Retouching and Post Production

I am a self-confessed gaming addict, so when I found out about the new 'Cullinator' I was beyond thrilled. Finally my insatiable thirst for all things gaming related will no longer derail me from editing my photographs. 'The Cullinator' is an impressive program created by Ed Pingol Photography that takes any gaming controller and transforms it to a photo editing controller.

Visual effects artists are very much like our cousins, in the sense that our industry is visually based much like they are. We felt that we had to post about this for the sake of awareness in case you aren't familiar with the news. Also, we wanted to create an open dialogue and hear from our readers about what they thought about all of this.

For anyone who might have missed it, I did a little review of VSCO 3 last week. VSCO Film emulsions are great at emulating an analog film look for your digital photos and also offers custom profiles for your camera manufacturer, if you are shooting Nikon, Canon, or now Fuji (just for Film 03), to further improve performance of the presets.

I have had quite a few people ask how I achieved this look. So I figured I would do a quick little photoshop tutorial on it to help you guys out! It is much much easier then you think. Hope you enjoy!

Here's a little cinematography humor to brighten up your lazy Sunday. From the people over at Autodesk and filmmaker Jeremy Hunt comes a coming of age story of a dude. A dude who just wants to go about his business and a visual effects editor who ruins said dude's day. We all know the importance of 'getting it right in camera', but this is what happens when post-processing runs amok.

I'm sure most of you have taken one look at the lens flare filter in Photoshop and decided to quickly over look it. Well I am here to say that you might want to reconsider and give it a chance. With the right steps and processing one can actually make it look decent. Now I'm sure there will be a few people that will still think adding flare is asinine, and to that I say to each their own.

I had to watch this video three times. It simply blew me away. For years movies have been created using green screens, as is the case here with the 2012 hit "The Avengers." The part that amazed me in this behind the scenes video is the amount of detail that is captured to perfection by the digital artists and how they team up with photographers to recreate reality spheres to insert the actors. Read on to check out some of the facts on how it was created.

"What If My Red Is Your Green?" is a question I ask myself for many years now. As a photographer this question/issue was always on my mind: I work so hard to get (what I see as) the perfect colors, and what I see as beautiful, but I have no way to know if the colors I see are the same colors you see. We all agree that red is red, and green is green. We all know that a lemon is yellow and a strawberry is red. But is it possible that you see yellow the way I see blue? Michael from VSauce did his best to answer the question.

The general idea of Photoshop is to help make someone look flawless, while still maintaining their unique and human qualities. It's a tactful technique that requires a keen eye and a good understanding of the human face’s shape. This basic concept was completely destroyed for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar China cover featuring actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

I'm kind of a huge fan of fantasy novels, and Game of Thrones (along with The Name of the Wind) is probably my favorite modern fantasy epic. I also greatly enjoy the television series on HBO. In this video you can see how the visual effects artists rendered the 3D for the final scene of Game of Thrones Season 1. Please note, this scene does have nudity. Also, SPOILERS.

Right now on creativeLIVE, photographer John Greengo is going over the fundamentals of Digital Photography. If you shoot primarily with film and are on the fence about switching to digital then this is a class you can't miss. John is going over all of the basics and much more. As with all creativeLIVE workshops, the LIVE event is FREE. This course will run live until February 22 but if you don't have time to tune in, you can purchase the video downloads for only $99.

I have been a fan of VSCO since their first film preset pack. Both VSCO Film 01 and 02 have a nice way of giving photos a subtle but believable film effect. This week I got the email that VSCO had released Film 03 and I was dying to check it out. It turns out that the effects seen in 03 are not quite as subtle as 01 and 02, because 03 emulates instant films. So I've decided to do a little review with some examples and share it with all of you.

Yesterday I posted a tutorial on frequency separation from Elena Jasic. In case you missed it you should go check it out! Well today she hit me up to tell me she had quite a few questions still regarding the preparation of the layers for frequency separation, so she made a handy little action, and asked me to pass it on to all of you. Who doesn't like free right?!

Frequency separation is an amazing technique used to retouch skin. It separates the color from the texture and allows you to work on them separately. In this tutorial, Elena Jasic goes over how she uses frequency separation in her retouching workflow.

When Adobe launched the Creative Cloud more than a year ago, it was not met with much fanfare from actual users of the software. Those around me heard about it, shrugged and moved on. I’m pretty sure many of us didn’t really fully understand what it exactly was. Fast-forward to today, and Creative Cloud has turned into something that is obviously Adobe's future, begging the question, "Is it good for Adobe, good for consumers or both?"

Greek law enforcement officials are facing investigation after ‘allegedly’ airbrushing out a black eye and face lacerations that the police may or may not have given to a young man and his three other bank robber friends.

Greek government officials have admitted to some photo alterations, but they would really insist you believe that it was done only to make the robbers more noticeable in public. It has nothing to do with making them look like half a Japanese Anime character.

The internet has become a gold mine of resources for photographers of all different genres, experience levels and styles. It's so easy to find inexpensive Lightroom or Photoshop presets to help create interesting post-processing colors and effects without spending hours trying to create them yourself. The only problem is: which ones do you use? SLR Lounge has released an all-comprehensive Lightroom 4 Preset System that is user-friendly and takes the headache out of using presets.

So, how do you shoot at the legendary Disney Concert Hall without breaking their rule of 'No Professional Photography'? You do it with finesse. Benjamin Von Wong was faced with the task of shooting the Trio Dinicu at the location without looking like a professional photographer. In this behind the scenes video he shows you how he accomplished that and also walks you through cleaning any distractions from your photo using Photoshop.

If you've seen the promotional videos for Lee and Patrick's new DVD, How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer, several different wedding photographers are interviewed about how they run their wedding business. Being able to have insight into their workflow, their way of thinking when they're shooting is such an amazing opportunity. For the next two days, our friends over at creativeLIVE are offering just that.

In a fun and unique approach that combines many different facets of art and multimedia, production group CanCanClub out of Buenos Aires worked with Antonio Balseiro from Gazz and 1st Ave Machine, Art Director Hernán Aragunde, and the crew from Nintendo to create a 30-second commercial for "Paper Mario Sticker Star." In this first of two behind the scenes videos, you catch a peek at the live action video shot,

Sometimes your favorite shot out of a series would be perfect if only one little thing was fixed. For me, that is often shadows obscuring details I really wish were more visible. PHLEARN has released an extensive tutorial on how to get those shadows to reveal details in a way that doesn't look super fake, which an issue I have with other methods I have seen.

Here is a gorgeous photo from Miss Aniela. She was commissioned by the Kai Mayfair restaurant in London to create a photo that embodied Chinese culture. Upon first inspection, she has nailed the topic wonderfully. But closer look shows the amazing level of detail, with hours of editing, spanning hundreds of years of ancient Chinese paintings.

Very few of us have been involved in photography and art long enough to truly appreciate how much change has taken place in when it comes to cameras and photographs. David Hockney, a British artist who has dedicated much of his life to painting and photography, thinks some of the art in imagery has been lost along the way. In short, Photoshop is boring.

So I have seen quite a bit of caricature portraits and fell in love with them. I decided to try my hand at doing a few and kind of fell into a new little series with them. Everyone who has seen them has asked if I could shoot them or their families in this style. This little tutorial will show you how I go about doing these shots.

Today and tomorrow only, creativeLIVE will be hosting Adobe certified expert, Erica Gamet as she teaches everything you need to know about Adobe InDesign. This class takes you from the basics, getting familiar with the Adobe workspace, color basics, and working with pages and layers, to advanced type, graphics and table manipulation and working with long documents! This class is designed for those with a firm knowledge of page layout, such as those migrating from QuarkXPress, PageMaker, or Word, and those who want to get past the basics of InDesign.

Photoshop, it's either a scary program or a fun one, depending on how much you understand it. There are times where it just becomes a nightmare. Specifically, extracting a model with flyaways from a backdrop. There are indeed many methods to do so. Here's one more that really gives us a good solution.

As you know, Ben Willmore's 3-day workshop on Lightroom is currently LIVE right now on creativeLIVE, but on Sunday January 20, he'll be going at it again for a fourth round teaching us how to master Photoshop! In this workshop Ben will be teaching how to apply adjustments to limited areas, and techniques for removing the background of fuzzy, furry, or hairy subjects. He'll also teach you how to remove the background from trees, glass, and other transparent objects.

Of course, if you ever learned anything about art history, you know Vincent van Gogh has long been dead. That didn't stop the creative mind that brought you the Blow Job series from posting the backwards claim on his blog that someone had turned his old portrait photograph into a painting. Aside from Tadao Cern putting some good humor into his work, it's stunning to see the photo-shopped transition from painting to photograph.

When I hear the name, Calvin Hollywood, a few things instantly pop into my mind. Photoshop guru, Scott Kelby instructor, 'freaky, amazing details', and lastly 'Calvinize'! Calvin is a master of digital art and his standing room only sessions at Photoshop World prove so. I had the chance to catch up with the intriguing and witty Calvin for an interview for an opportunity to see a glimpse into the mind of a digital genius.

As a wedding photographer, I don't know what I would do without Lightroom. I can remember when I first started using Lightroom, I knew practically nothing. Even though I've learned a few tips and tricks from Pye over at SLR Lounge, I still think anyone can benefit from learning more about the programs they use on a day-to-day basis.

Starting Monday January 14 at 9am, creativeLIVE is hosting 3 days of non-stop information for anyone who is interested in learning about filmmaking and editing. Taught by Jeff Medford and Ross Hockrow, you'll come out of this class with the skills to produce web commercials, wedding, birth, family and event films. So whether you're an aspiring filmmaker or a photographer you won't want to miss out on this FREE event.

Consistently, issues with digitally altered photos have appeared in the media. In specific, the way they affect younger women by what they see in images, whether in magazines or elsewhere. Now, Israel has taken proactive steps.

If you're looking for a way to really make your highlights stand out in your images, look no further; PHLEARN has released a new Photoshop tutorial dealing with accentuating highlights. Using Levels, Channels and Layer Masks in Photoshop PHLEARN shows how you can take highlights to the next level and make your images just a little more brilliant and detailed. Also, free 'Brownie points' to anyone who can guess what is used to create the slick effect on the model in the photo.

The Slanted Lens is back with another amazing lighting tutorial. This time they venture onto a 1700's Naval ship, the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston, MA. The portraits include an early Naval captain and his shipmates loading cannons. This tutorial specifically goes through how to light creatively during the nighttime hours where lighting might be more difficult for some.

If you've watched the TV series "Grimm," you may be curious how the mythological creatures from Grimm's fairy tales make it onto screen. Bent Image Lab, the production company behind the cg creations of the show, explains their process of transforming characters into creatures and adding a fantastical element to each episode.

Marvel's 'The Avengers' is the top grossing movie of 2012 and the third of all time, ensuring that the superhero genre of movies are here to stay. Industrial Light & Magic have finally released the behind the scenes and walkthrough for the post production on one of the most amazing scenes in the movie, a long take of all the heroes fighting off the Alien horde that is uninterrupted and seamless with New York City as its backdrop.

In this corporate headshot shoot by The Slanted Lens, Jay P Morgan plays around with a 10, 20 and 30 degree grid to show us how each one will give a drastically different look. Throughout the entire shoot he is constantly feathering the light. If you've ever shot on the streets of New York then you'll understand why he has to keep his set up very mobile.

The guys over PHLEARN have a lot of cool content, and this is their most recent. The original idea for this photo shoot was inspired by childhood, drawing on references from stories such as “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak and the classic comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes." The result is a playful look at the imagination of a child.

When I watched this video this morning from London-based film production company Make Productions my mind was blown, my jaw dropped and I just kept thinking about all the detailed work that went into creating such an amazing parallax sequence - all of which was executed perfectly. Take 90-seconds today and be sure to check this out then read on below to find out more details about how it was created.

Starting tomorrow at 9AM, photographer Eddie Tapp will be teaching how to create a new digital workflow. He will be going over something that photographers often struggle; color management. Join Eddie as he teaches insider techniques for processing images in Lightroom as well as creative portrait enhancements. In addition, be sure to catch portrait artist Judy Host on the second day as she will be hosting a special session on how to incorporate graphics and textures into your work.

We featured Elena Jasic on here last month, and this month she is back with this awesome tutorial on how to add freckles in post to your photos. Elena is a young and upcoming fashion and beauty photographer from Philadelphia. The photo in this tutorial is from Chris Zupo. You can also find the brush used in this tutorial here. If you guys try this technique out, share a link to it with us in the comments on this post!

If you've always wanted to get into wedding cinematography then this is your jump start. Starting at 9AM tomorrow, Monday December 3 creativeLIVE will be hosting a FREE Wedding Cinematography workshop With Vanessa & Rob. Together, they've got a career's worth of film-making knowledge and will be packing it into this three day course.

If you're a fan of the immortal and time-traveling Doctor Who, then this VFX breakdown might just be for you. The Mill, who works on the visual effects of BBC's Doctor Who, have been with the show since its re-imagining in 2005. Sit back and watch as they explain how they create their episode opening sequences, seamlessly incorporate map paintings with computer graphics and creature creation in this two part video series.

A mix of hilarious and slightly educational, 'Fafa's Photoshop Tutorial' is what you would get if you mixed fuzzy puppets, Photoshop, and humor. I'm glad they don't run all the tutorials, they would be all over the place and no one would actually learn too much. For the sake of light hearted Photoshop fun, enjoy.

I've been a fan of all of the Lord of the Rings movies and am very much looking forward to the release of The Hobbit this December. I always knew that a lot of work went into the film industry beyond the actors and cameras, but after seeing this behind the scenes of the upcoming Hobbit movie, it makes me realize how extensive the work is after all the filming is said and done.

Known best for her dazzling performances that have mixed a dubstep beat with violin playing, Lindsey Stirling has gathered quite a following with her fantastic music videos. In her latest video, "Elements", Lindsey shot footage behind the scenes that shows her picking up supplies, working with Director Devin Graham, and then talking about how she event does the editing herself as a self-proclaimed video nerd.

The people over ar Prime Focus World who are responsible for the special effects and/or 3D conversion of films like 'Total Recall', 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', 'Wrath of the Titans' and 'Tron', have made four videos in which Jon Thum, visual effect supervisor, sits and explains the filming process and post for the slow-motion sequences for the movie, 'Dredd 3D'.

Let's face it, learning new software can be a pain in the ass sometimes. As photographers we have to juggle between Photoshop, Lightroom, our camera's proprietary software, and countless other editing software tools. Most of us learn just enough to get the job done but in the process we probably fail to get the most out of each program. SLR Lounge has sent the Fstoppers team a copy of their new Lightroom 4 Workshop Collection to test out and this thing smokes! They've also discounted both the download and the physical copies for the holidays! Read more details

Kevin Margo, a VFX/CG Supervisor at Blur Studios recently released his directoral debut with his short science fiction film titled 'Grounded'. The film, while the general audience may not fully appreciate it, will entice cinephiles with its stunning graphics and read between the lines themes. In the following video he breaks down the CGI that was used in the film. The film was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and post processed using 3DS Max and Fume FX.

Vimeo recently rolled out a Tip Jar feature for it’s content creators, where you can tip a donation to the artist. Coming up next for Vimeo is a Pay-To-View service, where audiences will actually have to pay to watch the video. It’s controlled solely by the creators, but will Vimeo take a cut of the money, like they do with the tip jar?