A little over two weeks ago, Adobe released CC 2015.1 for most of its apps. The updates looked great on paper, but for photographers, there were a couple of glitches in the new Photoshop that turned out to quite be annoying. Yesterday, Adobe released a new update, CC 2015.1.1, meant to correct most of the issues.
MacPhun released Aurora HDR just a few weeks ago and touts it as the most advanced high dynamic range (HDR) software in the world. Certainly, veteran users of Photoshop and Lightroom might be skeptical. But if your sole purpose is to create HDR photos on the Mac, Aurora HDR might be the best option out there, seeing as it was created with the close consultation of HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff. In this video, Ratcliff dives deep in a first-hand look into how to get the most from Aurora HDR.
When the terrorist organization, ISIS, isn't busy terrorizing people, they are apparently busy stealing photographer's artwork. In this day and age, it's not uncommon to have your work stolen. Heck, it's pretty common. But having the bane of the earth stealing your work has to be a new experience. That's not the end of the story though. It gets worse.
Earlier this year we teamed up with Elia Locardi to produce the most in depth photography tutorial on landscape photography: Photographing The World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing. Today we are excited to release the next installment of Photographing The World.
Why is my print dark? Why are the colors off? I believe we all found ourselves asking these questions inside our head (or worse, yelling at our photo printer!) during our first steps into our journey in photography. Monitor calibration is the solution, bad settings and bad color reproduction by the monitor are the culprit. Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite energy drink and read on, I'll tell you everything about it, what you have to do, what you gain, how it's done, and what you need to correctly calibrate your monitors.
If you’re a commercial or fashion photographer, eventually you’ll run into a client who will ask to have their product, model, etc. to be placed on a perfectly white background. This method is very popular in the e-commerce and print industries for many brands, sellers and catalogs. But some techniques in post production cause some headaches and are also time consuming. So what exactly is the best and quickest workflow to get that perfect white background for your client?
Since Adobe released Photoshop CC 2015, retouchers and photographers have complained about the revamped healing brush. However, Adobe promised their users that CC 2015.1 would offer an alternative, making the tool as good if not better than the one found in CC 2014. Photoshop was updated a couple of days ago, and the said updated healing brush setting can be found in the form of a diffusion slider. However, is it as good as the previous healing brush?
Adobe just updated a couple of their CC applications, one of which being Photoshop. Amongst the new features, it was almost inevitable that a few bugs would show up. One that can be quite annoying is the liquify tool lighting or rendering problem. But there is a quick and easy workaround.
As announced at Adobe MAX 2015, Adobe released new updates to its professional Creative Cloud suite of applications. Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Audition CC, Dreamweaver CC, Photoshop CC, Fuse CC (Preview), Adobe Stock, and more have been updated. You can download the new versions from the Adobe Creative Cloud app.
Retouched Magazine, the interactive magazine from retoucher and beauty photographer Julia Kuzmenko McKim, has recently announced that they are also now available in PDF format. The magazine brings some of the most talented and experienced photographers and retouchers together to teach and share their insight into the field of retouching. Topics from the pro tools and methods for retouching, building your portfolio, and being successful in the field of retouching. Articles come from the top photographers and retouchers in the world including Pratik Naik, Benjamin Von Wong, and Joel Grimes.
When speaking of retouching, most people think of cleaning skin and altering the body shape. However, retouching goes further than that. Colors play such a significant role in an image, that forgetting about them would be a great mistake. Just like a good makeup artist shouldn't limit their job to the model's face, a good retoucher shouldn't stop the job with cleaning skin.
Photoshop is a veritable spell book of amazing and seemingly mystical tools that empower any digital sorcerer with the potential for creating visual magic. Adobe has done a pretty great job over the years at adding in tons of optimization and shortcutting that can make for a more pleasant workflow. Unfortunately, they often treat these workflow enhancements like Easter eggs by not making them obvious at all. In this article we will go through a few hidden spells to help you optimize your Photoshop workflow.
The use and misuse of composite photography is a story we hear about quite often. Long before the days of Photoshop and digital manipulation, though, composite photography existed. Here's the story of one of the earliest controversies surrounding a composite.
I don't have specific numbers. I don't even have vague numbers. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me Adobe's mobile photo editing apps have seen a huge success. The biggest reason: they're free. And the second: they really work, which makes the first reason even better. Today, Adobe updated two of these apps, Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix, with support for split view in iOS 9, for the screen size of the iPad Pro, and for the pressure and tilt sensitivity of the Apple Pencil for use on the iPad Pro.
Luminosity masks are a powerful trick available in Photoshop. However, the way Adobe implemented them is not so great. It's a combination of playing around with the channels layers and keyboard shortcuts to get the mask you wish. Greg Benz has come up with something awesome called Lumenzia and it fixes almost everything that made using luminosity masks a pain to use.
Think we're in the middle of a Photoshopping epidemic? You don't even know how bad it is (well, now you do). According to a recent survey, 68 percent of adults take to some kind of photo editing before they share any photo with another person or online. As desktop and mobile editing tools become easier to use — with some even serving the specific purpose of being easy to use for the less technically inclined — Photoshopping images is the latest trend... and it's still growing.
Astropad Mini, the app that allows iPhone and iPad users to turn their device into a graphics tablet for the Mac, received a major update on Tuesday. The app now includes support for Apple's 3D Touch, meaning it can now recognize 256 levels of pressure, bringing it even closer to turning your iPhone into a fully functioning graphic tablet.
While speaking with "E! News" earlier this week, Kate Winslet mentioned that in her contract with L'Oréal, there is a stipulation that all her Lancôme ads must be devoid of any retouching, reigniting the debate about the use of Photoshop and its impact on body image.
Great news for Lightroom users: today, Adobe announced another update to the program, confirming that they will be reinstating the old Import dialog, which was replaced by a newer dialog that received harsh criticism for its excessive simplicity and removal of features.
Thank god for the interwebs right? Not just because it brings us badgers and cat videos but because sometimes it allows us to be places we couldn't other wise go. I'm of course talking about the 2015 Adobe MAX conference that just went down in Los Angeles. If you, like me, were not one of the "5000 most creative minds" fortunate enough to make it, then you may appreciate this glimpse from the conference floor. Adobe set up a display consisting of several mock bedrooms. Each room being representative of a time period and pivotal moment within Photoshop's 25 years.
After Monday's release of Lightroom, many users were upset to find the release had seen changes that removed features and worse, had a tendency to crash, rendering it essentially unusable. Today, Adobe has released an update that corrects the crash issue, as well as an apology.
The well-known underwear and lingerie company is at it again with its Photoshopping ways. Victoria's Secret has a long history of Photoshopping their models, but this time, have they gone too far with an editing job that's not just unnecessary, but very poorly executed as well? Check it out for yourself!
Every year's Adobe MAX conference marks the an obvious time to expect updates throughout Adobe's product lineup. So what's different this time? Mobile. Adobe has the monopoly in the area of creative applications for media editing, but for the first time in a while, it feels like they're competing with some unknown entity. This year's updates bring so many new features across the widest range of Adobe products ever that there's no doubt they're serious about their making customers happy with a huge concentration on mobile.
I'm definitely NOT a studio photographer, but I respect and understand why for a urban running photoshoot like this one, it can make things a whole hell of a lot easier by doing it in the studio. Steve Brown shares some insight into his process in this behind the scenes video.
As New Horizons has shown us, the geniuses at NASA are not only solving the mysteries of the universe, they're also capturing its beauty. Just like you and I, though, they don't just publish those images straight out of camera. Read how Photoshop helps NASA to fully represent the universe in all its awe-inspiring beauty.
Ryan and Josh Connolly of Film Riot always brings us the coolest do-it-yourself filmmaking and special effects tutorials. In this "rewind" episode (read: old) they show us how to create the killer effect of throwing someone clear across the room. What's doubly cool is how easily this can be done with just a still camera and software that most of us already have (Photoshop and After Effects).
Retouching can vary from photographer to photographer. But it can also vary depending on the genre you are shooting. I know it does for me. My wedding retouching is far from being as refined and time-consuming as my portrait retouching. When dealing with hundreds of pictures, you have to find techniques that get you close to a perfect result, but as quickly as possible. One thing I had trouble getting my head around was maximizing my dynamic range in my wedding pictures without stacking multiple raw developments. That was until I made a lucky mistake when sharpening an image using a high pass filter.
Every day, millions of people use filters to stylize an Instagram post, or Gaussian blur to edit a photo. Have you ever wondered what's really going on when you do this? It all comes back to one fundamental process.
We here at Fstoppers can forgive our beloved Trevor Dayley for jumping ship and joined the crew over at SLRLounge as long as he keeps turning us on to useful tools and tips like the Adobe Color CC app. This thing is so cool and it's free. Adobe never seems to stop enriching it's eco systems with improved connectivity and functionality. The Color CC app allows you to sample real world colors (you'll see what I mean by that in Trevor's video) or create color palettes from photos straight from your mobile device.
While some physical improvements with Spotlight, Photos, Safari, and other Apple apps are definitely welcome with today's new OS X release, perhaps the most exciting aspect of El Capitan are the under-the-hood improvements for performance gains. There’s no need to explain how time-saving performance upgrades can be for working professionals — and for those reasons, everyone will want to update immediately. But there are some things to always take into consideration before an operating system upgrade.
As we all know, the human experience is unique. Your life and your opinions will never be the same as any other persons. This is why there is a subjectivity to art. When viewing and creating art, there will not be two artists who imagine the same piece. Since photography and retouching are both art forms, it would be plausible that the same applies.
It's a photo so ubiquitous that if you type "iceberg photo" into Google, it's the first two image results. And the sixth. And the tenth. Ralph Clevenger's iconic photo of an iceberg's tip peeking out from the water while the substantial body of it remains below has graced countless publications, from full-page magazine advertisements commissioned by major corporations to the ever-famous "Imagination" motivational poster. It's a photo that is so famous that it's been copied, stolen, manipulated, parodied, and imitated an innumerable number of times over its nearly twenty-year existence. It's even made rounds on the internet as a hoax that Snopes picked up.
Dodging and burning for cleaning skin is very common amongst high-end retouchers and for a reason: when mastered, it gives you natural, yet almost perfect results. The downside of the technique is that it can eat up a lot of time. When I say a lot of time, I mean up to a couple of hours for a single image, depending on the problems that need corrections. While spending this much time on big projects or perhaps on personal projects is conceivable, for someone that shoots portraits every day and has to retouch quickly, this is simply not viable. A couple of tricks exist to help you go faster, while retaining a high quality and natural-looking image. I have listed four of them here with the hope that they will save you as much time as they do for me.
It's always impressive to see a subject that's shot so often used in a new and creative way. This conceptual shoot of the Milky Way by George Malamidis was beautifully conceived and executed. George picked two possible names for the image, both of which perfectly describe the outcome, "The Iris of God" or "The Peacock Milkyway." Want to know how he got the shot?
This week we get to look at yet another style of retouch, a sports styled image. Each genre, weather it be fashion, beauty, landscape, or sports is going to have different parameters to follow and slightly different goals to achieve. With a female athlete it can be particularly tricky, because it can be challenging to find the line between doing to much or not enough especially as it come to skin retouching. In this post we will look at some of the steps and tricks used in this particular image that can be applied to your own sport retouch. We will also take a look at what else can be done to this image.
As I am writing this Apple is having a press conference about their new products. The Apple Watch is getting a software update, the Apple TV is getting a total overhaul, the iPhone is all new (and can finally shoot 4k video), but potentially the most exciting news for photographers is the Apple iPad Pro.
This week's winning image comes from Photographer Daniel Nordholm. It's a stunning landscape image that he captured in Lofoten, a beautiful archipelago in Norway. I was very excited to break from my norm of beauty and fashion retouching to tackle and share a landscape retouch. Many of the techniques and the workflow of a landscape can be very different from portrait retouching, while the philosophy can be quite the same. In this article, you will see the full retouch of the image in the short two-minute video. In all, the retouch took about an hour. I will also share some specific techniques for landscape editing that you can use in your images as well.
Oh the world of high end retouching. This week cosmetic company Dior released a new video and ad campaign featuring their hot spokeswoman, Jennifer Lawrence. With a not so subtle nod to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, this new lipstick commercial isn't so bad upon first watch. Social media has gone ablaze however once screen grabs from the video have been making their way across the internet. Where are Jennifer's eyelids! We have the behind the scenes video to see where things went wrong.
It's Monday so it's time for another speed retouch and episode of Retouching Mondays. This week image comes courtesy of last weeks winner, Ben Scott. If you would like me to retouch your image and send you back the full-high res final image, all you have to do is post your image in the comments and wait to hear back. I will email the winner on Thursday morning, so post your newest favorite image that you want retouched. It can be any genre, beauty, fashion, landscape, wedding! I'll record the retouching and send you the final image to use as you wish! Take a look at the speed retouch of Ben's image and let me know in the comments if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Now lets take a look at the before and after and the challenges for this week's Monday Retouch.
A couple of weeks ago, Serif released its powerful photo editing software called Affinity Photo. This Adobe Photoshop competitor has since been downloaded by numbers of users and has already seen a couple of improvement through an update. Its price and its speed are probably two of the most notable advantages the software offers over Photoshop. While the reviews are slowly making their way to different websites, many photographers and retouchers seem to be wondering if the software is worth its price.
In my recent Natural Light Tutorial with RGGEDU, I went through every aspect of natural light photography and retouching... Or so I thought. During a shoot this week, I realized I missed one thing: enhancing freckles with Photoshop. In this article I will show a simple method to making those freckles pop.
Last May, Adobe gave the world a sneak peek of their forthcoming mobile retouching platform. While the video only showed off modest implementations of the liquifiy, paint, and vignette tools, it's clear that Adobe and their army of software engineers have been hard at work beefing up their iPhone and iPad apps.
Erik Almas, one of the best commercial composite photographers, has recently teamed up with the team at PRO EDU to create a fully comprehensive tutorial on his complete shooting and retouching process. In this video Almas takes us through an hour-long tutorial, retouching and completing the backplate for one of his tutorial images. I'm always impressed when photographers and retouchers, especially those at the top of our industry, open the doors and reveal their entire process and Almas has done no less here.
It's Monday morning and that means another completed retouch and time to submit your image for next week. We had more amazing submissions last week and here is the winner! In this post, you will see the SOOC image compared to the retouched image and I will discuss the particular challenges and the direction I decided to go with the photo. You can also watch the entire retouch in the video. And once again, you can post any image of yours that you would like and it may be chosen to be retouched for free and delivered to you in full-res to do with what you'd like.
Natural-looking images are making a comeback. If you look at recent issues of big magazines, you will see that makeup is often a nude with some shine to it, retouching is less "doll like," and even simple 1-light setups seem to be the standard. Some people will argue that it has been like this for quite some time. It is true, but I find that retouching is more flagrant than before. Even well known high-end retouchers seem to leave more imperfections in their images than a year ago.
I personally have never used a Wacom tablet or stylus in my life. They always seemed like the most useful post-processing tool ever, but I never bit the bullet and tested the waters. However, after filming Elia Locardi edit over 40 images for his "Photographing the World" landscape series, I am confident enough to finally give it a try myself. Luckily my good friends over at Phlearn have laid out five of the most useful tips for making your Wacom tablet easy to use.
Have you ever wanted to photograph a location only to have a constant stream of people coming and going? Trying to capture the the front of a busy building can be truly frustrating. Lucky for you Greg Benz knows your pain and he has a quick and easy solution to help you get the shot you've been waiting for.
Its Monday so as promised here is the completed retouch for last weeks winning submission by Mitchell Flores. For only being the first week of this regular segment we had an great number of submission and it was hard picking, can't wait to see what you guys submit this week. In this post I'll go over some of the steps of the retouching process and talk about the challenges for this particular image. If you would like your image to be selected for next week, post your low-res image in the comments below by Wednesday of this week.
When using Photoshop, I find myself zooming in and out very often. While this might not be a massive loss of time, it still is one, especially when doing some local dodge & burn. I recently found a technique that doesn't require me to zoom anymore. I can now work on my file with multiple views at once in Photoshop. How is this possible? It is only a very simple option in Photoshop, nothing as crazy as Inception.
