Lessons

Lesson Info

Post Process: Hard Light Retouching

Remember this we were cross walking with a wide angle lens usually I'd use a longer lens of this to compress people into stuff into a moment and here is the closing image ok, maybe we'll do one of these closing images because it's pretty they're so cute I'm told to get convinced them to go on take pictures ah again we're going to go flat so they lope they never really had a good photography experience so we're gonna for sure given that opportunity to do this again do you guys have fun with it was not fun like these remember this is all we did we grab this shot from simply opening a door leading light come through you see how the brides turned in towards the light remember that we molded her first to light then gave him her reason to look in that direction that's that's the groom that's the reason why she would be looking that way see your feets turned away from the light but back in so that light the highlight is on you know I can't really see it here it's kind of she's lit so well but...

the highlight normally if the room was dark and black it would be this tiny little highlight on her side there and the shadow would be very large that effect sled arises directional light is a great tool for for for any any bride any couple, but especially for our plus size couples, which, you know frankly, most of us are the majority. The people deserve these techniques to be used. Um, I'm having fun looking at, and I know we're in the photo shop section, so there's too many fun options here, okay, this is not horrible, hard light we used it as rim light remember instead of dealing with it and they were super cute and their emotion posed and a big dip. Oh, look at that the motion post into really natural looking, beautiful, beautiful dip right there. I don't know maybe should do one of these because it's hard light it's difficult uh, these air already jay pig I would use um in a in them in our light room, I would use the recovery slider to really bring back as much highlights as we could in the shadows to the shadows adjustment slider to balance it up, I always all also my camera settings again shooting raw in your camera's headings go to the most neutral camera setting you have don't pick, like vibrant or any of these things that add contrast your images, I strongly recommend if you're going to do post production work and create this type of art, you've got to start with, frankly, a very flat flat as possible if you want you want that dynamic range of your chip to pick up a cz much as possible they don't want the camera software compressing anything so strongly recommend I think the setting is called neutral in at least the cannon siri's okay, way to go every time I turn off a function that makes this everytime touched the stylist bridge because we're so I lost it. Where is it? Oh my gosh too many fun photos how did that happen? Tethered you tell my attitude about the whole tether thing but it worked out thank you guys for finding great location for us and making it fun thank you for playing with it was it was a joy all right, this could be the same thing we really we could we could pull that over easily. We can turn that into easily a single image spread this image is a lot of issues with it, so I think I'll be a good place to start. Really what we want to do in this image is bring the attention towards the focus she's looking at us, you know and that's right there that is where I belongs right there circuit dodge and burn we'll take advantage of of, um the light on her face bring out even more we're gonna we're gonna bring down the light in other areas let's start here so first I hide and remove hiding remove is the first thing and I don't have much to do here hi to remove but what I do have is distracting lines remember I talked about the rectilinear environment that we live in his artists your picture takers you don't care so much if that linus slightly off but watch this I'll have to do is go command j get a new layer on top hit command tea for preaching free transform and slide this over now I'm architectural shooter and I automatically instantly see eyes ar sorr I instantly see lines line's always have to be straight with architectural entire fee we used to use tilt shift lenses to get that effect um also one wonderful thing that I give you permission always do with a horizontal image is a member of the distortion effect now this is a seventy two hundred and pretty far out probably about one hundred twenty five millimetres out you always have the permission on a horizontal image on a horse only shot image to do this okay so I straight the lines and I stretch them up slightly okay you always could do that just a little okay but if you do any of any of this convergence divergence fix it if you do this to your image you have to counter that because that will make them a little wider at the bottom right or sometimes you got to do that and that makes their heads wider so you counter that by going that way okay so let's get in here and start so way didn't do high to remove or not removing anything from this image we're just going to work with this busy nature it doesn't matter but I'm going to direct the eye towards what we want and that's her beautiful smile and you know I really like their natural motion posed body you know it's really it feels real to me so let's put a mark here on the area want to seymour off and I'm going to feather it I get to use the square marquis cause you could circle but square so fast and easy and you can hold shift in at areas see but watch filter they're select modify feather I have shortcuts on my computer to do all this stuff let's go two hundred pixels goingto curves because this is a specific thing I'm doing I'm using curves this time it is requires a little more control and up we go but I had a little contrast there it is and lovely okay now is dodging bird but what is going on here? I'm gonna bring down these areas holy shift uh and I'm grabbing areas that are a little bright and I'm gonna feather that select modify feather two hundred pixels again went up and this time it's a broad stroked item so I could do levels levels the broad stroke and I will take the middle slider turning to the right ok I could even move I want to add some gray into it I can use this slider here okay or dark and over here sometimes you have to do this you see you'd add a little grey in there and at the end when I do texture of the top it'll hide that gray well that slider so good things air starting you know I always do the screen test where my issues or how about this one see if I haven't laughed for you khun turn image upside down and eat instantly one hundred eighty arbitrary flip vertical okay this is a technique I want some ofyou beginning re touches to dio you to turn off your literal rain and turn on your emotional brain by flipping the image upside down this will help you see the problems with your image okay is tried and true effective way of doing retouching if you want to start go hey what's wrong I hear you're not distracted by the expression of our bride here heidi instead you're seeing the lines you're seeing the highlights or dresses a little hot there's a dark area to the left we can we can burn that out let's flip it back and I'm going to do just that I'm going to brighton here I'm going teo I'm dosing my short custom not working right now filter because we're in a different mode filter uh, that it, uh so left off it's like, modify feather. I'm used to getting up six and we're gonna go levels again and we're bringing up dodging and burning so some brightness there ok now everything's pretty even pretty even now let's really bring it in towards the attention so I'm gonna put a marquee round just them square that's where we want everything coming in and I'm gonna blend the darkness outward here it's like modify feather two hundred I want to do it again just like modify feather and saw two. Fifty this time I'm additive did it two hundred picture feather on top of the two. Fifty I'm just like the inverse shift command I and I'm going to noe darken the outside this is definitely something I do in the levels format so let's go levels and it's gonna blend it all in by smid tone slider and in we go beautiful all right, now I'm going to find to knit with the brush on the layer mask itself. You don't need channels what's this a little dark in here, isn't it right there let's make sure he brushes real soft it is, make it a slightly smaller would have paid back area here and here and here remember, I'm in flow right now, so the more I scrub on it, the faster it goes, I can go put my flow down to two percent you could just scrub away it's so much fun, so all right, let's, finish this thing now oh, by the way, I could find tune a little bit more, hit x and watch my swatches turning toe white we cannot painting white, so anything I paint white on will become darker painter dressed down a little bit he's from the same thing, I have a highlight issue here that a judge would eat me up over a judge would eat me up over this entire images to so busy, but you know what? These this isn't a type of image that you you you enter this time image that you please your clients with, okay, totally different you're not doing this for competition ever. Your job is to make an image beautiful um, for your clients and you know they're not going to notice so much blown outers like this were forced to use this this corridor, darn it, we're going to make a beautiful marketable album spread out of it, right? Okay, so in this case, it's going to be a small image, an album eight by ten I don't necessarily need to do our skin do it I don't know I don't so let's finish without the skin I've brought our attention to the viewer now let's finish with perhaps a texture and a diffuse glow and see what happens so we're going to the action set from the transformational toolbox I'm gonna hit uh texture overlay and we're gonna hit I like this first one and I love this one personally made this it's got a really small texture to it they're cross hatches and it's got a slightly warm color but also brightens it image you'll see individual national be brighter because the texture will do that to see but it warms it up we're an entirely new experience now hit enter so I can hide the by the way that the texture textures and they're pretty darned massive their big question why quick question as far as like you takes you because I noticed that the first one to have on your list I guess that's like your favorite do you keep their same texture throughout? You're a book oh dear changing question yes it will become the theme of the whole book yes and for that matter the treatments of each image should be exactly the same unless you really like trying to make a statement and go intentionally different okay uh jim really quick janet was asking us all questions just asking how if you have any tips on keeping a consistent editing color as well. In addition to the tax insistent editing color, just color overall. Look, feel if you're editing each individual emission photoshopped. Yes, yeah, all starts with the color correction process in the way kolet, which means we edit out the bad images and then we color corrected. So each siri's of images, I have the right tone, and then we try to keep that tone as much as possible with the techniques that we use. So the colors, when we add contrast, you notice things become more saturated, et cetera. We put those contrast ng more saturated layers into a a blending mode called luminosity, and I could show you that right now luminosity maintains the original color, so I'm not sure if I'm answering that question right, but we absolutely pay attention to mostly the colors of all the images put together in a single spread. A single story. We need those to be perfect. But obviously, throughout the entire wedding day itself, things need to appear real to life. Real tow left as if, like, ascended being this section as if it were done in the film during the film era. Okay, let's, go in and finish up this picture and the way we're going to. Take this texture in this case, I'm going to blur it off just because I think that's a better technique to show, but you could also cut a hole in that layer with layer mask, so I'm gonna feather it's select, modify feather this selection, and now I'm going to get on the texture itself. I'm a blur filter blur god, gendler goodbye texture, but the tone remains. I'm now going to lower the capacity of the whole image. Sorry of the whole texture brings back a little more contrast, and we don't need to add anything else like gran because we didn't blur anything necessarily in this image, you know, we could get a depth of field shot by messing with the left side. There I might blur the whole texture a little bit because it's a little intense on screen filter blur gods and blow the entire thing just a little bit and you'll see out here it starts to go away and on their skin, it's completely way, so two blurs on the same texture. So now it's intense for you at home on here, in the studio, on this computer screen for a reason. Remember, lower down to where you feel don't necessarily see it let's do the final thing. A technique to this image. I'm going to grab everything duplicated flat into a brand new layer on top by hitting command e, which is emergent visible layers and I'm going to add a diffuse call filter distort to fuse glow. This is going to make the whites pop into a brand new lovely place. I may have had black as my foreground color let's find out. No! Oh, it's perfect. So for this to work properly, white has to be your background color. So that engine that a few school engine searches for whites. Ok, let's, lower the impasse. E that's make it. And then we'll find tuned by hitting a layer mask, cutting the whole areas that were kind of blown out right here is a little bit of distraction right there. Back here, this window. Clearly the shoulder is a problem with the arm. But you know what, it's? A perfect ly sellable retail image. So let's, take it before and after real quick. Okay. Before, after or before. After before, after it's moving out of that space there dodging burn bring in the motion. Bring your attention towards the center at a bit of pop that's all really.