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Conversion Q&A

Lesson 27 from: The Art & Business of High-End Retouching

Pratik Naik

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Lesson Info

27. Conversion Q&A

Lesson Info

Conversion Q&A

First of all, one from night bird who says how do you deal with halos the white artifacts that tend to appear around objects of high contrast which are very prevalent in landscape photography but also in general is there a good way to fix it without spending much time cloning it out? Well, life I've learned that hey, those will typically happen um when I apply a lot of sharpening for someone if you're shopping techniques or don't get halos if you try to rattle of contrast you, sometimes we'll get halos selectively. I haven't been known to reduce the clarity of, say, an image and use that as part of a small object when you do that clarity in the other way, it really takes care of halos and then I selectively apply that around edges that takes care of that or I may just go in dodge and burn that halo so that the halo is not there, just like I did with the area around the roof where there was a halo going around and I quickly just dodging burn that out to make it blend and if you have a p...

roblem, those blending modes will really help you really find tune where is going to affect what right? And now this might be too big of a question, but we would have heard a couple of variations on it fashion tv from singapore can you perhaps show us or at least tell us how to remove reflections especially from someone who wore glasses and it reflected our light modifiers oh boy, I think that actually is a big question because the only thing that has happened for me I tell the photographer before the shoot take out the lenses and instantly you don't have that problem it's gone there's also no distortion because you notice when you shoot someone with glasses you have an issue with the eye looks big right the second you shooted issued it based on your lights and so forth she gave her the two issues you get rid of those refraction shoes as well as the issues with the light. Secondly, I've been known to help a lot of my clients that if you are shooting someone with glasses make sure that the light is not place for you have a lot of the reflections coming through however there may be situation where they say I really need the reflections to go what I will then do is essentially find a file that may not have reflection and use that to composite the eye again because there's no way to move a huge reflection covering the eye because you can take out something that's behind it unfortunately so you know it's it's yes and no answer but it's one that requires good preparation and prior to well of questions in here let's keep going excellent okay um so you know before this technique let me just stack these together and put them in it's only er you can see why turn on and off I kind of get the end result that I'm kind of looking for it really bills and lends to the fact that allows you to get the exact version that you want without having to do so much work before typically what I would do is again just you know this thunder black and white slider but what happened was it didn't give me that exact control that I wanted so you can combine these techniques together he's the best of both or one of the other but that's my main method of actually going to black and whites before this I used to always use things like greeting mapped also do black my conversions because here what would happen that's not black and white way here this's anybody who's watching that there's a difference you can set your end points of black and white however you can see it's quite flat right this what typically happens with the black and white conversion you get really flat file on dh there's not much you can do with it but here instead of having the complete black image you can raise the black level to you know bring up the showers love it more or say take your highlights and essentially reduced it also allows you to add tense in your black and white. So say for example, you want a little bit of yellow tint your highlights go to your black wine cider at a little bit of yellow, just a tent just pushing a little bit of yellow in there. It's like you're bob ross, you know, just a little happy clouds here and we'll be together here. You say that because there were some conversational lounge calling you the bob ross of my day hasn't made I'm I'm done guys, go party, I'm going to celebrate and that is fantastic. Thank you. Where is it? Uh, let's see here. So with a greedy map here now with the shadows, you can also add a little bit of your saturation. This is fantastic because not only can you control how deep or how shallow your black point is, you can also include what color you want in your black point and with saturation, you wanted it. So again, like I mentioned when you go up and down on this grady in't map picker was great editor. You can essentially pick you know what tone you have and then you can pick uh, what color you have as well as a saturation of the color, the more you go on this side more saturation and us I mean, when this side had less situation has so it kind of gives you custom, you know, black might. Look, if you want a little bit of a film, you tend to it, you know, maybe some expired film or something. Not too sure, but, you know, there's an option for you for that. So yeah, those were my essentially what I want to show you regarding some are objects. Well, just one clarification for ah, high five. Is this the same black and white technique that you use for shots of people or do anything differently for shots of people? Typically, I will stick to using this child mixer because one really cool things that have one really cool thing that happens with people and let me see if I can reproduce this effect, I will go ahead and see save this as I should probably do. All right, here, here, here's, our beautiful image again. And I love looking at this now because it's finished and I love it when an image is finished. That's all there is is why retouching image is to get there and gold, like in the ground hog tryingto we'll have sort of wheel, you know, continuously working for every single image, okay, enough about my hamster stories we're gonna go on and so say we have ah portion right and we want to do a black conversion for a portrait will be the same thing if you notice that in the individual channels the way that the skin is rendered it's so different on easily channels typically you can get away with just being a typical black white conversion and you know going into black and whites and adjusting your skin and so forth by pushing your slider left and right and your color left and right to but sometimes you don't know what color is included in the file you don't know what type of um look it's gonna have just based on the fact that let's say you want to increase increase more details in the hair and the dress well over here what happens is you're kind of at the mercy of the color that an image which is okay because you know with this you can kind of get it with dodging burning to emphasize or decrease the contrast and tone and so forth however with the child mixer again what happens is that we have a fantastic array of different conversions so if you notice the blue channel I love the way the dress was rendered I love it I think it's actually quite beautiful so I'll go ahead and no render that in really quick and I'm doing this very sloppily because I just want to quickly get to, uh quickly demonstration and let's see if we can actually apply a little curve just gently tweak so as you can see what I did here is you notice that I used the curve and I clipped it to the child mixer and I'm now able to control even more so how deep are dark or deep or light? That channel is rendering because before I think it rendered a little bit too bright in the shadows are the mid tones and then I just darken it with a curve that altar option and clicked on the child mixer next I'm going to another child mixer quick and let's say we say green uh quite nice the lips or orange command fantastic or yellow which is probably a better option so I'll go with the yellow everything right now because I'm not gonna typically okay so off going further I'd probably use you know darker more contrast channel for like the lips for example and what happens now is we have this really cool black white conversion just based on preference on what we have you can see skin is luminous, the clothes are popping is beautiful, you know we've got a party right? Everything is fantastic this's why like the child makes her a lot you know, laws you combined this of both worlds report ritz so yeah that's about it for black and whites in that regard of your channel mixer conversion different than the traditional black and white tulle is you can get banding and the black and white tool if you push sliders too far that's a fantastic point because you have the issue where you're stressed separate the color yeah and some black I've noticed that quite a bit with the black and white tool you know you have ability to adjust those colors individually and you're essentially stripping it from one we're pulling away like a bandage on you harry armor something that's think less of a discussion visual though in reality when you see these black and white shifters happen within the individual colors but that's a good point you get a lot of banding and tradition happening excellent. So fantastic. All right, first one out unless anyone here in the room has one we've got one from chris lamba do you ever use radiant maps for a black and white? I did actually just issues in great amounts were black and whites well, the great map is great because obviously we mentioned weaken use particular color tints and tones in our individual areas so being here in our portrait we can go into a b in math and then I'll see we have a default reset credence ok reset and here gets it uh our shadows are too dark we can lift him up just a bit we can bring down our highlights just a bit too if you need but it's not as extensively controllable as our child mixer but it is great to add tones to it so saved and say you've done a child mixer and you want to add a little color to it you can say ok on adult but a yellow to my alex and a little bit of science to my shadows we can say okay instead of applying the fact that it changed living off so you can just say our bloody mood and we can go down and set it to color and then what happens is it applies the underlying color toning I'm sorry underlying black my conversion but still keeps the color of the grated map the best of both and tastic let's see, mickey says in the black and white adjustment layer there the same channel presets as in the channel mixer adjustment layer is there a difference between the red filter preset in the channel mixer and the red filter preset in the black and white adjustment layer? That's a good question because they never knew that well you're right essentially no I think it premise that the same thing so you know it's essentially kind of identical so and does give you more options so you know it allows you for more control you're probably better off going to the black and white option but again the main emphasis and take away is that it's important to not use the black and white for individually modifying colors, because the fact that can strip away the transitions and making quite often awful. But, yeah, you could definitely go for it here, because it does give you quite a few options as well. And then just one more, I think. Finally, hear from vincenzo, do you ever use channel d saturation in light room or camera, roaring like that to control black and right, black and white? Do you do anything in before you're in photo shop? No, I don't. Everything is done after I do my conversion, because in case I want to make smart thiss more object layers and make a really nice base, and then I'll do it from there.

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Ratings and Reviews

peter
 

Really wonderful course, thanks. May I suggest a fantastic idea for maybe those who purchase the course? It would be extremely useful to be provided with a summary of the content of each video segment, perhaps a 30-60 second video with written 'dot-point' sheet at the end of each segment, to be reviewed at a later time. It just takes too long to replay each video to get the important messages. The notes provided by Pratik were a step in the right direction but they need more detail of what was presented, including tips and tricks, in each segment. In this way, once having watched the entire course, you could go back and review the nitty-gritty aspects of each segment quickly and efficiently. These quick 'summary' clips could make up a separate 15 minute video, recapping in detail the hard-core content of the course, without interruptions from questions. This would be extremely useful and hopefully not take the presenter too long to film. I feel this would be a wonderful 'added value' aspect of buying the course, as it would not be available for for free viewing. It would certainly encourage me to buy more of the available courses. Keep up the great work at Creative Live! I have stopped my Kelby subscription and just watch you guys now!! Well done!! Peter Bourne Australia

Valentina
 

Pratik has been a revelation and a revolution at the same time, even kinda a benediction because of its huge generosity to show us such an efficient and powerful workflow. His genial approach turns impossible things into possible. What amazed me most, was Pratik ability to see further the shot and take the best of it to reach the perfection. The original photo is still there, very recognizable, but through a precise and meaningful workflow, it becomes eye-catching, high quality, high impact. Pratik is a wonderful person, very genuine, high talented, with a sophisticated sense of the aesthetics and arts. This course changed drastically my way to look at photoshop and at the retouching techniques. Thank you!!

user d3cdf7
 

I have been a retoucher since 1992 and a commercial photographer and I am amazed at the wealth of information Pratik is teaching us. Love his great sense of humor. Yes, retouching takes me way into the early part of the morning...up to 4 am. I've learned to listen to Books on DVD from the library which help my attitude much better. Several degrees behind me and I know I was meant to make a difference with portrait photography. NO ONE wants reality, especially at elder ages. So I continue to learn to retouch professionally and not use a quick retouch filter which renders a fake look. I may incorporate a light retouching filter, but I find I must always do some manual retouching first, in order to have the appearance look real. Which is the old first rule to retouching itself. In the film days, I use to make my own texture screens in order to create more beautiful faces. My photographer friends would ask for my help in using them, when they had blurred an important celebrity shot. The texture screen would help spread the dots and give the appearance of your digital noise now. The results were the image looked more focused Thank you Pratik Naik, for being so generous with your techniques. I am interested in how to price out retouching jobs, as I have been told I give my retouching away with my photography. Thanks,, Jeri Goodwin-Akari cherished moments photography in walla walla, WA

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