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Image Coverage: Replacement Objects

Lesson 7 from: Compositing for Commercial Photography

Lisa Carney

Image Coverage: Replacement Objects

Lesson 7 from: Compositing for Commercial Photography

Lisa Carney

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Lesson Info

7. Image Coverage: Replacement Objects

Lesson Info

Image Coverage: Replacement Objects

So next on our list, so if we think this setup is done, which I'm feeling rather confident. I think if you look how sharp it is, I think we got it. I do, so I want to remind you, do you remember what I said about the seam? So there is a seam which you cannot see, but I'm going to turn it so you can see it. Yeah. So I'm doing the opposite, I am turning to bad right now. Let me pull my focus back. But I just want you to see it, because I want you to look for it. And let me get into Lightroom. Okay. So notice I'm sitting on a little apple box here. I really have turned into a hunchback from the photography work I've been doing over the years. So I try to just make sure I'm comfortable because doing this all day, kneeling down, I also have kneeling pads, like gardening kneeling pads that are memory foam for when our sets are low or when we're shooting on the floor and we're doing an overhead shot. So just be comfortable, just make yourself comfortable. And your stylist too-- ...

Can I interrupt you for one second though? Yeah? I'm sorry. We're not updating, so I'm not sure if I need to re-tether. Now I want to, while Tina's re-tethering, I wan to alleviate some pressure for some of you because I know I have this desire where I, god, I just think I'm supposed to be an expert at everything. You can't. You know, I know my way around Photoshop really well. I can limp along in Lightroom, and I'm not embarrassed to say it. You don't have to know everything, so I've alleviated myself from that pressure of working with photographers and being an expert at Lightroom. I'm like, "Great, you're an expert at Lightroom, do your thing. Do your thing and I'll come in." So cut yourself some slack. Do you guys feel that? Do you feel that pressure of knowing everything? And, no, you don't need to. It's okay. But know who does. So I'm rebooting Lightroom. I just clicked on? Were we in Lightroom Classic? I forget. Here, we're going to... So we're right here. So if you just want to command Q and we will reset. Yeah. Again, she's driving my car, and my seat's back a little further than she's used to. Let's try CreativeLive. It's a good analogy, don't you think? It's pretty accurate. So I just make sure everybody's talking. Okay, we're talking again. They had a little tiff. They were not talking to each other and it's picking back up. Well and let's talk about that. We said we were going to say when things go off the rail. Things move. You know all of the sudden it doesn't want to talk. You have to reboot. This happens all the time. There's no panic. It doesn't matter the software. You know Capture One, they all do it. Or you know actually-- I got the seam up there. What's that? The seam is up there. Okay. So do you guys see the seam? Excellent. Bad, bad seam. So we need to mark the set because at this point we are now going to... We are on the replacing bottle section. Hold on for one second. I don't do this normally, so I'm a little uncomfortable. There we go. I had to put my preset back on there. Okay. I'm uncomfortable marking the set. Do you want me to do it? Retouchers do not do this. We don't go in. So your prop stylist or your food stylist will be standing by, you know, waiting for stuff like this. Or your husband if he's your prop stylist. He'll be standing here next to you doing the goods. I'm going to have you touch. Yeah. Seriously, can you see I'm a little nervous right now? This is what happens on jobs. Like dear god, do not touch this. Just don't. It's going to be trouble. (Lisa exhales loudly) Everyone take a collective breath. Oh you'd be amazed. There have been some disasters. When you're doing food stuff, and they're doing the pour, and then something goes really haywire. Oh yeah! The things splatter all over and things fall. You have to strike the whole set and rebuild. And that's... You got a whole crew! So I like that. Awesome. There have been days when, yeah, we've had big fails, and you just have to, "Okay, it's a rebuild. You know, now big deal. It just happens." Okay, so our next shot that I have is if we're not rotating the bottle is... And I just realized a made a mistake, and I'm going to... This is awesome. All right, we're going to go ahead and shoot this. Okay. This is awesome. I love illustrating issues. (Lisa laughing) I do! Because you know none of us are perfect. Do you remember I said we need to shoot with the black card? Oh, that's right, and I forgot too. So, the next shot we're going to do once we know this one is okay, is we're just going to be put a black card in it. Why is that an issue? Remember I said that when there's liquid in the bottle, you get refractions. But I'm going to surrender to the universe and be like, "You know what, here we go." The other thing is why am I shooting with the black card? I'm shooting with the black card because I want to pick up the highlights on the bottle. That bottle just moved. That's a new bottle. Those highlights aren't going to line up anymore. That was just an expensive mistake. Now, let me tell you the truth. Black card? Oh, black card. Can we have the flag darling? Come on in. If I did this on a job, I wouldn't charge for the extra time for that. If I'm on a shoot and I'm doing the session, that's on me. So all right. All right, ready? I'm going to step out of the set. Going out. I'll have a look at that. Thank you. Awesome. Is that good for you? I think it is. Cool. There is a seam in the center of the bottle, but I think we can get away with it. Okay. Would you like me to rotate it at this point? Probably not. No, I think I'm going to leave it. Ans so here's a couple things I want you to pay attention to 'cause we are talking about compositing. Look at the neck of the bottle. The top, it's turned a whole different way. Right. I don't care. I'm just using this for reflections. For the lime. On the glass, so at this point this is a cost saving thing. Nevermind, let it go. Now, I want to call you attention to something else that's going on here. Look at the lime. Look how much better the lime looks. Do you see that? It's richer. This is another reason why, if you can... Did you see how painless that was? Just stick a card in there. In addition, if you didn't want to strike your set, you could stick the white card in it, okay? Or a gray card too. Or a gray card. And it's nothing. And no one does it. Yeah, no, you're right. I don't know if that's improper grammar. I apologize. Nothing and non one, but it's so easy! It's such an easy fix, and for the retouching end it is dollars. Yeah. Just dollars and time. Yeah. All right, so let's look at our set. We have the next thing we need to do is glass out. Glass out. So what I'm doing here... All though, you know what? In this particular rendition, our lime is the thing that's more forward. Our lime? What do you mean by our lime? This one right here, so it's covering-- Lime! I heard line, line, lime. Lime. Our lime is in front of our glass, whereas when we did our setup, it was not. So when I remove things on set for background plates, like what we're doing, I remove front to back, and-- Let's talk about why we do that. When you remove front to back, why you're doing that is, as a retoucher, I want that extra. If I have to fill in. Do you remember we talked about the pomegranate at the beginning? What if kiwis are in? And they want to stick a kiwi in? Well, do I have a back of the glass? Because this shape is different. Cinnamon... Uh, I'm not going to name names. Coffee beverages that you might enjoy, and there's lots of lattes, and cinnamon, and there's the pumpkin flavors that everybody likes. Everybody likes. Well, they'll lay vanilla sticks on there, right? Right. And they'll lay something... Ah, we're putting cardamon in it. Well, the shape of a cardamon is not the shape of a cinnamon stick, and I never have the bottom of the cup. I don't have it. And then I got to re-retouch it. Which I'll take your money. I will take your money, but do you have the time? So, so there you go. So this one, we're going to reverse where I think we get ride of our lime. Marking it off. Then the glass. Marking it off, we're good. And it looks like we'll have a clean shot of the bottle and the lemon if we do that. Absolutely, shall we kill the lights? Sure. Let's kill the lights ladies and gentlemen. So did that make sense? How I just explained what we're doing? Okay, and this is exactly how I work with a retoucher on set or with the client. So sometimes the client, you know you don't have the retoucher on set, and I'm asking the client what they're going to need. And so I'll have this conversation with them. Well, okay, you have a layout with text over here in one ad, but then there's another ad with text over here. So I'm going to have to just do this. And sometimes they don't even understand what I'm talking about, and I'm just like, "Trust me. It's just an extra file. I'm not charging you for it. You're going to need it if you want it to do what I'm thinking that you're going to do." So let' talk about this for a second as you do this. This is great. Go ahead and remove the lime. Now, there's a few things that we're not doing. As I said earlier, you're talking about a four hour shoot done in about 90 minutes or so. Right. So we are cutting some time off here. You would image stack. Let me get out of the light. You would image stack every single one of these. Right, we're not doing that. Let me say that again. You will image stack every single one of these. We are not doing that here. Now, the other thing that you brought up. And I really want to call attention to this. Clients freak out when, "Okay, we got the shot." The clients' got the end money result. Like, "All right, we got the crew. We can't have overages." They don't want her to shoot a bunch of stuff. I have been on sets where we don't even ask. You just do it. Right. Don't scare them. Just do it. I just say, "Oh, I'm just getting a variation shot." And it's something sometimes if the retoucher is on set, they're like, "Oh, I need this. This is a plate, this is as a plate." And so the retoucher needs it. The client might not understand exactly why. And I don't even have time to explain that because we got to get done that day on two sets, right? So then I'll just say, "Just doing a variation." Then, "Variation Queen." I call myself the variation queen to the clients so they know she always gives us these extra files, and somehow it helps us. Now, before you touch the lemon. Yes? I want to talk about an alternative. Can I get two limes please? Well, so we have to do this one first. Yes, but I'm actually going to talk about something different here. You do variation? (photographer chuckles) So, yes, so here is another thing. As a retoucher, I think that's why you might want to consider having retouchers because we say, "Hey, hold up sunshine!" So if I could just get two extra limes? I'm springing this on them. Whole limes, Lisa? Yes sir, whole limes. Going to do a variation? Yes. Excellent. And we will. This is a reality. We actually will do that. Thank you very much. And what we'll do is we'll talk to the... The client might have this idea, and the food stylist will have staged right next to us on set little vignettes of different you know different things that she's putting together like that. Now, very important. I had not touched that lemon. Do not touch the lemon! Okay? (photographer laughs) I'm adding to it. And why are we doing this? And not just doing it in post? Because all that refraction into the glass. Right. So this is a nothing little, "Hey, just in case you lost your mind and we're..." That's extra. Christina had talked about this. And you have a special name for this. The food, what do you call it when you add a food? Oh, food flavor profiles. Food flavor profiles. She talked about vocabulary before. A food flavor profile is these extra things, and there are regulations that if you are selling a product that is two parts lime to one part lemon, you have to have two limes in the shot. Can you imagine? I'm so glad that's not my job, sweety. So when, yeah, when you're dealing with advertising work with a branded product, you can't switch stuff out legally. So you know how they always, "Oh yeah that the ice cream is mashed potatoes or whatever." No, that's for an editorial job. So for advertising work, you legally have to use that product. So, if we were... Let's pretend this is a lemon lime beverage, and we were going to put oranges in it, their food tech person, who's sort of our police, this might be somebody who's actually on set verifying that what we're doing is like legal. They would say, "Oh no, no, you can't put an orange in there because that's actually not in the drink." So I'm like, "Oh, okay. Sorry about that, didn't know." So I just illustrated another point here. I want to talk about it. If you guys look at the frame. Do you see how tight we are? So I was going to ask you. Our limes are being cut off. Yes, Would you like to put that on the other side? No. Okay. This is what I would like to say because this happens on jobs too. Yeah? Many jobs. So if they really want it on the side and we cannot do an alternative, this is when at the end of this whole set, I'm going to set the limes right in the center and do a plate. I call it a plate. Background plate, yeah. Yes, so, again, you don't have to freak out. The key is you do not move this. Do you understand? This is gospel. You do not move this. Oh yeah. I cannot tell you how many photographers. I get their jobs. "Oh, we'll just back up." Ah! No! And it's because they don't understand Photoshop, so they don't understand how difficult that is now that everything's different. Everything's resized. At this point I can drag and drop and everything's exactly the size. Hope that makes sense. So you can touch your lemon now if you want. Okay, thank you. Or the glass or whatever's next. So I think, yes, well we move the glass next. Now, side note, the lemon might actually move if it isn't properly tacked down. So it might roll. It might move. I don't know. And a side note about your tripods, when you need to be locked down, use sandbags around the base of your tripods. So I always kick them, you know? It's one of those things, so and someone's going to kick it at some point. When I am in the studio with the larger format cameras, I'm actually on a studio stand. You know those big 200 pound monolithic things? That's what I'm actually shooting on and I call it planted. The stand is planted, and that is not moving anywhere. So that's just one of those things. So today, you know, hopefully-- And I don't think I've paid proper diligence to the lock it down chant. Lock it down, lock it down. Lock it down even on some of these more expensive high-end coffee jobs that I work on. That tripod, I don't know who's touching it, but it's just two millimeters out. Well I'm retouching. Can you imagine? Think for a second. Go ahead, go in your mind. Look at the highlight on the side of the glasses. Can you imagine having to retouch that three millimeter line? Yeah. Because the glass moved. That's expensive. That's not quick. Because some yahoo kicked the tripod, or the photographer was a little rough. Right. Lock it down. Please lock it down. Yeah and like the tripod's head here, they can get loose. I have even had clients where they see the focus stand as a, I don't know, piece of furniture, and they're leaning on it. And I'm like, "Oh god!" Very nicely like, "Okay, yeah, we're still compositing things right now, so please don't lean on the stand like that. I'm so sorry." Like, "Get off the set!" You know, nicely. "Stop doing that!" Okay, all right, here we go. We might move the lemon. I don't know. Oh, all right. Now this glass has my spritz. Oh let's see, over here. We're going to need that back in a minute, so, yeah, go ahead and put that here. All right. So this glass has a ratio of 50% water, 50% glycerin with my fancy-- 50% water, 50% glycerin. For spritz. And then on the key note you'll see there is a product that she actually uses a Q tip and a what do you call the wooden dowel? Oh yeah. Skewer. Skewer. To actually draw lines on the bottle and they're fantastic. And, yes, I can get a stock shot of condensation, but if I get a stock shot on condensation, it's not on the same shape of glass. And I'm guessing with this kind of work it's pretty precise. Clients want what they want. So I would suggest you get some glycerin and that other stuff. So glycerin, water, several different spritzer bottles because they all give you a different spritz on your glass. I'll also sometimes mix it with Karo syrup. It's very sticky. Just water it down. So you can experiment. So I have different formulas. I didn't go to town on this today because we just don't have time, you know? There's other special effects things you can do to put a drop on there that will never go away. Yeah, and folks think you can do it in retouching easily at the end. No, no. No. And I'm pretty good at retouching. No. I'll do it if you want me to, but this will look 100 times better. So, side note, I just put my camera on manual focus. (Lisa gasps) Because the focus was on the glass. Well we just removed the glass, so the focus would change to something else and change our perspective a tiny bit. Does that makes sense? So I don't want anything with the camera to change. I have to tell you, I've never experienced this kind of shoot 'cause when I'm on set, so calm. It's not like this. It is pandemonium when you're... There's people running around. People at the music. My shoots are actually, they're pretty calm. Oh! Yeah, I just don't like that. Mine are not. The ones I get the privilege of being invited to, there's music blaring, someone's yelling at someone, there's a dog barking, so the fact that this is all-- Yeah. This is ideal. And I do like playing music, yeah. (Lisa exhales) (Christina laughs) All right, so I think we have this. Do we have this? She says-- We have this shot? Yeah. Awesome. Okay, good. Now, the next shot is going to be everything out. And this is probably one of the most critical shots that no one realizes. The base plate. Just your base plate. So can I touch? Go for it. All right, I'm going to touch. Do you see I can't even help myself about asking? It's like-- I know. Striking the set is a terrifying thing. Also, I'm about to put my fingerprints on that. So, no-- Oh, so yeah I-- Don't ever, ever, ever touch the glass. I take paper towels and just rip them into quarters as just little things to have on set. So this scenario that I have here where there's a little tray, this is extremely common. My food stylist always has a little kit next to our set up here and all these little bits. So then I'll go in and use stuff if she's in the kitchen, or I'll call her out. So we always have a styling sort of kit right next to our set. I would like to take a moment and call attention to what I just did. There was water on the surface. Canned air and a napkin is your best friend. I cannot tell you how much time I spent spotting a stupid background. My heavens, canned air people. Yeah. Canned air. Can you imagine? I know, I see it in your face. You know what I'm talking about. Spots, spots, spot, and all it would've taken is that. Or my famous lint brush. If you lint brush over. Oh! Hey, I have one. Where did it go? You don't need it. Let's do this. Oh do you? Yeah, this is something I want to show. So this brush here... Here, I'll take the background shot while we're doing that. So this is a Nice move. When, again, it's on with manual focus, so it's not... The lens isn't freaking out. So this is... I think I've had this thing probably 25 years now. It's a fan brush, and it's not the soft bristles. I'm not a painter so I don't... It used to say what type of bristles these were, but this is awesome for just getting the crumbs off of your set, off of your products. You can just wash it and clean it up, so I use this a lot. Yeah. And I had to travel with it for sure. And I have to tell you, people think spotting is nothing, so, "Oh yeah, how many shots social media shooting?" Oh, dust! Can you please for just a second imagine 25, 35 shots. They wanted it yesterday. How's this? And no one brushed off the set. Who's doing that and who's going to pay for that? And I'm expensive. So I want to call attention. We're going to do two different things, but I feel it important to have a moment. I have this thing, that you guys who've taken my classes before, where I'll often say, "It's like take your hands off the computer, step back, collect yourself, and go where am I?" So right now we've shot the set. We're effectively done with this round, but the background... Do you see what the background is? You've got this tiny little background. Do you remember I said don't ever move the camera? The one exception, we are not going to do this, but I just want to tell you. The one exception to moving the camera is the very, very, very last set shot before you walk out the door. You go ahead and pull out, and you give me as much as physically possible. But that's the last shot of the day. Cool? Now, oh, we didn't talk about where you got this, this kind of table top. Oh yeah, check this out. These are from Home Depot. The CreativeLive folks got them here. This is flooring. Flooring for tables! And it's not glossy. Yeah. So it's awesome. So you don't have to deal with reflections. You guys here that? It's not glossy. Not glossy. This is very important. Yeah, I hate glossy surfaces. Excellent, so I want to just do one. And this is a total no-no-- Like welcome to 1985 with all the reflections. But this is what we're going to do. We're basically at the end of the shooting section, so we have to do the white shot. I just want you the see the white shot, so this is going to be out of position. I don't know if you'd rather set this up? Oh sure. It's quick. This is not going to match the other one, but it's just as a demo. Do the glass again? Yes ma'am, hh, I have to touch the glass. I'll do it. I have to touch the glass. I'm afraid. There's liquid. Liquid on the set, liquid on the set! (audience laughs) Yeah, exactly. (Christina chuckles) So one of the things that I do, I spritz the front of the glass, not the back so I have something to grab 'cause this thing is slippery 'cause it's got glycerin all over it. And what I really would've done in real life, I would've re-spritzed it and just spent some more time on that. But you get the idea right? So I would just spray more on it and place it in. Okay, and then our lime. Oh, it's right here. I think that's kind of how we were. Yeah. I don't really remember. It was something like that. So why are we doing it this way? And it's a timing thing. I want to be super, super clear about this. What this normally would have been is you have the hero set, you have the background in, you shoot the black card, that was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, right? Nothing, you just stick it in. Then you shoot the white. Well our white is all the way in the back and to move this set for this class, that would've been a pain. So that's why we didn't do it that way, but when you guys do this at home, you do the black, white, gray without touching anything. Okay? All right, let's take a look. About, well dear you're pretty close. Question. I know, do you want me to scoot it over? No, it's just for demo purposes. Okay. Now let's look at this for a second and talk about why you might do this. First of all, a reminder: image stack everything. Every single shot has to be image stacked. So you can imagine why this is a four hour shoot, not a 45 minutes shoot. What I'd like to call attention to is shadows, and mostly shadows to be honest, and reflections. So when we shot the black card, what I was getting is highlights. When we were shooting the black card what I'm getting are shadows. So what happens is that glass looks really translucent, and you want to put something on multiply behind it to give it some density. We'll cover that at the retouching session. And so that is why you shoot with the black card, and then a white card, and then the background. Okay? Highlights, I want to pull the highlights off the bottle. Shadows, you might have to add density, especially with anything clear. Yeah. Especially with anything clear. And then of course the background. Question for you. Yes ma'am? This is the bottle with liquid. Yes. Do you want to do it without? No I don't need it. All right. It's just for demo purposes. We won't have time. Cool. But she called great attention. Look at the shot. Do you remember when we talked about the refraction? Hey, just for giggles because I think we have two minutes. Yeah? I'm going to stick the non-reflective bottle in. So they can see that, yeah. So they can see it. I'll put the seam in the front. No, I'm not going to put the seam in the front. Okay. And I want you took at the reflection of the studio inside the glass. It really just creates a huge lens effect when you have that much liquid in something. Look at that you guys. I heard it. There was a collective, "ooh," out in the universe. Here's why. Think about the shadow. In fact, let me show you. It's all about retouching for me kids. You want to take those lines out? I don't want to take those lines out. That's all because water. Yeah. Look at the glass. Now, I'm going to tell you, I think the glass almost looks a little better this way because see how it took out a straight vertical line on this one? And it's got a little bit of a diagonal. I like it better. And when I say I like it better, I like it better because I have options now. And, as a retoucher, if you give me that, I have something to do. If you don't give it to me, it's too much money for me to put this in. So cool. I think we're... I'm going to have you step forward. All right. I think we're done with this section. We're done with the shooting portion of the evening, morning, or afternoon. (everyone laughs) All right! All right darling. We do have some questions. Excellent. So grab a mic if you have any in the studio. Thank you for walking us through that detail. Cool. That was really awesome. Hopefully that made sense. I know we kind of blew through it rather quickly, so hopefully that will make sense. Replay, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So you talked about the backdrop, the black card, and gray card. Yes. "Do you ever use a green screen?" Is a question from Kevin. No, never. And why? And why. One, because green screen tends to be video people. That the tend to think about it. In my experience, it's not everybody's experience, this is my experience. When people do green screen, they generally do it when they're shooting people is there subject is way too close to the green screen and you get the wrap around light of green around your product. And the purpose for green screen is to mask right? Well I don't want to mask out the edges of my product. And it's called color contamination. It's a huge problem. Color contamination, it is a huge problem. So that is why. Most folks shoot improperly with green screen, and you get color contamination because of it. Now, if someone is a green screen shooter and knows how to do it. Sure. Then it's fine, yeah. Absolutely. However, let me take another note about why did we shoot with the black card? I wanted the highlights. The white card I wanted the shadows. If you're shooting on green screen I'm not getting. I'm just getting the product. And you remember we talked about the reflection in the product? If you have a green screen, I don't get any of that. [Male Audience Member] You know, if your budget doesn't allow for a Phase One, and somebody wants a billboard, what do you do? Do I have permission to tell the dirty little secrets of everything? All right, let me tell you the dirty little secrets of life. Any more of these cameras are amazing, first of all, and I cannot think of any billboard in the last two years that I've built for entertainment that wasn't shot with a 35 millimeter camera. With entertainment you would be amazed. It's unit, it's someone, it's a fly by night shot. It's you have a stock shot that someone built. You'd be amazed at what you can get away with. Yeah. So any more you can do this. I mean people would freak out, and I know there's people on the internet going, "Ah, I can't believe she said that!" People do it. There's sharpening functions you have. You know that can sharpen your image. You can get away with it. And then there's the software that you can use to blow up files quite cleanly. Yes, Alien Skin makes a great product called Blow Up. Alien Skin, they make a great product called Blow Up, and that helps you enlarge files as well. And it's reality. Who's got a Phase One Back? Who can afford it? She uses a system that's dying out. So for advertising, many times the advertising agencies will actually dictate a massive file size so you have to have a Phase One Back, but with those advertising budgets, they're higher budgets. If you don't own one for 30 Grand, you just rent one. And they're about an average $650 a day. And they expect that. That's a normal digital capture package that you have on your contract, so-- $650 a day. I only own one Digital Back, and many times I have to run two or three sets at the same time, and so those other sets are rental backs. So my one that I'm working myself, is my back, my camera set up, my lenses. And then that's the most important set, meaning visually. And then the other shots are usually product shots of food or beverage shots on white. And so those will be done with a two and a quarter Hasselblad H2 or H3 with a Phase One Back on it, all rented. Right? I want to talk about two different points about this. Yes? All right, so first of all, if you're shooting with a 35 millimeter, did you see how tight we were? Right? Now we know they want a horizontal, or we think they might want a horizontal. I am not shooting this horizontal with the product being this big. Up close and personal. I will strip in a horizontal background and have image quality enough for a billboard. Do you understand? So you have to think smart about your setup. Always hero. That's fast. Do our horizontals fast, and we plan for it. Okay, second thing I want to talk about about file size is the ridiculousness of file size requests. Yes! I have a business of retouching class that I've done here on CreativeLive, you might want to check it out. We have this whole dialog about printers, or if, "Hey, this is going to be a billboard on a movie theater. We can print it at 300 dpi." So the entertainment ad agency says, "Great, we would like a 10 foot by 10 foot at 300 dpi." Photoshop won't even build a file that big. No. And the viewing distance is crackers crazy. I literally, I kid you not, I had a job last week. The base file size. That means flat. Base file. Flat, flat, flat, RGB. No layers. Four gigabytes and the client demands a layered file. I kid you not last week. And I'm not going to say who it was, and I love you. The fully layered file, which I made, 79 gigabytes. Didn't you just get the wheel of death thinking all the time? Yeah, I went out for dinner. I literally went out for dinner. Yeah. Now it was ridiculous. And it was too big, but I had a junior who was assigning the job, and I said, "You know this is too big?" "Yeah, I know, but this is what they're asking for." Yes, sweetheart, I know that's what they're asking for. This is beyond. Can we talk about what the size of the original was in the first place? It was one fourth of a two and a quarter frame. Oh for crying out loud! The originals! So it's all a blow up anyway. Yeah. And you know what's going to happen? I'll tell you dollars to donuts. At that print shop the people are actually outputting the vinyl very similar to this is saying, "What idiot built this file so big." They're going to res it down and print it at 72 dpi like they always do." Right. (Christina laughing) So, yes, there's some... CreativeLive is awesome. Where else are you going to get this information? I'm not kidding. It's like the dirty little secrets coming out of the bag. Right. So there you go. I hope that answers your question. Our print today, our background print, was printed at 150 dpi. I don't know if we said that earlier, so it was a 14 megabyte file. Yeah.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Compositing Companion Handout
Delivery Worksheet
Estimating Shoot Worksheet
Retouch Checklist 1
Retouch Checklist 2
Solar-Curves Action

Ratings and Reviews

Sean
 

Super Lisa is the best teacher. She makes learning Photoshop fun. Great course. Lisa has a great teaching style. She mixes in a great speech cadence, great voice up and down and pausing, jokes, and is extremely knowledgeable and fun to watch. Awesome course. Learned a lot from the course.

Anne Dougherty
 

I love Lisa Carney’s classes! She is casual yet precise, and she thinks like I do! The workflow logic of her process is brilliant. Really brilliant. I started working in PS version 1.something, as the publisher I worked for was just computerizing their department, and I was a total novice. But right from our first day working digitally, we had to create images and files that our novice printers could successfully print from. Lisa’s logic/approach is so familiar! Making things work on a deadline is an incredible way to learn time-saving techniques, and I wish I’d had Lisa crunching solutions with me. I am new to the newest PSCC, but all off her process made sense to me. She moves fast, so it might be a little tough for a total beginner, but she stops and explains things very clearly once she’s gone through it a time or two on a file, so, hopefully everyone can get things solidified for themselves. Now that I am retired and doing my photo work just for myself, her compositing techniques are helping me get to my end results much more quickly. I wish I had a Lisa sitting alongside me, with a glass of wine, while I’m experimenting with my creative composited work. Thank you so much for having her as a CreativeLive instructor/mentor.

user-af7c94
 

I took advantage of Photoshop Week and caught this class live - and loved it! I own other CreativeLive food photography courses, but I really liked the way Lisa and Christina taught the image shoot segment in this one. They show us a little glimpse of how the retoucher and photographer work together, in real time, on the set and I like that. Lisa and Christina are also very giving with their knowledge of how things work behind the scenes as well. Though, the main reason I bought this course was for the info Lisa shared about file naming and file version organization. There are a lot of video's on how to perform functions in Photoshop, but almost none about correctly naming, and organizing your versions. Now, I've got a real base to start from. Thanks :)

Student Work

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