If you get a chance I highly recommend watching one of Lindsay Adler's retouching seminars. I was fortunate to catch her three day seminar on Creativelive.com last week and it was tremendously informative and eye-opening. I was surprised to see how close my workflow is to hers, but she goes so much further and introduced some really effective techniques. [ http://www.creativelive.com/live -- there's a wedding seminar on there right now.]
She's a very experienced portrait and fashion shooter and retoucher, and also a very personable presenter. I'm not generally big on video seminars, but some subject matter benefits from this kind of presentation and this lady has the chops for sure. For example, she pointed out how nicely the Imagenomic Portraiture plugin can be re-used to quickly clean up scuffed seamless. Super idea! I've spend hours cleaning seamless in post. She demonstrates using frequency separation to do very high quality skin retouching -- quite an advanced technique. I would highly recommend the CreativeLive DVD of her course based on having seen it live. Here's a much condensed seminar of hers on Youtube that B&H put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N8wkVA4_8s Note: it's long! An hour and three quarters, but it's worth it. Also, this dates back a year and a half and she's teaching more refined techniques and CS6 now. On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 1:45 PM, David Savage <ozsav...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Bruce. > > The skin still has pore detail in the full res image. Like you, I look > at a lot of over cooked images too. > > My general retouch technique is spot healing brush/patch tool for > blemishes, the clone stamp on lighten with a very low opacity (about > 10% or less) for under the eyes, and the final skin smoothing is based > on this tutorial: > > <http://youtu.be/Fv4L1-TaGhI> > > I skip the 2 Gaussian blur steps and just reduce the skin smoothing > adjustment layers opacity at the end. > > Cheers, > > Dave > > On 4 November 2012 23:54, Bruce Walker <bruce.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Dave, I don't feel this displays over-smoothed skin, but I view a lot >> of fashion images where unrealistically uniform skin is expected, so I >> have a bias. :-) >> >> But I also note that one cannot really tell if skin detail was lost to >> post-processing in a 3/4 length shot that's less than 1000px high, >> like here. Assuming there is fine detail in the original, it's all >> been smoothed by image reduction to that size anyway. >> >> The beauty dish mounted just above head height and aimed close to >> on-axis produces very little shadow detail and so, as you note, does a >> pretty good job of skin smoothing by itself. >> >> I assume that you don't blur the skin, but use the healing tools, >> mid-opacity clone stamp on Lighten, frequency separation, maybe a good >> plugin, etc. >> >> On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 10:52 PM, David Savage <ozsav...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> G'day Rick, >>> >>> I did indeed smooth the skin in post. I'd be interested to hear if >>> others thing it's too much. I like to think I'm pretty judicious in >>> the level of smoothing I use. >>> >>> Also I've noticed that the beauty dish used like this washes out the >>> skin which is quite flattering. >>> >>> Thanks for your comments. >>> >>> Dave >>> >>> On 4 November 2012 06:44, Rick Womer <rwomer1...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>>> Dave, did you smooth her skin digitally? If not, she's got astonishingly >>>> clear skin. If so, it's a bit overdone. Any more and she'd look like a >>>> mannequin, and they aren't threatening. >>>> >>>> Rick >>>> >>>> >>>> http://photo.net/photos/RickW >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: David Savage <ozsav...@gmail.com> >>>> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <pdml@pdml.net> >>>> Cc: >>>> Sent: Saturday, November 3, 2012 10:49 AM >>>> Subject: OT PESO - Dangerous >>>> >>>> G'day Trendsetters, >>>> >>>> I had a bit of a shoot with one of my favorite models last weekend. >>>> Here is one of the images: >>>> >>>> <http://500px.com/photo/17291049> >>>> >>>> Single strobe with a beauty dish, high camera left. Shot on the D800 >>>> with a 50mm f1.4. >>>> >>>> Enjoy, and as always, comments & critiques welcome. >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> >>>> Dave > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
