Retouching Cinematic Portraits in Photoshop®
Lesson 48 from: Cinematic Lighting for PortraitureChris Knight
Retouching Cinematic Portraits in Photoshop®
Lesson 48 from: Cinematic Lighting for PortraitureChris Knight
Lesson Info
48. Retouching Cinematic Portraits in Photoshop®
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:29 2What is Cinematic Lighting?
06:42 3Motivated & Practical Lighting
07:41 45 Cinematic Lighting Tips
04:53 5Low-Key & Upstage Lighting
06:26 6Control Your Fill Lighting
05:18 7Show Depth In Your Image
13:24 8Pre-Production for Cinematic Lighting
22:42Grip Tools: Clamps
08:41 10Grip Tools: Apple Boxes, C-Stands & Grip Heads
10:53 11Grip Tools: Pins & Portable Gear
04:50 12Grip Tools: Scrims, Silks, Flags & Tape
13:52 13Grip Tools: Wind and Haze Machines
04:07 14Grip Tools: Unusual Tools
04:47 15Grip Tools: Filters
11:05 16Grip Tools: Q&A
15:04 17Theater Shoot: Concept
08:03 18Theater Shoot: Pre-Production Considerations
08:48 19Theater Shoot: Lighting Gear
04:27 20Theater Shoot: Motivated Lighting Considerations
26:47 21Theater Shoot: Lighting Walkthrough
20:45 22Theater Shoot: Capturing The 1st Shot
27:37 23Theater Shoot: Hero Shot
21:47 24Theater Shoot: Capturing In The Seats
21:48 25Airstrip Shoot: Concept
05:49 26Airstrip Shoot: Pre-Production Considerations
19:31 27The Haircut: Location Specifics and Motivated Lighting
13:17 28Working With Scrims On Location
06:34 29The Haircut: Getting the Shot
24:28 30The Haircut: Shooting Plates
08:21 31Staggered Planes: Location Specifics and Motivated Lighting
08:10 32Staggered Planes: Getting The Shot
08:23 33Capturing Plates With Talent In Background
16:26 34Airstrip: Environmental Portraits
07:01 35Airstrip: Location Shooting Q&A
22:05 36Using Plates to Create a Pano in Lightroom®
16:08 37Transform Tool
04:50 38Post-Processing 1st Theater Shot
09:48 39Retouching Details in Photoshop®
13:09 40Color Grading in Alien Skin Exposure X3
06:27 41Post-Processing Theater Hero Shot in Photoshop®
08:11 42Creating a Spotlight in Photoshop®
05:31 43Adjusting Color for Cinematic Lighting
12:28 44Post-Processing: The Haircut
12:08 45Coloring the Sky and Removing Modern Building
05:10 46Creating a Pano Using Plates in Photoshop®
17:12 47Developing Cinematic Portraits in Lightroom®
07:29 48Retouching Cinematic Portraits in Photoshop®
08:57 49Color Grading Cinematic Portraits in Alien Skin
13:20Lesson Info
Retouching Cinematic Portraits in Photoshop®
In terms of different distractions, I probably want to minimize, the one in particular. I don't like the one on the nose. You could soften some of this stuff. I don't really necessarily hate it. I don't love both of these. I mean, you could say that it's the sun, right? Like that is believable. But, let's see what it looks like taken out. So, we're going to create a new blank layer. I'm gonna come through here. I'm going to use the healing tool on the nose. Get rid of that. There we go. Good. And then, I'm gonna come over here, I missed. Let's see if we do this. And I'll fill it with a content aware. Maybe that'll work. Not really. You know, you could also do stuff like this, where it sits on top and then you can fade it away. So, you know, I take this. I take my erasure. And, maybe you do it at 50% or 30%. You can kind of bring it back a little bit. So, I mean, it's an option. I think this is fine. I don't think you notice it. This would be a really good place for this image to start.
I'm gonna remind you there's an Alex soft photograph, where the guy's holding two airplanes. So, I'm gonna zoom in here a little bit. We'll do a little bit of cleanup on some of the things. But, I don't really wanna do too much. Let's get rid of maybe some of these threads, a little bit. Cool. This is what I was talking about, where you can take a catch light from one side and put it on the other. It made it a little bit bigger. I'll brightn it up later on, and it'll be even more amazing. OK, this looks pretty good with the clean up. Not doing too, too much, keep it relatively natural. I think that looks good. I mean, this might be a little bit distracting. Probably can come out. Maybe something like, nope, wrong one. Something like that. And then this is where that erasure can come into play. Just kind of fade that out a little bit. Yeah. Good. Yeah, a little bit less distracting like that, I think. So, I'm going to dodge and burn here to give this a bit more shape. I'm gonna create a solid, a 50% gray layer. I'm gonna fill it with 50% gray. You can also do curve adjustment layers. It doesn't hugely matter. But, this is a 50% gray layer set to soft light. This is my favorite way to global dodge and burn. So, you're creating new blank layer. You go to shift delete or edit and fill, and you change the contents to 50% gray. You don't want to create a solid color fill layer. Don't do one of these. It's gotta be filled, because it's gotta be pixels. Change this to soft light. And, now I'm gonna be using my dodge and burn. Right, here's the dodge. That's the one that looks like the lollipop. And, the burn is the one that looks like the fist. My general way that I go about this kind of stuff, is I'm usually around 8-10% on a mid-tone for doing global dodging and burning. But, to make this a little bit faster for you, if you hold down the option key while you were on one, it will give you the opposite tool. So, here I am at dodge mid-tone 9%, and it's dodging the mid-tones, right? That makes sense. But, if I hold down the option key, it will burn the mid-tone at 9%. You're not gonna see any change to the tool, but know that when you do this, holding down the option key, it will give you the opposite tool. So, what I do is, I use it as a way to switch back and forth between these two tools quickly. OK? And, I'm just kind of tracing what's already there. I'm using that as a point of reference to create that depth. I'm just kind of tracing along and following it. I'm gonna zoom into the eyes a little bit. Brighten those guys up a bit. Darken the edge. Okay? There we go, that looks good. And, so that would be kind of how I would shape this image, by using the local dodging and burning in this way. You can also obviously extend it to the background. So, we'll do some stuff back there. Create a little bit of depth with some streaks. Come in here, darken the bottom. Let's darken that whole area over there, which I think is a little bit distracting. Darken the edge of the frame a little bit, give ourselves a little bit of a vignette. OK. And then maybe, dodging and burn, it's an art. And, once you really figure it out, it can just transform the image. And then, obviously, you can lower the opacity of this particular layer. If you find it's too strong, you can blur it. There's a lot of different ways that you can use to really finesse this particular step. So, again, lowering the opacity, if you find that your dodging and burning is too streaky, give yourself a blur and a Gaussian blur and you just kind of turn this up. Zoom in on the face and you can see it a little bit better. Here's what it looks like right now, and then as you blur it, it just kind of fades what you're doing, and softens it a little bit. And, it can become a really good easy way, a really good easy and effective way, to make, um, fine tune this. Obviously, you can see how significant the dodging and burning can be here. I'm gonna show you one extra cool thing that I like to use on glowy areas like this. It just kind of like a blooming or halation of light. And, so, what I'll do is I'll grab a new layer and change it to something like a soft light. And, I'll sample this bright color, and I paint it, just over top, where the light's hitting, to make things just a little bit glowier. Because I like sparkly things. (audience laughs) Yeah, that looks pretty good. And, then what I'll do, is I'll lower the opacity. Like, obviously that, alright? And, so it can make metal glow. You get that glowy effect on metal. You can get it on a lot of different things. I just think it adds a nice little soft, pretty golden effect, which I think is pretty cool.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Bruce Walker
This course is simply terrific, and I highly recommend it. Firstly it arrived at the perfect time for me as I am soon to do a studio shoot very much in keeping with a cinematic or theatrical aesthetic. Secondly it's taught by Chris Knight who I swear is like a long-lost twin brother. :-) There are so many parallels in the way he thinks and works to my own style. So I avidly watched this as soon as it was available for anytime streaming. This is the first time I have made extensive use of the CL iPhone app, btw, and I love how it pretty much enabled me to seamlessly switch back and forth from desktop viewing to my iPad that I carry around the house during the day. I was able to make coffee and still carry on taking in the course, uninterrupted. The content is fantastic, delivered succinctly yet entertainingly. Some material and ideas are already in my repertoire and were reinforced and validated by Chris' demonstrations. But he also introduced a lot of ideas and methods new to me and very welcome. I was particularly glad to see how practical it is to stitch a series of tripod shots into a wide pano. I have been afraid to try that but I will now be using that in my next shoot, for sure. As alway, his post production practices revealed all kinds of tips about Lightroom and Photoshop I didn't know. Negatives. The volume level mastering is iffy. It started out at a decent level then midway through one of the early lessons dropped so much I had to turn up my sound system to compensate. And as I write this one lesson (34) is missing and in its place was a duplicate of the next lesson (35). I expect CL will have that fixed shortly though (I sent support a note).
Jeph DeLorme
One of the best classes I have viewed at Creative Live. Definitely worth the investment of time and money. The pace of the class allows you to learn extra tips and tricks throughout the process. Great instructor, highly recommend this class to anyone looking to step up their creative game.
a Creativelive Student
excellent class in all regards. outstanding instructor with experience in complicated cinematic shoots but who also is willing to thoroughly cover the basic nuts and bolts. i wish all creative live classes were of this quality.
Student Work
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