#retouching tips

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Photo retouching finds applications in diverse domains. These tips can assist professionals and amateurs alike to carry our image editing exceptionally.

[pratiknaik-blog]

This “Brightness vs Luminosity” Video Instantly Made Me A Better Retoucher

It’s getting harder and harder to find pieces of information that aids to making my workflow significantly better. This video helped my dodge and burn out tremendously! Even though I felt like I have had a great grasp of it, this took it to the next level for me, thanks to Conny Wallström.  I realized that I have been doing it all wrong. Rather, I realized I could be doing it a lot better now that I have a better understanding of how brightness and luminosity vary within Photoshop and its association and relationship to color. When it comes to dodge and burn, we use a desaturated view of the image as a “helper layer” to see the difference in light changes so we can even out skin better. But instead of using the hue/saturation adjustment layer or the black and white adjustment layer, this is a much better method and Conny shows you why. I soon understood the differences between what I was doing and why I should be doing it in this method instead.  Here, just watch: 

He also adds:  “The desaturate method is fine if you use color adjustments that work in the HSL color model. But a lot of the tools inside of Photoshop rely on perceived brightness so that could potentially be a big problem. The same goes for BW, which is another perceived brightness, but not part of a color model, and a bit different from Luminosity. Another method for a Luminosity help layer is a Channel Mixer set to monochrome with 30% red, 59% green, 11% blue. So the best help layers are those that match your workflow and the adjustments you intend to use.”

So how does this relate to portraits?  This post gives a good visual explanation when it comes to fixing skin tones:  http://www.diyphotography.net/retouching-essentials-are-you-having-color-issues-when-dodging-burning-this-might-be-the-reason/

So from now on, a solid color adjustment layer set to “color” is a far better option for me. Thank you Conny Wallström! Conny’s Facebook and Website

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Retouching Tip: Clothing Pre-Planning

If you are doing a shoot where clothing is imperative, be sure to take pictures of the models wearing each outfit where the dress or garment is completely straight before she begins modeling.

This way, in case you come across folds or wrinkles in post production after the shoot, you have clean shots to sample from. It will save you a headache especially if you are working on clothes with complex patterns.