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Miscellaneous Creative Techniques

Lesson 13 from: Retouching & Adobe Photoshop Techniques

Lindsay Adler

Miscellaneous Creative Techniques

Lesson 13 from: Retouching & Adobe Photoshop Techniques

Lindsay Adler

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Lesson Info

13. Miscellaneous Creative Techniques

Next Lesson: Faux HDR Look

Lesson Info

Miscellaneous Creative Techniques

In this photo, I'm going to fake it to make it look like it's three d it won't actually work for three d, and this is where I want you to think outside of the box, this doesn't sound like you'd use it often, but how I used it with portrait ce, for example, I never use this with weddings doesn't mean that you can't, but I never did. Um, is if I had somebody with a sports jersey on with a bright color, I could use this technique and I had kind of a movement adds a little bit of action to the photo. I've also used it for kind of like an album cover of a musician, it just adds a little bit of visual interest in energy, so I'm going to duplicate my my background there, and this won't basically it won't make sense until you do it. So until you actually see it, if I go to image adjustments and hugh saturation, I dragged my hugh either to the left or the right, because either way it gets you the same point blue and the reason it's blue is it see far opposite end of what originally wass, which ...

was yellow's so it's kind of the science. Now this doesn't look right what we're going to do is want to cut the values in half and I'm going to split my capacity to fifty percent so I split my capacity to fifty percent it's halfway between sayin blue and halfway between yellow which makes it gray it's it's nothing at this point so it's in between if I click on my top layer and I grab onto the move tool and I click my skis I'm is going to click left a few and up a few what it does is the difference between the two it almost looks like a miss registered image that was printed but it starts to look cool in three d I wanted this colors to really pop so I grabbed it an adjustment layer for human saturation and I pumped up my saturation something like that and that's all there really is to it you can kind of crop out the edge but it's another thing to have in your arsenal and it's a simple is kind of messing with colors if you see somebody that has something interesting somebody who has a really bright colored hair when it's miss registered it draws attention to that hair or somebody with an interesting short assure or a musician or an athlete okay, I'm gonna do one more any questions? You guys good just check in see let's dio mirror here we go okay the point but I want you to take away from this retouched or this example is that same thing of you have control over everything in your frame and sometimes reality doesn't look the way you want it teo and you need to take control of that and so introduce you to a couple interesting tools here uh but looking here I grew up in upstate new york and my grandpa had planted christmas trees and we have these lines and rows of christmas trees and so lance our childhood you know as I became a photographer I'm like I want a photograph of model here so I became a fashion photographer and I took my entire creative team three and a half hours to upstate new york to shoot it and I look in my camera and it looked like that it looks crappy legally it does not look nice it was not that the shoot that I had in mind was all about symmetry and rip repeated patterns and leading lines and it wasn't doing that for me and the editorial that I ended up running every single image was a mirror image that's that was the thing in the background was mirrored but the subject wasn't so what you're supposed to feel is okay what's real and what isn't this could like this environment it doesn't look real but you could possibly convince you that it is this your brain can be tricked for a minute um and so knowing that I can take control and change this also, I'm going to show you real quick, and the editorial ran in sublime magazine, which is london fashion magazine everyone was unmarried frame mirrored image, so duplicate my background and I'm going to roughly center my subject, and if I click on my move tool, I could just drag it like that I'm just dragging her roughly centered, and what I need to do is I need to duplicate this side of the frame and put it on the other side, so I'm going to grab right here in the top left my rectangular marquis tool and I have terrible eyesight sorry, moving my chair guys, I'm gonna roughly grabbed right down the middle and I'm gonna use my my my left right arrows just center it kind of perfectly and then I'll do. We've talked about before is command jason's going copy and paste that selection into a new layer? So if we turn this off here's what I have, I'm going to go back to my move tool and I went to drag the right hand side of the frame over the left hand side of the frame and a click enter and so now when I'm looking, what I have is a really cool background, but a really funky looking girl. You know uh and so I can fix that and so aiken do we've done a million times before I can add my lair mask and I could go in and what I want to do is make her not perfectly symmetrical cause she looks like an alien it was I like alien models a little too far uh and I'll paint the black off that side of her face enough of her body and I just say I spent a little more time to make it look realistic and then I also cloned out the space between her legs um I chose black and white because when I'm using an image if you look at my portfolio this is something I I urge you to think about if the color is not adding to the mood or to the impact the maybe that's a chance reason why you should remove it and that's a people have the question when do you use black and white? Well this is about repeated shape and pattern color adds nothing so I switched it to black and white remember I said with caucasian skin tones your lighter skin tones it's the reds in the yellows seeing her skin that change uh you could drag those change skin tones and the last thing I'm trying to urge you to think of this point again is that when I look here your eye goes the area of highest contrast and also the latest area so okay, I'm obviously drawn into her outfit because she's wearing black so it's the highest area of contrast but I feel like my eyes get pulled to the edges like a keep getting pulled out because it's light as well so it's that same thing of dark ing it down I could grab levels those maybe some of you warm familiar levels I can darken down my midpoint so kind of dark and down those edges grab a black point it can increase contrast and you can tweak it how everyone and then just, uh reduced that effect off of her and so instead of just being a street in yet I can go around and kind of control exactly how it works if you look in this image you know I kind of focused in a lot more on her when I darken down the edges and I could go much more extreme another way to do vignettes as well to create a new blank lair you select black and you can paint around the edges however you want and then he changed the blood mode so if you change soft light that's one way to darken it down see you can also go to overlay they have different effects you can also darkened things down that's also an option you can try your your other modes in general I usually use I usually use soft light or overlay for darkening down edges. And I come back off the a passage, if it's too much but it's. Perfect. If I want to say, paint that black so that's, like right, exactly around her and control my eye in the frame. So definitely include, quote unquote vignettes in your photos to focus the 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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