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Fixing a Missing Pearl in Photoshop

Lesson 26 from: Tabletop Product Photography

Don Giannatti

Fixing a Missing Pearl in Photoshop

Lesson 26 from: Tabletop Product Photography

Don Giannatti

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Lesson Info

26. Fixing a Missing Pearl in Photoshop

Lesson Info

Fixing a Missing Pearl in Photoshop

we're going to go into this photo shop thing here um and of course you know don't stare too hard at my photo shop skills because this is not my photo shop someone else is and we all have our zone set up the way we do it but now that I'm bringing these in here those are actually flaws can you see that brett brett on john and I were trying to figure out those little things are those air actually flaws in the pearls um certainly an easy way to get rid of flaws in the pearls is to um is to just simply clone them out uh and this is where we need to put our pearl this pearl here and that one forty seven and one forty eight they kind of look the same don't they need the one where the gold thing out they look the same that's interesting not space to let the same what I have here one forty seven forty eight is there one forty nine no okay what happened to the last shot did it not come through that's now there it iss what is that one forty eight okay I've got one I've got one forty eight open to...

p change interest eh yeah um well it's embarrassing not what I wanted when I shot it wasn't what I wanted okay we're just gonna have to make thiss happen here by taking that pearl right there uh pierre was gonna basically cut around it and fool sorry that uh take this guy right here around here and we know this isn't going to fit that other one because that one has pearl in private right this's close enough to get on and really gets quiet when you and photoshopped done that talk talking banks just sails we move it up uh I did but that this pearl here seems kind of unique I'm not seeing unless it's this one right here so that's the closest one eye could see would be that one on we're gonna have to blow it up a little bit all right out there at this little guy down here we'll fix that in a second but first of all we're gonna lower the capacity on this whenever possible um you know you always try to shoot this correctly obviously but there's times when you have to work on so from a business perspective what do you do you either build it into your bid build it into your bid or you charge separately for your your work sometimes clients will say well gee had I'd like to have the files so we could do it ourselves okay we could do that I don't have a problem with that but you also don't get my best work if you do it that way but I do not sit at a um photoshopped table are my computer and do this stuff for free sorry not a fly with too many years on pc uh uh all right so there we've got that guy in there pretty well is not bad gotta fix this little guy right down here was take it out and see what it looks like it looks right right looks pretty good to me we got that little thing right there a little glitch so we'll have to fix that little glitch in that area right there how do we do that well what I do is simply to something like this so I got that shape bring it up I could do it that way do a different way stop it done command I'm gonna come right over here and do this something that matches the size of it pretty much and control j bring it up to a new layer and that's what I've done has brought it up to a new layer on that's oh where was lock sorry everybody sets their photo shop up differently sorry about that questions what we're doing this because well quite over there um jack's here is wondering if you think of photo shop as a valid photographers tool oh my yes absolutely I think it is too I mean I think it's it's literally more than necessity it's it's an absolute um you can't hardly do anything without it it's part of the process you don't have the uh you don't have the darkroom techniques to use anymore so that's why they call it digital darkroom question from a new york city on post do you always sharpen your images and if yes do you have a rule of thumb toe what degree do I do I shove my images yes to what degree uh good question I use a couple of different sharpening methods were the sharpening methods that I use is to use uh sharp with blue channel separately from the rest of the of the image I have played a little bit with nick sharpening the nick pro sharpening and that's pretty amazing I really must admit that's pretty amazing but most of my sharpening has to do with the blue channel and the other channels has combined and I'll work with it that way if I'm going online with the picture and I gotta I gotta tell you can I tell you quick story about how crazy this can be sometimes we had to shoot a guy holding up a a uh a utensil of thing um to be used in an ad I was told and he's going to hold this thing look at it and this is going to be in an ad and so we went out to shoot it and I had six pro photos and two alien bees in this giant auditorium big time you know it just sucked up light just like gone just whatever you did we had all of those lights there I could have used to more all right with me guys sitting there holding this thing up and I'm coming in and the art directors saying can we move this over a little bit and how about if I come up here and I'm shooting full on five d mark two files full rez twenty two megapixel files I got the shot struggle with it two and a half hours really got the shot they said I said uh she's just give me the j pegs and we'll take it from there part of me goes well you're not gonna get the best shot in the other part of me is fine you know I said so you know what you're gonna make product sheets than uh the art director said no this is for the website this for the website I just shot you you know fifty mega byte files for the website she's yes gonna go on the web site it's about this big runs over in the corner way just went through that for this so when you talk about sharpening what sharpening for that shot it just looked like a little blob but you know shot work fine but this big guy shot I could have shot it on a seventy two you know had seventy technician one hundred megapixel one hundred megabyte camera one hundred I don't know I'm trying to say could've shot on old old camera and it wouldn't have made any difference I was terrible I do the sharpening compared to what I'm printing you conover sharpen for lithograph or lithography magazine conover sharpened like crazy for that end up with a lot of problems because you got more detail in the digital file than three hundred dots per inch we're going to do I do all my sharpening and lab color except my final sharpening on my father's sharpens and lab um sharpening is kind of an art that was a long answer to a simple question but yes uh sharpening to me is one of the important parts that we do with with photoshopped blue channels where things go bad blue channels bad when things go wrong it's for me it's generally in the blue channel for most digit was generally blue channel that's where things will get soft so I can I can I can work my blue channel separately and get more sharpness without getting into the red channel because red channel when you start sharpening the red channel that's where you get fringing you know if it gets too short it just really just friends the heck out of it um and so I so I stay and do I separate the other one's not that much no questions terrible set over here doing this photo shop so there's a couple more um defar jeong from brazil's wondered about what about post processing perspective correction with photo shop um good question I understand it does that now um and I haven't done much of it dave I haven't done much of it at all um it seems to me that I gotta try out I just got cia six recently I went with the adobe cloud function by the way those of you who we're not aware of that adobe now has a thing called the cloud and for one flat rate per month you get all of the stuff within the creative sweet and I'm doing that I mean I use indesign illustrator photoshopped dream weaver and adobe acrobat all the time literally all the time and I can do I'm doing that now for fifty bucks a month when they come up with an update in fact I just went online at dream weaver was updated photo shop was up that you don't wait for six or eight months for the big update they come up with an update you go online it updates your photo shopped for you and for me for fifty dollars a month at six hundred dollars a year that's less than the updates for in design and dreamweaver alone so also you get after effects so if you're doing video and stuff you've got the big you get the big big momma big kona after effects toe work with your video makes the best wedding videos on the planet with that thing so my photos that I've used the perspective correction with on some of the building shots I've done and uh yeah works pretty well actually you have specific lens is built into it right no no no you uh well the main page there is like a specific glenn set up company make model but then there's a custom page where you can adjust you know you can kind of polish it out in the middle or suck it in in the middle and then you have sliders to control both the horizontal and vertical perspectives okay and so usually what I'll do is I'll and I'll increase my canvas size so that when I go into the filter lens correction filter you're going to be twisted it so it's distorting the image and then once you get that the way you like it you bring it back in and you crapped the rest out so then you could make sure that your verticals are all straight less cools and you khun do some serious corrections with it oh yeah oh yeah oh it's something that I haven't played with in photo shot much at all I I've been wanting to buy the pc so I had to find some way to you know hold me over well the gold the golden thing about uh software is that it has given us so much more power of control over our images I never ever looked at a photo shop as a way of saving my pictures I looked at it pretty much is the way I looked at my dark room um by the way have you ever had a conversation with someone who says I'm straight from the camera just like the old days and I think you never saw my darkroom straight from the camera to the negative yes from the negative too I had three and larger sze I mean there was every kind of paper imaginable we toned we bleached we dodged we burned we slaney um tone and then would take the selenium tone print reward wash the heck out of it and then redevelop it we did all kinds of things to it um ansel adams I can tell you with all honesty ansel adams would have been all over photo shop in a heartbeat he wouldn't even have looked back said down nice darkroom cia on and probably many of the other people that I that I grew up with type of thing would be the same way because they were all about the print all about the image and when you're about the image that's your your focus you find yourself not adhering to so many rules about to process you know I'm saying the process khun get in the way of the image talked about this yesterday would be nice to just go got it and then go home and put your thumb down on a thing and you know transfer the image over and then it appears on the wall in your house would be great right now is somebody microsoft one who told because we'll have that someday we'll have it they're being able to look they're looking at being able to chip the mind right now I want a bigger chip I want more megapixels and my check wei have the ability using software to fix things that didn't work to repair things that need repair ah and to create things that didn't exist okay we just fix the pearl necklace here with really no effort at all and uh this way you can sell it on ebay and say well off course the pearl was there where's the photograph of her in business photo shop and uh in design and light room become your lifelines to making money uh I don't e do not apologize for simply saying you guys need to make money in this thing okay talk let yet yesterday about the christian labou jill abo book one hundred dollars startup I hope all of you get that and I hope all of you get erica napolitano sze power of being unpopular we all try to be popular you can't be popular popular is not what it used to be popular is up today and down tomorrow be unpopular be very popular with a small group of people and you'll have longer success in and then that leads us to product photography product for tommy isn't the most glamorous part of work on the planet to a lot of people I'm hoping that by two thirds of the way through this program we're starting to see there's a lot of glamour in it it's a lot of fun you get to meet a lot of cool people and do a lot of things photo shop skills means that you can get done what you need to get done right away and charge money for it

Class Materials

bonus material with enrollment

Basics of Subject Centric Light.pdf
Simple Tabletop Tools.pdf
Introduction to Tabletop Photography.pdf
Product vs Still Life.pdf
Introduction to Tabletop Lighting.pdf
The Challenge of Shiny Objects.pdf
A Sensible Approach to Gear.pdf
The Business Side.pdf
ProductPhotographyWorkbook.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

mc
 

THere are some courses in CL i think of as not covering a to z but covering -z to z. THis is one of those courses. The value proposition is over the top. The instricutor: Don Giannatti is so experienced he's a relaxed in his knowledge and practiced in cutting to the chase to provide answers to really good questions about set ups for product photos (vs. art/ still-life). The topics: complete workflow from first principles in order to understand what we're trying to achieve with table top work, Don Giannatti makes it clear that we're using light deliberately to give shape to an object. Example insight: using a white card (or black) reflector is not the same as using a silver/gold reflector. The latter create a new light source; the former shape the light that's there. Can imagine the arguments but the demo brings the points home. Or how about NOT using umbrellas for product shots. Or for "drop and pop" product shots, how to do that without umbrellas and tents "that's 50 dollars a shot right there" says Giannatti. Example tool demo: one of the joys of this course is that such an expert does most of the class using readily makable tools like scrims from shower curtains and baking paper. The specialist tools like a modifier on a flash is well within the range of an aspiring commerial table top photographer. And Meaningful Demos LIGHTING/composition what are some of the most challenging and compelling things to shoot when building a portfolio/photographic experience? Can you shoot shiny stuff - like bottles and jewlery. PHOTOSHOP making photoshop unpretencious and accessible, Giannatti presents examples of how to fix bits of a shot, as well as - and this one is worth the price of admission - how to put together a composite of a guitar product shot if you only have one limited sized light to light the whole thing. We also see where highlights can be added - and how. Some basic knowledge of Photoshop layering, masking and brushes would be good to have, but one can work back from seeing it applied into those basic skills. BUSINESS We start with light giving shape to objects as a demonstrable principle, move into how to use light structurally for bringing out something fantastic about that product - that as Giannatti points out - puts bread on someone's table, so respect. From these demos we go from light and camera to post to produce the finished image. Now what? or how have a product that needs shooting? That's the business of product photography. In these excellent sections on Business, Giannatti details the heuristics of hard graft to get gigs: where to look for contacts, frequency of approach, engaging with social media (you don't have to, he says, but effectively, it's gonna cost ya). "Doing just these few things you're already way ahead of your competition." I can believe it: they are many of them tedious, but can also well believe they are what pay off. COURSE BONUSES JUST FOR SIGNING UP - for those who subscribed to a live broadcast, all the slides were provided in advance (you can see this offer on class materials) Now that's classy. What other CL courses have done that: given something to participants who just show an interest to sign up? (It's that gift thing kevin kubota talks about in his workshop on photography business - makes one want to work with that person: pay them for the value they create, eh?) TRUST/VALUE Instructor Personality Throughout each part what's delightful is just the EXPERIENCE of this instructor. He's put together a thoughtful course from light to lighting to parts to gear to post to business. There's immediate trust: plainly this man has made a living from what he's talking about, and has addressed almost any immaginable scenario. There's a great demo towards the end of the course of working with students to take shots. The value to folks watching is to see how he helps us all think about how to problem solve (the mantra for the course) to find the shot - to use light card after lightcard to wrap the light to bring out the countours of the material. Even when he says "that's just not working" - there's not a sense of the people shooting having failed - but an opportunity to think about what's been learned - to keep working the problem. There's a whole lot of HOW in that interaction that is highly valuable. Thanks to the participants in the workshop to be so willing too to do that work. This is the kind of course you leave feeling like ok, i can do this - or at least i have the tools and some knowhow now about them to start to work these problems, to start to create value in these kinds of shots. I am already just from being here a better photographer now. Related CL Course: This course feels like a terrific complement to Andrew Scrivani's Food Photography. And no wonder: both take place in small areas and use light in similar ways. A contrast is that in editorial food photography - scrivani's domain - there's a focus on skills to work with what's there; in table top/product, one can enhane - knowing how to do that effectively/believably is where the skills - learning to see that - come in for this kind of work in partiular . If tabletop/product photography is a space you wish to explore, or you just want to be able to practice working with light in the small, and see how to bring you will be delighted with this -z to z deep dive introduction.

a Creativelive Student
 

By chance I stumbled accross Don Giannattis’s Website and his creativeLIVE selection of videos. I was impressed by the material presented and decided to purchase the course for adopting some of his methods and concepts of light control in table top photography. The course covers a wide field, from building your own lighting tools to guidelines for getting in the product photography business. Emphasis is put on understanding light control related to the specifics of the object, discussing the how and why of the creative process. Insistence and patience were demonstrated to be prerequisites for achieving the desired quality of the pictures. I liked to follow the course, because Don Giannattis’s makes an excellent instructor. He has a clear concept, a wonderful sense of humor, and he is very flexible when listening and responding to questions of participants. I really liked this course and recommend it to all beginners in table top photography. William

a Creativelive Student
 

What an amazing workshop. Don holds nothing back, taking us from start to finish in a manner that will allow anyone doing this workshop (and I mean DOING) to go out and do product photography. What's more, Don is not pushing a bunch of expensive gear as the key to making good photos - he makes it accessible to those starting out with a low budget. I could feel Don's good-will toward beginning photographers in the way he conducted this workshop and that is deeply appreciated. It makes him a good teacher. I bought this course and his Lighting Essentials workshop and consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to learn from him.

Student Work

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