Lessons

Lesson Info

Portraiture Post Production

um one of the one of the things that I like about light room is all the great benefits it has I utilize uh product called nick's off work quite a bit because of the great stuff that I find that's in color facts pro four and a swell as in silver facts I think those were great supporting software's for photo shop in light room both uh and formerly aperture which I did you some as well but but what adobe has done you no lie room start I think is a cataloging sort of organizational software has an ad on as an a junked add junked for photo shop and they just kept adding more and more great tools and great tools in great kills and now it's like my room's like what a great tool because then you could do so much you can't do everything with it I can't do compositing no text there's a lot of things that you can't quite do with it and that's that's good I don't want to do anything more than I'm that I'm doing but I will take a look at something like this where I'll click on the adjustment brush ...

and I'll click on this little effect right here a lot of people missed this a lot of people don't know that that's there this little drop down that says exposure if I click on it it opens up a lot of options for me with the adjustment brush and at the very bottom of that is one that's called iris and hands if I click on the iris and hands let me change this brightness here let go backto one two again actually and bring her eyes just a little bit how's that focus whips how's that focus on her on my phone my little four lens that nobody likes uh sorry so before I start painting with this and before start brushing the effect look at this like look at the change in the sliders over there so the temp and tent is fine the exposure is up a third the clarity is up to ten percent saturation is up forty percent I don't I really wanna mak muck around with the saturation unless I keep it just on the iris if it gets in the white of the eyes be careful about using saturation because if there's any red in their eyes it over exaggerates it so you want to be careful about that but if I can keep it right on her iris that's okay with me but I think I'm going to even make it stronger on the exposure just a little bit too fifty and I'm gonna bump my contrasts very slightly because I'm just weird like that and now I'm gonna get my size about the size of her eye and I'm gonna click on it and I'm just gonna do this I'm just gonna wiggle it around just a little bit count it like that and then I'm gonna come over here and do the same thing on that I kind of like that and I'll click done now let me show you the before and after by hitting the back slash you guys know this I'm sure but by hitting the back slash you can see before and after and it's a subtle thing but it's a real quick and easy thing that they've added in it makes life a little bit simple force for us all uh now if I back out just a little bit more let me go ahead and go back to the ratio again just like that then I'll go back to the justin brush again and let's just go to that drop down again that little hidden value guy right there and it's come down to soften skin now if I click on soft and skin if you look at all the sliders the on ly one it's affected is it drops the clarity one hundred percent now here's what clarity doesn't not sure if you guys know this one off you studied this much but clarity basically is adjusting contrast in the midterms that's pretty much it that's what it's done so by dropping that value to minus one hundred percent that's a lot for skin softening so I think they got it right by having the filter in there but I think they got it wrong in the default settings many of the default settings I don't like I would cut him in half so I would take that clarity slider and move it up a little bit maybe minus thirty money forty some it's a subjective thing unless you have another software that you use for skin soft but I can do this real quick and I'll hit the forehead I go around the eye hit the nose at the bridge of the nose hit that cheek that chance stay away from the teeth and I stay away from the eyes completely and so when I click ok on that one now when I see my before and after and you can see the subtle changes on her skin and just softens up and cleans up just a little bit now one of the tip I'll show you in retouching on the face and this is everybody there again and I'm not going to be the photo shop guy here for the rest of the day I am going to tell you that in the world of photo editing and postproduction there are so many ways to do everything and you guys know that but one of the one of the tricks that I learned about eyes everyone anywhere has those little small subtle lines right there under their eyes babies haven't newborns have it two year olds have it everybody has those little lines this is not unusual thing this is not because somebody's old everybody's got it so here's what we do here is this is the way I fix it I'm gonna go in the photo I'll go at it in I'll go to photoshopped someone open that file and photoshopped real quick because this is this is a quick down dirty way that I do it um without having used any kind of outside um uh products so let me uh zoom into the sky more so you can see what I'm doing so I'm gonna grab my patch tool and I'm a guy that I'm a guy that loves my patch tool and there's a feature on the patch tool that only shows up occasionally and what that is is once I click on the patch tool I'll grab that my uh my cursor and I'm gonna click and dragon I'm just dragging a selection right here on this line and I'm being kind of loose about I'm just kind of missing the eyelashes but I'm being pretty loose about this and I'm just going to grab that like that so now I got my marching ants and I'm just gonna drag him down and get some new information and let go now it completely got rid of the line which I don't want so now before I click off of to turn off the march in ants if he now go to the edit dropped down now you see a new selection that you didn't have before that says st pat's election that doesn't even appear until you've marked moved let go and then you go change it before you click off of it so now I'm gonna hit fade packs election and I'm gonna drop that guy back to fifty percent now look how much more natural that looks under that eye it's still there but I've changed it dramatically and I did it in seconds seconds seconds seconds seconds seconds bam bam bam bam bam kept new information head it they'd pack selected fifty percent click okay I'm done it's just a real quick I didn't do enough there did I on that side looks a little heavier so let me try that again I'll do it like that at it fade pack selection and I'll drop it back again to there that looks a little more natural there we go makes sense then when I go command us and save that file when I go back to light room it's there you guys get the idea there she is with her eyes all cleaned up so that if I could hit that back up and take a look at it but then always I'll always not always but I usually on something like this outcrop in it if that was my hero shot of course I'm going to crop it a little bit and then I'll always go down to the effects and I always take a quick peek at the post crop netting I'll always at least take a quick look at it and I'll grab that I'll just tweak that a little bit do I like that just doesn't need yourself a little hit of that sometimes it just needs a little hit something like that just to hold the view and I don't want you to know that I overdid anything but I do a little subtle moves like that so that makes sense okay um I wanted to go backto one more thing and we'll go through this and show you some of the quick edits as we as we wrap this thing up but I did want to show you uh uh one edit that was especially important um that would be way go oh I know where he went never mind also tea later I'll stand by it I'll wait till we get to the end then I'll show it to you um but yeah this is this has been a this is this is a fun shoot this whole day at the at this home was terrific for me um let me show you this was the this was the last of the shots that we did of her in that situation and then you can just go in and you can brush him with the clarity adjustment for the soft skin doesn't have to go on scan put it on the background you're the wrinkles you know so there's some things like that that you can do it's almost like if you think about it ah lot of people haven't figured this out yet but when you have um um um like any of the skin softening techniques that you use our fabulous on flowers they're fabulous on rose is you have a close up of a great red rose that you love use one of the soft skin softening softwares and brush it on use of gulls and bird change your gulshan values but brush it into that those rose petals and it becomes velvet so there's an awful lot to it there's an awful lot you can do okay okay um one of the things that I want to show you real quick let me go find there was a picture of of this girl right here where john was in my frame just a little bit with this hand and of course in something like that you're gonna have to go in and fix that uh but again let's think about if I if I can get myself further away I have so much more room to work back there because my lens sees less of the picture so again as we know just keep bidding that topic to death but when you are in confined spaces it really really makes a difference um take a look also and this is this is one of those pictures that where if I go to the the basic setting look at her face that zoom in a little bit here and let's just go to the shadow slider shadows whites and blacks well off or even the highlights those four sliders have been become so improved over the last maybe three or four years that it really really does uh it makes light room a very very powerful tool and if you you certainly don't want to open up all the shadows but if I open up a little bit of a shadow you can see what's happening there and if it looks like I'm affecting the highlights too much in the background too much great then go in there and put it on the on the adjustment brush and just painted in there right by the way you all know that when you move sliders like this in light room if you double click on the slider it'll go back to default zero you probably knew that without having to go over here and type and zero or tired of moving around to you can try to find zero just double click it's just a short cut uh so I'm just going to go back to my brush too I'm gonna go custom I'm gonna go shadows up and set that back to zero set that back to zero and it's gonna open up that shadow a little bit and then I can come back and evaluate that I open enough for that open it too much and it's kind of like it gives you the ability to not have to taken assistant to hold a reflector I don't have any editing budget great then bring a reflector and bring in a reflector here we go in and great uh and then I might pull that clarity down just a little bit in the shadow interesting thing about shadows when you are editing and shadows if you if you open a shadow I will promise you that shadows have left contrast than the highlights so any time you open a shadow you might seriously look at consider opening your contrast bumping your contrast slightly I found that with that with many of the plug in software's where they have shuttle controls that are really fantastic and that's great except that if you don't change your contrast as well you can get yourself in real trouble so all right