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Audience Image Retouching

Lesson 17 from: Retouching & Adobe Photoshop Techniques

Lindsay Adler

Audience Image Retouching

Lesson 17 from: Retouching & Adobe Photoshop Techniques

Lindsay Adler

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Lesson Info

17. Audience Image Retouching

Lesson Info

Audience Image Retouching

So let's take a look at a couple of photos, and this is a photo that I know that the question that was asked is a quick and simple way to change the color of the hat and the shirt. And one way that you could do this. We already learned in photo shop. If you go into Photoshopped, um, adjustment layers hue saturation and you'd select. In this instance it's magenta. However, it's really easy to do this if you have late room. If in light room you're in develop module and that's where I am here. If you go under basic, not basic, not tone curve, but under hue saturation, luminous color and black and white. If you go to Hugh, you have something. Which is this called the Tat, the targeted adjustment tool. When you click on that, it gives you a little circle, and based on if you click and drag offer down, it'll change the hue of that shirt. So, for example, I'm doing nothing right now, but clicking and dragging my mouth up and or down. And so now I can match her identically to the chair if I wa...

nt or drag it up because of what it's doing is identifying those similar colors. There's nothing like it in the rest of the photo and saying, Okay, let's make the change. So if the color change the way you wanted, so that's all you really need to do. It's really quick and easy. A couple other things that I see in this photo, um, is if I'm looking at her and we drop, you have to drop your tools just so you know, we wander around with and can't get rid of it, Uh, I see that the light on her face is too blue. It's it's too cold. So I would just white and light enough the or warm up the photo by hand. If you had a great card, you could do it that way. But sometimes I want more warm. If you're looking in the back and it looks like it's kind of end of day and probably what it is, it's the end of day. It's warm like everywhere else, but she's under the shade of a big tree or the side of a house or something. And so that's going to be really, really cool light, because all the light in that instance is coming from the end of day blue sky, kind of the that twilight. So I can just warm up the image by hand. You know, that's that's a personal preference. What's cool is that you could make a lot of changes right here in light room without going overto photo shop. So I feel like my eyes are getting lost on the edges and there's not enough bringing me to her face. So if I scroll down to the bottom here under effects, I can add up. And yet and so I can kind of dark and down the edges of it. And I'm just pulling the amount slider in, so it focus you in on her Now there's obviously you can go away too much, Um, but I just want to pull my eyes and from the edges, and then I want to increase the contrast on her face. Your ears go, your eyes go the areas of highest contrast, brightest and color. So in light room there's a tool, which is the adjustment brush. And it is much better now in lightened four than lightning three. Just you know, because what it did is it gave you all of the options that you now have in camera raw for CSX. It put it into light room four. So if you have light from three and you're looking at this brush, see how many more options you have if sharpness and noise and more and different and clarity And in all this and those that exist prior. So with this brush, anything that I adjust here so I can pump up my exposure in contrast and shadows and whatever anyplace I paint, it will only apply that effect there. I'm not in photo shop. If you're not familiar with light room, you can do a lot of these changes in light room even without photo shop, so I can paint. And what's good is if I look and say, Okay, that's probably a little too bright. Well, it's not permanent. All of light room is completely non destructive. So I could back off and say, OK, it was a little bit too light or my highlights went a little bit too far. And so if I come down here and I'm just gonna hit clothes and if I who, Why the shortcut is why I can see a boat with foreign after for the photo in light room and I'm gonna hit l once and l twice. You can see it just on black, and your face might be a little bright on that side. It looks correct on my screen. Just, you know, I can't quite tell. But even that makes a big difference. And if I come back and say no, I wanted to change the clover shirt again, you know, kind of no problem if I look at that color, I used the hue saturation, luminous all the time to change colors because it's an easier to make a selection so fine, like, Wow, that blue looks to blue. I can come over to saturation in de saturate kind of blues and awkward a little bit so I can make some changes. I'll also do this a lot of times when I do that kind of pale skin. Look, I don't even do it in photo shop. I'll pull out reds and yellows in light room right here. I go to saturation pull out, and it's not gonna work on her. She's already pale, so it doesn't really matter. But if I pull out reds and yellows. You know, I could make her skin go completely light. Um, I'm not sure if there's not another photo here that would better represent that. But even something, maybe like this. Okay, says another photo that one of you submitted, Um, if I first of all I would crop in my eyes were, like, lost all over the place so I would crap in. And I would also either get rid of the hair or photo shop a lot more hair in, because right now it's just there's a little bit here. Um but what I'm going to dio is I'm going to lighten it up. It's gonna pump up the shadows a little bit in the highlights. Right enough, This photo a bit, but let's check out her skin. If I wanted to make her skin kind of pull out the color if I pull out some oranges and yellows and I increased my contrast a bit, brighten it up just a bit even before and after. So it's getting more of that pale tone. It depends on how far you want to take it. I can go back in and pull out a lot of vibrance, a little bit plump up, and I'm just like tweaking. So I have these things that I commonly tweak. I'm looking and there's purple in her eyes. So maybe I want to go to grab purple and magenta to pop those tones up. And maybe I want to go into my adjustment brush and I want to pump of the shadows and the highlights in the clarity and then just kind of click on it in the eye. And so if I had done, you know, maybe it's overdone a little bit, but that's a a drastic change and just kind of tweaking a few things. And so I don't usually mess with color and light room too much, but all of those little exposure tweaks. I get that right. Open up in photoshopping, it changes the way that I retouch any questions. I'm pretty good. So I am going to open up a couple files in photo shop. So I'm gonna pick this photo, for example, until you a bit about how I might retouch that I would use portraiture, which I don't have. But I'm just gonna give you an idea of a couple things I would d'oh. So my problem with this photo since I think it's really, really pretty. But since everything's the same tone, I really need to define things with my contrast. Since everything's the same color. I don't have color working for me to tell me where I look and I don't really have bright highlights to tell me where to look either. And I think this is very pretty for whoever made this photo. So I wanted to lighten it up a little, and I'm just looking here at my history. Graham. I don't really have any blacks cutting or any highlights being clipped off so I can lay it up a little bit. Okay? And maybe it's a little bit warm, but I like it warm, Supposed to be warm photo. So I'm going to open up as is. And so the tweaks that I made it or just increase the contrast a little bit made it pop a little bit, added a little bit of clarity. So little things, someone open it up in photo shop and I'm gonna zoom in. I went duplicate the background, and I'm gonna start by saying, OK, I need to increase contrast in certain areas of the face and around the subject. I probably want to do that first because it's going to change what I see in my retouch. If I lighten things up or dark in it down, so that's where I want to start. I'm going to start. And instead of using the typical in vignette with levels, I'm gonna do it. Do so with our softly so when at a new layer and I'm going to paint around her and I know that I can change this later and I could do this if I wanted to, and let's change it too softly and so that makes it really, really, really dark. But I don't want it that dark so I can decrease my capacity. But if you look already, maybe I can blurred a little bit. But it focuses your eye and a bit so you're already saying Okay, so I need to I need to look more her. That's where I'm trying to look so I would do the same thing where I went to select her with my lasso tool, and I could paint with soft light, but I'm going to select her feather my brush and I'm gonna goto levels. And if you're looking, she doesn't have a white point. So they give her a white point, increase the contrast a little. It makes her the brightest area. The photos. So your eye goes there more. Okay, good. So I get myself a white point, lighten it up a little bit, give myself a black point. So if you're looking, if you think that mess with the color a little bit remember, you can change it to luminosity, and it helps with the color a bit. So I'm looking and I think your screen looks okay. That highlight on the knee and the sky there is close to being too bright, but it's not too bad. So so far, what we've done is just I've just controlled the eye so, so much more. You look at her before and after, and all I've done is darkened on the edge is lighting up the center and so every single photo that I do, that's where I start working on the edges. Lighten up the center on my subject. So now I'm gonna pop in here and take a look at what I need to do for retouching. And so I need to get rid of bruises and I need to get rid of blemishes. And like I said, I think this photo is really pretty. So I'm just kind of perfecting. All right, Um, she's fine, but I always get rid of, um, wrinkles or veins and girls hands. That's where we show our age first and in bikini shots. I always look for places where somebody was maybe wearing jeans or socks. You can see the ridges up the sign. I think this might actually just be a scratch, but a lot of times you'll think of the scratch. It was just because they were their socks too tight. And so I can really I can pretty much just get rid of, um, most of this with Patch to and that's all I'm doing is clicking and patching. That's great, Lindsay, because folks had asked yesterday about the lines and the remains on the skin. So thank you. Yeah, I've hatchet or all use, um a clone stamp on leyton. Same thing I like. This voter doesn't really has as armpits hidden because you guys that I filled our heads. Okay, so I would look in here and I know I need to clean up her skin. And I would ask myself the question of how big is this photo gonna bay? Because if this photo is going to be large and needs to be perfect, will, this is one of those instances where she doesn't. It's not really that much detail in order to do my frequency separation. If you're looking at it, it's not really detail is just more of tonalities. So I know that portraiture would probably be easiest for me. Um, also where I can kind of smooth out those textures as I had yesterday by creating a channel and painting colors. But I'm just really getting rid of watching us, since I know her face is kind of small getting rid of blotchy nous with the patch tool I can clean up under her eye and I have a very large brush. Won't clean up under her eye using clones, them one leyton Okay. And so clean that up just a little bit. It's under her eye speck up. And if I see like, I think that maybe that with a little strong, I could back off the A passage if I wanted to. Kind of depends. I could also use a history brush if I wanted to paint things back in the history. Brush is right underneath the brush tool so I can do a lower opacity for the history brush, and it kind of just steps it back a bit. Um, all right, so I know that I would get rid of this next to her mouth. And if I'm looking when it's all said and done, though, her face is still too dark, if chances are I mean, I know she's in a bathing suit, so obviously you're looking at her body, but I want to lighten up her face just a little bit. So a couple things that I do and I'm kind of just clicking around is I wanted to find her features a little more. I know I would smooth out this area. I'm going to use my, um, levels to brighten it up and then soft light to give her highlights and shadows because it's flat light here. So it kind of hide your features so I will select your face and I'll see if Levels does the job for me. It's kind of selecting your face. Select, modify feather and or curves. Cruz is another way to do the same thing. Might lighten it up, Maybe just give a little more contrast if I'm looking. You know, it brings a lot more contrast to her face and I'm just looking If I missed, if I went over and maybe had the right of a highlight on the side Not really too bad. It really just highlighted her hair, which looks good. So I'm going to paint off over here. I might add the highlight even more into her hair because I like that and this highlights in could also go in further and okay, the little darkness under her nose is getting to me and I can't help it. I think certain things I can't leave alone, just it needs to go away. Okay, So I would add a new layer paints the highlights on, and so when it paints and really soft highlights the top of her cheek, grab another one. Paint some shadows underneath her cheek, turn them both too soft light, and I can blur them or back off. But if you notice from a distance that would look like lighting that wouldn't look. Lee wouldn't think twice about it. So I come back up and see how it kind of would define more. I would do the same thing and come in with my sees. This is Shadow. I would come in with a light brush and pull out these clavicles more. Something like that. All right, so I do a couple more. I know that we're basically at a time. So the last things that I might do is it might lower her shoulder a little bit in local five. But there's not too much. Maybe pull this leg in its tiny bit, and I'd probably run a portraiture on her legs. I'm looking right here. Even though it's not bad, it's still splotchy, and you could d'oh! If you wanted to keep some detail, you could do your frequency separation and do it there. But I know that for me. I find it quicker to just do a portraiture. Very, very, very. Last thing is, if I did want her to look a little brighter, I could pull out a little bit of vibrance. So it's a vibrance and decreased vibrance a little bit for fashion shoots all the time. I decreased vibrance and increase saturation. It makes the photo pop. So if you're looking here, uh, maybe I want everything around her to be a little warmer, so I could leave it and then maybe just apply that decrease vibrance to our skin. So if I zoom back in and apply the decrease vibrance, maybe to her legs here, let's do, like, 40% kind of pull out a little bit of color, make her look a little paler. And I know it probably isn't too bad for you guys, but her leg for me mentally looks a little magenta ish. I might go ahead and add a little bit of yellow in or try toe contract. Okay? We're not even a Jensen. More sayin looks. It has a little bit of Sai into it. So real quick without really any major retouch is what I was focused on More is when I looked at the photo, she kind of got lost even though it was beautiful. So most of everything that I did when trying to move this thing down. You guys can see it better. Everything that I did Waas all about focus. And so I think you noticed her and look at her a lot more. And so retouching doesn't mean liquefy and skin softening. It can literally be how you're using Photoshopped to control the viewer's eye.

Class Materials

bonus material

Keyboard Shortcuts
Retouching Checklist
Beauty and Retouching
Creative Techniques

Ratings and Reviews

Sean
 

Fantastic Photoshop course. I knew Lindsay was great at Photography, Lighting, Posing and Public Speaking, but I am really blown away by her mad (great) skills at Photoshop. Lindsay really is a fantastic teacher. She turns what might be a more or less dry topic into a fun and entertaining topic. Thank you Lindsay and thank you CreativeLIve. You have a real superstar with Lindsay Adler.

a Creativelive Student
 

This is a great workshop for photographers wanting to learn and hone in on their retouching skills. As a photoshop user and photographer of 10 yrs I have been able to take away some further techniques to help better my skills and more or less tailor them. I would suggest you have some adv beginner knowledge of photoshop because I don't think some of the techniques you will be able to keep up with unless you buy it. There are two things that I wish she did better in her teaching and that is to teach new users to label all their layers and what they are as you are working. As you can see Lindsay ends up with 20 layers and unless your the one doing the editing you will have know idea what is what when you have to go back to it. So its best to teach this in the beginning so people get into the habit of organization early. Also I wish she used a Wacom. It really does cut your editing time in half and you have more solid movements in precisely selecting areas of a photo. From a photographer to other photographers. Use a wacom. You can start with a basic baboo for $89 and when the apple wireless mouse cost $69. Time is money, and a wacom truely save time! I used to use a mouse and my trackpad and once I switched I was like OMG what was I thinking before! So I wish she just emphasized that point more. Overall I think it was $99 well spent.

Christian G.
 

Not only is Lindsay very knowledgeable and a very good teacher but I REALLY TRULY appreciate her no-BS, straight-forward style.. No time wasted on long tangents talking about herself (or what have you), on cute remarks or on off-the-mark humor. She has showed us many great techniques, has presented to us various creative/different ideas AND she has also really been able to explain "how she thinks of a solution", how there is a bit of trial and error, "even" at her level.. All in a all, a truly excellent course and worth every penny!! Thank you Lindsay and thank you to the CreativeLive team for a great course!!

Student Work

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