Angelina with Michael Murphree

When the subject of the photo is Angelna Jolie it's gotta look perfect. Careful attention must be given to making sure the image shows beautiful skin texture while keeping the image looking "real". This requires a highly skilled touch to make sure the retouching is kept invisible while bringing out the subject's natural beauty.

This shot was part of a series of images photographer Michael Murphree took for a PR campaign for a movie project Angelina was part of. Below is another shot from that same series.

The Big Photo Show

May 4th & 5th The Big Photo Show was held at the LA Convention center. Christian from the LA Photoshop User Group asked me to do a couple of presentations at their booth during the show. This demo was on my Beauty Retouching workflow and as you can see it drew quite a crowd.

Lifestyle with Chris Crisman

While building complex composite images is a fun challenge I also enjoy working on wide range of images including Lifestyle images such as this one shot by Chris Crisman. This shot was part of a series Chris did for Field and Stream. In working on this image I paid close attention to Chris' style and worked to bring out the right amount of detail in the old man and deer trophy on the wall.

Part of the challenge retouchers face is knowing what we leave is as important as what we take out. In this case the spider web by the table and the dirt on the floor were left to help add to the rustic feel of the location.

Introducing the Boeing 787

When Boeing gave Gil Cope an assignment to shoot an ad campaign highlighting their brand new jumbo jet, the 787 he was faced with a bit of a dilemma. You see while the 787 is quite roomy from a passenger's point of view it proves to be just a little too tight from a photographer's point of view.

So the question facing Gil was "how could he create a well lit shot inside such a confining space?" To solve the dilemma he decided shoot the interior of an empty 787 cabin and then recreate the seating arrangement inside a large studio where he could properly light the models and focus on getting the positions and expressions he needed for the shot.

That was when Gil asked me to add the Photoshop Magic needed to combine the various shots and add the final enhancements to bring it all together.

Here is a quick look at some of the elements that went into creating the final shot:

Upcoming Workshop: Retouching Secrets of the Pros

Retouching Secrets of the Pros

Retouching Secrets of the Pros
Take your retouching skills to the next level as two top retouching experts, Lisa Carney and Dennis Dunbar share some of their coolest Photoshop secrets. From beginner to advanced this workshop will have cool tips and shortcuts for users of all levels. They will be showing some of their favorite techniques for masking, color correcting and sharpening. They’ll also talk about adding special effects to give your images a great look and delve into the magic of blending modes and smart objects.
This workshop promises to be an informative and intriguing session where you’re sure to leave with new ideas that will help you take your own imaging skills to a higher level.
The action happens
Saturday, March 16th
9:30 doors open
10am - 2pm presentation
Lunch included
Strauss Studios
6442 Santa Monica Blvd. #204
Hollywood CA 90038

Layer Style Noise

Every retoucher knows that just the right touch of Noise can help hide various issues when working on an image. There's something about the random texture Noise adds that helps hide areas where there might be some artifacts left after working on extensive spotting or reconstruction of an image.

The most common way to add Noise is to create a new layer, set the Blending Mode to "Overlay", fill it with 50% gray then use the "Add Noise" filter. This method works well, but it can be a little in-flexible as well as adding considerable data to our files resulting in larger files.

Several years ago a retoucher friend tipped me on to the idea of using a Pattern Fill layer to add Noise. This method takes a bit of setup, but basically the idea is to create and save a series of patterns with different amounts of Noise and then use them in a Pattern Fill layer instead of the more common way described above.

Since this method is based on a Pattern and a formula it not only adds fewer Megabytes to your file size, but you can easily change the Pattern by simply clicking on it in the appropriate window and choosing a new Pattern.

This method works great and it's been my favorite way of adding Noise for several years.

But what if you're working on a file that has several layers and you just need to add Noise to 1 or 2 of these layers? How could we apply this same idea to these layers without having to set up Clipping Groups or doing careful masking?

That's where using a Layer Style to add Noise comes in!

Here's a closely cropped portion of a composited image I worked on with photographer Richard Radstone. This image has many, many layers that all needed to be blended into one seamless composite. The Layers palette on the left shows just a portion of the layers used in creating this image, but for this example let's suppose we needed to add Noise to the lamp (this layer is highlighted in Blue in the Layers palette.)

 

The usual method to add Noise to the Lamp would perhaps be to make a Selection surrounding the lamp, then making a new layer where the Noise is added. But with this new idea if you already have made the Noise Patterns all you have to do is go to Layer>Layer Style then choose Pattern Overlay as shown below.

Now all we need to do is choose the right Noise Pattern, set the Blending Mode to "Overlay", perhaps choose to scale the Noise (here I'm scaling it a lot so it will show more clearly in this example) and then click "OK".

 

Here's what the lamp looks like with our Noise Layer Style:

 

The advantage with this method really shows up if you've done extensive retouching and need to bring in a bit more texture to hide some artifacts, or make your work blend in a little better. Layer Style Noise can easily be added to layers that are in the middle of a Clipping Group without affecting the other layers in the Clipping Group making it lots easier to add the Noise only where you need it.

Cool, eh?

Lifestyle with Colin McGuire

Last Summer I worked with Colin McGuire on this lifestyle project involving 15 different shots to be used in a campaign for one of his pharmaceutical clients.

The shots all needed to have an early morning or late afternoon warmth with the sun just meeting the horizon off on the right of the image. On the days of the shoot Colin and his crew were met with stormy clouds and rain. So in addition to doing the usual cleanup, changing clothing colors, and compositing I needed to restore that warmth and bring out the sun so it appeared as planned.

Overall this series of images called for very careful masking and color correction. Each sky had to be replaced with a new one, the color of the main subjects' shirts needed to match the brand's red logo, the grass needed to be consistently green and shadows needed to be 'punched up' to give the impression of clearer skies and more direct light.

In the end the client was very happy and Colin looked like a hero for getting great looking shots despite the adverse conditions he faced.

Here are a couple more shots from the campaign.