just happens and so you just kinda have to remember that it all averages out you're gonna have ones that won't take much time and you're gonna have to take more and, uh, something that I saw yesterday do you then completely like if somebody has a lot of acting, do you then completely clean it out or do you so they're perfectly fresh face or do you leave it more realistic what's your style there I take it out, take it out and take it out because I think that um actually I could tell you guys ah, unique story about retouching with an issue that I from a session and photographed years ago but I think that your job is to portray your clients as the best looking version of them and I think that acne is something that goes away in general you are not always going to have acne your entire life and so I think the best version of you is is to get rid of it. I do I'll tell you guys about the story and it was the single bravest moment I've ever seen from a high school senior in my whole entire life and I had a girl that came in at a client that came in this is years and years and years ago and she was blind in one eye she had an accident which was a little kid and had she actually had a fake I it's totally gone it was noticeable it was but it was who she wass and so we came in and we did the session and I shot it in a crushed it it was great photos loved her session and at the end of the session they're leaving and I just say thank you so much we'll see you later bye see, we got you proof book and the mom comes up to me in front of the senior and says I'd like her I fixed in all of the photos and she said, I want that change I want it perfect and I thought, okay, I can do that and the senior spoke up and said no and she said, I don't want that mom and the mom goes well no, I don't want to look at your eye like that in the seniors that's who I am and it was the single like for a seventeen year old girl to look to her mom and say, no, I don't want to look perfect I wanna look like me it was it was it was when I was taken back by the by the ability to say that to your mother I mean that's awesome and so I went in and they left and they agreed that I was not going to do it for the for the images they agreed that I would not do it on her proofs, but they came in and ordered and um oops and the mother insisted that I fix it in one of the images that she was going to order and I told her I said I can do whatever you want you know you're the client you're paying me you're paying me good money and she insisted and we changed it in one image that the mom ordered and everything else went out the way that it wass so retouching when it comes to things like that and when you ask that question about acne and stuff it's it's not who you are you aren't acne if you have a scar I'll ask you wanted in or out I mean I got a massive scar I want that bad boy in don't take that out that her I earned that skye don't touch my scar, but other people might not like it, so unless that would be a cinch unless they tell me otherwise I wouldn't change scars that wouldn't change birthmarks that wouldn't change fundamentally who they are but I would change acne blemishes things like that without noticing that you are actually not necessarily working in layers or whatnot you like you're working in actions and you bounced back and forth between history and actions so you don't create any layers or anything there's like once you're done with that part of it you're done at your own to the next thing then what's the point like it's taking me like table like ninety seconds to go back and redo it you know it only take me a little bit tio go back and redo it so and this one I got a little bit goofy with that I ran the portraiture before I ran the action six like that it's minor differences but I mean I don't get hung up on it so it's good bye bye. So can you come over to the school and can teach a class? I have one available on creative live actually, you should check it out. No. Um yeah man next time I'm in town, I do I go back to my, uh where I got my degree and I go back there and I teach like, one class I'll help out usually once a year I go over there and it's kind of funny because the first time they asked me I got ran into my old teacher and he's a case like you want come by and talk to them about wedding for talking peace and love to you. And, uh, because and I know you guys are going to be surprised by this. What I wanted to talk about with wedding photography is knowing your stuff and having a business model and not doing your friend's wedding for free and I want to go over there and kind of ah preach on that writes it's really excited so I worked up like I was like, all right, I'm going to do like we get our right like forty five minutes to an hour on this and I showed up to the class and the teacher neglected to tell me that I was expected to talk for like two hours, so I'm like let's talk about gear, so that was totally about me. I should have asked what the expectations were. Mary oh, thanks for catching up on clothes and this stuff I mean it's really like the whole point of the whole message of this is like I said, if you don't like the super smooth skin, if you don't like contrast the images, I tend to go a little bit more like I like contrast the images that's what I like, I like my images to have bright colors I like my images tohave top if it's not your thing, if you like muted tones, you want all that figured out, but what I'm just trying to show you guys through this workshop is like, I'm gonna have a session that I'm going to make four to five hundred dollars off in a cell for five hundred dollars in product at least I'm going to make that offer this session. Well, I'm giving this, but in general if she came in, I would sell for five hundred bucks for this girl and I'm teaching a class and doing this in an hour and a half I mean, how long do you think it takes me when I'm really in my studio on my computer and I'm flying this this this photography thing is is important to understand your craft. It is a craft that we practice and to know your equipment to know you're lighting to know how to pose, to know howto have a process to retouch it's so incredibly important because you're just you're just running in circles otherwise and playing photo shop by playing photo shop, but I don't play in photo job at work playing photo shop in my basement for my tv watching like iron man three and drinking glass, maker's mark and checking facebook that's that's when I play, so do that, but don't do it when your work matthew have a question from ryan in memphis, who once who noticed that you aren't whitening the teeth and do you typically do that or not do that? I don't generally because she had good tone and hurt her teeth like she didn't have like she's from seattle, she probably has coffee teeth who, how many people I think that no, no, she had her teeth were white like they were naturally white, and I think they look good in the images, and I think that over whitening eyes over whitening teeth over sharpening things kills it takes it to like a surreal point and you'll and, like, I don't do a lot of eye enhancements, I don't, and I still get people that are like the eyes or to work and that's all I'm doing so if I get into bright ning teeth and stuff, it opens the door for me to have more issues with people, the more study monkey with the more stuff, the more likely you're going to have people that have issues with it and the fact of the matter is like, if you look at photo shop like my theory with photo show biz ah lot of people use photo shop like a drunk guy uses a lamppost, okay, like a drunk guy uses the lampposts and some to lean on I'm just like I'm like photoshopping that out. That's that's how most people are using photo shop it's sad but true and used that that street lamp to light your way that's what it's for is lighten your path it shouldn't be something to lean on, so if you're having massive swings in your images, if your images look ridiculously different from the start to the finish, two things are happening one your image was taken poorly, you lit it badly, you under exposed it too much you overexpose it too much, you did a bad job capturing that image and I hate like I don't wanna sound like a like a jerk and I don't want to sound like your dad yelling at you in the basement to get a job, but you did get did the wrong thing or you're taking you could be taking too much artistic freedom and just spending too much time doing all these things that don't ultimately add up to more money so no there's not huge swings in my work from before and after that's because I'm selling images of kids that look like the pictures I took get it right in the camera I make it I perfected in photo shop and I sell it so it's not about radical change is radical changes mean that you aren't doing your job when you take the picture so I get a preach on that brooch I love that no, I love that because a lot of people do you know who they focus so much on getting everything perfect instead of making them sellable and that's when you're running this type of high volume photography business that's what you're looking for you're looking for sellable you're looking for what these, what your clients want and in your case it sounds like they don't want perfect they want their kid, you know and there's something I'm going to talk about in tomorrow so this is kind of a preview for you but I went to photographers ignite at w p p I and jerry bowman had an ignite that was really it was good because he talked about diminishing returns and I talked about it a little bit differently than he did, but he had an image and then he's talking and you don't really notice but the images change we're in a new slide, right? You know what the heck's going on? I didn't even notice that we like in the point is is one was edited and one was straight at the camera and we as photographer sitting in the audience didn't perk up and go oh my gosh, look at that file it's so incredibly different so what happens is you worked too much on an image you spend too much time trying to get it right and the return isn't there you aren't making more money and if you want to do it because you you just want to work that's I mean that's that's on you but I want to make I want to make money and I want to enjoy my life. I love my job, I love photography and I have a lot of joy providing my family the families that come to me with images that they're goingto keep in use for years and years and years I love that, but I also love my family I love my family a lot more and so my goal is to provide this service for my clients and then spend time with my family because that's the most important thing to me like I love my wife were still in that point of marriage where like I like hanging out with her we still have fun like I go I'm like I goto like w p p I and stuff and I'm like day three I'm like I just miss my wife I miss my dog I want to go home and I like so for me my work is my work is to provide for my wife my work is to provide for my family and I have employees with kids and I have to establish a new income that's going to provide for all these people it's it's, it's it's a weight that you have to carry when you own a business this size and all that stuff that I dio is to make sure that we give a great product but more importantly we have a good life so all right, so we're done with our retouching go to our retouch folder copy based rename it's now these images were going to go in and pick through four images remember we do about thirty percent three times for twelve we took we got picked three or four images that we're gonna go in I'm an idiot there big three images they're gonna go in and work on or images where you go pick some. All right, so let's, go in. I think that I learned from kevin kimoto one time that emotion should sell an image and color khun b distract. So if you're looking to make an image black and white and you don't know which one to do, if it has emotion, put it in black and white, focus on the emotion, not on the color so that laughing one that's emotion. All right, we're going to turn that black and white. We got a little fashion post. I like that one. I'm going to do some work on that. We have this one. I just love that pose. I did that one a lot and then because I don't want all of my image is to be the end I'm gonna pick one of these three and let's just go with it. Let's go with this one. Actually. So I take these images in the photo shop now I know this image and this image or going black white twenty one do you know that right away. So I'm just gonna hit my keyboard shortcut for the action dashboard that's gonna pull it up and we're gonna go with that mocha, black and white, the mocha, black and white. You guys need to ask kevin to explain what the milk in black and white because he's just such an amazing time he's like it's this black and white where in the shadows it's dark rich, creamy brown tones like a hot cup of mocha hey doesn't have maisie doubt it I can't do it I can't do kevin cambodia but a someone right in when he's on because he's in here is a creative life I know he's here on my birthday so april twenty eighth is one of his days so I should get a shout out on my birthday. Kevin have everybody saying happy birthday! So so when I ran that action like I like this there's like I like this, I sell it it's done flattened save it! Move on! All right, let's, go to this one. Okay, I like that now. Let's, add a little bit more interest to this image. Alright let's toss a starburst in yet I don't want to go on her head change two, three hundred quid that real smooth edge run it now that's actually like a little bit too dark on the edges for me so I want to soften it, so just go to my layers take that backing off a little bit second modify all these actions not stuffed with how it goes like if I wanted to make it really dark I could just hit command jay and duplicate that layer a bunch of times and we could make it really dark that would be so nineteen seventies s o okay done you know what I'm gonna do one more thing to this I just think it's going to look cool if we add a little bit of green to it which is so funny to me because we have like these cameras and lenses out now that we worked to have like such incredibly sharp and brilliant image is like it's like we have the ability to create images that have never been as chrisman is clear and then we take these actions and photo shot textures and we make him look like they've been in a basement with mildew soaking on number twenty years it's a little bit funny flatten it save it done okay this image let's go check out something a little bit more vintage e so I clicked this dropdown box it allows me to pick which package I want to look at so I have the viva le vintage so let's go take a look at some of these files you'll see it gives you a little previews as to what they look like but what does this look like on it let's just try it it's kind of cool it's kind of cool now what is distracting to me is that our elbow because it's close to the light it's too bright so I do want to darken that down, so I'm going to run the oops it's because I'm in the wrong action packed here and I'm going to run this action called smokeless burn and that's a way for me to darken the edges and it looks a little bit more real than just seizing the dodge burn tool cool! I like that I could make money after that. Close it on this one, you know, we haven't done any textures don't do textures and all my sessions, but I want to go over that one more time. So even though this might not be what I would really do on this image, I'm gonna show you a texture on it. So we go into this whole vortex tab in click through we just want to see the text chairs we don't want to see oops! I just want to textures we don't want to see the borders! Well that's kind of cool let's, check this out so this one we're going to go in right away and paint off the discoloring ization on her it's flattened that colors like weird, so I want to do something to kind of tweaked the color and I'm thinking that what we're going to go with on this is actually something like a loving, just muted tones. Who did that cool color on it? I'm digging that I just want to soften them, so let's go with this one. Oops actions who that did not look good. I changed my mind. That's. The beauty of these is it's, just super easy to go in, and if you aren't finding something you like, undo it. Oh, yeah, like that's. We'll call it our way. You know what we can do, actually, let's, do this let's, go back to that mocha, black and white and run it. But then let's, go into our layers, palate and back that off a little bit about some of that original color, kind of come back in, make our own vintage tone with that texture, don custom action.