Lessons

Lesson Info

Lightroom: Retouching

Some of these you can see I mean, I really was happy with some of the stuff that we did especially we got into the color the color controls here in the background and it's just fun. I mean, you know, it's just it's. Nice it's hollywood. Uh, I love that picture right there, but I wanted to take a look. In fact, let me just take a look at her. Yes. So so she's got beautiful, beautiful skin, beautiful face, but I would go ahead and I would soften her face up just a little bit and personally the way and there's so many different ways of doing this. Let me just take a look a period that let me open this down and, uh, I think because it tether can click off this tether, I bet I can close that think if I closed, that doesn't give me my menu on top. There we go. So if you go to photo, I just kind of just take a look here real quick and see yeah, ok, so good. So there's a couple of things that I that I would normally do for a skin there's two different ways that I can soften that skin I can, I ...

can use I'm going the knicks software and use dynamic skin softening, which doesn't really remarkable job or I can also go into if if I don't have that plug in just gotta lie room and you can go to a light room when they go to it's common where's buddy here we go the hell up and come back here we go so there's my basic okay so under this situation what I would do is I would go appear to my selective tool and I think once you click on the selective adjustment brush I call it selective it's adjustment brush then you have this little small thing right here that custom that pops on if you click on that you've got lots of options under there and what people know this there but some people don't know it's there so if you click on that then you can roll down here and you can come down I'm trying to see I don't see it often skin softener they're just soften the skin basic so I'm gonna click on that so now I've got a brush and there's my breast size move over here so you can see it and then with the bracket keys I'm just increasing the size of my brush right? So man, I'm just going to go in here and it's gonna paint that softened skin effect just a little bit right here on her skin I'm just trying to clean it up just a little bit smooth at some of the rough edges on our skin and it's, just a simple, easy thing to do. And basically, you can see over here that the clarity sliders moved down as it does that and you can click the the spate the backspace button before not to see the before and after and if that's more than you want certainly you can go back and revisit that. But I do think that it does give us it gives us the ability to go in and just without doing a lot of work I can real quickly go in. I can paint that across someone's skin and I can move on to the next picture and I can do that pretty fast. And for me, my post production editing work is all about fast. I just want to do I just want to do a quick job, usually in a relatively short period of time. So that's kind of the way I would approach that on her skin uh, and then I wouldn't let's just drive over this way a little bit again. Let's, go back over here where this is. Is that our last one over there? Or maybe may see that let's go back to this one in the horizontal I think I can like the bar's always want to check out her face a little bit, yeah, I like that but I think that the bank ground as they were finished in this up yesterday, I thought, boy, I wish I had pulled the background density down just a little bit, so what? I would do it again, I would go back to the basic I'm sorry I would go back to the adjustment and I would go to that drop down and go back up to the top of it and go to exposure, and I'm gonna take my exposure, and I'm just going to drop my exposure just a little bit like I'm looking at the percentages there I would go down, you know, in the thirties of the third of the stop fifties, a half stop somewhere in there, so probably around the half stop or so maybe two thirds of the stop, something like that. And then I would come over here with my brush tool and I would make the brush bigger to get the big spaces, and I would just bring that down just a little bit, okay? I just like that that look of bringing that brick in a little bit more natural, and I'd do the same thing over here just brush that density down a little bit, and I know this is a kind of elementary for some of you advanced users. But something like that then there's another thing that I would do it on a shot like this, I would go down to, uh, would close up my basic and I would go down tio oh, you got everything open here so let's close that up and let's close that up and let's close that up and let's go down to effects and under effects, I would go down in my post crop than getting tool. I've gotten into a real habit here, and I don't know if it's a good habit or bad habit, but we just all stumble in the habits from time to time on one of those habits that I've kind of gotten into is going to this tool right here and bringing that guy down just a little bit. I don't bring it down always, and I don't always bring it to this level, but I do like the the ability that I have to draw the viewers in by keeping the viewers from going away if I could draw their attention in without looking like I did it, then I think that's the key is, you know, um again, as I mentioned yesterday, I want to make sure that we use a light touch, a light hand on this, and I think it's pretty important to do it that way. I will always go and take a look at the detail and my sharpening I will usually sharp in just a bit and it's going to depend largely museum in here let me hit my one to one it's going to depend largely on what my output is going to be one of the things that I like about nick software's sharper sharpener pro is the ability that I have to go in there and sharpened based on what my output is uh that's a real key important feature I think I like that a lot but I would go ahead and sharpen it just a little bit for the output that looks great to me right there I think she looks I think her lips look a little bit saturated and I think I would probably pull some of the saturation back and go back up to the to the basic to do that um I pulled out the saturation down just just a little bit I always I always I sort of teach when I teach workshops stuff with editing how we still people toe wiggle something left and right and so so I would take and put my my cursor on my vibrance and I would wiggle it left and right and just see what I like it's just one of those little things that you'll see it affect some pictures and really does a nice job to the right just a bit and then still, with a little bit less saturation, you know, something like that so that overall, you know, before and after it goes from there to there and I think, you know, I use the term a lot, and I don't know if it's a I'm not sure if it's a good term or a bad term, but I use the term a lot of polishing my pictures, and I do like to go in, and I just sort of polish off my pictures um and then so what I usually do I'm not a guy that likes the I'm not a big fan of the numbering for my picks or any kind of starring or anything for me, it's just either a picker it's, not a pick, so I just used the p so I'll go back to the head of the of the day and I'll just start throwing just hit the peak, you know, key, and I'll just start barreling through that's what we do, the motion shot the other day, our motion blur. I like that one, and I'm just going through, and I'm just kind of picking some of these at rand no, but I kind of like theirs are painting with light. Right there was our one of our finals on things like I like that a lot. In fact, while we're there, I'm just going to I'm going to show you what I would do to this real quick, and I'm bringing this exposure down just a little bit, something like that. Of course I'm going to come in and prop it, uh, bring in just a little bit, get rid of some of that stuff back there and, you know, this isn't I'm not trying to editing one on one here, I'm just going to show you briefly some of the quick things that I would do to something like that, but you could get you get the idea, and this was all painted for those that weren't with us. This is all painted with a mini mag flashlight for during a very long exposure on it just gives us a cool kind of a look, um, that allows us to do some things that we couldn't normally do little highlight their little shadow there, an extra highlight there, so something like that anyway, but that would be one of my picks. I don't think I hit p yet I would pick that, and I would just again, like I say, I'm just driving through the day. You know and and as we go through I'm just looking at stuff that I pick so there was with him without the reflector and I would probably pick both of those so I could use them both for demonstration purposes or whatever and then as I get to the end and of course I would go over here to the to the drop them flag here and I would just go show me the flag ones and that way you just get rid of the clutter I get it all worked out now I will say this let me just tell you how I sort of structure my my my image file system if you will um I'm pretty big on on having my folders are arranged by year so in my light room I've got one catalog now a lot of people make a catalog for every shoot I have one catalog and it's tony on colin tony's big a catalog on that's the name of it it's the big a catalog and the big a catalog has folders that say two thousand two thousand one two thousand two two thousand three that's when I started doing visuals two thousand so I've got digital folders all the way out if the current under that current is folders under the name of every every job that year right? So I've got the whole the whole root directory is basically one big string of you know connected brackets, if you will all the way over to that shoot and then when you open that chute in there is the entire shoot, plus the hero files and then under the hero files are the hero files that were retouched. So I've got the whole thing strung together, and if I do this the same way every single time, I can't go wrong, so what I do is, when I come in from a shoot, I take my cf card, I plug it in, I dragged those pictures onto my big a route director will I go into the folder? First? I've got a folder of tony's image files, and then there is the same year is two thousand two thousand one two dozen, although up to two thousand thirteen, so I dragged those images in that folder first into thirteen. Then I opened the light room catalog and import those pictures from that position so everything's always imported from the same position. I never lose a file that way, I talked to photographers all the time they're in live when they can't find their pictures, and they just keep getting that thing the file is missing, the file won't be missing if you place it where you're going to believe it, leave it there and then imported from that position, so I do it exactly the same every single time. Andi that's. Just the way I do it. And there's, you know, it's fun about photography for me, all of the things that were talked about in the last couple of days. There are so many different ways of doing everything. And back when we were shooting film, everybody did everything the same way. We sort of shot the same way. At the end of the day, you shoot a roll film, you would look down the tab as you finished with the role of one twenty or two. Twenty. Stick in an envelope and send it to the lab. You'd wait a week and the proofs would come back five by five and there's your negatives. And then you would client would place order. You'd cut the negatives, put him on a card to send him back to the lab. Wait two or three or four weeks. Prince would come back from the lab. We never did anything in post if you want anything to be done, you know, did it when you shot it. So if you want to softening, you got put a soft focus filter in front you wanted. And yet you had to put a vignette in front, you had to do everything at the time, other than maybe retouched temples, zits. And then introduced digital, where nobody does anything the same way and digital think about all the work flow for me. I think the digital workflow begins with how you set your camera first off, I think everybody thinks this it'll work. Flow begins with retouching well, I don't think so. I think it starts with setting up your camera, but from the time you begin until you deliver a print or make a print in every step in the work flow, I think there's nine steps that I identified and each of those nine steps there's at least five or six or seven different software is available, and there are different ways of using all of those nine, six or seven softwares and in different orders, so nobody does the same thing the same way. When someone says they're teaching a workflow class, I just want to laugh because everybody's work flow is totally different. Nobody's workflow matches nobody's I love the way kevin cambodia tags his images in light room. I hate the way he does his catalogs. It doesn't work from have tried it, but that's for me. And so everybody does everything a little bit different because the tethering you were shooting jpeg files do normally shoot shake pig, I almost never shoot j peg okay, so the white balance that you're talking about setting where do you know make those adjustments but those carried over in the raw files making those adjustments of white balance but you you would set the camera for daylight daylight? Sure or you'd set it for shade or cloud whatever I said it for, okay it's that carried over in the raw file sure this would have to make any adjustment at all. Okay if I shoot with daylight balance what I get is daylight balance when I opened the file in light room it's done it's there. Okay, what if I make a change? If I if I take a picture of you with daylight, take the same picture of you with tungsten and I open it in my room they look different so yeah, that it is carried in sure and I don't have to make any adjustments if I've done it properly and that's the that's the key guys I love digging into this stuff I love digging into this stuff but I don't want to do it any more than I have to and I don't want to do it to fix a mistake. I want to do it to make something look better and if I can do that I win my client wins and it's all I just think it all the universe comes together a little bit better so that's that's what I think question russ, you look at me like you have a question, I'm looking at you like, I love what you're doing. Do you have a great do you photograph and edit in adobe rgb years? Rgb? Um, start with the end in mind. So my question is it depends on what the output is if my output is going to go to a white house, they frankness rgb or do we argue be? But they don't friend pro photo, so I would never said in pro photo, I would never work in pro photo because my lab doesn't do that, so I would probably work in s rgb, you know, if you've got a file that you captured and adobe rgb and you're trying to get precise color and you're showing it on the web, you're making you're killing yourself because the web is set up is what? S rgb, right? So you have to start with the end in mind. My answer is, I don't know what's the end going to be if I'm going to make my own ink jet printer, I'm going to capture and adobe rgb, I'm going to go through photo shop or live room in adobe rgb, and I'm gonna output and adobe rg because that's, what I'm printing him so it all depends on the output I just try to match it in my color space I don't overthink anything, I just want to be consistent all the way through, and I think that, you know, adobe rgb is a pretty big color space compared srg so if I captured an adobe let's that captured in s rgb and in photo shop, I'm working on toby rgb, so I've taken a cover space that's this big and then it inter plates this big as I added, and then I go off to the white house to make my print and then it comes back down to adobe s r g b to output I just killed my quality of color. Well, so I just my statement on color spaces, I don't care what you do just do the same on all three steps, depending on what is the output that's best? My only so bucks on that my only rule to live by own color balance uncover space I usually shut my used to shoot up to about six months ago in color temperature just you know I would I would dial it in manually on cone. Calvin calvin doesn't says she raw, my peers were telling me, why bother? You're capturing every single piece of information anyway, and so I just that's the only thing I shouldn't auto now as I just leave the white balance and auto and I just checked with the w if you click the double if you go in, you could just check to make sure it's accurate should I go ahead back to doing come oven? Or should I just leave it? Auto? I don't see much much what you won't if you're using the same consistent light all the time, but if you're in varying lighting conditions, you're going to see big changes for me. The word auto and almost every aspect of our world means evil. Yeah, use the cameras during the thinking well, it will help you and save you half the time and kill you the other half the time, and you never know when that's going to work and it's not auto color is the same as any of the other auto exposure features as long as everything's under control and you know, what's taking place autos great, but if you don't know what's going on and you don't know what's taking place, you could be in really deep trouble real fast. What auto he was just going back to the common temperature than are back too. The daylight I would suggest whatever works for you for me is to use the presets, okay, I use daylight, I use shade, I use cloudy and I used tungsten I use those for everyday, okay. I don't use anything but those four and never go to kill them, and a lot of my friends do. But I just don't. I just I stay with those presets because I've dialed in on him, and now I get it, and I understand them and accurate with him. So I just leave it there. Thanks.