Using Photoshop to Enhance Your Photography

Retouching Your Photographs

Using Photoshop to Enhance
Your Photography

I have received a lot of personal emails over the last couple of weeks from readers wanting to pick my brain on my use of photoshop. I think the most common question has been is if I decide before I even shoot how I will want the images to eventually look like and the steps I take to get from prepping a shoot to the final result. I can begin by reassuring everyone that I absolutely consider how the final images will look before I ever fire off a single frame. It is absolutely essential to have an idea of how you want your images to look so you can take that into consideration on how you will shoot. Will you need a lot of room around the subject to drop in walls or objects? Are you going in and doing major special effects on the model? Are you going to trick out the color and distort angles?

There is an old saying that if you can’t print, you can’t shoot. The point trying to be made in that is that as a photographer, your final images are what you aim for in everything you prepare for in a shoot, from lighting to location to casting. If I want a very hip, edgy, clean, modern feel to my photos, using very hip, edgy contemporary clothes, I’m not going to shoot a girl with long flowing wavy hair, put flowers in the hair and shoot her outdoors in a rose garden. I’m going to hire edgy models who wear the edgy clothes great and put them in a high key lighting set up, whether that’s a studio or a location and I’m going to consider what kind of work I will be doing in post for the final result. Am I going to turn it black and white or am I going to give it a cross-process effect? If I do a lot of tricky stuff to it, I need to consider the lighting in my shoot. I can’t shoot too high key because I will plan to do a lot of curves in post and I don’t want to blow out my white balance.

I do all my own image processing but I don’t do all my photoshop. I have two very competent people who do my retouching. One is a very dear friend who I’ve known for ages who is based in New York City named Richard Ray Ruiz. His website is: www.richardrayruiz.com Richard knows me very well. He has worked with me on numerous shoots as an assistant, so he knows how I shoot and what my eye basically looks for. There isn’t much guess work with each other. Richard and I can have a conversation on the phone, I can show him a few images or ideas by cruising some websites together or I can email him some broad ideas and we can discuss them over the phone. Then he goes and does what I asked for. The one thing you need to always remember is that whoever you get to retouch for you has to stick to your guidelines, not the other way around. I mean, obviously they have the skills and know-how on techniques and certainly may help steer you in a better direction than you originally were going in. And their feedback is essential. But make sure you work together on your shoot and that your retouch artist doesn’t take over “too” much. I suppose that’s why I like working with Richard. We know each other so well and his work ethic is impeccable, as are his photoshop skills. He never assumes how I want something to look. If he has a question, he stops and asks me. We send images through an FTP server over the internet and we will even use yahoo messenger for single images from time to time. I like his work because it’s clean and meticulous. And he keeps the integrity of the image quality intact. Some post work will destroy the pixels if you don’t know what you’re doing or you hire someone else who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

The other person I use for my retouching is my husband. That’s right, I have a in-house retouch artist! And he knows I’ll never divorce him because of it! Just kidding! He’s also very good and thorough, keeping the image intact without destroying the pixels. It’s one thing if you’re going to throw your images up on the web at 72dpi. It’s another thing when those images are going to print! That’s when you need to keep as much on the image as possible. My husband doesn’t have a website and doesn’t do this for a living as Richard Ray Ruiz does. You should definitely check Richard’s work out. I can’t say enough great things about him or his work!

I’m showing the above image for a reason. Obviously, this enormous flower wasn’t growing in the studio where I shot this image. This image is part of an 8 page editorial for Spring fashion. The fashion editor/art director wanted to incorporate huge photoshopped flowers into the image. So I had to keep that in mind when I was shooting by allowing white space behind the model to drop in the flower. I also hand chose the flower (I went down to the flower mart to research the kinds of flowers that were available and the colors I could work with). I spoke with the stylist and sent her pictures of the flowers I had found at the flower mart so she had some idea of colors and textures to compliment the clothing we were going to use. For this shot, I went with this long elegant light purple flower that wasn’t too withering or too transparent as it had to “compete” with such a strong evening gown but it also needed to hold up next to it. Since it was for the Spring issue, I had to go with more Spring colors as oppose to darker reds and darker purples. All of these elements had to be kept in mind in order to get the end results that I wanted ( and that the magazine and the client called for ).

Again, I can’t emphasize this
enough about retouching:

Using certain plug-ins in photoshop, such as skin softeners and filter blurs to reduce blemishes and facial problems, WILL DESTROY PIXELS! A lot of Photoshop blogs and tutorials will show you this short cut technique on the internet. Sure it’s fine for a 300×500 pixel image on a website, but if you are planning on printing your images , ie. magazines, your porfolio, or even larger formats, you do not want to use these techniques. Please learn the appropriate techniques, take a photoshop course for photography or look on lynda.com which has some very good video tutorials relating to photography and photoshop. But do watch out for graphic designer blogs pretending to be photoshop experts showing you how to retouch images. Or find an appropriate and competent Photographic Retouch Artist that can accomplish the job for you. Sometimes you can find young students who are looking to build images for their portfolios as well.

Also, another very important tip for retouching is color correction. You need to make sure your monitor is calibrated correctly. Look into buying a Pantone Huey, (imporant for photographers even if they don’t want to retouch). Another step is making sure your global settings and color profiles are correct in photoshop (look up “color profiles” on google). These are 3 steps to ensure your workflow and the images you produce are presented at the best quality possible. Stay tuned because there will be many more references and resources that I will go much more in depth with in future blogs and videos.

One final thing that I will leave you with is that I insist that most “flaws” that would otherwise be categorized as “fix it in photoshop” should be avoided as much as possible. I’m talking about less than flawless skin and clothing wrinkles, etc. These two elements alone can save you hours of time in post by hiring models with really great skin and working with stylists who steam and iron the clothes before they are shot and keeping an eye on the garments while they are being shot!

41 COMMENTS

Javier G

November 5, 2008

Retouching is a big can of worms, there are lots of “right” ways of retouching. I believe it varies on what area you work in and what style you’re interested in. Sometimes the “quick and easy” techniques work out for the kind of work you’re going to do, sometimes they don’t even hit what the client wants. In my opinion its good to know everything that’s out there (the “good” and the “bad”), so you know what to do if you’re doing a fashion photography project or something like portraits.

I totally agree the “I’ll repair it in post” is the worst way to think of working. It eats too much time compared to repairing it “in camera”. It has to be the other way around, get the most “in camera” and just do the polish in post.

Ian

November 5, 2008

awesome post on retouching. it’s a topic that goes deeper than most photographers think. not as easy as the magic wand and healing brush. most pros will end up a ton of layers and file sizes that can get up past 1GB.

Katrin Eismann has a book out called Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Eismann is considered one of the masters of the retouching/post-production industry. it’s an awesome book, packed with an endless amount of tutorials and skills. i’ve owned it 2 years now and have hardly even scratched the surface. highly recommend it.

Justin

November 5, 2008

Great post! And I couldn’t agree more about using amateur retouching techniques–nothing ruins an exposure faster. It’s saddening to see all of these models with belt-sanded skin, no detail, and horribly liquified extremities.

Real retouch work takes patience, taste, and reservation–not a filter or an action.

Scott

November 5, 2008

Funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday…

When I go to the store I make it a point to walk by the magazine rack and look at all the covers, bride, fashion, GQ etc… I will even buy them once in a while just for the pictures to ad to my swipe file. I can’t believe some of the images that end up on the covers. As an example, look at this months Oxygen cover, it’s a Photoshop nightmare. How does this get past editors and the like?

I have been guilty of overcooking an image to save it but in print, it never makes the grade.

Jessica Price

November 5, 2008

Thanks for the great tips! Your blog is always full of fantastic information!

Henrik

November 5, 2008

This article is giving good advice “Get it right in the camera!”. You can enhance an image in post processing, but don’t try to fix it. You usually can see in the final product if you started out with a bad image. On the other hand, sometimes you can’t go back and re-shoot something.

bizior

November 5, 2008

Great post, but I got one question:
which PS tools will destroy pixels? Does burn or dodge do that?
How can I check if my retouching destroyed pixels (is there any procedure)?

Would appreciate your feedback on that

admin

November 5, 2008

Thanks, Ian, for the advice on Karen Eismann’s book. I researched a little on her book and it looks to be a good resource for retouching, so thanks for the recommendation!

And yeah, Scott, I have seen the photoshop nightmares out there! Pretty scary some of them. That’s why I urge the importance of not corrupting the pixels.

Bizior: To answer your question, dodging and burning does not destroy pixels. It only lightens or darkens so the thing you need to be aware of while you’re dodging and/or burning is over exposing skin or under exposing it. There are no specific ways to check if your pixels have been destroyed. What you need to look out for is leaving things like pores and texture in tact while cleaning up an image.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want!

Thanks everyone!

denny

November 5, 2008

thank you Melissa!!!
just what I wanted/needed to know…
your blog rules!
=)

daniel jenkins

November 6, 2008

Great article. Thanx

Javier G

November 6, 2008

What do you mean by destroying pixels? Do you mean working non destructively? If you use the dodge and burn tools directly to the image you’re “destroying pixels” if you do it in a 50% gray layer on top that would be nondestructive, since if you don’t like it you can always go back to the original. Most of what I’ve read recommend on working non destructively, working with adjustment layers and always work with a copy and not the original when you need to use certain tools, like the patch tool. The only drawback is size increases in the file and if you don’t have a fast computer some stuff starts taking longer.

Greg Brophy

November 6, 2008

I have watched Lynda’s videos for photo retouching and they are great.

The other book I would suggest is Skin. http://www.amazon.com/Skin-Complete-Digitally-Photographing-Retouching/dp/047004733X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226010498&sr=1-1

I have to buy another version because I have worn it out so much.

admin

November 6, 2008

Javier G – Thanks for the question and I hope I can clear things up for you.

I don’t mean working on other layers besides the original. That is just common practice in order to not destroy the original image. What I am talking about is using non-professional techniques or “shortcuts” when retouching images. For example using the “Patch Tool” as you noted, in large areas will blur your pixels around the edges, and essentially you will be losing pixels. I suggest only using the Patch Tool, Healing Brush, and Spot Healing brush only in small areas and make sure your brush size stays under 20. This is still a very rough estimate, but will help keep the QUALITY of the image intact as well as TEXTURE. Also, with dodge and burn, it is better to use it more often because it does not damage pixels but only lightens or darkens them.

I hope this helps, its kind of long-winded and hard to explain. But, overall, if you have a keen eye you should be able to see if what your doing is damaging the QUALITY and TEXTURE of the image.

Cheers!

Javier G

November 6, 2008

Yeah, I’m still learning, and I get what you’re saying. I don’t use the patch tool and the healing and clone tool I use them from 3 to 6 pixel brush size.
I recommend also noting that the dodge and burn technique is quite time consuming but its mostly the only way to keep texture.
You can also use the “degrunge” technique but with very low opacity. I recommend people also visit http://www.retouchpro.com to learn more about this. There are allot of retouchers there as well as tutorials and info.

Mike Wood

November 9, 2008

Excellent post. And the lynda.com series of videos are really great for the novice and advanced users alike there is something for everyone. I just discovered your blog, and I know I will regularly be spending time reading it.

Mike

Maria T

November 11, 2008

THANKS…. FOR YOUR POST……..SIMPLY…….MAGICAL…… JUST LIKE THE PHOTO

John Waiblinger

November 12, 2008

Wow, this post is incredible (and all the links so useful)…and I got at ton out of the comments, questions and answers as well. Thanks for taking the time to provide all this information and perspective – it’s so great to follow your particular eye and aesthetic!

Javier de Martín

November 12, 2008

A very interesting blog. Thank´s for share it.

Noel Digital

November 13, 2008

Hey, I’m a retoucher searching for more experience. I’d love to work with some more photographers. I’m very good at not destroying pixels. if anyone here wants to work together post here and I’ll check back.

Brad Walters

November 13, 2008

I agree that filters damage images, but “Destroying” pixels may be a bit strong. Plus, time is money, and if the damage is slight, but saves time, it may be worth it. It’s a give a take sometimes. Just my opinion.

pcShots

November 14, 2008

Great post!! By the way, I have a question (I’m still learning).. What should I do to soft the skin without using the brushes? I mean, I’ve already seen Richard’s work (amazing by the way), and he softens down the skins. What would you recommend to do this?
Ohh.. and all the replies are great!! They help a lot too.

Hugh O'Malley

November 15, 2008

I also enjoyed Photoshop CS The Art of Photographing Women

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Photoshop-CS-Photographing-Women/dp/0764543180/ref=sr_1_42?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226748776&sr=1-42

I know we’re on CS 4 now but 99% of the techniques still apply and he’s very good on how to work non destructively. In fact he (Kevin Ames) is almost a bit anal at points but you can take what you need from it.

Especially good on converting to black and white, compositing images, and working with the pen tool, channels etc.

P

November 17, 2008

The patch tool kicks ass for fixing seamless backgrounds with footprints or little tears.

Diego

November 20, 2008

Great post and very well explained for Melissa.
Never try to blur the skin just because you don’t have the time to retouch your picture.
Remember:
if you want to take professional photos, you should give equal importance to the stylist,Wardrobe-stylists, makeup artist, lights and last but not least the postprocessing to give the final touch.

As sample of good skin texture in photoretouching please visit my site

http://www.diegoangarita.com

One more time Amazing blog Melissa

Andy

November 29, 2008

Great advice, bought a Huey. What an inexpensive way to insure accurate color. Thank you!

Michael E.

December 24, 2008

Has anyone seen the DVD on retouching called High-End Industry Retouching Techniques? It’s taught by this fellow, Vitaly Druchinin. It’s worth a watch. He uses the healing brush and contours with curves, dodge & burn. You can check out the site at: http://www.digitalphotoshopretouching.com
Happy Holidays!

Nicky Watts

January 20, 2009

Another great piece of information. Thank you.

design tricks

March 3, 2009

Anyone know where I can find a color guide?

Walid Azami

March 17, 2009

By far you are my favorite find of the month! Great stuff.

William

March 24, 2009

I have to say that I found this blog a few days ago and I am impressed with the quality of the articles posted. Great work =)

Directory New York

April 30, 2009

Doesn’t it take up a lot of time to keep your blog so interesting ?

Phoenix Computer Repair

May 17, 2009

Great article… I too have fallen victim to some plugins destroying pixels in photoshop. I thought it was going to “touch it up” but ended up making it much worse. It is always better to make a backup copy, and back up again just to be safe!

sherief

May 26, 2009

i would just say that the digital imaging and digital cameras have really changed
alot of things in this industry ..cause now with the digital cameras it ables
the picture to be retouched or edited .but with normal cameras its not preferd
to retouch or edit from a nigative picture

thanks