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?
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 Jesús 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.
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 Zoë 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!
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.
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 Zoë Noble, and it’s extremely good.
Don’t mind the gap – The ethics of retouching school photography
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There is something amiss with the photo above. I’m not talking about the missing teeth on the left – that’s the right photo. The problem is the photo on the right.
Surely we have lost the plot when we start photo shopping an 8 year old’s gappy grin.
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.
The Ten Commandments of Retouching
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There are some things in life that are just universal rules we should all follow. Things like not cheating on your wife, not killing anyone, and not stealing. Easy enough, right? These are just a few of the Ten Commandments. So if life has Ten Commandments that are just some simple things to not do, then retouching should have them as well, right? Here’s what I see as the 10 Commandments of Retouching.
The mental sweet spot for progression
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There is a problem we all face as creatives in one way or another, and that is either being too hard on ourselves, or too happy about our own work that we take critique very personally. Both of these sides are toxic and they aren’t the essential zone we need to be in to promote and nurture growth with our work and our lives.
Over the last eight years, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know photographers who I have seen become very successful. I met them on their journey and they asked for my help in improving their retouching through one on one consultations. I noticed a trend among those that made it during our time spent together, and it wasn’t just the relentless drive they had in order to succeed, but the exceptional balance of knowing their worth while also being aware that they had room to grow.
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