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Crediting Retouchers: What’s the big deal?

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Hey Pixels!

Before we begin, I must start this piece off by saying that I’m referring specifically to collaborations on social media/magazines, where the aim is to grow your fanbase/audiences, when appropriate, and all parties agree on written credit.

 

Hello guys and girls! *waves* welcome back to another blog post! I have to warn you up front that this one is somewhat of a baby megalodon in size, but don’t worry! There are pictures 😀

I’ve noticed over the last few years that retouchers are one of the rarest things to see in the credit list of a team. So I wanted to investigate further and start looking at why this may or may not happen and if it does happen to you (as a retoucher), what you could potentially do about it.

This is definitely from my own experience and may not reflect other people’s, though I do believe this to be quite commonplace, more so if an agreement was not in place.

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Affinity Photo for iPad updated to iOS11 for speedy drag & drop workflow

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Affinity Photo for iPad has rapidly become the hot favourite for editing images on the go. It’s a fantastic piece of software that’s extremely powerful. It contains the same processing engine as the popular Mac and Windows versions, but it’s optimised for the iPad hardware. Now, Affinity Photo for iPad has been updated for the new iOS11 release.

One of the new capabilities Apple added to iOS 11 is the new Files app. The new Affinity Photo update allows you to drag and drop files from the Files app into the app itself. It means that multiple files can be dragged at once for focus stacking, HDR or making panoramas. And you can drag files straight in from emails, including PSDs, with all layers intact.

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Add style to your natural light photographs

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This week we will be looking at adding style to your natural light photographs. Recently I have shot against my usual style, which is off camera flash. The reason for this being I want to challenge myself to shoot in different circumstances and to gain more experience when not using flash. The image above was a commissioned client shoot. The location was Selby abbey. It wasn’t the planned location, but hey, when you stumble upon a location this good, you gotta use it. And when you have an amazing selection of headpieces from Creations by Liv Free  to use, we probably couldn’t have unplanned it any better haha. As you can probably tell the image didn’t pop out of the camera looking like it does above. I wanted to take natural light photography and infuse it with my own style. So let’s get into how I did that. [Read More…]

Are you guilty of these top 10 Photoshop retouching fails?

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We were all beginners to Photoshop at some point. It’s a rite of passage with just about anything. You have to be a beginner before you can become skilled. And as beginners we make mistakes. Lots of them. But mistakes are how we learn.

This video from photographer Nino Batista highlights his list of the top 10 amateur portrait retouching Photoshop mistakes. We’ve probably all done these at some point or another. But how many of you are still making some of these mistakes today?

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This simple technique turns Content Aware Fill into a very powerful tool

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Content Aware Fill is one of those features of Photoshop that many users love to hate. So much so that quite a few of us have called it Content Aware Fail since it was first introduced in CS5. Personally, I’ve only found it to be really all that useful for extending clear blue skies, and even there it occasionally wants to put a branch or a building flying in the middle of nowhere.

This video from the JesĂșs Ramirez Photoshop Training Channel, though, shows me something I never knew about Content Aware Fill. That it respects layer masks. Something which turns it into a much more reliable and useful tool. This method makes it very easy to use Content Aware Fill where you previously might not have even tried.

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How to create flawlessly retouched skin with dodge & burn

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Retouching skin with dodge and burn is one of the most valuable skill a photographer can learn. It can have such a dramatic effect on your image, but it does it completely non-destructively. While dodging and burning has been around since the darkroom days, the precision of a digital workflow gives us so much more control. It’s an incredibly powerful tool.

In this video, photographer and retoucher ZoĂ« Noble talks us through her process. You’ll want to clean up the skin first to remove major blemishes, which Zoë also covers in this video. But then, let the dodging and burning commence!

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This is everything you ever needed to know about Photoshop’s Liquify Tool

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The Liquify Tool in Photoshop is one of its most controversial and misunderstood features. Many see it as a response when client asks “can you make me skinny?”, but it is so much more than that. While modifying the way people look is almost certainly its most common use, it also offers up some cool creative options.

This video from photographer Nemanja Sekulic shows us the ins and outs of the Liquify tool. Nemanja goes through all of the different settings of the Liquify tool, as well as the new Face Aware Liquify options.

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How to retouch perfect natural looking skin using the clone stamp tool

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There’s a lot of fuss about the overuse of Photoshop and retouching these days. But sometimes it needs to be done, or you just want to. Perhaps you have to clean up a little makeup or get rid of a stray hair or two. Maybe a temporary blemish like a zit or a cut. There’s many different ways to do it, but here’s one I typically tend to avoid. And that’s the clone stamp tool.

I have a love hate relationship with the clone stamp tool. I tend to prefer using the healing brush tool, and only use the clone stamp when I absolutely have to. Mostly because I can never get the clone stamp tool to do exactly what I want. This video tutorial, though, is starting to change my mind. It comes courtesy of photographer and retoucher ZoĂ« Noble, and it’s extremely good.

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Conceptual photographer takes us behind the scenes on the moon’s ever changing cycle

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Swedish Photographer and retoucher Erik Johansson goes all out for his creations. They take so much work that, according to his website, Johansson aims to create only six to eight new images per year. Some of you might remember his mirrored lake project from last year. A fantastic feat of both photography and digital illustration work. Now he’s back with something equally as impressive.

Full Moon Service shows a crew in operation swapping out the moon for one showing a different phase. It’s a very cute idea, and the execution of it is absolutely superb. The project started in Summer 2016, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of planning and preparation before the shoot, and a lot of post work afterwards. Johannson also released a behind the scenes video to show how it was made.

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