Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Lesson Info

Introduction to Natural Retouching

We're gonna be getting into natural portrait retouching. And this is a topic that I feel pretty strongly about. I don't like to over-retouch anything, so I like to keep things pretty true to what they were, yet fix things that definintely need to be fixed. I know that there's a lot of different thoughts on retouching. These are my personal thoughts on retouching, so take that and kinda run with it. And look around at the way other people retouch as well. I know another CreativeLive teacher here, Pratik Naik, he does phenomenal portrait retouching. Just take a look at his work and see what he does, and take a look at retouching work and see what they do. The thing that we wanna kinda avoid is the overly retouched look. I'll teach you some methods on how we can avoid that. This really is an art form. There's an art form to the retouching, that you can go on a whole... That can be your entire career, is just essentially portrait retouching. Because there's a need for it, it's important, a...

nd doing it well and doing it right, there's definitely a place for that. Couple things you wanna think of, best practices that I consider best practices for portrait retouching. Again, I'm gonna add that caveat. We wanna be true to the model, yet make the end result more visually appealing. So we wanna be true to the individual that we are retouching, but at the same time, make the end result have things cleaned up. Like stray, flyaway hairs, I wanna make sure we clean up pimples that wouldn't necessarily be there. But we wanna avoid removing moles that might be what I call character embellishments. You know, you have certain moles on faces that just are beauty marks that make that individual, that's their character, that's the thing that makes them them. Other things that I'd be cautious of, I've got like a chicken pox scar here on my forehead, that's like a signature to my face. If I get rid of that, then when someone sees me the next time, they're gonna think that I just have this new crater in my head, but that's not necessarily the case. So we have to look at the model as we're shooting them and take these mental notes. Even if you have to take actual paper notes. Okay, that's actually a mole, that's not a zit. I'm not going to remove that because... In turn, you may offend somebody if you remove something that's actually really important to their facial features and their facial structure. Freckles, I'm Irish, a lot of my family is Irish. We have a lot of freckles. And if you remove those freckles, it removes parts of me as a character. So, this would be our before, and this would be our after, right? That looks pretty good. (audience laughter) Before. After. I mean, we're staying pretty true to the individual. No, see, this is not what we wanna do. We wanna go more for something like this, okay? So what we're trying to do here, is we're trying to look at the things that were wrong in the first image, and fix them for the second image. And you can see here what I've done with this photograph of myself... This is a really good thing to do, actually. I was very uncomfortable doing a retouching session on myself, because, it's like a self portrait. But it's not just a self portrait, it's a self portrait where you're pointing out all the things that are wrong with you. So, I challenge you to take your own self portrait, and retouch yourself because it's going to... You're gonna see some things about yourself, that will help you take those mental notes. Like I was telling you about that little crater that I got on my head, that's important. It's a chicken pox scar. But then other things here, like the zit on my forehead. We get zits, even adults do, it's part of life. Looking at things like stray flyaway hairs. This is proof that my hair is not always perfect, okay? I try, but it doesn't always work. Other things that you see that are happening here, the eyes. If you look right here in the center of the eyes, my eyes have this greenish-brownish type of look to them, whereas the regular photo doesn't quite bring that out, but I can bring that out later. Another thing you might not even see here, but what I've done is I've added my own catch lights to my eyes that are completely different from the catch light that I had before. So the catch lights in eyes are really important. We're gonna look at what happens if you look at eyes with no catch lights, it's the creepiest thing in the world, you look like a baby doll or something like that. My teeth, I don't know if this is like a hereditary thing, but my sister and I both, like our canines are yellow. It's like we're, I don't know, literally canine. So those, I know that my teeth have a yellowing on those canine teeth there, so I pay attention to those things and I bring that down a little bit. Other things that are really subtle that you might not notice are really hot spots from the flash or from the lights that I'm using from my light setup. Those hot spots are cleaned up, they aren't gone, they still help shape the face, but they're just not as harsh. They're not as harsh on the lip, they're not as harsh on the nose, they're not as harsh on the cheek. But ultimately when this is done, I haven't retouched this to the point that you can no longer tell who Blake Rudis is. All I've done is cleaned up some things that just don't look that great. It's just like a landscape image. I mean, think about things in a landscape. We talked about cloning things out in a landscape that are there, but we don't wanna ruin the integrity of that landscape, we just wanna cover up things that maybe don't make it as visually appealing. And it's the exact same thing that you're gonna see here when we get into natural retouching. So let's go ahead and hop into Photoshop. We're gonna talk about all kinds of crazy things. Basically everything that I showed you on this, we're gonna go ahead and do on this portrait.

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® is a valuable tool for photographers, but it can also be intimidating. In this all-inclusive 20 lesson course, you’ll go from opening the program for the first time to creating images that really stand out. Join Blake Rudis, Photoshop® expert and founder of f64 Academy, as he shows you how to maximize your use of Photoshop®. Topics covered will include:

Week 1
• Class Introduction & Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Setup Interface, Cropping and Layers
Week 2
• Layer Tools, Masks, Selections, Clean-Up Tools and Shapes & Text
Week 3
• Smart Objects , Transforming, Actions, Filters and Editing Video
Week 4
• Custom Creative Effects, Natural Retouching, Portrait Workflow, Landscape Workflow, and Composite Workflow

Don’t let the many aspects of Photoshop® prevent you from maximizing your use of this amazing app. Blake will help you develop the confidence to use your imagination and create the images that you will be proud to share with your clients.

Software Used: Adobe® Photoshop® CC® 2018

Lessons

Bootcamp Introduction
The Bridge Interface
Setting up Bridge
Overview of Bridge
Practical Application of Bridge
Introduction to Raw Editing
Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
Global Tools Part 1
Global Tools Part 2
Local Tools
Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
Toolbars, Menus and Windows
Setup and Interface
Adobe Libraries
Saving Files
Introduction to Cropping
Cropping for Composition in ACR
Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
Cropping for the Subject in Post
Cropping for Print
Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
Introduction to Layers
Vector & Raster Layers Basics
Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
Organizing and Managing Layers
Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
Screen and Multiply and Overlay
Soft Light Blend Mode
Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
Introduction to Layer Styles
Practical Application: Layer Tools
Introduction to Masks and Brushes
Brush Basics
Custom Brushes
Brush Mask: Vignettes
Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
Mask Groups
Clipping Masks
Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
Practical Applications: Masks
Introduction to Selections
Basic Selection Tools
The Pen Tool
Masks from Selections
Selecting Subjects and Masking
Color Range Mask
Luminosity Masks Basics
Introduction to Cleanup Tools
Adobe Camera Raw
Healing and Spot Healing Brush
The Clone Stamp Tool
The Patch Tool
Content Aware Move Tool
Content Aware Fill
Custom Cleanup Selections
Introduction to Shapes and Text
Text Basics
Shape Basics
Adding Text to Pictures
Custom Water Marks
Introduction to Smart Objects
Smart Object Basics
Smart Objects and Filters
Smart Objects and Image Transformation
Smart Objects and Album Layouts
Smart Objects and Composites
Introduction to Image Transforming
ACR and Lens Correction
Photoshop and Lens Correction
The Warp Tool
Perspective Transformations
Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
Making Your First Action
Modifying Actions After You Record Them
Adding Stops to Actions
Conditional Actions
Actions that Communicate
Introduction to Filters
ACR as a Filter
Helpful Artistic Filters
Helpful Practical Filters
Sharpening with Filters
Rendering Trees
The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
Introduction to Editing Video
Timeline for Video
Cropping Video
Adjustment Layers and Video
Building Lookup Tables
Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
ACR to Edit Video
Animated Gifs
Introduction to Creative Effects
Black, White, and Monochrome
Matte and Cinematic Effects
Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
Gradients
Glow and Haze
Introduction to Natural Retouching
Brightening Teeth
Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
Advanced Clean Up Techniques
Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
Portrait Workflow Techniques
Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
Landscape Workflow Techniques
Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
Composite Workflow Techniques
Landscape Composite Projects
Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR