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Retouching Q&A

Lesson 31 from: Fashion Photography 101

Lara Jade

Retouching Q&A

Lesson 31 from: Fashion Photography 101

Lara Jade

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Lesson Info

31. Retouching Q&A

Lesson Info

Retouching Q&A

I have a question here from mitch girl. I'm assuming in michigan, who says, would you recommend selective sharpening on any areas of the image, like the eyes? It's a good question as well, I yes, um I'm gonna show you in the next image when I do that, how I do shopping in, but it's, great. If you got, for example, this necklace in the shot. If it was the hero of the shot, it was for jewelry designer, I'd go in and shop in that so actively and the eyes like, for example, I used wide opportune, so not all the time. Sometimes it could be a little bit hit and miss that's. Why I shoot a lot and it manually focus. Sometimes it could be a great image, but there's, a bit of a blur in the eye, and I want to go in and just add some detail, too, that we're not just because I could kind of get away with. Doing that but because I feel it's important to have eyes sharp things like jewelry shop but I tend to keep skin and hair soft and the background here yet so further on skin from michael tools pho...

tography in atlanta what is a good technique for evening out skin that has multiple tones skin that has multiple times I would say it's just a matter of going in and using you lay a mask and doing several different collective colors and then using you laymen say there was a yellow tight in this skin up here using that on the yellow removing the yellows in selective color, playing around with them raising on the lame ask same with the reds as well see, you kind of adjusting different times within the skin and it takes some work to kind of know exactly what's effective what is in and skin is really hard because skin can look fake very quickly as well. I know there's probably gonna be some questions regarding human saturation of skins, which is like the d saturation and again I would say if you wanted to do that or you would need to do is make that layer the hugh saturation way I'm actually going to show you this quickly going into here hugh saturation again on an adjustment layer so we control later on taking down that saturation toe around this level and then using that tool or even filling that tall. So basically going into here, the paint bucket tool. So instead, this time, we're going in using the paintbrush to use the lay a mask. We're making this black and using the white to bring out what we want. So it's almost like an invert. So I'm just gonna color that onto the other side. Sir, I'm clearing that white, not black. All right, so now we're clicking on the paint brush. This time on, we're clicking on the white so whatever's here, you need opposite here to remove, to remember that, and then what we're doing is which is selecting the areas of the skin that we wanted to saturated when it's time. Okay, we start to see how that looks. And again, just subtle changes museum in few, rising with if I wanted to go down even further, you start to see how nowhere I've selected that goes down even further as well. Yeah, now I know that this is a overview of your general retouching. Um, but I see that you're kind of very loose in a good way with how you're going over the skin. Is that something that you do all the time, or if this was a longer at it, would you, you know, perfectly outline everything so and yes, that is a really good question actually because when I am retouching beauty work I have to be very particular I mean today I have to be quicker than my usual work for like you said but yeah, I mean when I'm doing things like we did the makeup the shadows highlights you can afford to go messy here but don't go off the face okay? So if you have like a big area you can afford to be loose in areas where it's not going to slip but as soon as you start working like here and then all of a sudden you go off the face you don't want halos around your subject because that's really obvious and I know when people have that they'll select an area of the model and then bring the contrast out but they forget that you've got all of these areas around the model and you start to see this little halo going on and again it's obvious the money's we touched it then photographer I think everyone wants to maintain a certain scent standing up at work so say if you have different client jobs that pays differently used teo try to spend the same amount to perfect each image even though you're getting pain less just to maintain the standard yes definitely um if I'm doing an editorial it's I'm spending my own time and I'm not only money I will put almost probably more time into what I do because that's my vision, my personal work m inspired by it and I think when you're processing things from clients shoes from editorial and personal work, it should take the same amount of passion in time and, you know, perseverance into what you do because it's important that those both exist in your portfolio and they both have the same kind of technique involved with them yeah, way got a question from cody lane who says you mentioned that you like adding rain tear photos on day one you quickly talk about that technique? Sure let's go for actually yeah, I'm gonna do that for image too, but I'd love to see it now you can see it um so adding grain to an image I don't really add grain at this point grain comes when I've much my ladies and I want to save it for web so if this was me right now going in, I would merge thiss this's my finished image, for example, had flat in that image I want I want to do is make a background lan and it's gonna be what I work because remember we can't do this and adjustment layer because this needs to affect this image so going on filter at the top here going into noise we want to add noise and we want to have monochromatic because there's nothing more um fake looking if you go in and you have colored grain, you just want a touch of this grain you want about a percentage of and it's good to toggle between here to kind of see what suits you and what's great about this kind of grain is you can do retouch into the skin and you're taking out detail as much as you try not to you are always taking out detail and by adding noise you're adding texture back into your skin. You don't have to use this to affect the whole of your image if you don't want to, but you could just use it to selectively affect the areas of the skin as long as she removing things like the eyes so there's no grain in the eyes as well. So if I was to do this now I add this onto my picture and for me this would be a finished image because you see how that grain kind of ads and text you back to the image and I do this for a lot of my shots and this is why I don't mind high so in my work because I don't mind having that green there and I did even more because I love grain I don't like I'm not a fan of really shop images, but again that's just my visual style that's what works for me and everyone comes down to you know your role in the own author. If you walk and you're the ones that kind of put your technique to make you a star, you need you need teo you a few questions in the challenge about shiny parts of this canyon and what is the best way to address those? Okay, so, like I mentioned earlier with the skin, I'm just gonna go back to my thing here to show you, so I went in earlier when I saw the skin, and I started using things like clone in and the skin retouching just on areas of the skin here, and the reason for that is by using cloning and using the highlights and shadows the highlights, inclining together, we'll both work for this, so you clone in and the healing you going in and kind of removing those like bumps and areas where it's obvious and then with the highlights, you blend in, but into the skin, so you'll blend in that kind of highlight. If you wanted to edit that even further again, you could go into selective color, go in, go in tea, whites, remove those harsh whites on the skin and just select the area with your mask as well I would love to actually, if we have time, I would love to try, and teo the black and white one now, before we break because I do think after it after lunch, it's probably best to go into that. So I'm just going to go into the light room back in tow, light room, hand pick up one of those images that I selected. Oh, yeah, funny questions. Well, I'm just trying to find my own image. So m todd, thirty uh says, how do you know when the picture is perfectly ready when there are so many possibilities? How do you know when you're done? I think you know why you're done by just getting familiar with the technique and kind of knowing what's too much on what is in, um, again going back to when I started, I didn't know what was too much and what wasn't, and people have to tell me that and I think it's good to get a professional opinion on that. If you do get the chance to get critique online or going to put follow reviews or meeting up with someone in the industry and they can get that two cents to it, I think that's really important.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

It was an amazing class. I have seen many fashion photography courses in Creative Live and I find this one was one of the best and very easy to follow. Lara was very clear about the fashion photography industry, explaining the differences between editorial, commercial and advertising fashion photography and when/why you work for free, the process, the importance about experimenting solo or with a creative team. It was very inspiring and loved her!

James
 

Having dusted off my camera after a 3 year inspiration slump I decided to head toward the fashion/editorial/Fine art/Portrait route. I discovered this course and after researching Lara Jade's work and seeing the course content I decided to buy the course. I'm completely new to the fashion world having mainly shot personal stuff. Anyway, for anyone reading this review who might be thinking 'should I, shouldn't I book this course?' I'm only up to video 6 - the vintage natural light look. I've learned so much already, even if I'd paid the same and got the first 6 videos I'd have been happy. So far it's covered so much about planning shoots, directing models. I like the fact that Jade is a working professional photographer rather than a want-to-be-but-failed or a long time passed has-been. I like that she's British (as am I). I like how she teaches and how down to earth she is and how happy she is to answer questions. I like how humble she is. The content, the teaching style is nothing short of being an assistant on set and learning first hand. Don't think about buying this course, just do it. You will not be sorry, I promise you!

a Creativelive Student
 

Lara's course was very well put together. She covered so many aspects of her shoots, including letting her creative team have the perfect amount of input; so she demonstrated how important it is to surround yourself with the right people and consistently getting their input. I'd love to be able to work with her hair stylist and wardrobe stylist for future editorial shoots. For being as young as Lara is, she is beyond her years in preparedness, experience, and aptitude to instruct. I thought she handled situations, like some "dead air" during live shoots very well by explaining in detail what was going on. Needless to say, I was super impressed.

Student Work

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