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Culling for Retouching

Lesson 7 from: The Art & Business of High-End Retouching

Pratik Naik

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Lesson Info

7. Culling for Retouching

Lesson Info

Culling for Retouching

I want to show the dirty side, so we're going to actually sit on dh, do some select. Yeah, but actually, why don't we just show it? Yeah, we figured that registry the whole process because, you know, you get to see exactly the photography thinking and then what my points are and I can sit here like this doing exposing yourself to the world. Yeah, before we go on, I want to say one thing a lot of people have asked, I got twitter and everywhere but allah fun backdrops my allah from backdrop is the grey one that we used for the beauty. Look, this was actually they had these on set here for set design, and I stole them is a creative lives. They're not include a lot of fun, but I called all the fun, especially at lunch. And I said, could you paint a drop like this? And they said absolutely so they were like, thanks. We got lots of calls, people asking if we can put metal sheet on dh. We told them, know what? We can paint it so I just wanted to clarify that. Good take any before we start any...

points that you thought of the lunch about. But we're going to do now well yeah, because I think now since we have everything we ever even touched, the bad shots were good shots we can I guess basically go and start seeing how you go through the process of starting off once you loaded the card into the computer. Now before you talk about that, how long do you wait before you look at the images site if I had a bad shoot I like take some time because sometimes it's good stuff that comes with it would you know, you kind of go I'm so terrible because you take a hundred bad shots and one good one you just you know, if you do one look yeah um and then you just remember the bad ones sometimes it's good to take some distance, right? Right? And something that probably happens to you when you're shooting you have in mind what the shot the shot is, but then you go back and you look at the whole shooting like, whoa, I found a better shot that is better than the one I had originally thought of. Yeah, when you're not changing your mind. Yeah, yeah, I have got a lot, but let's see let's dive right into this we're back in capture one andi this is we had our little won't go through the whole thing I'm actually kind of thinking of skipping to where I was but if we run through these should unlike mine these early ones, right? Is this the very beginning? Yes. That's the very beginning of the shoot there's nothing that I did like about the fact that you're white balance was so close to co checker it allowed you to actually, you know, do less work later on. You don't have to I don't have to use so much. So if I take a take the white bands, I'm curious here, by the way, we're just we can have questions. I know where your little bubble here. Yeah, like in the computer, but you can ask anything, so I'm going to copy the white bounds and it's just ever so close actually, isn't it is very cool. Yeah, and relief, I think we've put a bit of a yellowing on here just to give it that effect pelosis essentially keep it too yeah, keep it there and I'm going to go through and I think pretty well just go ahead and go to the image that I think I like the most but just looking at these thumbnails, you know I won't lie I had a little trouble with this festival we had the was at theeighty male ends a melons I mean I say now, but just beauty should be not on eighty millions on medium format, but I really thought that between the weighing out the disadvantages like that's, the lens we had between the phase one or the lens and I kind of thought, I think I want to try the phase, one of my things pretty can make it work. Yeah, but you should really beauty should be shot on the longer, linds. Absolutely. What about, I guess going back lighting for beauty of rhys fashion is there, like, a particular standard or something? Or do you just whatever looks appropriate to your end goal? I mean, I think people do that thing where they put that reflektor underneath. If I can find that picture, it'll be the one that looks horrible things on dh like the clamshell lighting, and I always think this is just looks so flat and commercial, I can't will come across the shot, but I don't think there's any hard and fast rules, but like, if it looks nice, it looks nice exactly it's always relevant to the person shooting or whatever their clients after. And I took that little time era soft books because anyone can get that I rented one for shoot from a rama in new york and that they shipped it to me in florida, where was on dh. Cost me sixty dollars to do the whole thing and it's like that's affordable you know anyone could do that? I don't even own that soft box, but if I need it every now and again, I use it and that's my choice, right? But I'm getting that really fast drop off if I am I think I like kind of this like this I think is beautiful I'm going to just go through and like, give these ones that are like one star and again, I'm just going through like that I'm thinking also with what's gonna happen in retouching exactly the same thing as I'm that once lovely as I'm going through here and you're definitely instinct yeah, I'm just going by instinct and it just the picture will just stop me like that that beautiful eyes really poppies and yeah, and there was there was one I remember we had where the frame and I'm now just looking at the thumbnails and there we are. Yeah, I liked one of these and we have something that we really liked, but there was a lot of like that I love this a swell so let's make a select um see, talk about how we do that oh, I like that and I see here on the chin let me make this a little bit bigger so you guys have to see the dirty side of it, but I see just hear the chin the shape it's not really the best, but I know that, you know, we were with that wider lens and I think critique you can liquefy that really easily, yeah weakens wouldn't stop me just also it's the way the hair comes down and kind of then creates this square shaped there so that's actually bring up because look, if I typically they assume that we're looking fine people to make them skinny butt that's really over the case nowadays what were local fined for it's a fixed things with distortion things like that or dresses that have you no need to be longer, you know? But we're not tampering so much of the models anymore, you know, as people perceive it, that unethical thing like you want to talk about it is I will be talking about that specifically later but that's a good point that people keep bringing up this, you know, what do you make a mole skin? You're not not necessarily it's mostly just to, you know, have a good shape or good flow through the image or re correct are correct things that are issues with the lens, for example interesting and like we could have in that image shaped the hair to cover a little bit exactly, yeah okay, let me just see here I want to go through this patch you see, this is where we have her eyes I'll make this a little bigger again eyes adjust to doc and I wouldn't pick that and I want to ask critique what you is this something you could fix it is fixable but not as realistically as getting it right right? So deaf so because we have if this was the only ship exactly then we'd have to work with it and we need that little better okay, good. And here I'm doing a fantastic job of cutting off her head, but I kind of like this and I think we have enough selects from that first look let me just select the ones that I wants to ohio and I'm really liberal here and I'm going to add thes I actually want to that yet I was going to adam to select order on dh let's see if we can make these guys a little bit bigger now do you look at something else a bit weird you look out for is when you're going to then yeah, so first we look at some nails, I promise we'll get to the business in a minute, okay, first I looked at some nails because I'm looking primarily at that composition and this is the way I do it I'm going to look at composition first but then I'll usually end up going in and it's out of focus so we'll see what happens and I actually I'm going to send you this image yeah one at home is good hands cut off I don't mind so then I think the strongest one in terms of a beauty just some like this one with you we go with that one was good so that's our select for this well actually I'm go down a few more as well I'm going down there is this one of the eyes popped? Okay, this one yeah I'm just gonna right click which it's doing and where is it was just here had to select our and I have in my little you're here a little select album and then so that's the two we have so should I imitate these and then we'll see how we do with time and everything and absolutely going before you move under that felix question from fashion tv well cooling in order to find images with enough detail how close do you view your images that do you do it? Just kind of exactly how you did with, you know, split screen or are you looking at one hundred percent view to make sure that it's exactly perfect right? Let me show you how I do it okay, so I'm going to go I have the two images so we've nailed that down my first party is to go with the images that have that impact, which they had for both of us now is where I take a risk I'm going to go in and used the live tool here and just have a look and that's all detailed it's not the sharpest image, but you know what? Don't be a pixel pekka fears this matter, this will too. I mean, it's it's once focused on the lips and I actually have a little bit of it feels like motion blood just a tiniest bit, maybe oh that's pretty shop you know, it's funny that you bring that up, I get a lot of photos from really good photographers, and a lot of times they're either just out of focus or their exact like that were they looking focused? But when you zoom in there's a little bit of focus going on that's irrelevant like no one's going to see that so again, personal opinion is let the impact guide your select first, and then the small mining details is relevant to what is output, how much you notice it? Yeah, and that's kind of how I look at it as well. So this image it has a little bit of that motion blur that doesn't really concern me at all, because if you print it in a magazine full page a half anyone that takes out a magnifying glass and look so close to you will think it was a deliberate decision on any everyone else wants. So and I have had a photographer friend of mine who said, I like to shoot with a little bit of movement so we leave or we leave the model am paan and leaves the shutter speed really slow and then when you move, you get that little bit of ghosting and it's been a deliberate decision before, um, I'm gonna have a look at this image as well. So I'm saying we're doing this dirty side, same thing here remember, this is what kind of looking at a raw that unsure opened so we don't have that's beautiful that is that's a perfect it's amazing the difference between you go from what the I to the nose for example, it changes how whole girl we're looking like god, she's not here with us, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the lip when you go up to the eye, the eyes really shop exactly on the lip is kind of soft, good. So these two so I want to take these into photo shop see that develop panel here and I've selected photo shop here and I'm going to do them as a j peg for this particular usage because I don't want them to be that big going to store the files on my desktop aiken specify all the options seventy two pixels per inch on forty nine I was trying to get to fifty nine out of forty nine because I don't need the files to be very big just to annotate to give a particular idea I'm gonna process and it will open and photoshopped that even giving me a little countdown timer now that's a good point you see it says fifty eight seconds one minute it's due it's taking quite sometime that's because the phase one files are just massive so I might end up actually going back into here and saying hi I need there's a ten percent quality because I just to annotate a file it's a bit overkill you cried chain the scale down fifty percent yeah, the scale we contain just well so let's see how big these files are when they this is you know that's one of the drawbacks of shooting medium format your workflow just slows down you got such big files on dh I think a lot of people have that experience as well when they switched to date hundred I know I certainly did on dh if you have this luxury yeah that's a good point some people say it's the one hundred and then they get surprising the retouching cost become like double triple the cost and they think, well, should be the same like no, you know, that's the price you have to come think about before you upgrade your system is across the stories, the cost of process and crossed every touching cost of time, so more doesn't mean better just means more mrs sometimes yeah, which brings us back to like the little shot I shot with my soni like the file still hasn't opened so but the shots I shot with my sony that's like so fast I can transfer my wife too much. I don't have a sponsorship from sony, but I love that little guy on dh I can transfer to y find my phone and if I had to show a client like a light test, I'll just transfer. Why from a phone I don't have to take my camera, I don't have to mess around on my computer. I don't have to wait for photo shop to crash, which I think it's just done so interesting before you go on, I notice using in tablet for making selects how necessary is that first like somethings I like the tablet because when I annotate uh I can kind of draw I tried to do with the mouse yesterday I realized no, I always have the tablet ready and that's what I do, you know it's on my desk and then I split from the mouse to use this because I can kind of right I'm just going toe restart my system here and we're going to talk about some other things in just a second, literally it's taking forever. Well, it's still loading, I got a couple more questions if you don't mind, we've got regard got tommy and who says what if you have a picture that you like, you saw with your eyes and it really stunned you and you're just in love with it? And then you notice that there is, like maybe a caught the eyes blinking or something like that? Well, you ever send over two pictures and say, use the details from this one on this one all the time, in fact, I get them, I get them often than you'd imagine, so I'd have a photographer basically say, oh, I love this pose no, she'll say I love half of this post, thanks. I love how this was I love the legs the way the legs are extending but then she says, for this shot, I love upper body, can we just frankenstein them together? And then just based on the angle, I'll say yes, and then we'll see what happens and we're blending together by using masks and things like that, so it's very common so when you see shots, sometimes they're not the shot you see or even the eyes like, you know, they mentioned we'll take eyes from another photo and open them up, you know? But if you have a single shot no, you can't do it, but you have to have another donor photo to copy them from donor donor photo yeah, we're getting all very technical. Yeah, okay, good. Um do you do that a lot? I do that quite often, actually, uh, it's, because typically when you're doing a fashion shoot, you know, you're focusing on the good elements and sometimes you don't capture everything in one go, but I think it's important to still have practices where you're trying to get everything right in camera you do want obviously rely on photo shop like I mentioned earlier because obviously much worse to do that way a lot more work well, more time and it's not cost effective and clients can't really see what you're doing, you know, prior to working so it's a huge difference. Well, I think I have these files just about open and photoshopped. Well, let me set this up really quick has cj and tyrus imagery were wondering why your editing a jpeg format right now rather than a psd and just producing this size seems like you're throwing away pixels what you're doing here is you're not actually doing the edit that's what you're doing here is just explaining j pegs so that you can send you could make notes on it to send it to the re toucher is that correct? Exactly this going to be a complete the low grade quality photo so it may be full res however, the quality that we exported that is very low, so false eyes stays low and in j peg, the only purpose for this is that he's just going, you know, circle parts of the image telling me, telling me what exactly he wants so it's not that we're going to be using this volatile even if it was a small web resting and had a couple of notes and be totally fine, yeah, can I just say, also, I'm looking at this image, and when I came from that shoot, I was like, this beauty should I wasn't feeling it, but now looking at it, you know, we have these insecurities all the time just carry on, and actually I think we have something that's really gonna work exactly. I think, as artists, we do that, right? Yeah, just follow shot anything that you're not good enough to as human, but to think you ad is even more human.

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Ratings and Reviews

peter
 

Really wonderful course, thanks. May I suggest a fantastic idea for maybe those who purchase the course? It would be extremely useful to be provided with a summary of the content of each video segment, perhaps a 30-60 second video with written 'dot-point' sheet at the end of each segment, to be reviewed at a later time. It just takes too long to replay each video to get the important messages. The notes provided by Pratik were a step in the right direction but they need more detail of what was presented, including tips and tricks, in each segment. In this way, once having watched the entire course, you could go back and review the nitty-gritty aspects of each segment quickly and efficiently. These quick 'summary' clips could make up a separate 15 minute video, recapping in detail the hard-core content of the course, without interruptions from questions. This would be extremely useful and hopefully not take the presenter too long to film. I feel this would be a wonderful 'added value' aspect of buying the course, as it would not be available for for free viewing. It would certainly encourage me to buy more of the available courses. Keep up the great work at Creative Live! I have stopped my Kelby subscription and just watch you guys now!! Well done!! Peter Bourne Australia

Valentina
 

Pratik has been a revelation and a revolution at the same time, even kinda a benediction because of its huge generosity to show us such an efficient and powerful workflow. His genial approach turns impossible things into possible. What amazed me most, was Pratik ability to see further the shot and take the best of it to reach the perfection. The original photo is still there, very recognizable, but through a precise and meaningful workflow, it becomes eye-catching, high quality, high impact. Pratik is a wonderful person, very genuine, high talented, with a sophisticated sense of the aesthetics and arts. This course changed drastically my way to look at photoshop and at the retouching techniques. Thank you!!

user d3cdf7
 

I have been a retoucher since 1992 and a commercial photographer and I am amazed at the wealth of information Pratik is teaching us. Love his great sense of humor. Yes, retouching takes me way into the early part of the morning...up to 4 am. I've learned to listen to Books on DVD from the library which help my attitude much better. Several degrees behind me and I know I was meant to make a difference with portrait photography. NO ONE wants reality, especially at elder ages. So I continue to learn to retouch professionally and not use a quick retouch filter which renders a fake look. I may incorporate a light retouching filter, but I find I must always do some manual retouching first, in order to have the appearance look real. Which is the old first rule to retouching itself. In the film days, I use to make my own texture screens in order to create more beautiful faces. My photographer friends would ask for my help in using them, when they had blurred an important celebrity shot. The texture screen would help spread the dots and give the appearance of your digital noise now. The results were the image looked more focused Thank you Pratik Naik, for being so generous with your techniques. I am interested in how to price out retouching jobs, as I have been told I give my retouching away with my photography. Thanks,, Jeri Goodwin-Akari cherished moments photography in walla walla, WA

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