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Retouching in Photoshop

Lesson 10 from: Concept-Driven Commercial Photography

Joel Grimes

Retouching in Photoshop

Lesson 10 from: Concept-Driven Commercial Photography

Joel Grimes

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Lesson Info

10. Retouching in Photoshop

Next Lesson: Compositing

Lesson Info

Retouching in Photoshop

Let's go back to my uh bridge we're gonna pick up phillips and I went through really quickly and picked this one out here and it was the one we had sweat on his face so we see this, um this image uh the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring it into and I'm gonna explain this kind of really quick I'm going to take and open him up in riva raw image and that raw gives me options that are pretty much non destructive the minute I take and go over and open it up in photo shop everything I do is destructive so you want to minimize the destruction is best you can by working out whatever you can in wrong now if I opened it up in raw to photo shop as a smart object it's like I say this it's like mama giving birth to a baby with the umbilical cord still connected still pumping life to that image so as long as I have that is a smart objects from raw I can always go back to raw do some things go back to his photo shop back and forth back and forth so I go always to dark go back two photos are...

raw and I can adjust it nondestructive so smart objects are really smart, smart way to think but when I first heard of smart objects I was like I didn't understand it then one day I said I gotta learn this so here we go we're going to do a shortcut which is command are which is just a shortcut to go raw and if I double click on and I think I'll be fine too but here we go command are we're in raw? Okay, there it is now I'm going to show you the joel grimes secret toe all my images so are you sitting down you're the first thing I do is not to take my shadows to the right in this case I'm gonna go make one hundred percent and my screen's a little bit let's do this there we go my screen was a little dark okay, I'm gonna take the highlights to the left now see where I have I have I have checked the ability so that when my highlights are clipping they turned orange just read I believe it is I don't know I'm colorblind but we'll go to the left there and so on his face there there was no clipping. Did you see any read on there? No there's detail on its sides of his face even looks pretty well edged out, but I still move the highlights a little bit over the left I'm gonna take the contrast to the left and clearly clarity to the right like that we're getting pretty edgy there and I don't want to go too far on clarity now if I understand correctly that from when they first introduced clarity it'll be issues and now with c c or c essex and cc the clarity slider has gotten a lot better so it gives you a little bit of an edginess kind of like high passing kind of thing but if you want to get that edge just do it in raw so I'm gonna take it out but I'm not locked into it because I'm gonna hit well if you look over here at the bottom where the blue says adobe rgb ninety eight sixteen bit ok and this is what comes with photo shop if you buy photoshopped you open it up it's set up to rgb the worst color space on the planet and why it is I don't know and it's set to eight bits depth you don't want to work in a bit you want working sixteen bit millions more colors so down the very bottom caesar says open and photo shop is a smart object I have I clicked if I don't haven't clicked I have to hit the shifty down when I hit open up object and it will go and take it as a smart object but I want to do it every time because I am sold on the smart object concept so I go okay click it's now taking me to photo job and I am still tied to raw look right here little symbols is a smart object I'm still tied a mom over there the umbilical cord is still connected so why is that important? Watch this I'm gonna duplicate this it this layer now don't forget this this is why you want to buy this whole session, right? Because if you forget this this will not work you wantto duplicate this layer not by just doing a command j which duplicates you want to do it this via copy that allows me to have a duplicate smart object that are independent each other. So if I do command j it'll say smart object and it will take you back to robb but if I turn it the black and white the bottom one goes to black and white so watch what happens you're learning now that joel grimes secret on how I do my thing I'm going to right click new smart object via copy now if you can't remember that go upto layer smart object manu smart object via copy you let go now I got two copies both indicating I'm a smart object but they're independent of each other so here goes the secret right here I'm going to double click on the top one it's gonna take me back to rock so hearing back and raw with phillips and I'm going to convert this to black and white now the reason what? When I discovered this technique, the reason why I discovered it was because I spent many, many, many, many, many years shooting black and white large format I wanted to be ansel adams so I learned to put filters in front of me. Alice is so I had a good idea what filters did with black and white so sometimes old school education is good and so when I got to this point I said I want to convert the top layer to black and white but I want to manipulate the skin tones and so I went to black and white which is the fourth icon fromthe left so it's h s l slash grayscale click on convert to black and white now watch this folks are you sitting down? I can manipulate skin tones did I hear who's boss so I want for an athlete I want to make him look tough right for a beauty scenario it's a little softer so when you look at I don't have it here but my blowout high key look that I probably did a little bit but I moved the sliders tow the right for a female to make the skin look like porcelain for an athlete and go to the left so I do the yellow and the red orange to the left and remember this that the effect I'm getting on my monitor here will end up half the effect later because I'm going to blend the two together so I usually push it a little bit more here and I'm also gonna build contrast so I know that ahead of time that's why I wanted a little bit softer remember I brought it in is a little bit flatter and so but I'm not tied to it because I'm still tied a raw watch happens I'm going to say okay preparing smart object and here I have the black and white in photo shop right and I got two layers the bottom ones color top was black and white now watch this hold on to your hats soft light bone there's my look right there what I heard awhile and and so there's if I think look I would love that to be a little bit more just to command jay and boom it's even more but let's not do that yet let's not let's not do that because I don't want to overdo it could you toggle you mean here? Okay that's the color there's a black and white blend and I could tell you right now this monitors a little bit lighter than this monitor and I don't know why that is but at this point you know, just keep in mind I'm seeing pretty dramatic here it's a little less dramatic there but that's okay right now so um and also my color space on here maybe not set up one hundred percent right because I'm colorblind and I just did a big presentation in mexico and they were changing all my color spaces and I have no idea what they did to my computer but the point is this is that by blending the mode so I this is a blending mode right now are aiken blend so overlay is twice effect of soft light so if I want to go twice that effect I hit that boom I mean it's really dramatic so normally I do soft light that's a good place going to show you what I'm gonna do in a minute and it's going to even take it one little notch darker okay so let's grab this so so there's there's off on and so if I don't like it watch this double click go back here to my mama and I could still go on raw nondestructive so what you want to do is do it now do it here and then I go back to here let's say it's a little contract s t I'll flatten it out a little bit let's do this okay watch so that's going to process that one and I'm a double click on this one and let's just say we're gonna push the contrast will back a little bit there and here we go I could also dodging burn in raw that's a whole new recession but I'm just telling you it's possible do it in raw if you can and so here I am now ready to go the next step I haven't option I can flatten it or aiken snapshot so snapshot is shift altan the pc option on the back command e that gives me a snapshot of everything below so if I had to I could go back to raw on these but right now there's nothing there they're inactive in in terms of what's above but if I'd say went on and made us take what oh rats let me go back there still here but what I do is because I've done so many of these at this point I always say put the ring on the finger commit and I'm gonna flatten them so we're going to say command or my little shortcut f flatten him and there they are so I'm gonna do another command j not smart we've now lost are smart objects command j I'm going to go up to filter blur gazi in blur and I'm gonna give it a radius of about somewhere around fifteen ish you're so fifteen to seventeen now watch what happens it's out of focus joel, would you do all that money's been on that sharp lens? I'm going to soft light that and now I build my drama and I'm gonna pull it back to about thirty to forty percent somewhere around there. So what is this doing? This is give me a little bit of smooth in the skins and it's kind of like the velvety look we had with get film the color start to come back a little bit because I've kind of de saturated it bring it back so here's what I do I'm color blind so I don't know a lot what's going on I mean, I know something, but I basically take color out, bring it back, bring it back that's how I'm getting the look I'm getting so it's kind of an interesting technique, but, um we're gonna talk about that on saturday have I plugged that enough? Okay, so I brought a little bit of the smoothest back and like I said on my monitor its a lot darker, but and I'm going to, um, flat or merge it down so command he will merge it down command jay, give me another duplicate I'm gonna run up here to my, uh, filter other high pass. Now I've kind of smoothed it out a little bit and I want to bring back that punch so I give it a two radius high pass and I overlay it or soft light it's overlays double the effect, so let's blow this up look at that face man and again that's a lot over exposure but so if I take it off do you see the fact and if it's too much I go to soft light and it is still too much I'll take they'll pass it down so I can feather it to what I want so I think for my monitor that's a pretty darn good we'll just leave it at a soft light um one hundred percent okay so with that I am ready tto merge down and I'm ready to bring this into my background so but before I do that let's do the same effect to my background so here's my background command are gets me too raw and I'm going to take the shadows a little bit not much because that you know highlights a little bit a little soft in the contrast clarity so what am I doing the same treatment as I did on my subjects of people ask me all the time do you do your grungy hdr stuff in these programmes no I want to do it in photo sha r the way I'm doing it now because then they match as best I can so we got a pretty good uh start their exposure maybe I'll bring my exposure down just a little bit is that we really want to build drama here and I say okay open as a smart object here comes I am now going to go command lips, make a convert smart object via copy go to knowing a doubleclick open it up, go black and white and I'm just gonna look at my lighting here because we had some really funky lights in this in this gym or this locker room so I wanna play with my colors here a little bit and see what happens. Red doesn't do much orange does a little bit. Not much there yellow actually does a lot, so I don't go too far gree others a little green in there, but really on a background it's not as critical, so I'm gonna say okay, we're gonna blend the two v er soft, light and let's blow it up here sorry, just get a little small, you see it and that's a colored shift there and I'm color blind but where we go here we go, we're going to commit flatten. We're going to go command j we're gonna go to filter, blur, cosine blur it should default to the last one. I said at fourteen point eight whatever don't write that down just somewhere around fourteen, fifteen, sixteen he's a good, good place and then we're going to go to soft light and here comes here comes the grungy nous happening, so we're gonna pull that back a little bit and then we're gonna flatten again, emerge down and we're getting pretty close to dropping our subject in. But before I do that let's do a little bit of a crop, okay, so I'm gonna go command just see for crop and I'm gonna bring it in a little bit on the sides, okay? Because I don't like that side over there bring a little bit on the top here and up on the bottom a little bit, okay? So that's a good start and hit, okay? And I got a little bit of problems with my perspective. Not much. So I'm gonna go free transform. So since it's his base layer, I gotta go command a command tea and now I can go in here and I can use either warp or skew let's, start with skew. I'm a straighten out my locker a little bit. Here. It looks pretty good. The floor. I might just bring that down a little bit there, so I'm lining everything up. Ok, that looks pretty good. Say okay.

Ratings and Reviews

x-man
 

Fantastic!! He is so down to earth and humble. His work is unique an exceptional and he shares his techniques, experience, tricks, and best of all his life stories that took him to where he is now. One of the best instructors in CL. I love how he checks the ego at the door and just shares his art and techniques with us. I definitely recommend this course and I was lucky enough to get it at a great discounted price but it is worth its regular price imho.

Dee
 

He's my new favorite instructor, there are many CL instructors I really like but the second I watched and heard him I bought the course, love his style, love his knowledge and the way he conveys it. His way of Frequency separation is fantastic and pretty precise and takes care of a lot of flaws. Learned lots! Thanks Joel! Thank heavens I am not color blind ;)

aracelibotello
 

Joel makes it easy to follow when it comes to editing and shooting. He is a wonderful teacher and very easy to learn from. I enjoyed the photoshop techniques he taught as well as his approach to lighting. My favorite part is his advice on business it's very motivating and inspirational. I thoroughly enjoyed this course!

Student Work

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