The Digital Transformer

Photoshop's Clipping Groups

2012-02-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

When Photoshop introduced Layers (way back in Version 3) organizing the Layers used in the course of compositing or retouching an image has become somewhat of a challenge. And if you work like I do the numbers of Layers in any particular image can really add up. For some of the movie posters and more complex images I've worked on I can easily use more than 100 Layers.

Luckily there are a couple of great tools available to help us keep those numerous Layers in line. Clipping Groups is one of those very useful tools that I use constantly. While it's not really a tool per se (you won't find Clipping Groups on your Tools palette) I use it so much that I consider it one of the more valuable tools in my arsonal.

So just what is a "Clipping Group"? Simply put it's an option used in the Layers palette that allows you to control where and how a Layer shows up based on the Layer it's "clipped" to.

Here's an example to show you just what I mean. In the image below you see there are 4 Layers: Background, Square, Circle and Triangle.

Here you can see how the 3 shapes all overlap each other. So far so good.

But supposed we only wanted the Red Circle to show up where it overlaps the Square and no where else? How would we do that? While some might suggest using a Layer Mask to hide the parts that spill out beyond the Square there is an easier way. What if we could use the Square Layer itself to control where the Red Circle shows up?

This is exactly what Clipping Groups do as you can see from the image below:

By clipping the Circle Layer to the Square Layer we're able to easily have the Square Layer control where the Circle Layer shows up. If you look at the Layers palette you'll see the bent arrow pointing from the Circle Layer to the Square Layer. This means it's now clipped to that layer as a Clipping Group.

So far so good for the Circle. But now what about the Triangle Layer? Can we clip that to the Square Layer too? The answer of course is:

As you can see from this image we're now using the Square Layer to control both the Circle and the Triangle Layers. And all of this is being done without using Layer Masks. Pretty cool, eh?

Now the question is just how can we create these Clipping Groups? The first thing that is needed is to make sure the Layers are arranged properly in the Layers palette. Since a Clipping Group is sort of like a stack of Layers the Layer that will be the base of the Clipping Group needs to be immediately below the Layers that will be clipped to it. As you can see in the Layers palette in this example the Circle and the Triangle Layers are right above the Square Layer. If we wanted just the Triangle to be clipped to the Square we'd have to move that Layer so it was the one immediately above the Square Layer.

Once we have the Layers arranged properly in the Layers palette there are 3 easy ways to create the Clipping Group. The first one is to hover the cursor right over the line separating the 2 Layers in the Layers palette while holding the Option Key (if you're on a PC machine that would be the Alt key) and when you see the cursor turn into the overlapping circles like you see below click on that line:

Clicking on the line then creates the Clipping Group like this:

An alternate way is to go to the Menu and choose Layers>Create Clipping Group as shown below:

Looking at the menu as shown here you can also see the third way to create the Clipping Group, by using the Shortcut Command + Option + G. (Or Control + Alt + G for those PC folk).

Now that we know how the basics of Clipping Groups work imagine that instead of basic shapes like used in the examples above we're working on something more complex like the image shown below:

If I could fit the entire Layers palette into the screen capture you'd be able to see this image has just over 50 Layers. As it is the Clipping Group for the girl uses 23 Layers by itself. In this image I used both regular Layers as well as Adjustment Layers all in one Clipping Group. And by using a Clipping Group I can leverage the mask for the girl which means for many of the Layers no other mask is needed.

Imagine the difficulty of working with this image if each and every Layer needed to use the same mask over and over and over. Besides the complexity one problem that would come up is that any little errors or feathered edges in the Mask would be multiplied many times over making it far more likely we'd see the problems it might cause which would then mean fixing that mask over and over and over.

Now that we've seen how Clipping Groups can work with both simple and complex images how will you use it to make your work easier?

Russell Brown's Sun Rays

2011-10-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

As an artist I enjoy the challenge to continually grow in my skills and abilities. There is so much more to learn that it keeps the work fun and fulfilling, and it's one of the reasons I enjoy sharing and teaching so much.

This challenge also means that I'm continually looking through various blogs and websites perusing articles and tutorials hunting for those gems that might be found by exploring some new idea. For me it's less about the specific task the tutorial is covering and more about the ideas being presented. Quite often there will be something discussed that catches my attention and gets me exploring some new idea.

One of the best presenters on the web has to be Adobe's Russell Brown. As one of Adobe's top evangelists he's part wizard and part showman always presenting tips and techniques in an entertaining way.

In the video below Russell talks about adding some drama to an image by creating fake Sun Rays. It's a cool effect, but the particular techniques that I thought you would be interested in was his use of the Polar Coordinates Filter along with the Overlay Blending mode. This Polar Coordinates Filter is used to take a series of vertical lines and turn them into a series of lines radiating out from the center. Now what else could we use this filter for? Hmmm....

Roger Hagadone and GVC

2011-09-29T18:46:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year I collaborated with photographer Roger Hagadone on a series of ads for Grand Victoria Casino in the Chicago area.

The image shown here is one of ten images we created for the campaign. For each of these images Roger shot the background and foreground elements inside the casino and then flew out to Los Angeles to shoot the models that would be composited into the images.

Working on set with Roger as he shot the models I quickly dropped them into the backgrounds so he and the client could preview how the final composited images would look. Then once the final picks had been made I took copies of all the files and returned to my studio where I started to work on crafting the final composited images.

To keep the focus of the image on the model I used Photoshop's Lens Blur filter and to create the illusion of a short depth of field and then progressively darkened the deepest parts of the background. The table was added in front of the model and I brought in just a hint of her reflected in the wine glass. Then I retouched the model and added a touch of stylizing glamour to give her that special look Roger wanted.

Below are the before shots used to create the final polished image.

Digital Dissection - Photoshop Workshop Sept 24th, 2011

2011-09-22T18:29:00.001-07:00

Come join us on Saturday September 24th for the next in our series of Digital Workshops with Dennis Dunbar. For this event Dennis will cover some of his recent projects highlighting several special techniques giving you an insight into how he approaches the challenges that come up.

He'll demonstrate techniques for stylizing images using split toning and other tricks. He’ll also show his favorite techniques for Color Correction and he’ll give you tips on Masking, using the Pen Tool as well as Photoshop’s Refine Edge Brush to blend several images into a seamless composite. Then he’ll show you how to wrestle pixels using the Warp Tool. Along the way he'll discuss file structure, layer organization and retouching workflow.

Join us for what promises to be an informative and enlightening workshop with one of APA LA's very own retouching masters.

Saturday September 24, 2011
10am-2pm

At Strauss Studios
6442 Santa Monica Blvd.#204
LA, CA 90038-1513

To register or for more information Click Here

Sponsored by:

Great info from X-Rite & CMG

2011-08-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

Ever since Photoshop 5 debuted Color Management has become an essential part of any digital workflow. Back then, in the dark old days of Color Management, it was a challenge just to find any good info on what we needed to do to get our color under control.

And the tools for profiling printers and monitors were difficult to work with as well. The first printer profiling package I used, ColorBlind, required a two day training session just to learn the basics.

We've come a long way since then and the latest offerings from X-Rite have taken the ease of use even higher while also delivering some very powerful tools that allow you to get your color under control like never before!

I recently upgraded my profiling package to X-Rite's i1 Profiler and I have to say I'm very impressed. This software is easier to use than any I've used before and yet it also gives me some very advanced options that make it easy to get everything dialed in whether it's calibrating and profiling my monitor, or it's creating a profile for that new paper I've been looking to try in my Epson printer.

As I've explored this new tool I came across a great resource for information from X-Rite and my friends at the Color Management Group. If you're looking for tips on how to make great printer profiles, or how to produce Contract Level Proofs on your inkjet printer these folks have the info for you.

You can read some great tips on the cool new features in i1 Profiler in the Tech Corner section of their site as well as find links to downloads and more info here: http://www.i1upgrades.com/category/tech-corner/

Adusting a Layer Mask with the Dodge-Burn and Blur Tools

2011-08-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a technique I developed for quickly finessing a Layer Mask using the Dodge/Burn & Blur tools. The idea is to use the Burn Tool to bring the mask in tighter to the object and the Blur Tool to give the edge just the right amount of softness.

With a little practice you'll find this method works very quickly because it does not require you to be as careful as you would need to be with the Brush Tool.

Take a look at the video and let me know what you think.

3 Steps to Optimize Your Brush Settings for Wacom Tablets

2011-08-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

As an experienced retoucher one of the most valuable tools available to me is my trusty Wacom Tablet. The ability to use hold the Stylus in my hand as I would a paint brush or a pencil makes the whole work of retouching and masking so much easier.

For me using a mouse for painting feels like I'm using a brick. I simply can't imagine how it would be possible to get my work done that way. Yet I am constantly surprised by the number of Photoshop users I meet who just can't seem to get the hang of working with the Wacom Stylus.

After speaking with several folks like this I realized that often times there are just too many variables happening at the same time when they try to use a Wacom or other pressure sensitive tablet. And in many regards this makes a lot of sense to me.

The default Brushes in Photoshop have a lot of power behind them and it seems like Adobe keeps adding in more power with every update. But these many of these default Brushes have overlapping controls that can make working with them very difficult, especially for users who are not used to being able to control so many factors at once.

For instance many of the default Brushes use the pressure sensitivity of the tablet to control the opacity of the Brush, but it controls the sizing of the Brush as well. In other words pressing harder or softer affects how much paint you're adding as well as how big the Brush is. Here is an example of the kind of effect this can create:

As I painted with this Brush I started out in the middle with a very light pressure and gradually used a harder pressure and then a lighter pressure as I finished the stroke. You can see how the size of the Brush and the hardness of the edge changes as I varied the pressure.

For many users this can make for some unpredictable effects that are harder to control. No wonder many of them want to just keep painting with their brick, er Mouse!

As I said in the beginning of this article Photoshop gives you a lot of control over the way the Brushes work. Let's take a look at our example again, but this time we'll also take a look at the Brush Setting as well.

Looking at the Brush palette you can see there are several controls available. Right now we're only going to be concerned with 2 of them.

Step 1) Just below the "Brush Tip Shape" name is a control labeled "Shape Dynamics". This setting is where you can control the shape and size of the Brush. Turning that control off (by un-clicking) allows you to keep the size of the Brush constant no matter how much pressure you apply. Now your Brush will act exactly the same way when you use the Stylus or the Mouse.

Step 2) Now go to the control labeled "Transfer" (In Photoshop CS4 and before this is called "Other Dynamics"). Clicking on that control will show you a few more options. The one we're concerned with here is called "Opacity Jitter". Click on the Control button right below that and you'll see a pop up menu like the one shown below:

Setting this control to "Pen Pressure" will allow you to control the opacity of your brush by changing the pressure you apply with your Stylus. The harder you press the more paint the Brush will apply. And the softer you press means the more transparent your paint stroke will be.

This control gives you a lot of power that can be pretty easy to master. With just a little practice now you should be able to easily control how much paint you're applying. If you want a softer, more transparent effect just use a lighter pressure. If you want more paint to be applied just press harder. It's really that simple.

Step 3) Once you have set your Brush up as you like it be sure to click on the "Brush Presets" button, then click on the "Create New Brush" button to save your brush as shown below:

Since many of Photoshop's tools, like the Rubber Stamp Tool, make use of Brushes you'll find it's now easier than ever to get just the effects you want. Many Photoshop Pros make a variety of Brush Presets with different sizes and hardnesses so they have a wide range of handy settings available to them. To make these various Brushes just go back to your Brushes palette and click on the "Brush Tip Shape" control shown below:

Here by changing the Size and the Hardness options and then saving each Brush you can create your own variety of Brush Presets that will be easily available to you whenever you work in Photoshop.

Choking a Path with Photoshop and Illustrator

2011-08-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

Every now and then a project will involve creating a Clipping Path which the client will then use in a layout program such as Quark Xpress or InDesign to make sure the background drops out completely.

Now creating a Clipping Path is simple enough, but what happens if the client needs the path to come in a little bit tighter, commonly called "choking"? Moving each point on the path in a few pixels can be very time consuming especially when you have a complex path.

Here is a video tutorial I created showing you how to easily accomplish this using Photoshop and Illustrator together.

Guess Mailer

2011-07-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

This past Spring I was called by photographer Emilie Harris who asked me to handle the retouching for a Guess ad campaign she had just shot.

The job involved working on 9 images that were to be part of their Spring Mailer. In addition to the usual retouching, color correction and cleanup this project involved an added twist. All of the images were shot using a cool idea, projecting an image onto the background over the models. In the end we wound up using a combination of 'Old School' and 'New School' techniques to create the finished images.

When the background images were projected over the models it created a very cool muted, slightly distorted image that spilled over the models tying them nicely into the scene. By combining the approved shots with the images that were projected onto the backgrounds I was able to bring a level of control to the project that could not be achieved 'in camera'.

Of course this meant laying the background images over the approved shot, matching the distortion and color then carefully masking out the models. For the image above this meant painstakingly masking out the spokes on the wheels as well. Now that's true masking fun!

Here are the Before and After shots:

A Really Cool Script

2011-07-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

Naming your Layers has always been one of my pet peeves when it comes to retouching. When working on a multi-layered image there is nothing quite so confusing as trying to figure out what "Layer 39" is for.

And "Naming your Layers" starts with the Background Layer. A great deal of the images I work on involve compositing several images together. Whether it's adding a new cherry to the top of a tasty milk shake, or it's replacing someone's head it always helps to know where each part came from. By putting the original file name in the Layer Name of each Layer I can easily keep track of where that cherry or head came from.

This way when my client asks "What shot did that head come from?" I can just look in my Layer's Palette and see right away giving me an easy way to confirm I used the right shot.

In the workshops I teach I make a point of this and I've written about an easy way to put the name of the source image in the Layer's name in a previous blog post, Workflow Tip #1. In short that post described a method for copying the original file's name and then turning the background into a Layer and pasting the name into the Layer Properties dialogue for that Layer.

It sounds a little complicated but once you get used to it it's possible to do this in 3 or 4 mouse clicks so it's actually pretty easy.

At least I thought it was pretty easy until a reader, Jim Koch, turned me on to something really cool that automatically does this for you by using a little script you can load into Photoshop. Very Cool!

This script was created by one of the propeller heads from Adobe's Photoshop engineering team, Thomas Ruark. If you're a big user of Photoshop as I am these guys are among your heros. And Thomas just rocketed to the top of the list in my book!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the use of Java Scripts in Photoshop rest assured these can be very cool little items. A script is basically a set of commands that can automate various actions within Photoshop. They are similar to the more familiar Actions that so many people use constantly, (I have one friend that regularly uses something like 150 Actions in his daily work.)

But unlike Actions which require you to click on something, or invoke some key commands scripts can be set up to run automatically. I've not experimented too extensively with scripts before (though I plan to play with them more in near future), but I understand scripts can even do things not possible with Actions. All in they're promising to be pretty handy tools for any busy retoucher.

The script Thomas wrote is called "OpenAsLayer.jsx" and once loaded into Photoshop it completely automates the process of adding the file's name to the Background Layer when you open the file. After installing this and working with it for a few days I've come to really love this cool little script.

You can find the script here on Julieanne Kost's blog, This link will take you to the blog post where she explains how to download, install and use the script.

Now after waxing so enthusiastically about this cool script I do want to mention one thing, once you've installed the script it will automatically name any Background Layer with the file's name so if you regularly use any Actions etc that look for a Layer named "Background" you'll need to remember to re-convert that Layer back into a Background Layer before using the Action.

To restore your Background Layer all you have to do is go to the PS menu bar and click on Layer>New>Background from Layer. Come to think of it you could even create an Action to do this, or modify the Actions that need a Background Layer to make this even easier.

For now my thanks go out to Jim Koch and Thomas Ruark for making my work just a little bit easier.

Beauty by Layers

2011-05-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

This Saturday I'll be teaching a workshop on retouching for the APA Chapter in Denver, Colorado.

Beauty Retouching with Dennis Dunbar

May 14, 2011
Beauty by Layers with Dennis Dunbar

Join us on Saturday, May 14th when Dennis Dunbar will be teaching a workshop on High End Beauty Retouching. In this workshop Dennis will cover his Beauty Retouching Workflow, and will go into detail describing his techniques for getting perfect skin, as well as Color Correcting, and Sharpening. He’ll also discuss working on hair, enhancing makeup, adding a “Healthy Skin Glow” and using Adjustment Layers to augment the lighting.

Users of all levels are welcome as this workshop promises to be an informative and interesting event where Dennis will share tips and tricks that will help both the beginner as well as the advanced user.

APA Member $25

Non members $50

9:30 Doors Open

10am-2pm Presentation

lunch included

at Denver Pro Photo

235 S Cherokee St
Denver CO 80223

Door Prizes and Sponsored by:

Beauty Retouching with Dennis Dunbar

2011-03-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Cowart and Taylor Swift

2011-03-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

As a digital artist/retoucher I love collaborating with photographers producing beautiful images like this one of Taylor Swift, shot by Jeremy Cowart. This image called for careful retouching and subtle techniques to enhance her natural beauty.

In working on Beauty shots like this one my standard workflow is to first go through the image cleaning up any out of place bits, then I carefully worked on her skin using a combination of the Heal Brush, the Clone Tool and a little paint here and there balancing just the right amount of texture with an overall smoothness to make sure her skin looked perfect. Then I removed the stray hairs that always seem to show up in closely cropped shots like this.

After the basic cleanup was done I then focused on bringing just the right sense of light to her eye with a gentle Curves adjustment. Keeping in mind that the viewer's eye tends to go to the sharpest part of the image I always like add just a little more sharpness in the eyes. For this part I usually make use of the HiPass sharpening technique combined with a layer mask to limit the effect to just the eyes.

After applying the sharpening to her eyes I then added a subtle Glow to her skin by manipulating a copy of the Blue Channel to create a selection I could add the Glow through. The next step was to add a couple of "Bling" highlights on her earrings. And finally the lighting was enhanced with a Curves Adjustment Layer that added just the right sense of drama.

Here's a closer look:

After Effects Animations

2011-02-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

Over the last year I've been working on adding some After Effects skills to my capabilities. It's been a pretty natural transition as the basic concepts are very similar to what I've been doing in Photoshop for the last 20 years.

Recently I was called on by the talented team of Tom and Miriam Gundred at Soular Creative to help create some graphics animations for a project they were working on. This particular project involved creating two graphics animations that were to be part of a presentation highlighting some innovative technology one of their clients provided for their trade show clients.

In working on this they provided me with the Illustrator files and some directions indicating what they were looking for. After breaking out the various parts of the files that needed to move I then worked on creating the animations. This one in particular was designed to highlight how the client's technology allowed a presenter to control who could view the presentation.

Double-Click on the image below to see the final animated piece.

Recreating the Hipstamatic Look in 6 Steps

2011-02-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

Last summer I finally broke down and got an iPhone. Beyond all the cool phone stuff it does my favorite part has been playing with it's camera. Somehow the simplicity of the camera and the fact that it's always with me makes photography much more spontaneous and fun for me.

And of course I had to check out various photo apps as a way of making it easier to get cool looks from the photos. Pretty quickly the Hipstamatic app became one of my favorite photo apps for the iPhone. I really like the way it re-creates the plastic lens look that has become so popular these days. Here are a couple of shots I took while playing with this app when I was on a beach walk with my family over this past Christmas Holiday.

Of course it didn't take me long before the retoucher side of me wanted to figure out how to replicate this look with "Normal" shots. I love the spontaneity of these Hipstamatic iPhone shots, but also really like being able to use my Photoshop abilities to create just the look I want.

With that in mind I opened up a shot taken on one of these beach walks with my Canon DSLR and started to experiment until I felt I had successfully matched the look I was getting with my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app.

Here are the Before/After shots showing where the image started and where it wound up:

Now while it's fun showing you all some of my photos, the real fun lies in sharing just how I created this look and in seeing how it inspires others to play and create new images on their own. With that in mind here's a short tutorial on how to achieve this cool effect.

First let's take a moment to talk about what characterizes the look we're after. Looking at the beach shots above of my wife and daughter you can see there is some blurring, some color shifts and some vignetting all working together to create the look. With this in mind we can start to see what what steps will be necessary to re-create the look in Photoshop.

Step 1: open your "straight" image

Step 2: Copy the Background Layer so you have 2 copies of this layer, one on top of the other like below:

This layer will get a small amount of Gaussian Blur that we'll use to recreate the soft focus part of our look. The specific amount depends on the resolution of the image you're working with. For this image let's use an amount of 2 pixels.

Since we don't want the Blur over all of our image we'll use a Layer Mask to control where the blurred layer shows. To do this add a Layer Mask and then using a large Brush paint Black in the Layer Mask to hide the effect where you don't want it to show. (Hint: using the Scatter Settings in the Brush Controls can help give this a more organic transition.)

Here is a shot of the Layer Mask I used with my Blur Layer:

This should give you something that looks a bit like this:

Step 3: Add a Vignette effect to darken the edges of the image. To do this create a new Layer and name it "Vignette". When you create this layer set the Blending Mode to "Multiply". Then again using a Brush with the Scatter Settings turned on paint Black around the edges of the image taking care to allow for a soft transition where the Vignette effects the image.

Here's what the Vignette Layer I painted looks like:

And here's what the image looks like with the Vignette Layer added:

Step 4: Now comes the fun part, adjusting the color. Studying the look of the Hipstamatic images we're trying to replicate we can see that typically the color shifts more towards Cyan and Blue while the Blacks of the image get pushed darkening the shadows and the Whites get pushed just a little bit providing some punch to the image along with the Color shift.

To do this we're going to use a variation on my preferred Color Correction Technique. This technique involves using 2 Curves Adjustment Layers, one set to Luminosity Blending and one set to Color Blending. By separating the Luminosity adjustments from the Color adjustments we can more easily control the contrast and tonality of the image independently of the color. And using the Color Curves you'll find you can not only affect the overall color balance of the image but you can easily control the saturation of the image as well. It's a very powerful technique that let's you control so much so easily.

If you're interested in learning more about this technique please feel free to send me an email by going to the Contact Dennis page of this site. I'll be happy to send you an article I've written on this technique that explains it in more depth.

For now create 2 Adjustment Layers and set one to Luminosity Blending and the other to Color Blending. (It doesn't matter which one comes first.) To help you keep them straight name the one set to Luminosity Blending "Luminosity Curves" and the other "Color Curves". Now click on the Color Curves layer and bring up the Adjustments panel, then adjust the Curves in the dialogue so they look something like the adjustments shown below:

Looking at the panels above you can see the RGB, or Master Curve has been pulled up at a point just about 3/4 of the way where the highlights are. This tends to increase the saturation in the highlights just a touch.

Moving on you can see the Red Curve has been pulled down in more or less a straight line, the Green Curve has been left alone while the Blue Curve shows we've pulled a little more Blue out of the shadows than the highlights. (Of course you can adjust these settings to your own taste as needed.)

Here's our test image with these Color Curves:

Now this is starting to look pretty interesting but there are still a few more tweaks yet to do.

Step 5: As mentioned above part of achieving the look we're after calls for pushing the Black and White points of the image a bit to deepen the shadows and add some "pop" to the highlights. To do this click on the Luminosity Curves Adjustment layer to bring up the curves dialogue. Then pull the Black point over to the right and the White point over to the left as shown in the screen grab below:

And here is what the image looks like with both the Color Curves and the Luminosity Curves:

Step 6: This is looking very close now, but it still looks just a little too clean. The plastic lens look that characterizes the Hipstamatic photos has some out of focus scratches and textures that old lenses might impart to the images. To re-create that we'll use a texture placed on top of our image and use a Blending Mode that gives us a cool look, then use a Layer Mask to control just where we want this effect to show up.

Over the years I've built up quite a collection of textures I've shot and found on stock image sites that come in very handy for times like this. Here's one such texture I found on one of the sites where artists share various textures and brushes they've created for use in Photoshop:

To use this texture in our image we'll just drag a copy of it over our beach scene and make sure it's at the top of the layer stack in the Layers Palette. Then set the Blending Mode to Soft Light and slide the opacity down to around 50%. Finally create a Layer Mask for this layer and again using a Brush with the Scatter Settings turned on (to help give it an 'organic' look) paint Black in the Layer Mask to hide the texture where ever you don't want it to show. Here's what the Layer Mask I painted looks like:

With the Texture in place and the Layer Mask finished the image looks like this:

With all the flexibility Digital Photography provides we're freed up to play more with various color treatments and styles in an effort to express our artistic vision. Photoshop fits in very neatly into this equation as the more we play with shifting colors and adding textures etc the more control we have over the final appearance of our images.

A Few Thoughts on Banding in Images

2011-01-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

The other day I was browsing through the APANet discussion list and came across a question from a photographer about banding issues they were seeing in the skies of some images. After responding there I thought this would be a great topic for a Blog post so here we are.

Here's a shot of the sky over Lake Powell in Arizona. Like most shots of skies this image shows a nice gradation over a large, fairly open area and is a good example of where you're most likely to run into banding issues. If you look closely there are subtle bands running in a rough diagonal direction following the gradation in the sky.

Upon first glance they don't look too bad, but as soon as we add a little drama to the sky they start to become more apparent. In the image below I darkened the upper part of the sky by adding a Curves Adjustment Layer along with a mask that has a gradation in it so the darkening eases in keeping the lower part of the sky the way it was.

Now sometimes the web isn't the best place to see these bands so here's an image with some red lines indicating where the bands are showing up.

Of course once we see the bands in the image we can see the problems they can present. We know scenes like this should have nice, smooth gradations so the steps of color we see (banding) become very distracting and threaten to ruin our image.

For the sake of our discussion let's take a look at another image. Like our sky the image below features a gradation (you'll only see banding in areas of gradation) but this time it's easier to see the banding.

The bands show up when the steps in between the colors in the gradation become visible. Basically if there are only 10 steps between the beginning and ending colors in the gradation it becomes pretty easy to see each step of the gradation if you look closely enough.

Sometimes the banding is naturally occurring in the image and sometimes the adjustments made to the image exaggerate the banding issues. For instance the Hue Saturation tool is known to exaggerate both banding and noise/grain in an image. Here is the same gradation with a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer added to turn the grays into blues.

Here you can see that the Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer not only changed the colors, it made the banding worse! With over 24 million possible colors in a 24 bit image (8 bits/channel times 3 channels) you'd think there are more than enough to choose from.

But as we see with skies sometimes the colors the image HAS to be just don't allow for that much room. Right about here I can tell some folks are thinking "Ah, then the solution is to work in 48 bit depth!" (48 bit images have 16 bits per channel allowing for thousands of steps per channel not just the 256 found in 8 bit/channel images.)

But experience seems bound to defeat this easy solution. Every time I've tried to solve banding by working in this higher bit depth it's never made a difference. The reasons for this seem to be mired in the endless debates among computer engineers and geeks. The best explanation I've heard for this actually came from a computer engineer who used to work for one of the big software companies who told me the pipeline from the computer to the monitor was limited to 8 bits per channel.

Whatever the reason we're still left with apparent banding in our images and thus we need to figure out how to deal with it.

The first thing to look at is to see if any of your adjustments are creating the problem. The most common times this happens is when using several Adjustment Layers that push and pull the image leading to the posterization evident in the banding. Sometimes, as with the Hue Saturation example above, the tool we're using is the cause of the problem, I've also seen this happen with some Gradient Map layers as well. If that's the case then we need to find other ways of manipulating the image to get the result we want.

But luckily for the great majority of images the answer is pretty simple. If the cause of the banding is that we can see the borders between the distinct steps in the colors of the image we can usually solve the problem by breaking up those borders with a bit of Noise. Here is our same Blue Gradation image with 2% Noise added.

Here you can see how the Noise acts to dither, or break up the borders of the bands making them harder to see. The trick when adding Noise like this is to view your image in Photoshop at 100% while using the Add Noise filter. Look for the minimum amount that will break up the bands. Most often you'll find it just takes a very small amount to hide the bands and solve your problem. Checking the individual Channels in your Channels Palette can help make sure you've fixed the problem.

As a last note one of the most common ways high end retouchers like to add Noise to an image is to make a new Layer, fill it with 50% Gray and then set it's Blending Mode to Overlay and finally use the Add Noise filter on this layer. By doing it this way you can easily experiment with different amounts of Noise (just fill with 50% Gray and try again) and you can vary the opacity of the Layer, or hide parts of it with a Layer Mask etc etc.

Quick Tip: Burnin' and Dodgin' made easy

2010-10-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

One of the more common techniques retouchers use is named for an old darkroom technique, Burning and Dodging. Back then we'd use our hands or some other device to either expose a part of an image longer (Burning) or to keep the light out of an area on the image (Dodging).

While it's been a long time since I was in a darkroom doing that kind of work I still use the same idea frequently in my retouching work. Since it can be so useful I wanted to take a moment to share one of the easier ways I've found to apply this technique.

Here is a close up crop of an image supplied to me by photographer Richard Radstone. Richard's a great photographer and a good friend, check out his website to see more of his work here.

So far so good, now while there are lots of ways to darken (Burn) and lighten (Dodge) an image in Photoshop as a retoucher I greatly favor methods that allow for greater flexibility. So while many folks might just jump right in with the Burn and Dodge tool and start working away I like to do my work on separate layers which makes it lots easier for me to go back and fine tune what I've done without worrying about harming the image itself.

With this in mind what I like to do is to create 2 new layers and use their Blending Modes to accomplish the effect I'm looking for. For Dodging I'll make a new layer and set it to "Overlay" blending. Here's where I depart from the many folks who would then automatically fill this layer with 50% gray (which is neutral, or invisible in this kind of layer), I've never found much reason to do so. Instead after making this layer and naming it something like "Overlay Lightening" (ALWAYS name your layers!) I'll just select white, or a very light color from the image and then take the brush tool and start painting.

Since Overlay layers are basically contrast adjusting layers light colors in the Overlay layer make the image lighter and dark colors make the image darker. The closer to White or Black the color is the stronger the effect shows up. Depending on how much control I need I'll often set the Brush Tool to a low opacity, maybe 30%, so I can slowly work the image until I get the result I'm looking for.

Here is a shot of the image with the Overlay Lightening applied.

Looking carefully you should be able to see the pupil of her eye has been lightened up a bit giving the eye a little more 'life', the white part of her eye has also been lightened up just a touch. Less obvious, but still there is the subtle dodging I did to the darker texture of her skin near the bottom of the image. While I tend to prefer other methods for cleaning up skin sometimes a little bit of careful lightening can help.

Now for the Burning part of this technique. For this part I like to use a second layer set to "Multiply" blending and then I'll name this layer something like "Multiply Darkening". Multiply Blending will darken an image based on how dark the color in the layer is. So White will have no effect, while Black will have the maximum effect. When using this technique to darken skin I'll sample a bit of darker, shadowed skin tone from the image. This tends to produce a much more natural result than just using Black. In this case I sampled a darker part of her eye lid and again painted using the Brush tool set to a low opacity, around 30%.

Here is a shot of the image with both the Dodging and Burning layers turned on.

The areas worked on here are the little shadowed area right above and to the left of her eye, (just a little), the edge of her pupil (to add definition), the edge of her lower eye lid (digital eyeliner) and her eyelashes (digital mascara).

To make it easier to see where I painted in the effects here is a shot where I filled the Overlay layer (lightening) with Green and the Multiply layer (darkening) with Blue.

The advantage with doing this on separate layers is that working this way gives me more control, (I can easily tweak just the highlighted areas) and it plays to each Blending Mode's strength. Overlay layers can work very well for lightening an image but can also tend to shift colors in an objectionable way when used to really darken an image. Whereas when we combine Multiply blending with a sampled shadow color we can get a very effective tool for darkening. Pretty cool, eh? (Just remember that subtlety is very important a good retoucher knows his work should never scream out at the viewer, but instead should compliment the photographers' vision.)

Finally here is a Before and After side by side.

Top Chef and the Free Desserts

2010-09-16T16:24:00.001-07:00

Last month I worked with the good folks at Arsonal, www.arsonalla.com, to create the final artwork promoting Bravo's new cooking show, "Top Chef Just Desserts". In addition to the usual magazine ads this campaign entailed a tie-in with the current Food Truck craze by hiring trucks in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles on the day of the shows premiere, September 15th. Basically the idea was that by following a Twitter Feed fans in these cities could track down the trucks and be rewarded with a free dessert. Yum!

For the Art Director, Tony, and I this meant creating artwork to wrap around the sides of the trucks. With 4 different trucks each with 4 different sides this meant creating 16 separate pieces of high resolution finished art, Whew!

Since the various designs were built around the cast members I first created separate files for each of the cast members and did all the stripping out and retouching there saving each one as a Smart Object. The biggest challenge, though, was in working with the Frosting that created the border for each of the images. Since the frosting had been shot using a couple of hot lights and a hand held camera there weren't many sections that had the nice, sharp detail we wanted. Add in all the twisting, warping and distorting Tony had done to the shots and you can imagine what it all looked like.

The biggest problem was that the frosting part of the image was going to be seen big and up close by all the folks waiting in line to get their free desserts so it had to look good. After working through all the noise reduction & sharpening techniques I normally used I found I still needed to find a way to bring out the subtle detail in the frosting. That's when a conversation I'd had long ago with a photographer friend, Jim McHugh, came to mind. Jim had come to one of my workshops a few years ago and he often reminds me how much my tip about using the Find Edges filter has helped him when he's working on his own images.

The Find Edges filter is often used as a way masking off sharpening effects so you can go a little heavier with the sharpening without worrying about creating problems in the areas you don't want sharpened. That's because the Find Edges filter creates something that looks like a white image with dark lines wherever it finds the edges in the image. Here's an example of what Find Edges did to the Frosting layer I was working with:

Normally retouchers use this to create a mask for a layer they've used some other sharpening technique on. But as I thought about different ways to use this I realized that if I made a copy of my smoothed, sharpened layer and ran this filter on it I could get an interesting effect by using the Multiply Blending Mode. You see the Multiply Blending mode will darken everything below that layer using the tones of the layer to determine how much darker to make the layers below. In this case White would have no effect, light tones would have a little bit while darker tones moving to Black would have the strongest effect.

So by making a copy of the Frosting I had worked on, using the Find Edges on that layer, setting this new layer to Multiply Blending I could get a layer that just emphasized the edges of the detail I wanted to bring out in the Frosting. To finesse the effect I added a Layer Mask that blocked all of my Find Edges Multiply layer and just selectively painted in the detail where needed. It added a very subtle touch that really helped it look like delicious frosting, not soft mush. Here's a Before/After comparison showing just a small cropped bit of the Frosting.

Dumplings and D.A. Wagner

2010-07-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

I became a fan of D.A. Wagner's work when I came across his website last year. Balancing deliberation and spontaneity with great concepts D.A. creates some fantastic still life images of food. To see for yourself just take a quick visit to his website here: www.dawagner.com.

After looking through his work I sent him an email letting him know how much I liked his work. One thing led to another and soon we were working on a few portfolio images together. The image below is one of these new portfolio images.

Being an experienced shooter, D.A. knew that trying to actually photograph the dumpling in boiling oil would probably lead to a few nasty kinds of disasters. So instead he used water in the tank along with a bubble making attachment from an aquarium. But this also meant the shot would need something 'extra' to really make it pop.

And as a retoucher I liked how D.A. made the process of collaborating with him easy. As we worked on this image he sent along suggestions about what he was looking for and was open to any ideas I had about how to really make this image sing.

After cleaning up the little floaty bits that inevitably come with this type of food, and after removing the pins that prevented the dumpling from floating by itself I started to work on pushing the color and the contrast of the image to get the rich look D.A. was looking for.

In the end it was one of those "Hey, Cool!" moments that led to the final adjustment the image needed to achieve the look D.A. had been after. Now that's a dumpling I'd like to eat!

Be sure to catch D.A.'s side of the story at: blog.dawagner.com

What's the most important skill for a retoucher?

2010-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

In reading various blogs and articles by and about retouchers I see lots of folks focus on the dramatic before/afters as proof of a particular retoucher's skill.

Sure, that can be pretty impressive. But on some level that seems like we're focusing on the sizzle and not what's actually the more important skills a retoucher needs to have.

For instance when I'm working with a photographer such as Matthew Jordan Smith, or Jeremy Cowart, or Bob Stevens they give me a really good starting place and aren't looking for the dramatic difference in the final image.

What they're looking for is a collaborator who can help them get an image that really expresses their vision. After all as the retoucher, I'm working for them. And it's important for me to keep this in mind: in the end it's their vision and their image that we're working to perfect.

So for me Listening is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the skills I need to have as a retoucher.

Listening to my clients to gain a thorough understanding of what they're looking for and where they're looking to take a particular image will help me in working through all those little subjective decisions that come up along the way.

And it's only by listening will I be able to make sure I'm helping my clients get just the image they're looking for which will help me gain a happy client. And that's what I'm looking for.

So what do you think is the most important skill a retoucher needs to have? I'd love to read your comments and see where this leads.

Betty White is Hot In Cleveland

2010-06-23T18:01:00.001-07:00

Recently I had the pleasure of working with Brad Johnson and all the great folks at Arsonal Design in Los Angeles creating images for the ad campaign promoting TV Land's latest new show "Hot In Cleveland."

With three women featuring long, wind-blown hair this project was quite the masking challenge. As Brad said this design was all about the hair and it had to look perfect.

For those who have worked on high end retouching you'll know that most of the masking plug-ins don't hold up well to close scrutiny. The edges usually need so much work after using the plug-in shortcuts that it's not often worth the trouble. But as I worked on this image I decided to try Photoshop CS5's new Refine Edge Brush and was pleasantly surprised to find that in this particular case it gave me a much better starting point than my usual method of carefully painting out each fly-away hair. Here is an example of one of the images that was used for Jane's hair, (yes there were several.)

On the right is the mask I created for her hair, and what the Refine Edge tool helped create here was the softer transitions necessary for the hair to properly blend with the other shots behind it. If the mask did not blend properly we'd have problems with the gray background adding a nasty fringe around the flying hairs.

Of course the mask as generated by the Refine Edge Brush did need some massaging before it worked properly, but in just a couple of hours using this tool I was able to get a much better result than spending many, many hours masking and painting the 'old school' way.

Subsequent experiments with this new feature showed it helped in some cases and did not in others. I'm still getting a good feel of when it will and when it won't be worth the time spent. But for this project it was truly a Life Saver. Thanks Adobe!

To see more about the complete campaign created by Arsonal go to: http://news.arsonal.com/ and read their blog post about it.

The Last Airbender

2010-06-17T17:13:00.002-07:00

Next week the 'other Avatar' movie, "The Last Airbender", is due out hoping for a big debut weekend. Here in Los Angeles one of the local ad agencies I work with, BLT & Associates (www.bltomato.com), did a great job with the print campaign for this movie. Over the last couple of months I had the opportunity to help them out with doing the final retouching (Finishing) on several of the posters and billboards for this project. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Shadow Work

2010-04-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

A recent discussion on ASMP's email list touched on creating realistic shadows so I thought I'd post a quick tip here describing one of my favorite ways of creating realistic shadows when creating composited images in Photoshop.

The most important things to remember about creating shadows are: 1) Proper shadows tend to be subjective - imagining what the perfect shadow looks like will drive you nuts. Everyone will have a different idea of what looks right. 2) Studying real light and shadows will help you 'see' what a realistic shadow looks like more accurately, making your subjective opinion just a little bit better bit by bit.

When painting a shadow it also helps to remember that 'real' shadows tend to have different parts. If the object casting the shadow is resting on something (like the ground) it will tend to have a core shadow right where it lands on the ground. And there will be a softer, gradating shadow as it blocks the light from hitting the ground.

The image above is from a series of images I worked on with photographer Richard Radstone last year. In this particular one of the challenges was to wrap the accordion around the palm tree. That particular task generated my first tutorial on the website, www.psd.tutsplus.com, which can be found here: http://bit.ly/3YEVfT

And of course after wrapping the accordion around the tree it needed to have some shadowing added to make it look like it really belonged there which brings us back to the topic at hand.

Adding the shadows involved creating 2 layers, one for the core shadow, and the other for the cast shadow. In this case I used the Multiply blending mode for both shadows because I like the way the colors of the shadows blend more naturally with the objects in the image.

The way the colors of the shadows blend is very important because shadows do have their own color and this is affected by the color of the ambient light and the color of the object the shadow is landing on. Using the Multiply mode while sampling 'real' shadow colors tends to work pretty well for me.

So for these shadows I sampled a darker color from the palm tree and experimented with a few strokes before deciding on a final color. Remember the darker the color the stronger, darker your shadow will be - but you can easily adjust that with the opacity of your shadow layers.

After settling on the right shadow color I made one layer, called it "Core Shadow", set the blending mode to "Multiply" and then using a smallish brush I painted along the area where the accordion was touching the palm tree. To keep this shadow layer from splashing over onto the sky I clipped it to the palm tree's layer as a clipping group.

After painting the core shadow I then made another layer set to Multiply blending and called it "Cast Shadow". Then I used a much larger brush and painted in the softer cast shadow keeping in mind the shape of the accordion and the direction of the light the accordion would be blocking to cast the shadow.

To get the gradating effect of the cast shadow you can either use a low opacity brush and build up the strokes closer to the object, or use a layer mask, or use the Eraser tool (set to a low opacity) to erase it away until you're happy with the result. I alternately use all 3 methods at times depending on what strikes my fancy that day.

The point here is that the shadows are painted with 2 layers, one for the core and one for the larger cast shadow. By making them independent I can then play with the opacity of each one and use the Move tool to nudge them into the right place if needed.

Using this method I've found it's much easier to create shadows for everything from accordions on trees to vitamin bottles on white. Simple eh?

Steve Austin and Damage

2010-03-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a recent image I worked on with the good folks at BLT & Associates. This version is a poster sized crop of the overall image which was built to also accomodate billboards as well.

Just to give you an idea of the work that went into this image Steve's head was stripped onto another body (there are 2 guys with a build like that? Yikes!). Detail was added to the neck showing more collar bone & muscle definition etc. Since the shot of Steve's head was pretty blurry & low res looking detail had to be added along with lots of sharpening. Thanks to Joseph at BLT for a new sharpening technique involving the HiPass filter and the Linear Light blending mode. Cool new trick!

The background is built from various shots of crowds. Finally the smoke and color treatment was added overall to create the dark moodiness of the overall image.

Jeremy Cowart and the Blue Girl

2010-02-15T14:27:00.001-08:00

As a digital artist/retoucher I love collaborating with photographers producing beautiful images like this one from Jeremy Cowart. From the dramatic backlighting he used to the inviting look in her eyes Jeremy created a great shot and it was a pleasure to work with him in creating the finished image shown here.

In working on this image with Jeremy I wanted to keep everything very subtle. The model had this beautiful, enchanting look and I loved the dramatic lighting Jeremy used to make her seem almost angelic. With such a great starting point I mostly worked on eliminating many of the stray, fly-away hairs that were highlighted by the backlighting or that ran over her eyes and face. I also worked on showing off her beautiful skin by smoothing out the extra texture picked up by the side lighting. Then I added just a little more light in her eyes and added just a touch of highlight to her lips.

Before -- After

Click here to see more of Jeremy's work.

Syncing ColorSettings or What's Safe about "Safe CMYK"?

2010-01-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

A recent post to the APA Digital email list brought up an important topic I thought would be good to discuss here. When Adobe bundled their programs in the Creative Suite the idea was to make life easier for users. As all the programs now work together seamlessly the process of creating placing them in layouts and then printing those layouts should be easier than ever.

And with a thought to making Color Management just as easy Adobe enabled coordinating all the Color Management preferences through Bridge. But there is a big ‘Gotcha’ hiding here that could mean big problems for photographers and designers.

You see the problem lies in a preference nick-named “Safe CMYK”.

Normally “Safe CMYK” would sound like a good idea. But the question “Safe for Whom?” applies here. You see there are 2 sides of the equation: The Creative side (photographer-designer) and the Output side (printers). What’s safe for one is not necessarily safe for the other.

Safe CMYK was designed for the Output side of the equation. It's safe for the guy who runs the printing press because it will cause the fewest problems with the RIPs these guys use when outputting files on their presses.

But this same Safe CMYK setting also means if you’re not using a RIP you’re very likely going to see bad color on your own outputs.

The problem comes down to this, Safe CMYK tells InDesign and Illustrator to ignore any profiles embedded in CMYK images that are used in those programs. This means these programs will now assume all your CMYK images are all set to the same profile as the default CMYK profile for the program.

So if your default CMYK profile is something like the commonly used “US Web Coated (SWOP) v2” but you used something like “US Sheetfed Coated v2” when creating an image that was placed in an InDesign layout when the layout is printed to the non-RIP controlled printer (ie and Epson inkjet) the colors could come out pretty far off from what you expected.

Not so safe now, eh?

Now the question comes down to: What to do?

Fortunately there is a simple answer that just takes a few steps I’ll outline here. Setting the preferences correctly for your Creative Suite programs will ensure your Color Management policies work the way you expect and you’ll get the results you’re looking for.

The way Adobe envisioned us synchronizing the Color Settings for all the Creative Suite programs is to use Bridge as the central place to set these preferences. By setting them here in Bridge all the Color Settings will be automatically set the same way which should ensure that colors look the same across all the various Creative Suite programs. If you go to Bridge and choose Edit>Creative Suite Color Settings you'll see a dialogue box like this:

Note that here I have North American Prepress 2 chosen. This choice is supposed to be good for users who are working with RGB and CMYK images in the US. The important thing to note here is the phrase "CMYK values are preserved". This is the 'Gotcha' I was mentioning earlier.

Bridge can still be used to "Sync" the Color Settings across the Creative Suite programs if you have a Color Settings File with the proper settings chosen. The catch here is that since the setting we're worried about is something InDesign and Illustrator use, not Photoshop, you have to make your Color Settings file in InDesign or Illustrator and then go back to Bridge to "Sync" the Creative Suite Color Settings.

Both InDesign and Illustrator work the same with regards to making this Color Settings file so let's take a look at how it's done in Illustrator. As with all the Creative Suite programs you can bring up the Color Settings dialogue by going to Edit>Color Settings. That will bring up a dialogue box like this:

You'll see the CMYK policy is set to "Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)". This is the dangerous side of "Safe CMYK" and means that any embedded CMYK profiles will be ignored. To fix this setting all you have to do is click on that setting and choose "Preserve Embedded Profiles" like shown here:

Now click on the "Save" button and give your new settings a name you'll remember. I called mine "Prepress 2 modified". Next go back to Bridge and bring up the Color Settings dialogue once again. Once you're there if you scroll down the list you'll see your new setting listed there. Below you can see where I have highlighted the file I made:

Now all you have to do is choose the new settings file, click on Apply and you're done.

Easy? Yes! More work than it should be? Definitely. But now that you know you'll be practicing truly "Safe CMYK" in no time.

First Things First

2010-01-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

As an artist some issues such as Workflow tend to come across as being stuffy and boring. How many of us just want to get in and start working on creating something really cool? That's where the real fun is, right?

But running around in circles isn't much fun either. I'm thinking here of the times we jump right into the image adding color corrections, maybe a few effects etc. And then later decide to do the more boring spotting retouching out the little dust specks and stray hairs etc that are always somewhere in the photo.

The problem is what happens when we decide we need to go back and tweak the color, or change one of the effects. If you've done the retouching after those steps odds are you're going to have to do it all again because changing the image below changes the way your retouching blends in.

I see students and even intermediate level artists do this all the time. And it becomes one of the reasons why they hate the spotting and cleanup work all the more.

This is where the idea of Workflow comes in. If we keep in mind Stephen Covey's reminder "First Things First" and do the boring retouching/cleanup first we'd avoid that running around in circles and have more fun working on the cool parts of the image.

So my suggestion here is to get down and do the the basic, necessary parts first. This means starting off by doing the spotting and cleanup first then move on to creating clean masks for those parts you're going to need masks for, (how many times have you had to repair 4 or 5 copies of a bad mask?). And then going on to the fun stuff.

A little work here to start of goes a long way towards making all the work flow much easier. And you'll find you're having more fun along the way too.

Hmmmm.... maybe Covey had a pretty good idea, eh?

Pserpective Grids in Photoshop

2009-11-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

Illustrators often will draw out perspective lines when beginning a complex illustration to help them keep everything looking just right.

The old way involves defining the vanishing point and then drawing a series of lines all intersecting and passing through that vanishing point. While effective this could be somewhat of a time consuming process.

Then while working with one of my students I recently discovered this great little trick for using Photoshop's Vanishing Point filter to render perspective lines. Now whenever I need them Perspective Lines are just a few clicks away.

To show you how easy it is take a look at this image of New York's Public Library:

The perspective on this shot is pretty exaggerated, but that just helps illustrate my point. If I wanted to add something to the front of the library, or maybe add another building next to it it would be a big help to have some guides that showed me how the vanishing point lines lay in proper perspective.

Now I know one of the common uses for the Vanishing Point filter is to be able to clone and paste things in while keeping the proper perspective. But using the Vanishing Point filter only works well if the object I'm pasting in is "straight" to begin with.

Suppose the new building I want to add already has some perspective happening in the shot? This is where some guides showing me the correct perspective could be really helpful. And luckily that's something the Vanishing Point filter can easily do.

By just following a few easy steps we can have those guides on a separate filter ready to help us keep everything looking right.

Step 1) Make a new layer so you have a place for the Perspective Grid to go. (Hint: give this layer a name that makes it easy to remember what it is.)

Step 2) Make this new layer the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers palette. Then go to Filter>Vanishing Point to bring up the Vanishing Point window.

Step 3) Using the Create Plane tool define a plane that follows the plane you want the perspective lines to follow. (I used the corners of the banner as an easy way to define the plane for the front of the library.)

Step 4) Once your plane has been defined expand it out to fill the necessary area by clicking on the handles in the middle of each side of your plane and dragging them out until they cover the area you need.

Step 5) Now here is the magic part: Looking at the menu bar in the Vanishing Point filter you'll notice a small icon that looks like 3 short horizontal lines with a tine triangle just to the left of those lines. Clicking on this brings up a submenu like this:

Here is a close-up of that submenu:

See where I've highlighted the "Render Grids to Photoshop" option? If you choose this and then apply the filter by clicking on "OK" in the upper right corner of the filter window Photoshop will now render out those grids to that new layer you made just before bringing up the filter. You should get something looking like this:

And now all you need to do when adding that new building is to make sure the lines of the new building follow the lines in the grid and you'll have everything following the same perspective.

Cool, eh?

Cafe: The Land of Flavors

2009-10-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year Dennis worked on a campaign with photographer Richard Radstone featuring surrealistic scenes representing different regions in Colombia. This image highlights the coffee growing region that is known the world over for the great flavor of the coffee it produces.

In building this image Dennis began with a sky he had shot while on a trip to Lake Powell. Then he added in stock elements of the hills covered in coffee trees being careful to blend in the edges around the trees. Next he created the foreground by combining Richard's shot of a grassy meadow with the coffee cups and the model shot in the studio. Finally the rainbow steam was composed by adding shots of smoke with a rainbow gradient to get the colorful effect the client wanted. After retouching the model and removing a few extra wrinkles from his shirt the image was ready to go.

Here is a before and after image showing some of the elements used in creating the final image.

Quick Tip: Checking your Masks

2009-08-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

Of all the skills needed in doing High End Retouching, (or "Finishing" as they call it in the movie poster biz), masking is among the most basic and essential. When combining several images together a mask is used to determine what parts of the image are kept and which are not seen so the quality of your mask will have a big effect on the final image.

Think of it this way if you were going to add this palm frond to an image you'd want to make sure only the frond itself showed so you wouldn't have any of the background or the guy messing up the image.

One quick way to make a mask for something like this is to copy one of the channels from the image and manipulate the contrast in the copied channel to make sure the background is separated from the frond.

A quick look at the Red, Green and Blue channels told me the Blue channel would make an easy starting point and so after copying that channel and Curves, (my favorite tool for this), I pushed the Black and White points over to get this:

Pretty easy, eh?

Before moving ahead, in order to work correctly there are a couple of things we need the mask to do properly:

1) The edges have to have the right amount of contrast to them to make it look right. If the edges are too hard it'll look cutout, and if they are too soft the image will look mushy and out of place.

2) The parts of the mask that are supposesd to be White need to be completely White and not have any 'dirty' specks. And the Black areas need to be completely Black and not have any 'holes'.

If the mask has parts that are not clean you'll see holes in the palm that don't belong there, or you'll see flecks of the background showing up in unexpected places. Hunting these mistakes down can be a time consuming hassle.

So here's the long promised Tip: Use the Curves tool to double check the White and Black parts of the mask. Basically the idea is to make the mask as you think it needs to be, with the edges adjusted to the right hardness, then once again open up the Curves tool and push the White and Black points way over like these examples below:

In the top example I temporarily moved the Black point way over to the left so I could check to see if there was any 'dirt' in the Whites of the mask. And sure enough there was quite a bit on the left side of the image.

And in the lower example I moved the White point way over to the right to check for any 'holes' in the black areas. Once again there was some in the middle part of the frond.

Note: An important thing to remember is that you're only using this method to check your masks, be careful NOT TO APPLY these extreme Curves to your mask. You're only looking for any problems that will need to be fixed.

Now that I knew where the problem areas were I could solve them using any of several ways, usually some combination of pushing the White and Black points over just enough along with some painting using the Brush tool to finish up the job.

The key is by temporarily exaggerating the Whites and Blacks of the mask you can see where the problems are and solve them before they become something more bothersome like unexplained specks on your beautiful composited images.

Until my next post Happy Masking!

The Magical Land of Bucaramanga

2009-08-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

Recently Dennis created a series of images with photographer Richard Radstone featuring surrealistic scenes representing different regions in Colombia. This image spotlights the Magical Land of Bucaramanga where Lollipop Trees meet up with friendly Alien Moss Balls while passing bicyclists stop to read their favorite science fiction stories.

The work on this image began with Pre-Production meetings between Richard and Dennis where they planned out a strategy that would allow them to work efficiently and quickly. Working from the client's sketches Richard shot various elements to be used for the background and foreground pieces. Next Dennis and Richard moved into the studio where Dennis worked on creating low res comps stopping to drop in a few quick frames as Richard shot the model to be sure the perspectives all lined up properly. After a week of shooting various models and props for the complete series of 30 ads Dennis and Richard then moved their operations back to Richard's office where they proceeded to work closely together creating the final ads.

For this image, representing the region of Bucaramanga, Dennis began by extending the grassy field Richard had shot for the foreground. Next they experimented with various skies until Dennis achieved the final effect by layering multiple sky shots together to build up the density and tonal range the client wanted for this image. Various flocks of birds were then stripped out and combined with the sky. Then he moved on to rendering the triangle frees and moss balls from elements Richard had shot in the studio. Since this region was known for it's moss covered trees a search through various stock libraries finally resulted in an image the client liked which was then carefully masked out and dropped in place.

The bench and lamps were added in to give the image more of a park-like atmosphere, the bicycle was placed in and changed from red to black. Next Dennis took a shot of gravel from his own library of textures and used it to create the path that runs through the background. Finally lighting effects including highlights and shadows were painted in to give the image a more mysterious feel.

Here is a before and after image showing some of the elements used in creating the final image.

Amazing PDF Tricks

2009-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Just the other day a client was having problems converting a PDF file to a JPEG. After seeing the results she was getting and helping her solve the problem I thought this could be a good topic for a blog post/tip.

PDF files have many strengths, and can be amazingly flexible. Several years ago I discovered two of my favorite uses for these files while working on various projects that had certain challenges. The first was when I was working on an ad campaign for a cruise ship line. In that job they had created a new paint scheme but did not have any photos of the ships with the new paint. So they sent me some older photos of the ships and a PDF showing the new paint scheme. As I was trying to figure out how to map the various swirls onto the older photos I discovered that when I opened the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator all the paths and fills were there making it easy for me to copy them into Photoshop where I warped them into place. Very Cool!

Here's a before/after from one of the images in that campaign.

The next favorite use came up when I was working at a smaller ad agency as their production manager/retoucher. As with many agencies it's hard for them to stay on top of every new version of the various programs they use. For instance it could take several months after Adobe would come out with a new version of Photoshop or Illustrator for them to update everyone's systems with the new software. (One of the things I loved about being the Production Manager/Retoucher was that I was usually first in line for the new stuff.) So on occasion we'd get a file from a client that was saved in a newer version than we were running at the time. With something like a logo or template set up in Illustrator this could be a big problem.

It was then that I discovered my second favorite trick with PDFs: Illustrator files can be opened in Adobe's Acrobat and saved as a PDF! By opening the newer Illustrator file in Adobe Acrobat and saving it as a PDF I could then use trick number 1 and open the PDF in my older version of Illustrator without problem! Now we would not have to call the client and make them think we were too behind the times to do the work they needed. Again Very Cool!

With all these cool uses in mind for PDF files the point I really wanted to talk about here was how to convert PDFs to JPEG files so they can be used in even more ways. Before we get into this it's important to remember there are basically two kinds of files used these days: Vector files and Bitmap files. In short Vector files are based on formulas etc that tell the computer exactly how to "draw" the elements in the file. And Bitmap files are ones that are based on pixels, all that the computer knows about these files are what color pixel goes next to that color pixel. Illustrator files and live type are good examples of Vector files while almost any Photoshop file is a good example of a Bitmap tile.

PDF files can be a mix of these two file types. And because of this they don't really have a set resolution. This is part of what makes them so flexible but for some uses such as on a web page it can be better to save them as a JPEG file giving you a smaller file that will load faster. The challenge lies in how you do the conversion from PDF to JPEG.

When you open go to open a PDF file in Photoshop you'll see something like the dialogue box shown below.

This PDF has several pages as you can see. The first step is to choose which page you want to open and convert to JPEG, (sorry, Photoshop can only work with one page at a time). Next you see the Page Options, this option determines how you're doing the initial crop of the page as you bring it into Photoshop. I usually have this set for "Bounding Box" as shown here, but the other options are such things as: Media Box, Crop Box, Bleed Box, Crop Box, Trim Box and Art Box. Since they are basically different cropping options, choose whichever one works best for your use.

The next option to pay attention to is the Image Size option. Here you can take advantage of the PDF's flexibility to make your file a little bigger, since elements such as type are usually vector elements (based on a formula) this can be a good time to render the type as cleanly as possible. After setting the dimensions and the desired Resolution, (be sure to check the Constrain Proportions box!), the Mode option is where you choose the destination Color Space. Since I was converting this file for the web I chose sRGB, but you may want to use whatever your preferred RGB, or CMYK space is depending on what you're going to do with the file when you're done.

The final option is to set the bit depth. While some users find an advantage at times in working in a higher bit depth than the usual 8 bit for this is not one of those times. Since we're not working with RAW captures just go with the 8 bit option here. Clicking OK then opens the file in Photoshop where you can then do any final cropping and scaling needed before saving as the final JPEG.

Keepin' it Simple Take 2

2009-07-02T19:07:00.001-07:00

Back in September I wrote a post about naming layers and how that can help you keep things clear while you work, (see "Keepin' it Simple with Layers"). While working on a recent project with Richard Radstone there was one particular image that was a great example of just how helpful this can be. In this image the client wanted the sugar cane stalks to be topped with cotton candy making for sort of a surreal scene showing just how sweet that region of Colombia is.

Now putting the cotton candy on top of the sugar cane was pretty easy. But the challenge, (isn't there always one?), came in when the client kept asking for the cotton candy images to be "sharper, no softer, rotate this one right, this one left. No go back the other way. Etc. etc." You get the point, eh? This kind of tweaking is pretty common, but if I had not set the layers up making all the adjustments could have made for some pretty big headaches. Just imagine having to constantly search through all the source images for the right cotton candy shots over and over. (Richard must have shot at least 70 variations on the cotton candy alone.)

Instead, because I had taken advantage of my own advice it was pretty easy. All I had to do was put my cursor over a particular cotton candy shot and then holding down the Command + Control keys while clicking I could bring up the pop-up window showing all the layers affecting that part of the image. Then I could select that cotton candy layer and have it highlighted in the Layers Palette. Now with just a few more clicks I could copy the name of the layer, go to the Finder, paste that into the search bar in the directory window and let the system find all the files with that name. Once the right file was found there I could open it up in Photoshop and easily use it to replace the blurred and rotated version.

As the work on this image progressed I had to do this several times, and just by following that one simple tip, (naming the layers), I kept the job manageable and relatively headache free. And lord knows we get enough headaches without needing our jobs to give us more!

Quick Tip: Reducing Artifacts

2009-05-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Whew! It's been awhile since my last post, things have been busy the last couple of months as I worked on a long project with Richard Radstone (http://richardradstone.com/). As soon as we get the OK from the client I'll post some new technique ideas that came to me while working on that job.

But this week I've been working on some PR images for a client and while these images are all pretty simple their tight budget presents it's own set of challenges. Today I wanted to share an idea that helped quickly solve some of the problems I ran into.

Since these were almost all pre-processed images more than a few of them showed artifacts that are typical of really aggressive sharpening as well as some JPEG artifacts. Here is a close crop showing what I mean.

Looking at the texture of the skin you can see it has a bit of a speckly texture to it. On some images there were little crystal-like whitish specks as well. Retouching these out would normally mean taking a fair amount of time cleaning them up one by one. With the combination of budget and time on this job I needed to be more efficient than that and so I turned to one of my favorite tools in Photoshop, the Reduce Noise Filter.

Normally I use this filter to reduce grain and excessive noise in an image. It can be really useful with skies that have to be blown up a lot. With this filter there are sliders for settings like Strength, Preserve Details, Reduce Color Noise and Sharpen Details. There is also a check box for "Remove JPEG Artifact". When I'm using it on a sky it's not unusual to maximize the Strength and Reduce Color Noise settings while I set the others to 0% .

But when I was working on the images for this PR job I remembered the Remove JPEG Artifact feature and thought "What if..." When I set everything to 0% and left the Remove JPEG Artifact turned on I saw that it did a great job of smoothing out most of the specks I was concerned with. Here's what the same image looked like with the filter set this way:

Using the filter this way looks a lot like a very subtle blur, but the edges are kept pretty sharp. For the skin areas of this image it was a good start on the job. Applying a layer mask made it easy to keep this effect out of the parts of the image that did not need this and with just a little more work on smoothing out the lines etc. I was on to the next image.

Type Safety

2009-02-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Jeff Witchell writes a series of quick tips for Adobe's Layers magazine. While these tips are aimed at users of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign occasionally there is something really useful for Photoshop users as well.

The tip I've copied here comes from today's newsletter and reminded me of my days as a Production Manager when we had to make sure everything was as bullet proof as possible.

Here's Jeff's tip for Feb 4th:

"Layers magazine Tip of the Day

Adobe InDesign CS3 Tip – Being Safe with Outlined Type

In preparing an InDesign layout for production of a poster print, I took a look at the printer's specifications and noticed that all type in the design needed to be Outlined (Type>Create Outlines).
Before doing this, however, I decided to play it safe. I selected my “Type & Logos” Layer in the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and under the panel's Option menu chose Duplicate Layer “Type & Logos.” I clicked the Visibility icon next to my Copy of the this Layer.
Then in my original type Layer, I selected all of the text and chose Create Outlines under the Type menu and saved my work.
Less than five minutes later I got a call from my client who asked, “Did you send out the poster yet?” “No. Why?” I questioned. “I have a quick copy change,” he replied. “I knew you would,” I jumped in laughing.
Ah! Murphy's Law circumvented."

NOTE: While Photoshop doesn't have the "Create Outlines" command for Type but you can still get the same thing by just going to Layer>Type>Convert to Shape.

You can subscribe to the Layers newsletter from their website at: http://www.layersmagazine.com/

Workflow Tip #1

2009-01-09T20:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick tip that make a big difference when working in Photoshop: Name Your Layers.

Ok, this sounds really simple, but it also really can make a BIG difference as you work. Ever since Photoshop added Layers it's gotten harder and harder to keep track of what you're doing and even more so what you've done.

What I'm talking about here is situations where you look at your layers palette and see lots of layers named "Layer 1", "Layer 2" etc, etc. When you have to make some adjustment how can you know what "Layer 37" is for and what it does? This gets to be even more important if you're working on a composited image that has bits and pieces from more than one image being combined into a single image.

Simply naming the layers in some way that tells you what the layer is for can help you immensely as you work your way through the project.

When I'm working on an image one of the first things I do is make sure the background layer is named the same thing as the original file. For instance if the file I'm is named "Katie_img_002" I will make that the background layer's name.

This is really easy to do to, all it takes is 3 or 4 steps. (Since I use a Mac I'm gonna give you the Mac shortcuts here - if you're on a PC you'll just have to translate.)

Step 1) Bring up the "Save As" dialogue, (Command + Shift + S).

Step 2) Copy the file's name, (Command + C).

Step 3) Close the dialogue without saving, (Esc).

Step 4) Double-Click on the layer's name in the Layers palette and Paste the copied file name.

With this done no matter what you call the file from now on you'll always know where you started. And if you're copying this layer to another image the file's name is copied with the layer so you'll always know where that piece came from.

Taking the layer naming idea a little farther I also will name layers according to what any filters I've run. For instance if I run a 6 pixel Gaussian Blur on a layer I'll name the layer something like "GBlur 6". Now if for any reason I need to redo this layer I'll always know what I did and what if any change I need to make.

While it doesn't make a tough job easy, it sure helps me keep track of what I'm doing and that always helps!

Dustin' & Bustin'

2009-01-07T13:25:00.001-08:00

Dustin’ & Bustin’

Every once in a while we come across an image that seems like it’s been through a dust storm. Lots and lots of little specks that all need to be eliminated, one by one by one by… well you get the idea.

Here’s a section of an image that suffers from this very problem. Notice all the whitish specks that cover the face of this watch?

While we can wonder how they got there the question we’re concerned with here is how do we get rid of them?

The first thought that may come to mind is to use Photoshop’s Rubber Stamp tool, also known as the cloning tool. This could work, but keep in mind that this means having to carefully work around all the gradations etc we can see on the face of the watch.

Maybe the Heal Brush could work well here. While I really like the Heal Brush for a lot of tasks, (it can be really great with skin), there are a few things you have to watch out for with it. With an image that has as many spots as this one there can be a little delay each time you click with the brush. It’s not uncommon to get ahead of the tool and have to wait for Photoshop to catch up to our work so we can see how effectively we’ve dealt with the problem. If you’re working with a good sized file, like a couple of hundred Megs, that could be a lot of waiting, and waiting.

In cases like this I’ll go back to an old tried and true technique to make this job as simple and quick as possible: the Dust & Scratches filter.

Found under Photoshop’s Filter>Noise menu the Dust & Scratches filter is basically a variation on the Blur filter. From this screen grab you can see that the filter’s dialogue has settings for both the Radius and the Threshold.

The challenge is to find the balance between the Amount of Blur being applied with the Radius and protecting the smaller details with the Threshold setting. While that can sound a little tricky the way this is used in practice is to find a setting that knocks out most of the dust without blurring out too many little details, (on a duplicate layer of course).

Then the trick is to use a Layer Mask filled with Black to mask out the filtered duplicated layer. Now all you have to do is using the Brush tool paint white in the layer mask wherever you see those nasty little spots and magically they disappear. (Ok not so magically, but it’s more fun to put it that way, eh?)

Since the Brush tool works more quickly than the Heal Brush and the combination of the filter and the layer mask is simpler to use than the Rubber Stamp tool this can be a pretty quick way to knock down the majority of those troublesome spots.

There are a few things to watch out for when using this tool to bust those specks. In this side by side enlargement here you can easily see the small type has been blurred, but what can be just as problematic and more difficult to see are the borders around some of the larger specks.

When viewed closely these borders can be objectionable artifacts that should be avoided. This means that the Dust & Scratches filter usually won’t do the job alone, when you see some artifact like these borders use the Heal Brush or the Rubber Stamp tool instead.

So while it’s definitely not a cure-all solution the Dust & Scratches filter is certainly a very useful one.

Bob Stevens and the Smart Smileys

2008-11-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

While working on a recent project with Bob Stevens we had an interesting challenge. As part of the Kaiser Health campaign for the ad agency, Campbell Ewald, we needed to create an image that featured the control panel of a cardio workout machine.

In keeping with Kaiser’s Thrive campaign the panel needed to show a series of happy Smiley Faces in place of the lights measuring the intensity of the workout. Now re-working the panel was pretty easy stuff but knowing Bob and the Art Director, Marge Bornais, I knew those 20 or so little happy lights would need to be tweaked and adjusted until they were just right.

Remembering that we had a pretty tight deadline, (what job doesn’t?), I decided it would be a lot easier to get one light looking great than 20. But of course Bob and Marge needed to see all the lights in place before they’d know if they were right or not. Hmmm….

This is where Photoshop’s Smart Objects proved to be the smart answer. You see one feature of the Smart Objects is that you can use it to embed one image into another. And when you change the embedded image it automatically will update in the file you’ve placed it in. What this means is that I could make the Smiley Face light as a separate file, place that in the cardio panel image as a Smart Object and make several copies of this Smart Object to build up the number of lights we needed in the image. So far pretty ordinary, right?

But here’s where the advantage came in, when I needed to change the Smiley Face all I needed to do was double click on one of the copies in the Layers palette, this opened up a separate image that had all the layers of my original Smiley Face. Then after I made the necessary changes to this file and hit “Save” Photoshop automatically updated ALL the copies I had made in the cardio panel.

Huh? All 20 at once? Yup! Just by changing one I could get Photoshop to do all the work of updating all the lights at the same time. Pretty smart, eh?

Wick Beavers & the Ascension

2008-11-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

Florida photographer, Wick Beaver, had a problem. He was working on creating an updated version of Jesus’ Ascension for one of his clients but was having trouble getting the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands just right.

That was when Wick sent me the image looking to see what solutions I could see for his problem. While I’m not a trained illustrator working as a digital artist for nearly 18 years has taught me to look at images with an illustrator’s approach. And that experience proved to be just what I needed to create the ‘holes’ Wick needed.

Beginning with the idea of the hole itself I added an adjustment layer set to Multiply blending to create the illusion of depth. Then I thought about how the skin would look around the hole and added another adjustment layer to desaturate giving it just the right ‘deadness’. Some illustrated highlights around the edges helped a lot. This was followed by another adjustment layer that was painted in to create the bruises surrounding the wound.

After all that I felt something was still needed. Then I realized, it needed the right texture and shadow detail to really finish pulling off the effect. I grabbed a ‘comp shot’ of some meat and placed that into the holes using a layer mask to control how much detail was apparent in the wound.

Finally I sent a layered file back to Wick with the suggestion that he replace my rough shot of the meat. Rushing out to his compost pile Wick tells me he found some days old chicken breast and some bow tie pasta which he quickly shot and dropped in to finish off the image.

Here’s what Wick had to say about the collaboration:
“I had the great fortune and real honor of having Dennis Dunbar out in LA work the nail holes in the hands of Christ in my Ascension of Christ Ft Lauderdale photo. He immediately grasped the illustrative and kitsch nature of the task and returned me his 15+ layers, masks and adjustments to "get" the rotting, splayed back, bruised nature of the nail holes. Below is a close up of the forward hand. I attach a copy of the final full image as well for a look at the whole image. He left me a single layer he titled "MEAT", for which I shot week old chicken bones and bowtie pasta dug out of our nice compost pile. Yes, gross to the max, but worth the effort in the end!”

Plastic Wrap and Running Shoes

2008-09-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Recently I worked on a project with photographer Bob Stevens, (www.bobstevens.com), that was pretty fun. For me it started with a call from Bob seeking input on how to tackle a particular challenge. You see he was bidding on a job for Kaiser Healthcare and this one image involved shooting a pair of running shoes that were packaged up like a choice steak at the grocery store complete with foam tray and plastic wrap.

The challenge was how could he shoot a few different sets of shoes on the foam tray, get them combined to create a “generic” shoe and then have it all wrapped in plastic wrap.

After thinking about it for a little while I took one of my own shoes and did a couple of quick shots of it with and without plastic wrap and then looked at them carefully to see if I could figure out an approach.

Then it occurred to me, since the wrap is essentially clear it basically showed up in the image as subtle shadows and highlights depending on how it interacted with the light. But each of these qualities also had a certain kind of ‘organic’ look to it so while I could just paint in the shadows and highlights I’d have to be careful to match the way the stretched plastic really caught the light.

So the solution I offered to Bob was simple: Shoot the different shoes without the wrap and then shoot some examples of shoes wrapped in the plastic so we had some good ‘organic’ examples, (otherwise how would we know when it looked “real”). Then all we needed to do was build the generic shoes by compositing bits and pieces and finally I’d illustrate the wrap onto the composited shoes. Easy, eh?

On the day of the shoot Bob had his crew along, with the Art Director, Marge Bornais, and I all meet at the studio. While Bob and his assistants shot the various pairs of shoes I started “comping” together the shots working to build a lo res version of the generic shoes. When every one was confident we had this part covered we moved on to shooting the plastic wrap examples.

To make sure the wrap showed up as well as possible Bob had a pair of black shoes standing in as the hero shoes. Then Bob and his crew shot somewhere between 30 and 40 shots of the plastic wrapped shoes. As they went along they realized that with the reflective nature of the wrap they needed to concentrate on shooting bits at a time. One shot might have a great look over the toes and another have a good highlight over the heel. As they went along the Marge and Bob circled the areas they liked and passed them on to me.

Finally it came to assembling everything together in high resolution for the final ad. First I worked on combining the parts of the shoes to build the generic shoe. When everyone was happy with the new shoes I started working on adding the plastic wrap.

Marge had a great insight oserving that the wrap added some slight darkening effect overall. So first I added a curve that darkened the shoes and the tray just enough to define a shape for the illustrated wrap.

Then I opened up the shots of the plastic wrap and studied them closely. It became pretty apparent that the wrap had a subtle shadow, a more diffused highlight,S and then a sharper, hotter highlight on top. Basically this is the same way you illustrate wrinkles in fabric. I decided to approach it by making a series of layers, one to darken slightly, one to lighten a little and another one for the hotter highlights.

After working that out all I needed to do was to trace the various shapes we liked from the sample shots of wrapped shoes and copy those shapes to the various layers I had made in the hi res file and fill them in with the right color of paint. Sliding the opacity of these layers gave me the control I needed to make sure they had just the right transparent quality.

With Marge and Bob art directing me as I went I then took the shapes I made and gave each one a few tweaks to get them looking good. When that was done I then went around the edge of the foam tray illustrating little wrinkles along the way to complete the illusion.

The final step was to work with Bob and Marge to adjust the overall color and saturation getting the “Feel” Bob was after.

Easy as pie.

Here is a before/after of the base shoes and the final wrapped composite image.

Channel Pulling Masks

2008-09-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we get lucky. Every now and then there is actually one of those “Quick and Dirty” tricks that actually works and saves us hours of extra work. Depending on the shot “Channel Pulling” is one of those tricks.

Basically the idea here is if one of the channels in the image shows enough contrast between your subject and the background you can make a quick mask based on that channel and save yourself all the work of having to hand paint the mask.

Here’s how a quick run down on how it works. First let’s take an image like this one I got from Jupiter Images. You can see this is just a basic shot of a person against a white background. While this technique can work with more complex images I just wanted to use an easy example to get the idea across.

The first step is to go to the Channels palette and look at each of the channels in the image. This one is an RGB image so we’ll look at the Red, then Green and finally the Blue channels to see which one offers the best contrast between our subject and the background.

Looks like the Blue channel is our best bet so we’ll use that one. Next we’ll click on that channel and pull it down to the folded page icon in the menu at the bottom of the palette. (Ahhh, now you know why it's called "Channel Pulling"!) This makes a copy of the channel called “Blue copy”.

Now click on that channel in the palette menu to select it and see it on the screen.

Looking at this channel we can see that it needs a little work to be useable as a mask. Remember that you need a mask that is mostly black and white with just a little gray in between them to soften the edge and make a good transition between our subject and whatever the new background will be.

Obviously this means we need to add some contrast to the channel so we can push most of the gray values to black while making sure the rest is truly white. My preferred method for adjusting the contrast is with the “Curves” tool. You can get to the Curves adjustment by selecting Image>Adjustments>Curves from the menu, or by using the shortcut Command + M (sorry, I always have trouble remembering the PC equivalent).

Once we bring this up the adjustment itself is pretty easy, just slide the black point (in this window it’s on the lower left) over towards the right until you see the grays start to fill in to black. Then slide the White point (it’s the one on the right) over to the left until the lighter grays turn to white.

It’s good to note that you want some shades of gray around the edges. Since Black and White are the extremes shades of gray give us some feathering around the edge. How much feathering we need all depends on the image itself. As I noted in a previous post the right combination here depends on how crisp or soft the edges in the image itself are. You want your mask to have a similar amount of crispness or softness as your image. Here is a close up view of the bits of gray I’m using to feather the edges of this mask.

Now the next step is to fill in the areas that need to be black but aren’t quite there yet. Depending on what seems easiest I’ll either use a big brush to paint it in, or use the lasso tool to select those parts and then fill them with black. The same thing goes for any areas that really need to be white.

When you’ve completed this you should wind up with something that looks like this:

And now that we have our mask channel made all we need to do is turn it into a layer mask. Doing this is really simple. First make sure your layer is not set as the background layer. (Background layers cannot use layer masks.) If it is all you need to do is double click on it in the Layers palette. With this done now load the channel we just made as a selection. Again I like to do this by command clicking on the channel’s icon in the Channels palette but you can also use Select>Load Selection from the PS menu as well.

With the selection loaded look to see if the crawling ants are running around the outside of the image. Since by default White in the channel indicates the area that will be selected the channel we made will mean the background gets selected instead of the subject. No worries, all you have to do is choose Select> Inverse from the menu (Command + Shift + “i” on a Mac). This flips around the selection and now your subject is selected instead of the background.

Then the last step is to go back to the Layers palette and click on the little “Add layer mask” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Here’s a screen shot of it:

Now we have our layer mask and your image should look like this and you’re ready for the next job. (Don’t forget to Save your image.)

Keepin' it Simple with Layers

2008-09-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe this comes under the “Pet Peeve” heading, but as a retoucher I see a lot of Photoshop files with lots of layers that have names like “Layer 1” or “Layer 2” etc. While I know this is Photoshop’s default naming system what happens is pretty quickly you need some sort of guide to tell what layer is doing what, a sure-fire formula for confusion!

So the suggestion I want to make here is take the brief moment it takes to name the layer in some way that helps whoever is working on the image get an idea of what that layer is for.

For instance when I’m working on a beauty shot typically I’ll have a layer where I do the majority of spotting work that’s called “Spotting”, there will also be a layer called “Stray Hairs” etc. This keeps it easy for me to tell what layer to go to when I need to make some further tweaks.

Taking this a step further if you’re combining several images into a composite image it really helps to name the layers with the names of the source images themselves. Since I work on a lot of movie posters it’s common for me to see layers named something like “boy’s head”. This at least tells me what’s on the layer, but gives me no idea which source image the head came from. Have you ever had to search an entire server looking for the correct shot so you can replace it with a cleaner version? Not fun.

But there is help. Here’s a really easy way to copy and paste the name of the source image so the layer is properly named.

Step One: With the source image open use Photoshop’s “Save As” command (Command + Shift + S on a Mac), then copy the name of the file as it shows up in the dialogue (Command + C on a Mac). Then hit the Escape key.

Step Two: Go to the Layers palette and double click on the layer named “Background”, now paste the name you copied in Step One (Command + V on a Mac).

Step Three: Now drag that layer into the composite image. Note that the layer is now named for the source file.

After doing this a few times your fingers will start to automatically go to the right key combinations and you’ll see that with just a few key strokes and a double click or two you’re done and things are organized and easy to figure out.

See, I feel better already. ;-)

Divide & Conquer: Color to B&W

2008-08-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

Black and White imagery has had a long tradition in the world of photography. And in this digital age Photoshop goes a long way to honor that tradition giving us many different ways to convert our Color images to Black and White with more control and finesse than ever before.

What I’d like to talk about here is how to make use of some of that control to easily get results that couldn’t be achieved before without a lot of effort. Suppose you have an image like this one I took at Lake Powell a couple of years ago.

Having grown up loving the dramatic skies in Ansel Adams’ images. When I looked at this image and thought of doing a B&W version I wanted to get close to that kind of drama in the skies. But as I worked on it with Photoshop CS3’s B&W adjustment layer I realized that I wanted to also bring out the detail and contrast in the cliffs. The adjustments that gave me a cool looking sky just didn’t seem to do what I wanted in the cliffs.

Here is a screen shot showing the image adjusted for the sky along with the settings I used to get that.

And when I worked to get the detail and tonality in the cliffs the sky just seemed to miss out on the drama. Here is a screen shot showing the image adjusted for the cliffs, again with the settings.

Luckily Photoshop gives us an easy way to have the best of both adjustments. The secret is to use both adjustment layers combined with layer masks that makes sure they’re only affecting the areas we want affected. To do this all I did was start out with one adjustment, in this case the one for the cliffs, and then by painting black in the layer mask I kept this adjustment from affecting the sky.

Here is a screen shot with the layer mask shown as a Red overlay:

Then all I had to do was copy the mask from the Cliffs adjustment layer to my Sky adjustment layer and invert the values so I had the opposite part of the image covered. That looked like this:

Finally all I had to do was give a quick look over the image to make sure none of the original color was showing up in between the two adjustments and voila I had this as the finished image:

B&W APA Seminar on Aug. 9th

2008-07-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

I'll be teaching another seminar for the Los Angeles chapter of the APA on August 9th with some of the folks from Bowhaus. Should be an interesting day.

APA/LA Digital Workshop: From Color to Black and White
Saturday August 9th, 2008
9am - 1pm
3221 Hutchinson Ave, LA CA 90034

Sign Up Today at www.apa-la.org
LIMITED SPACES FOR THIS EVENT PRE-REGISTRATION IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Join us Saturday, August 9th as we present our own Dennis Dunbar and
Bowhaus' Antonis Ricos in the latest of our series of digital seminars.
They'll be taking their audience on an exploration of the Black and White
digital world.

Dennis will start things off by delving into the process of converting Color
Images to Black and White. He'll discuss what happens when you hit the
magical B&W button in Photoshop and show you how to gain control of the
process so you can fine tune the conversion to get the results you're after.
Then he'll show you how you can "Mix and Match" conversion methods to bring
out the right tonality and detail in specific areas of your image.

Then Bowhaus' Antonis Ricoss will take over the session and show you how to
get "Fine Art" Black and White prints from your images. He'll show you how
to create Digital B&W inkjet prints with rich blacks, luminous highlights
and ultra-smooth gradations. These guys really have mastered this art and
you'll see why acclaimed fine art photographers and galleries are now
choosing BowHaus to produce their Master and Exhibition prints. He'll also
show you Bowhaus' IJC/OPM software as well as their new "True Black and
White" printmaking software that you can use to create your own stunning
Digital B&W inkjet prints.

Come join us as this seminar promises to be informative and intriguing and
will help you gain the knowledge you need to move seamlessly between the
World of Color to the World of B&W.

Pre-Registration
$35 APA/LA members
$45 ASMP, LADig, Student members
$55 non-members

Day of:
$45 APA/LA members
$55 ASMP, LADig, Student members
$65 non-members

Brought to you in part by:
Bowhaus www.bowhaus.com

Good Mask - Bad Mask

2008-07-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

One of the more frequent questions I get asked is about masking. Almost every Photoshop user has used masks at one time or another to control how one image blends with another to limit some effect to certain areas of the image. Safe to say they're used a lot. But the question that comes up is "What makes a Good Mask?"

Of course the quick answer is "It all depends on what you're trying to do." What that really means is different tasks require different qualities of masks. For instance if you just want to 'nudge' the color of one area a little bit you may get away with a softer mask that's not too exact. But if you're going to strip in a new background behind a shot of a model you're probably going to have to be a good deal more careful with your mask.

In this case the answer to our question "What makes a Good Mask?" is primarily about 'Edge Quality'. With a mask the hardness or softness of the edge is what makes for a seamless, natural looking blend or something that looks like you used a pair of scissors on. This is what we mean when we talk about 'Edge Quality'.

To get a bit deeper with this idea take a close look at the image of your model paying careful attention to the edges that naturally occur inside the image. The edge of your mask should look pretty close to how these natural edges look. Any harder than that and the image will look 'Cut Out'. Any softer and it may look 'Mushy'. (Great technical terms, eh?)

When I'm working on a mask I usually like to use a brush to paint around the edges of the part I'm masking. And while painting this edge I look to use a brush with the right size/hardness combination that looks as hard or as soft as the edge of whatever it is I'm masking. Sometimes this means I need to change the brush as I go along because maybe the depth of field means one part looks sharper than another. After I've painted this 'border' I'll then use the lasso tool and

make a series of selections based on tracing more or less along the center of the border that are then filled to make the mask.

Here is an example.

With this image the red outline you see is the border I painted, and as usual the edge of this bear varies according to the depth of field so I had to change the brush along the way as I

painted.

Here is the image with a black line showing the selection I made with the Lasso Tool.

And here is the image with the mask filled using that selection.

Now let's check the mask to make sure it's solid White and solid Black where it needs to be.

Finally here is the image with a new background.

Of course since I used the mask as a "Layer Mask" all I've done is hide the original background so the new one can show through. This means I can easily fine tune this mask to make sure everything looks just right.

Adding Glows to Hair

2008-07-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

Lately a good deal of the work I've been doing has been with photographers who shoot high end beauty shots. Part of this work usually involves adding "a nice glow" to the hair and skin of the model. While there are several ways to do this I thought I'd share here a simple technique for adding a soft, luminous glow to the hair.

To get this effect we're going to use one of Photoshop's "Layer Blending Modes". As you're probably aware there are many blending modes we can use in Photoshop. These break down to variations on a few themes. There are blending modes that affect Contrast and Saturation, modes that darken the image and modes that lighten the image as well as a few other ones.

Now one thing that users frequently forget is that an Adjustment Layer set to a particular blending mode even without any adjustment made to the settings of the layer itself will give you the same effect as if you had copied the image itself as a layer and set it to that same blending mode.

The cool thing about using an Adjustment Layer (I like Curves myself) is that it adds almost nothing to the size of your file, which can be an important consideration if you're working on big files. The other cool thing is that while you don't need to play with the adjustments in the layer you can to tweak the effect you're getting.

The mode we'll use here is the "Screen" mode. This blending mode will lighten an image based on how light the tones are in the layer. So White will have the strongest effect and Black will have the weakest effect. And all you need to do is add a Curves adjustment layer set to "Screen" blending and then make sure the mask for this layer is filled with black (this hides the effect of the layer).

Now just look at your image and picture where you want the Glow to appear. Then take the Brush tool and paint White in the Layer Mask wherever you want this effect to show. To really get this right you need to think a bit like an illustrator, but armed with the knowledge that you can always undo the effect by painting Black in the Layer Mask you're free to play and experiment until you're happy with the effect. If it's too strong you can also turn down the opacity of the layer to back off.

So try it on one of your own images and see how it works. Play a bit and I bet you'll like it.

Communicating Color Effectively

2008-07-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

Remember the story about the 3 Blind Men who are shown an animal and asked to describe it? Of course, being blind, they use their hands to feel parts of the animal and then describe what they think the animal is. The first one goes to the front and reaches out to the animal he says, “This is long, thick and strong like a python snake!” The second moves forward, feels the side of the animal and says. “This is tall and wide, like a wall!” Then the third goes to the back and says, “No, this is long and thin, like a rope!”

Meanwhile what the men don’t realize is that they are meeting an elephant, not a python, wall or rope. Communicating the proper appearance of digital images can be a lot like this. When there is no tangible image what we see depends on how our systems are setup. Without following proper color management procedures, or paying close attention to what the others in the workflow are doing we become like the blind men, describing something based on just a small part of the whole picture.

Fortunately the answer has gotten a lot easier in the last several years. Advances in software and hardware has made trusting what you see on your screen possible. By calibrating and profiling your displays using any one of the reputable packages available these days we can know that we are looking at something pretty close to “The Truth”.

If it stopped there life would be easy. But, of course, life is not so easy. In the vast majority of times there are others in the chain we need to deal with. Making sure your image is treated properly and winds up looking like you planned is one of the big challenges in the modern digital workflow.

Here communication is key. Knowing who to talk with, and what questions to ask can be critical to the process. How do you know what the client needs? And how can you get it to them in a way that makes getting it right easy? This is where groups such as UPDIG and DISC come in.

UPDIG, (the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines, www.updig.org), is an industry-wide group created by a consortium of photographer’s groups such as APA, ASMP.EP.PPA and many more throughout the world that is focused on determining the requirements for digital images in the various parts of our industry. The folks working on UPDIG have created many resources for photographers and clients including guidelines and “Best Practices” documents for both image creators and those receiving digital images.

This work, begun at the 2004 PPE show, is on-going and continues to grow in both scope and reach. Go to their website, www.updig.org, to learn more about the group and to download the guides and best practices, then put them into practice and share them with your clients, and anyone receiving your digital images. Remember, communication is key.

Playin' with Textures

2008-06-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

After years of working on movie poster images I've come to really love some of the rich textural treatments the designers I've worked with create. So whenever I am out shooting images for myself I inevitably look for things I can use as textures with other images I may play with later on. I've built up a library with lots of shots of wood, rust, water, greenery, basically anything that looks interesting.

There are lots of ways to use these textures in combination with other images to get some cool looking results. One of the most common ways is to make use of the Overlay Blending Mode. This blending mode basically takes what is in the layer and uses it to increase the contrast and saturation of the layers below. Anything that is neutral gray has no effect and the farther away you get from neutral gray the stronger of an effect it has. We used this blending mode as a way of burning and dodging an image in the previous post. But here we'll look at how it and other blending modes can be used to get some interesting results.

Above is an image I created as an example for a seminar I taught on Channels and Blending Modes. What I want to discuss here is how I created the Blue Wood background for the rusty heart to sit on.

To begin with I dipped into my library of textures and found this shot of some wood that I took on a dock in New York a few years ago.

As you can see it's sort of interesting, but a bit flat and it lacks the "punch" I wanted the background to have. After doing a little contrast enhancement I added a Curves Adjustment Layer set to "Overlay" Blending. (Yes, you can use blending modes with Adjustment Layers. In fact it doing this gives you exactly the same result as adding a copy of the image and setting that to the same blending mode - but it adds almost nothing to your file size.) So after this step this is what the wood background looked like.

OK, now we're getting something interesting. This has much more drama to it and will work a lot better with the Rusty Heart. But a warm background and a warm foreground image won't really work well together here so I needed to shift the color to make the heart "pop" more. That's when I looked for another texture to add to the wood. Again a trip to my textures library led me to this shot of some water in a fountain that I took several years ago while taking my oldest daughter to Summer Camp.

The blue of this water looked like it would work well as a way to set off the heart I had made and so I placed a copy of the water over the adjusted wood image and tried out different blending modes. In this case I really just wanted to use the color of the water to make the wood pick up the blues in the image. I also liked the variety in the color that the highlights from the ripples added and wanted to use those as well.

Of all the blending modes Photoshop gives us there are two that primarily affect color: "Color" and "Hue". The main difference here is that the "Color" mode will affect the saturation of the layers below while the "Hue" mode won't. In playing with the two modes I chose Hue and got this result:

Now that's more like it! By combining a couple of images as textures and playing with their blending modes I went from the drab looking wood to this much more interesting wood that worked much better as a background for the rusty heart. Here is a larger example of what the final image looked like.

Now the bigger question is what textures do you have to play with?

Burnin' & Dodgin' on a layer

2008-06-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most useful techniques in working on an image is to do selective burning and dodging, that is carefully darkening and lightening parts of an image to define edges, create a sense of detail or even to add "shape" to a part of the image.

As a digital artist I've seen many different ways of doing this, and most work pretty well. The most common way is to make a copy of the layer and just use the burn and dodge tool in Photoshop. While this can be effective I personally find it limiting and inefficient.

It's limiting because it's hard to adjust what you've done after the fact, and inefficient because every time you need to copy a layer you're making your file bigger and forcing Photoshop and the computer to do more work.

Here's a simpler way: Create a new layer, set the blending mode to "Overlay" and then using a brush paint White to lighten and Black to darken. When I'm working with this technique I use a low opacity on the brush so I can more easily control how much I'm lightening or darkening the image. Also don't fill the layer with Neutral Gray, it's really unnecessary and just makes the layer bigger.

Overlay is one of three blending modes that affects the contrast of an image depending on how much lighter or darker than neutral gray the values are. White and Black will produce the strongest effect and shades of light or dark gray produce gentler effects.

One thing to look out for when working this way is that sometimes the colors in the image may gain an unnatural looking saturation when you use a strong effect. For this reason I'll frequently use one Overlay layer to darken and another to Lighten. Doing it this way makes it easier for me to change what I've done. For instance if I like the way the Lightening worked but wanted to back off on the Darkening I can just lower the opacity of the Darkening Layer leaving the Lightening Layer alone.

It takes some experimentation, but as with anything the more you play with it the better your control will be.

Starting Out

2008-06-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

As a digital artist I tend to look at images trying to find easier ways to get certain looks or effects. When a group of photographer friends were discussing various in camera techniques they used one of them shared a self portrait he had done where he really liked the pronounced blue tone he had achieved.

I liked the look, but thought his process didn't give him much control so I opened up a shot he had done of me and started to play with various ways to get a similar effect. Turned out it was pretty easy.

Here is the shot I chose to play with:
And here is the final Blue version:

To get this effect all I did was play with Photoshop's Curves Adjustment Layer. If you set the blending mode to "Color" and then push and pull the curves about you'll find that the only thing you're affecting is the color and saturation of the image. Pulling down on the Red Curve will take Red out of the image, but won't make it any darker or affect the contrast either.

So for this image I created a Curves Adjustment Layer, set the blending to "Color" and then went to the Blue Curve and pulled the bottom point all the way to the top so it was a flat line adding all the blue it could to the image.

Then to get just the shade of Blue I wanted I took some Red and some Green out as well. Finally I toned down the saturation by going to the RGB Composite Curve and pulled the white point (the one in the upper right corner) straight down until I liked the saturation.

Here is a screen grab of what the adjustments in Photoshop looked like:It's great that Photoshop now lets you see what's happening in all the channels at once. Here you can see that I took almost all of the Red out of the image and most of the Green as well. All in all it took about 5 or 10 minutes of playing to create this look. The thing I like best about working in digital imaging is that it's so easy to play with something until you get what you want. The more you do it the easier it gets to see how to get there.

Try playing with this idea on some of your own images and see what "Looks" you can create.