Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction to V Gallery Postproduction

Well, everybody, this is my husband dead he's actually gonna be doing this morning segment um and it's because in our business we have very specific roles um I have said it a few times I am not a technical person that is jet, so I'm very thankful because if there are any technical questions anybody an audience or online has about our workflow or any you know, computer stuff he's going to be the guy to ask so today this morning will be your chance so I think really ultimately what jenna and I worked on late last night was I was using and pulling in some of the images from the shoot yesterday that way you guys could see what they have just looked like and so really just tio take them and implement them into some of our workflow things on dh kind of show what an image wass how we kind of proof it but that even, you know, taking it that next step further. So I think what that go for it? Yeah, we tried tio petrify my program last night with images that include pets because my program typica...

lly does not include pets, so we took a lot of images that vicky shot over the last couple days and inserted them in here so make it a little bit more applicability to what we're talking about so I'm gonna go over some workflow stuff and a lot of the things that I'm going to talk about are really going to focus on making what you knew in post, more efficient, um, and trying to maximize the amount of time that you're spending in post, um, a lot of the things that I want to talk about, our specific to our studio but can also be applied. Teo, everybody else, we we had a bigger space, and now we've downsized quite a bit eso we've gone tio quite a bit of an evolution in the last couple years, anyway, but we've been out of our house, huge studio, smaller studios, we've kind of been all over the map, and a lot of the stuff that I talk about will apply to wherever your and your business, if you're a one man, show her one woman show, or if you have three or four employees, you can employ a lot of these principles that I'm talking about to what you're doing. Um, I'm going to start off with a few tips here regarding light room, uh, these air and some of these air subjective to but again, this is just kind of the way that I do it in one of the number one things that I do in light room is that I create a new catalog for every session. And we used primarily light room to edit to call and make some adjustments to your images we have seen presets and then photoshopped to do a lot of design or even you know further retouching stuff like that so those are the two programs I mean photoshopped for us is still a mother ship of all applications and it's where I feel the most comfortable doing whatever I want to do but like room is fantastic for calling calling down and applying is thinking a bunch of adjustments across the board white balancing color correcting things like that but my tips for light room have five of them that I typically throughout two people creating new catalog for every session that's the way we do it now someone could argue the other way like someone can argue I want every image that I've ever shot one catalogs like a new quick searches and I can you know look through every image on the same cat look that's fine we've found that for us it's better to create a new catalog for every session so every client has their own lightning catalog they're smaller if if one of them becomes corrupt you don't have to worry about it. You know it's it's probably backed up somewhere else on our server but I'm not dealing with the gigantic catalogue with tens of thousands maybe one hundred thousand images in it I don't want to do that render one to one previews when you're importing and that is here have light room open and when you import in your library module in light room, this box comes up and this is where you can change that and we we render one toe on right when we import the images. Now we do that because that way the rendering is on the front end, and as I'm cycling through images, I'm not waiting forever and we do wonder one because we want to look at, you know, this sharpness around the eyes and really zoom in um, you can if you're just going to be like calling something like a first edit, you know they don't have to be rendered one to one you can render him standard or even or even smaller so you could just quickly go through and not have to worry about zooming in on the images. But if you want to zoom in and check for sharpness, I'd render one to one now that's going to take more time on the front end and you have to wait a little while, but I go get a sandwich or a drink or something. I get a sandwich a lot every time that my computer is doing some work I just say I go grab a cheeseburger or something on unfortunately that's that's not an exaggeration that's fairly accurate so render one toe wind that way most the work's done up front and then you khun click through your image is really fast and looked for sharpness if you want to zoom in um hit and here's here's the big one and this is you know like the bottleneck every time I talked to a group like this it's been eight years I've been doing this I talked to a group I always say look what's what's the bottom and everyone's like I just have so many images to add it I just have so much to do on the and what should I do and I just say shoot less just don't shoot as much and I know that's easier said than done I get it I'm not a photographer but I'm not you know a stranger to the fact that it's you know it's digital you could just fire off you know spray and pray or whatever people call it and I know that there are sometimes especially like if you're photographing pets or if you're photographing ah wedding or something like that were sometimes spraying prey is somewhat necessary maybe forgivable in certain situations but I told people shoot less and I know that there are people out there that have the opposite philosophy and they will say you're not doing it right if you're not going to a wedding and shooting three four five thousand images and that makes me want to puke don't sorry forgetting forgetting where I'm at I don't don't do that you know don't do that I tell people shoot less you know and I know that all you can edit in light room really fast well, I don't care if you're the best editor in the world you can edit fifteen hundred images faster than you can add a five thousand a lot faster, you know and it's just taking up less space and it's taking less time to import there's a million different reasons to shoot less I tell people become familiar with your camera you know those muscle movements that you know, the different settings and things that you have to change even on the fly even his things are happening with pets and you're outdoors or at a wedding and it's just chaos I get it but those the muscle movements that you're doing to change settings on your camera your client should be watching you like this not like this, you know they should see you like this as much as possible uh so learn how to shoot learn how to like learn how to pose lighting should be like second nature you know, um in any situation and that's what you guys are doing, you know, that's what you're furthering your education those are the types of things to really focus on so that you can shoot less and be more comfortable behind your camera um and then a cz faras editing goes pick the smaller amount when you're heading in other words if you have uh one hundred images from a session and you want to get that down to thirty don't pick seventy to remove pick thirty to keep you know does that make sense so you're picking thirty and you change your mindset accordingly like okay I'm gonna keep thirty so I'm going through just gonna pick thirty that I like okay as opposed to worrying about seventy but I have to get rid of its more than double the work you know and and vice versa if you're if you're gonna keep seventy and get rid of thirty then just picked the thirty that you're going to get rid off you know that's for your mindset if it really does make a huge difference especially for you know bigger sessions I said one hundred images we rarely start with a hundred images it's a point of contention I'm just sitting here fighting I live right now well we have lots of points of contention and maybe you know maybe we'll get to some of those when we do our doghouse was telling some people I'm kind of in the doghouse right now for the way that I was last night you can talk about that too I just haven't been very nice lately anyway way alright so so shoot less all right I'm gonna keep going number four automate automate autonomy. Your computer is set up with these programs, and these applications too do a tremendous amount of work for you there's a learning curve virtually every time, whether using light room and it's presets, or the using photoshopped in his actions, or whether you're sinking in light room. But these are the types of things that we really, really, really need to get a hold on our hold off if we want teo really shrink the amount of time that we're spending in post automate you guys all the time. You see on my desktop, I have droplets appear that I use all the time. You know, if I want to set up a preview if I wanted, you know, size something down the resolution of my projector as nineteen, twenty by ten eighty turns it into a j peg, I could grab a folder of one hundred images, throw it on there walkway get sandwich! Come back, it's done it's all finished or burrito embryos to, um so that's another thing, I'm going to go over a little bit more in detail and then don't export anything bigger than you need to export it. And this is something that I think people don't always have a handle on, either when you're exporting digital proofs. And it's just gonna be for the screen the resolution only needs to be seventy two d p I you don't need these gigantic files for your clients to see his proofs you know and some people do that because they do you know they work on every image you know they have seventy images of the session there showing the client they're going to go through and they're gonna manipulate every image by hand and that's how they want to do it and I say god bless you if that's the way you want to do it but there is no way then I'm going to get caught doing that I mean I'll run an action on everything while I'm eating a sandwich but it's going to get old isn't it? But but I am not going to sit there and read touch every image and my client's gonna order three for maybe ten images if unlucky out of seventy that I spent you know four hours till two in the morning you know that night I've just heard that story over and over and over again so don't export anything bigger than you need to because they could just be these little tiny small files um resin toe what your projector is like our projector is nineteen twenty ten eighty it's the resolution my projector it's ten ap projector so just find out whatever you're projecting or what however you're selling on your monitor that's the resolution at seventy two that you need to you need to worry about for your client anything bigger than that is really a waste if it's if it's just for digital proofs that you're showing people to sell and it's just gonna take up more space and it's just gonna take longer and any time they're moving or you know anything anything you're giving anything with the files even within the application everything's just going to take longer okay let's move on and get down to some of the new degree functional air mass I'm going to go through some things in photoshopped mostly now photo shop I cannot divide it into two sections kind of the production or maybe it would be left brain analytical type production type stuff and then creative part kind of the right brain um two separate things to separate hats that you really have to wear andi I look at it this way because for the longest time when we started our business I was doing both you know like everything she shot would do everything and poets like all the editing going through and color correcting and then then going through and doing all the retouching on everything and then designing all the stuff and then and it's two very very different things and some people are stronger at one and weaker at the other some people are good at either one in which case hire somebody else do it or outsource it but I don't recommend doing both of these things for anyone even if you're good at it um because it takes an awful lot of time you know and I really believe that for the most part we should be either outsourcing this because there's all kinds of options to do that or hiring, you know, employees to come in and do some of it for us let me not all of it but some of it especially like first edits you know, you go through you have all these images let somebody come in and had it that now we get interns interns are great, you know? I don't know if there's some interns here I don't want to offend anybody but interns are fantastic, especially high school interns, college interns, a little snooty I kind of think that they kind of airbending been there done it and this is for my job. This is for my career high school kids they're just happy to be in there, you know? And if you get one that has an attitude, you just say goodbye and get another one because this is like a pool of high school kids at your high school I mean it's photography this is like the hottest thing to do right now so you have tons of people to pull front, so what someone comes in it's their problem okay goodbye and then go get somebody else and they'll come in you have a new person they could do your first editing or unwrap your packaging or whatever it is that you want an intern to do go to the post office or whatever we have get a sandwich for you you know if jimmy johns is running slow that day for some reason okay, so I'm going to go over some things that maybe you should be doing yourself or somebody that's more trained or skilled should be doing right away I'm gonna go into glass clear now this is using layer mathis's the functional use of a lamb and ask okay, this isn't going to be like really creative stuff we're gonna go through the boring production stuff first thank it into more than creative funder stuff later but if you don't know how to use layer masks and most people do, I think nowadays but some people still don't or even if they do, they're not really comfortable with a mask later mask are essential in photo shop if you're going to be working in voter shop a lot um this is and this is just functional years of one with glass clear, but if if you have lasker like this is what this what this woman looks like way hotter take your glasses off for one shot and then you can just grab her eyes hear with your lasso tool and do a quick copy which is commander control c and a quick paced commander control v and kind of line that up zoom in a little bit so we can see and then I'm gonna add a layer mask on in my layers pout I'm an addle their mask onto this layer appear that one that I just paste it and I'm gonna hold down the option key and I'm going to hide everything when I click my layer mask button down here holding down the option key give me an automatic hide everything because that's what lair master doing? I'm either hiding or revealing you're not erasing with layer mass it's not destructive that's what's so awesome about lamest you're either hiding or revealing so I had this layer on top okay, what is it clicking? Ok, just layer on top don't know why it's doing that there we go and then I'm going to use my white brush let me just start over it's not working okay, so there is my layer on top I'm gonna put a layer mask on top of there after I get everything lined up first let me line it up so use my layer mode difference okay? This isn't my layer modes I'm gonna go to difference and this kind of gives you this negative effect I'm gonna line up her eyes this way it's a good way this is a really good way to line things up okay so I'm looking I'm gonna line up one of the eyes and then I'm going to do a transformation which is just commander control t and I could move that midpoint over one of the eyes like that okay and then it's gonna rotate that's the access that's going to rotate on and I'm gonna line up the other I like that so it's just a little bit tilted now it's lined up I'll go back to normal now I'm gonna have my layer mask and hopefully it'll work this time that was weird um okay there we go and I'll use my wife to brush okay one hundred percent and now since that's all lined up I know that I could just go in and get rid of that glass claire and it's gonna be really seamless I'm even getting rid of that reflection on the frame or from the from the from the glass okay so the biggest thing here is again in the camera room shoot or a location shoot them without their glasses you just have to get him to take off their glasses like that you know and it also helps if they're gonna be smiling to get him to smile I'm not really smiling right now but if you get on the smile you see how it changes their eyes so get him to do this then getting too serious and if you have to turn it like this and then get him to do this, you know, just take a few shots that way so that you have on hand for your glass for problems that you're gonna have later because I'm telling you if you don't know already that's really hard to fix by itself and we had a little rule first cause vicky was forgetting teo get this shot and then our rule was okay, if you forget to get the shot, you got to fix this and then she then she always got the shot after that because it's really tough to get you could work on this for forty five minutes to an hour and the person will look like an alien afterwards, they look worse than what they did when you started so important when you're dealing with glass clear to get this shot without the glasses, but that also is really, really a way where you could get what a layer mask does. Okay, you're selectively hiding or revealing anything you want between two layers and that comes in tow well, here's ahead swap and this is where we're using puppies this one's a little bit tougher because I just got this last night, okay, so what we're going to do is take this puppy's face here and put it on this one is a blinker gotta blink or even dogs blink apparently so I'm going to grab this this is the part this is the part that makes me a little bit nervous because I didn't have any idea that I was going to be doing this until about twelve thirty last night he's like how about a dog head swap yes that's also much session to go teo so we have this again I'm using difference tow line that up right? Okay and I did this last night and it did work so I hope it still works today um but I'm just really gonna be focusing on the eyes and the top half the dog's face nothing else because he's blinking so I'm gonna line that up as best I can think mediation tilt it a little bit looks like it needs to be brought in a little bit maybe squeeze down a little bit and then kind of moved up I'm just trying to line those eyes up is best I can it looks a little weird on the screen but then when you go back to normal okay I got that now I'm gonna hold down my option key and usual air mask that's hiding everything black hides so everything's hidden like it's not even there right? And then if I use my white brush I'm going to selectively reveal whatever I want on that that layer mask so I'll go in now oh it's a little high so you can see it's a little high way just move it down we just move it down ok laugh at me and then I'm gonna go in here oh it's a little wide it's okay you guys because then we just bring it in like moving over like that this is what this is what happens on the back and you know I didn't show you this okay but this is what it looks like this is what it looks like in a retired dungeon you know, that's usually where I stand okay, so I'm just gonna bring it in a little bit and maybe I'll bring in some more light you know I can get that right now it's starting it's starting to work ring in his eyebrow there sure can well, no, I just wanted to say just to clarify what we did, what he did with the glass clare and this thiss actually would not be something unless this was the only way to get an image of the two dogs looking like we don't purposely like try to go to all this work ahead of time this would be a bottleneck so even the glass claire we don't fix the glass claire before the client's way point we just have a folder in there called glass claire and with like they're brought captures their j pegs class claire so whoever's retouching images at whatever point they order they can't go to that folder so that's posts that's now something like this though, is this were or in a family shoot river that the only way to get an image that's like wow, they might do a wall portrait of this then you do it ahead of time I know a much nicer do it ahead of time and give them something to buy you an option because I would rather do that spend a few minutes or pay someone to do it and do a reshoot but see e shifted around a little bit, okay? You know, the point is it could be done and it can be done quickly and easily, you know, with a lair mass and that was that was just off the cuff that's, not normally what I show, but it it works, you know, and I'm and I'm using transform and I'm using a different slayer mode, a lineup and amusing, transform free, transformative commander control t and I'm using my layer mask I'm hiding everything at first so it's all black, and I'm using a white russian light black leather mask to reveal selectively what I want and you just tool with it and play around a little bit and you can pretty much nail it within a minute or so