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Lesson Info

Liquify Tricks

this. This is a true story. This girl comes in a studio and she says, Mr Carter, I want you to take a picture of me the way you did. My friends. She was standing in the middle of the street with her hands all in her hair like this. And could you take a picture of me like that? And I said, my brain. I didn't say this to her. Of course. No way. But I said, God, you just It's a different. You have a different body shape. And and she was so demanding about doing it. I said, Okay, let's do it. So we did it. Do you think she saw what you see on the screen here? No, no, this is what she saw. Nice. It was reality. This is fantasy reality, and this is fantasy. Okay, so how do you do that? I'm glad you asked. Liquefy Very cool trick shift. Command X opens up a whole new dialogue box, and this is liquefy box. And you There's all sorts of things in here. You could probably we could probably spend our at least in our playing in liquefy talking about all the different things But if you've ever opene...

d up liquefy and said to yourself, let me do something in liquefy most probably You opened it up, and that's about default right there. And you just opened it up and you said, Let me do something. I don't like liquefy. Okay, let me put that back. Now, this is the deep Let's 50. Not 51 50. That's the default setting. It comes in at brush density. 100 brush pressure 50. And what happens when you do stuff that happens really, really fast. See how fast things are happening? Put it back. I want you to change. This is probably the thing. I get emails about the most because it's like one of those settings you don't have liquefy. Get your pen ready. Get ready. Here we go. Change brush density 20 Okay, change brush pressure to 15. Okay, Here's your only rewind. Change. Brush density 20 Change brush pressure to 15. Now. I'm going to now do the exact same thing. I just did just two seconds ago. Watch. He's how much slower things happen to now. So now you have a lot more control. And that's the real trick. Here. Get everything in liquefied to slow way down, and you can do it just a little bit at a time. Very subtle. Okay, the in this particular girls case, what I did was it's 12345 down. This is the push left tool, I believe, is what it's called. And whenever you go up, everything goes to the left. And when you go down, everything goes to the right. Do that again. I'm glad you asked. Everything goes up, he goes toe left down goes to the right. Okay, before and after before, after before after. Or this is what she saw. This would reality cool. True story. Mom came in, looked at the pictures. She's looking at him and she's like, Girl, you look good And I'm I didn't say anything. Not a word. I mean, because again, it's not my job. My job is to make him look the way they think they look. I know I can hear. I can hear your chat thing. Lighten up right now. Saying doesn't anybody ever say anything? No. Because you, you everyone out there and you five have the luxury of the before and the after. They only have the after. Okay. And by Onley having the Astor, you create the fantasy, the illusion, the way people see themselves in their mind. Cool. All right. Does it work with boys? I'm glad you asked. Yes. So this senior boy comes to May? He was the equipment manager at school. His draws said it's kind of funny. Okay, he had one of these. That's really weird. Okay. Anyway, so he's the equipment manager. Is this what he really looked like? What do you think? You know, this is what he really looked like. Notice his shoulders. Look, it is Look at his thing. What is that underneath the arms? Yeah, them things look, a little love handles a skinny as he is. He still got some love handles. That light between light hanging on the background between his legs. He that, uh, fixed all that stuff right up. OK, now, here's what you have to understand. With all seniors, you think seniors in general or insecure the senior boys? Absolutely. To me. The worst. Okay, just the worst. You got to be very cautious with this. Do not say Oh, I'm gonna liquefy. And that word does not get spoken. All right, what you do? If they say anything you can say, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna do something in the computer. Don't worry about it. You know, just call it that. All right? So you could be real cautious with that. The other thing that you gotta be really, really cautious with is you gotta help help promote the fantasy of it all. OK, so senior boy comes in and says I want to do something good. Equipment manager, I'll do something with my shirt off. Okay. Did you know that has been statistically proven that if you warm up your muscles, they actually get bigger? He will be like, Yeah, I've heard that That that that's the case. So what? What are you suggesting, he'll say? I'll say, I'll say, Well, how about maybe some push ups and sit ups, you know, warm up them muscles. Well, that do will flop like a fish onto the ground and start with okay. And so then you just do a little fancy look over and you add to the illusion of it all so true. Starry. Not this guy, but a guy. Good looking guy came into the studio, wanted to do the whole bow tie thing, you know? I know sharp man with my boat, and he was ripped. You know, when you start out ripped, you don't have to do a whole lot of liquefy, Okay? But you can do some cool things with highlight and shadow and make people look really ripped. And so that's what I did. I did to my liquefied, to the guy. I did some highlight and shadow, but before we did any of that, I said, you know, you could warm up your muscles and he was You must have 100. Okay, so here comes the girlfriend. When she gets to prove book, she's flipping through the proof book, flipping through proof book, flipping through the proof book. And she's like, huh? She gets to the picture with no shirt selected. Him looks at the boat, looks at him, looks, looks, looks, looks at me. Looks like the bullet blocks. And me looks at what looks at him, looks at the book, then looks back at me and says, uh, did you like, did you like, do something in the computer to his muscles or something. And he goes Now, now now has been statistically proven that if you warm up your muscles that get bigger. Oh, okay. So much. Okay. So are they listening? Oh, yeah. They're listening. They are listening. So there you go. So that's just another thing again. I just kind of goes to the fact that it's a fantasy. What we do is a fantasy. Okay, so there you go. That is liquefy. Guess what we get to do now. What we get to legal vinyl. Are you zoomed in here? I feel like I need to dot in across deal here. Right, Because that is number 38. I just counted. It was 38. 38. Things that we were going to do. That was the last one. I think I think the very least we need, like, the wave or something. You don't get the camera, way, way of double ways. I think that was the first wave way across the Internet way. Very good. So I know you said it the first day. 2345 times. There's no way of getting through this whole thing. No way. Yeah. Guess what I think I did it. They did it. Absolutely. Did it. So just as a bit of a review. Unless you want Teoh handle some questions you said I've been handling as I've been going, we're all good. OK? Yeah. So just as a bit of a review. So workflow is the thing that is going to get you home. This is the girl I was just telling. About. What? The paint. Remember? I said when we change the color of it, So Yeah, there we go. That was just kind of fun stuff. Anyway, workflow is the thing that gets you home, gets you home. Why is workflow so important? Well, like I said the first day, what do we dio? We getting people in the studio the second day we making awesome images. We have all these fantastic images, we dosing every skill set. We've got every piece of fantastic equipment that we can possibly by without going into major debt. And now what do we have to dio? We have to make it look the most awesome it can, But we have to do that fast as we can and get home. Your homework assignment was to take those sticky notes. Those sticky notes make you a detailed explanation detail all the way across the board, your entire workflow after get it all laid out, lay it out everywhere, some place that you can look at it and make sure you see it every day. And I want you to do it on the Internet, too. Then start trying to get those notes off, taking them off one at a time, even Julian at the point where you can't take other things off and that's okay. But get as many of those things off every time you pull a sticky note off, you're speeding up that workflow, speeding it up, getting home that much faster. Talked about bridge. Why I used bridge, how I use bridge all the different aspects of bridge. We talked about Adobe Camera raw in that fact that both bridge and adobe camera excuse me both bridge and light room use adobe camera. It is the product. It is the thing that Adobe uses to make the conversion in all the different aspects of how it works. And then we played in photo shop and I showed you some. So someone in my little tricks and some of the things that I do in photo shop and how I haven't laid out and all that kind of stuff we played in some actions, we made an action. That was a simple action. But I think it it's the first step. The first step to get you going. Now, you think that start? Maybe a little something a little bit more complex? Next time you catch yourself doing something over and over and over again, you're gonna say, Hey, I know how to make an action. I'm gonna make an action, make yourself in action. And then we did some ski tricks. We just did that to help speed up your workflow along the way. And that is how we did it. That is what it took to get us to this point. And so here we are. We did it in three days. Worth. That wasn't. I kind of want something to pop out of the lockers. Nothing. Okay, I don't know. I looked all over for a stuff, nutrient man choose. Gonna have somebody in there that I didn't know about or something I know. I was kind of wishing we had planning E because I would really like cheering. Yeah, that's how you feeling. After three days, I'm ready. Going maybe two more days. No state. That's an extra bonus. Bonus. Ugo. One question from the Internet that kind of been saving for you tonight because it just seems like the right moment, I guess, for Moon Dog. And it kind of directed towards the whole senior process because so many people, you know, you photographing you get inspired and get out there and you shoot and shoot and shoot. And then all of a sudden, after a month or two, you're like, have any fresh ideas where I where I get my energy from where to get my creativity in your inspiration. Where do you find your inspiration every day to keep going and to keep giving that to other people? Where does that come from? It Zmelik. I layered one thing. I did it coming into Seattle. I'm walking through the airport and I'm photographing in my mind is all what I was doing. Somebody walks by and I looked and I was like, Okay, what would it take? How would I How would I fix that? How do I adjust. How would I pose that person? And I take pictures a lot, but in my mind is what I do. And so I will say that I have. If if there is a talent, people say, Oh, you're so talented I think it's all learn herbal. That's my gut feeling. But if there is a talent out there that I have, it is a cataloging system in my mind that I if I see an image, it can be filed. And when I approach a scenario that IHS similar to that thing that I seeing maybe even 34 years ago, I call it up and do it. So if they're like I said, if there's a talent, that would be it my filing system. But all the rest of the stuff that we do, I think is completely learn Herbal completely learn herbal. Another thing is like I will look at magazines and things like that and just you know, I'll flip through a magazine very, very fast sitting on the stand and I'm cataloguing. I'm cataloguing. I'm filing things away another thing that when you get to where you been photographing seniors since you was a senior in your 51 years old and it's 30 plus years and you've been doing it. You get to a point where you haven't seen anything new in a in a while, but you can force yourself and challenge yourself to today. I am not doing anything that I have ever done before unless the customer requests it. So the customer says, Hey, Karki, no, I won't do that thing with the truck. Okay, then all bets are off, making the customer happy. Is there anything you want me to do back? And she said, No, I'm leaving it up, Theo. Well, guess what. I have forced myself. You cannot do anything that you have ever done ever. And so true. Talk about a challenge for yourself, but when you get into that that mode, it will absolutely, absolutely talk about Bring about some crazy creativity. Another one that I have been done I have done is I. Sometimes I'll play a song or a song will happen on a radio on the radio, and I let that song motivate me Toe would what is what if I want to make an image of that song with this girl? What would I do? And it's kind of weird that it touches a different part of the brain. And so it channels that creativity. I get together with photographers very often, and we'll go and do a little free photo shoot for somebody are Everybody has, ah, particular challenge. It'll it'll be something like, OK, go photograph a chair. You know, things like that that will do. And we've been known to do that kind of challenge thing on the Pro Forum sometimes, you know. So that's another thing that I do. And like I said, it's so is multi layered. And it's all of those things. It's a bunch of little things that Connor yeah, keeps you going, keeps rolling, keeps you keep your clicking. Does that help? It's perfect. Thank you. School. Oh, I'm sorry. Policy question today is more just questioning. Okay, I notice on your marketing everything. Now you asking the seniors about you want to something a little crazier And you came with a serious off this painting and dropping. If we have time, I would like if you could go walk through us. Like what? How you do like what danger? Using what is in your mind because, like, imagine if I get ah senior and say, OK, let me get my Home Depot painting. Going to hair doesn't go. How you doing? The very first time I ever did paint on a senior, it was the senior who did it. She walks in. She's an artist. She's got these multiple paintings that she's done. She was impeccable. She was an impeccable painter. I bet she's doing that for a living somewhere. This this girl was good and she says I want to do some stuff with some my paints. And I'm like, Well, what do you think? And she goes, Well, I'm gonna go ahead, make a painting on this white shirt and I'm gonna be wearing it. And then maybe I thought I'd smear some of it on my face and I was like, OK, well, where you gonna do with the mess? Because I get messy when I paint all the time, so don't worry about it. So we saved it till last. It's not this girl, not this girl. But it was just the very first time. This is how it happened. And so I said, OK, now is the time She went into the to the changing room and it was like three minutes. She comes out with this work of art, sure that I was like, Wait, that's the same white shirt. She goes, Yeah, incredible man, it was It was awesome. Awesome. So I told her we did a couple of images, just like the pain was wet on the shirt and the paint. The type of paint that it was, was that tube paint paint that comes in a tube. You know, it's like artists. You know, the stuff that you would paint like with a knife or chisel. What is it like oil paints and all that stuff? It's acrylics, is what they call it, but it's in a tube is what she did, and she had it all squared, and she had it all done. So anyway, after doing a few images of just the wet that not that's homes bad. It wasn't a wet T shirt, but it was wet with paint. OK, it was so he was still it wasn't dried because she just just did it. I said, This is what I want you to do, want you to just take your fingers and do like that. Just get your paint on your hands. Now, do this. And she was faced Me. I said, now do this. So Okay, now do this. Now do that. Now, do this. And so she did several things like that. And then I had to put the paint brushes and her fingers and hold, Hold it like this. And the images is really It was really, really neat. Okay, this girl, I actually saw that image. Okay, this is how this happened. She saw that image and thought it was neat. And he was like, Can you Can you do something of me with paint? And so it was just simple. Artists paint in a in a jar, and I get it. I got it from the, You know, the artist store was a liquid paint. It was water based, So it's not any kind of oil thing. It's not gonna, you know, it says on the little package. It said, you know that it is not going to damage skin and, you know, you got all them disclaimers on this stuff, and it was just an oil. It was just a water based paint and it had a, you know, a flip top and had a little tiny hole. And that's all I did. I just had a lay ahead like this, and I went and I made a big glob. And then when she went up and just started the drip down and he got all over her shirt and it got all over the floor and I should have showed you all yesterday it's still all over my camera and it is all over the place. And so it is a mess. It is aggravating, but doesn't get attention. Absolutely so and then you use the high key technique used, the high keep that I showed you. And I used the the saturation technique to bring up the and then she actually had blue. She knew it was gonna be pink because I told her ahead of time that I had some pink paint. So she wore this pink eye make up and then in Photoshopped, using the saturation tool just like the brush that brush sponge tool in saturation mode. I just wiped it over the eyes to make the more pink. Okay, so So you know, there is no a lot of it is is on the fly, man. I mean, there's no formula, I guess, is what I'm getting that and that's okay. I think that's one of the cool things about Senior Portrait is that there is no formula.