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Retouching

let's talk about retouching. So we just went through 10 ways to ruin skin. And at the end I am going to do just a little wrap up and hopefully you guys can keep that checklist in your mind. But a really easy way to mess up skin is retouching and it goes very, very wrong. So taking a look here, retouching problems. Either the skin is too smooth, it's not smooth enough, the cloning or the retouching obvious or you're trying to fix freckles or something, you're getting rid of what you don't intend to. All right. So one of the things that I would recommend everyone stay away from often is using retouching plug ins before you understand how to do it by hand because if you just use the retouching plug in, you don't quite know how to back off when you need to back off. And whatever the plug in gives you is what you go with. So I definitely, even though there are shortcuts and things that help out, I start by making sure that I understand how to use the essential tools like clone stamp blend m...

odes, patch tool, spot healing, Um how and we will talk about something called frequency separation. So to try to do a plug for day three. frequency separation is what high end retouch is use and what it lets you do is that lets you separate the texture from the skin, Put it on the top layer and then you can perfect and even out the shape and the smoothness and the colour and the tone of the skin and then add the texture back in. So when you're trying to smooth out blotchy nous or reduce the shadows and wrinkles or even out blotchy nous and pimples all of that. Usually you're worried that you're going to be getting rid of the texture. This particular thing that I'll share with you, lets you fix all that and then add texture back in and you can fix any texture problems after and it looks real and it looks gorgeous. Um So the problems that people usually have are going too far and just using the retouching plug ins, whatever they give you. Um Retouching plug ins are fine but I would be a little bit wary. Um Also with this class I have a retouching checklist that I recommend that you take a look at. Um It goes through all the things that I'm looking at for the skin In general. For retouching. Um for a quick retouch really quick. I just want to improve an image is going on Facebook. I usually only spend about 10 minutes if it's going to be an image that I delivered to the client, they're going to have that file or they're going to have that print. I would say on average I'm spending between 20 and 40 minutes. It depends on how bad their skin is. If it is going to be an insanely beautiful beauty advertisement then it's 30 minutes to an hour That being said, I really don't spend that much time. It's practice makes perfect Another question that I get a lot is all about, do I do my own retouching or how much do I do? Generally what I like to do? And I'm gonna show you a lot about retouching. What I like to do now in my career is from a set of images. I retouch one I retouch 1 to perfection exactly how I wanted to look. And I have done my research and I have a series of Rita Cher's that I now work with as a fashion photographer where I can provide them that one image and say I want the others to look like this. And so a lot of my retouch is that I have used, I found on model Mayhem Rita Cher's that have portfolios there and what I'll do is I'll give them a sample image, I have the before and I have the after and I said make it look like this good or better and that's how they make my cut or not. So at this point in my career I still do retouching but it tends to be one or two images for a segment. Whereas if it's creative, I still, I do all the creative work any compositing any special colour effects, anything like that. Um what we'll be talking about on day three is basic, this is kind of the over basic blemish removal smoothing out skin blending modes and different tools, color correction. So color correcting by curves, how to fix an image where there is um split light when there's a mixed light in the scene. What to do if someone's face is a different color from their chest? What do you do if there is a color cast to the image? What do you do for an instance when there's couples of two different skin tones and they're not matching and you want to help bring that exposure in a little bit. Things like smart objects and so that is retouching but it's much more than that and it kind of is all bunched together. There are 10 main areas that ruin skin. 10 main things that if you don't take control of and you don't know about if you're not educated about a photographer, the skin can be ruined instantly. So the very, very first one is white balance and just know the auto is not your friend and you need to find some type of solution if having beautiful skin tones is important to you. You've got to do more than auto. My recommendation was considering an expo disk or something like a color checker or I also had a data color um Spyder cube. So some solution to give you a neutral target in the scene. So you can achieve white balance and post or setting a custom white balance in your camera. So wrong white balance will mess up your color number two is going to be mixed lighting. So mixed lighting would be daylight balance and tungsten in a single room and so you'll get blue and yellow on the face. So my first recommendation is to try your best to get rid of one of these light sources close the windows, turn off the light, do something so that there is just one lighting situation, one colour temperature in the room. If you can't do that, what you're going to do is pick the dominant light source. So let's say the dominant light source in the room is tungsten. You're going to set your white balance to match that dominant light source and you're gonna gel your flash to match that dominant light source and try to overpower whatever that mixed light is in the room, you can overpower that other color. That's going to give you a nice even skin tone and have instead of having mixed light. Okay, the next one is color contamination and this is one that I would say I see. The biggest problem with most um, kind of beginning photographers professionals or not is unwanted color cast created by contaminating colours. So what you want to do is you want to go to a scene and analyze it. What could be adversely affecting the skin tones. So things that would adversely affect the skin tones would be maybe your assistant has a bright colored shirt and a lot of times I don't have my own assistant, it's mom or dad of the person I'm photographing and if they're wearing a bright colored shirt and they're holding a reflector, you will definitely have color cast in the skin. So maybe it's asking them to wear solid colors or maybe it's just being more aware of that. And also the subject, maybe if they're wearing crazy colors, having them tone it down, keeping that in mind, another problem for color contamination is also going to be in the environment, taking a look at the environment, analyzing, okay, what is the actual light source and kind of look around what light is hitting the subject's face. So maybe there's a red wall right here and you don't think it's your light source because you've got the sun our but it's definitely hitting your subject and giving a red color cast. So that's something you want to look out for, The green hitting the grass. So what you can do is you can either move your subject or you've got to overpower the unwanted light. So overpowering unwanted light could be popping a flash in. This could be a studio strobe or speed light or going ahead and using a reflector to try to overpower the unwanted color and then the last part of color contamination that you want to stay away from is if you're shooting in the studio and you're getting ambient light meaning the fluorescent bulbs from your ceiling are showing up in the shadows or maybe the daylight light from the windows is showing up. So you want to shoot at a fast sync speed or do something fast shutter speed near your sync speed, do something so that when you take your trigger off and you take a picture without the strobe that you don't see any light. So those are the major ones for color contamination. The next one would be camera files and also settings. So just the super duper basics of it is you always want to shoot raw. If you're not shooting raw, you're not getting the best skin tones, there's no doubt about it. You want to be shooting raw When you're processing your files, you want to be working in 16 bit and you want to be at least working in adobe RGb, maybe pro photos, a good fit for you. It depends on what your needs are, but you need to go through and check along your entire workflow process that all the settings are right. So you need to make sure if you're in light room or adobe camera raw or exporting in light room or the open as settings that it needs to be the correct color space and the correct bit, depth 16 bit and then opening it as a Tiff. You want to also keep in mind that you want to start with as much information as possible. And I use the dress analogy because you want as much information or as much fabric to work with as you manipulate your files and then your final product, how you export them. It's whatever the end result is going to be, maybe it's for a monitor, maybe it's for facebook or maybe it's a print. Well then you have after that is going to be color management. So color management actually begins in camera getting the correct white balance. But the next part is if you do nothing else, at least calibrate your monitor. So there are products by data color and X ray, you want to make sure your monitor is calibrated and something that might help you out is investing in a better monitor. Really expensive monitor, inexpensive monitors aren't going to show the correct color. So how can you possibly see what your camera actually captured? How can you possibly see what we'll end up in the print. So you do want to take a step to do that. And then the final part of kind of managing your color and color calibration is doing something called a soft proof. So finding a way to prove your colors to see how it's going to print or how your conversion from your color space from one color space to another, what that's going to do to your file. And we talked a little bit about rendering intents, so take a look at that. Number six is exposure. And the most important part of this is just to be smarter than your camera and whether you are metering with a meter external to your camera or whether using a metering mode, just be aware of how they work and how to outsmart them. Um So that is an important part for exposure. Okay, number seven is quality of late quality. Light means how soft or how hard is the light and you're controlling that primarily by your light modifier choices. Harder modifiers are going to be harsher on the skin. You see more texture, you see more wrinkles, they become more saturated. Harsher modifiers have more contrast. So all the blemishes, everything shows up more on the opposite end, softer ones are more flattering to the skin. The problem is maybe you want a little bit more crisp shadow. Maybe you want a little bit more shape to the face. So you've got to kind of figure out based on what your goals are for that photo, what modify you're going to choose on the hard end. You have things like the silver dishes, then in the middle you have things like beauty dishes and parabolic umbrella umbrellas. And then on really soft you have soft boxes and the bigger the light source in relationship to your subject, the softer it's going to be, the more diffused it's going to be in the more flattering to the skin just cause it's more flattering to the skin doesn't necessarily mean it's the best for your photo, depends on the look you're going for. Okay, so number eight is going to be direction of light. Direction of light makes a big difference to texture to the uh the more you move your light off axis up and down left and right. You start to show more texture. So the higher up, for example, you raise the light, you'll see more wrinkles or the more to the side is it rakes across, you're gonna see skin texture that you might not want. So flat light kind of flat to the camera? Lower and centered gives you the least amount of texture. But also gives you a really flat looking photo. There isn't much dimension. The more you move the light up, maybe the more carves out the cheekbones and jawline, the more you move the light to the left or right. It starts giving you drama, starts shaping the face. So your job again is to figure out where that balances how much shape you want, how much dimension you want. But at what point is it going to create too much texture? And at what point is that the look you want? And you're just gonna have to retouch it. And that's kind of part of choosing the modifiers and choosing the direction of light. Number nine is makeup. My recommendation is to use a makeup artist when you can and if you can build your business around the idea that when they hire you there's a makeup artist built in, it's going to make your job a lot easier. We recommended some key products that you do want to purchase for your makeup kit, your essential photographers kit. And this doesn't mean you have to become a makeup artist, but instead it's things like blotting papers. So if someone has oily skin, it's kind of hard to retouch this out, especially if they go over exposed, you're gonna be able to block out blotting papers on the forehead. Or if someone has really dry or ashy skin, having a really, really great moisturizer to be able to uh kind of have it soak up that dryness and it's going to make it easier for your retouching as well. And I also recommended giving your clients some kind of guide, some kind of guide saying, okay, don't wax a few days before your, before your appointment. Try to figure out your true color uh tone for your skin. And giving them some ways to educate themselves about makeup, even if you can't hire and then also learning to communicate with your makeup artist so that they can help you contour and shape the face and have makeup that actually works with your photography instead of just doing makeup, like you would see every day you need to have more makeup than someone would wear on a typical day because the photographs actually eat it up. And the very last one is retouching, which will spend a lot of time on. Um, but for retouching, your real goals are to get rid of temporary imperfections. Help someone look their best, but keep skin tones don't make it, keep skin texture, don't make it look over retouched and also to have correct color. So that is what an entire day of day three will be going over. So all these, these are the top 10 things that ruin skin. What I hope you can do is if there's something that you feel you have a weakness on maybe practice it. But in any photograph or any scene, take a look and make sure I have my white balance correct? No mixed light. Okay. The person is wearing a black shirt, not contaminating my scene, having your camera set right in Photoshop. And so kind of going through all these things and having that balance again for the lighting, the texture and the mood.