Post-Production

Benjamin Von Wong has finally wrapped up his long and productive European tour, Von Wong Does Europe. The very first shoot that he was able to do was also ironically the last to be published and for good reason. It will blow you away. Taking over 60 hours to retouch Ben collaborated with talented retouching guru, Chester van Bommel. 

The New York Times is being forced to examine their policy in regards to retouching on their images. Of course, they stand by the fact that manipulation of their news images "strictly forbidden.” But recently, they received backlash when the cover of their [style] magazine T had what many readers felt was a fashion model that looked 'shockingly thin' and 'underage.'

This might be an extreme take on the all-too-common client request of "get it done quickly," but it serves as an excellent benchmark of what can be done in a short amount of time. Odds are, you won't ever be asked to do a full post-production retouch in such a short amount of time, but the idea behind what Aaron Nace of PHLEARN is showing here is solid: with the right tools and knowledge you can streamline your workflow with extreme effectiveness.

So as a lot of you have probably seen, you can now record full 1080p 14Bit Raw video on the Canon 5D Mark II and Mark III. This is truely incredible. However, you can not just import the video and get to editing right away. To be able to use the RAW video, you have to convert the RAW files to DNG. Here is a quick workflow tutorial on how to do that. It's really not that hard to do, just a little time consuming.

If you're not tuned in to creativeLIVE right now, you should be! Today through Saturday May 18, creativeLIVE is hosting award-winning portrait photogrpaher, Brooke Shaden. Brooke is teaching some great tips to create eye-catching works of art without any flash or expensive studio props.

Excuse me while I pick up the brain fragments scattered across my office. In the last few months, there have posts and chatter about raw video recording being enabled in Canon's popular DSLR through new developments in Magic Lantern's firmware. It appeared to be only useful in bursts of less than a second, but now news is coming out now that they have unlocked the ability to record, without issue, continuous raw video at 24fps.

UPDATED 05/14/13 9:50 AM PT: I have received word from a source that the reason these original totems were made were effectively replacements for the box imagery that Adobe will no longer be producing since... well... there are no more boxes. If you recall, CS6 had a lot of imagery surrounding faces (just look at the cover of Adobe Photoshop CS6). Moving to Adobe CC, the team wanted to try a different angle that was more expressive, abstract and fun.

Of course many of us want to always nail a shot in camera, but sometimes things happen. Maybe it looked great on your camera's LCD, but entirely different once you got it on your computer. Maybe your sensor is too small and shallow DOF is hard to nail. It's for these cases that Aaron Nace at PHLEARN does tutorials like this one, where he shows how to adjust depth of field in post.

Thanks to redditor Gypp and his amazing sense of humor and creativity in photoshop, the world now has an abundant new array of animals to appreciate. How would you like a Guinea Lion or a Purilla to be roaming in your neighborhood?  Which one would you keep as a pet?

We learned a lot about Adobe at Adobe MAX earlier this week. We learned that they are moving to a cloud-based system that will remove support for perpetual licenses. We learned about new features that are really something special. And we also learned just a little bit about Project Mighty and Project Napoleon, Adobe's push into hardware through a pen and ruler that link to the digital world.

The hot topic of the week around here has been the new Creative Cloud model from Adobe. We recently posted this video discussion about what some of us thought of it along with this article on why it may not be a good idea. There were great points made on both ends. However, like all popular things, humor follows shortly on the Internet. 

Now and then, some people tell me that they had no idea retouching existed before Photoshop. It comes as a big surprise to them when they learn about the history of it. I don't blame them, we're so used to Photoshop these days that it's hard to imagine what it would be like long before it, especially in the 1940's.  

Over the years, I have taught numerous workshops for photographers and during those classes one of the most appreciated techniques that we discuss is shooting proper white balance using Kelvin temperatures. If it is something new to you, it might at first seem a bit overwhelming but I guarantee it is actually quite simple to learn. Read on to learn just how easy it is and the benefits of shooting in Kelvin versus Auto White Balance.

Adobe Photoshop’s new feature “Camera Shake Reduction” has been has been carrying a ton of hype, likely due to the publicity Adobe has been putting behind it since last year (and more recently just a couple weeks ago). However, what it actually is and how it works is somewhat misunderstood. Many were prepared to hate the program, thinking it a panacea for all bad, blurry images. It’s not the all-healing-blur-fixing-magic-of-the-gods some of you might think it is, but it’s still really flipping amazing.

Want to improve, or just possibly brush up on your photoshops skills? Lynda.com is offering a free 1 hour and 37 minutes video to help you enhance your photos. In this course, the Photoshop senior product manager takes you on an insider's tour of the key photo-enhancement features in Adobe Photoshop CS6. Even if you consider yourself a master I'm sure they have some tricks for you. This course is only available through May 10 so act fast.

Eduard Zhikharev, lead motion designer at Transparent House in San Francisco, created a interesting conceptual series Shining, a body of work that depicts glowing figures from street scenes that his wife Olga Tsybulina had photographed one day. I reached out to Eduard after running across the work on Behance and asked him about the series.

Shooting photos in RAW is the choice of most professionals. Unfortunately, we all know that once you import those photos into Lightroom, the vibrant images viewed on your camera LCD suddenly look flat. What if there were a quick fix that would make your RAW images better replicate what you see on your camera?

Beauty retouching can be an arduous task in any photographer's workflow. The amount of detail that can go into retouching a glamor portrait can easily run into several hours. Learning the secrets of the pros can be even more difficult. Julia Kuzmenko McKim has made learning easy with her new book entitled  'Digital Photo Retouching: Beauty, Fashion and Portrait Photography'

A photographer and digital artist by the name of Terrence Blanton has released a new website and photo series called "Eagle Faction" that is explosive and very influenced by Call of Duty and Battlefield. Terrence got ahold of a local Airsoft team to help create a fictional series about a team of former military and outdoorsmen that band together to help salvage their local territory of America after a collapse and invasion in the year 2023.

People create photo series for a number of different reasons. Sometimes you come up with an idea and pursue it while others just fall into your lap unexpectedly. For portrait photographer Willis Bretz the Washington D.C. metrorail system is where his series was brought to life or rather awakened from other commuters' slumber. We sit down and talk about his series entitled, 'Sleep in Transit'.

As leaders in the video post-production plugin world, it's really cool to see Red Giant creating short films to promote its products, and they are always a blast to watch. You might recall "Plot Device" or "Form 17" as some of their previous work. This new short isn't directly related to BulletProof, their new plugin, but it's a very entertaining piece with an equally informative making of video as well.

Photoshop blending modes are one of those areas in Photoshop that a very few people understand in full detail. Everyone has a general idea on how they work and what some of the modes do specifically. Much of it has always seemed to be understood through experimentation. The results you get are often guessed. If you're the lucky few who know all of them precisely, you will still want to read this article. 

Quite a number of years ago I had a friend that suggested I use Photomechanic to review my photos and pick the ones I want to edit (also known as "culling.") I downloaded the free trial and was immediately turned off by the archaic and confusing menus. Had someone showed me then what I was missing I would have immediately adopted it into my workflow and saved myself lots of time over the years. Hopefully this video will do it justice and show you just how incredible and valuable a tool Photomechanic is for your workflow.

There is that popular phrase that goes "the best camera you have is the one on you." That phrase has never been more true in this day and age with considerably powered cell phone cameras living in the pockets of nearly every person you might come across. Even as professionals with thousands of dollars in gear, sometimes we will find ourselves in a situation we shoot on our mobile cameras, whether by choice or by circumstance. I spoke to the product manager of Lightroom to get his take on the best ways to bring the most out of your iPhone images.

Following the terrible events that happened in Boston yesterday leaving at least 3 dead and more than 170 wounded, the Daily News is under the spotlight of criticism for doctoring photos. While they have appeared to have doctored the photo because of its graphic nature, they still maintained many other graphic images on the cover of the publication. So why?

Adobe just released a teaser video for their May 6th event where they will announce few new products and features. In this video they show one of their new tools for Photoshop - "Camera Shake Reduction". This tool will allow photographers to save photos that were always considered as garbage - photos taken in a rush, or in low-light situations. The tool analyzes the photo, and deblur it to make it sharp.

Ok so many of you will not be fond of this technique. That is totally your preference. But for those of you who like good HDR photos, the guys are PHLEARN show a method that will teach you a method to get faux-HDR final images that will make some of your images go from good to great.

Adobe announced the release of their beta version of the new Lightroom 5 today and with it I dove in and quickly discovered my five favorite new features. A few of these are true game changers in how we edit our photos and will in the end save us as photographers quite a bit of time while using the innovative software. Read on to see some examples of the features and what my first impressions are on the new Lightroom 5.

PBS Digital Studios put together "Is Photoshop Remixing the World?" a brief look at how Photoshop has effected today's culture.In the video we hear from three users, first from Jeff Huang, Art Director & Illustrator discussing the way he works with Photoshop to execute his multi layered digital illustrations. Laurent Le Moing of Picturehouse NYC, follows up to talk about the enhancing

While in Las Vegas attending the annual WPPI conference I stopped in and spent some time at the print competition. There I repeatedly noticed that many of the prints had a matte type of look to them. Now part of this is the choice of paper they print on, but also how the photos is processed plays a big part as well. I created this quick video to share with you how this look is achieved very easily in Lightroom. I have also included some sample before and after photos below.

Venus is the Roman goddess who encompassed the concept of beauty, love and various other traits. She embodies all that is beautiful about a woman. Now, if you took the classical definition of beauty and brought her over to our age today where everything is retouched to 'perfection', what would she look like ? 

Automotive photography can be an extremely rewarding niche in the photography industry. The fast, shiny, power-inducing machines that rush by in a blur of color can be a thrill to anyone photographer, but it can also be daunting making sure that every detail is just perfect. Automotive photographer John Zhang walks us through the post processing of one of his lates shots of a Lexus LFA.

If you read my post a few weeks ago about managing multiple lightroom catalogs and decided to split your catalog, then you probably have had the need to shuffle some of your photos between catalogs. While not a difficult task, it is not quite obvious, so I decided to write a quick post on how I go about moving photos from one catalog to another.

The Walking Dead is among the hottest shows on television today. The amount of work that goes into the visual production to make this show so spectacular and real often goes unnoticed by its fan base. The latest reel from production company Stargate Studios shows us the amount of work they had to put into the latest season of AMC’s hot television series.

When it comes to compositing, the most tedious part of the Photoshop workflow to me has to be the extracting of objects from the background. With so many different ways to extract a subject: the pen tool, the lasso tool, refine edge, or Fluid Mask, it can be hard to find the technique that best suits your workflow. Commercial and editorial photographer Michael Herb has recently released an amusing quick mask tutorial that might just be the thing to get you out of your compositing rut.

Over the last couple of years I have received more than a few inquiries about how I use Lightroom to edit my photos. The embedded video is a screen recording of my entire workflow, from import to export. It's sped up for the sake of time, so if there is any part that isn't clear, feel free to ask questions in the comments. So without further ado, here is my Lightroom workflow.

If you are a regular reader of Fstoppers, than by now you should be familiar with Elena Jasic and her amazing photography and retouching skills. Elena just posted her tutorial on how to color tone your photos the way she does it. Mind you, there is no one way to do anything in photoshop, but Elena is a master at her craft and offers some very valuable insight for anyone interested in color toning their photos.

Have you ever been on a shoot in which you used two cameras or had an assistant shooting with you, imported the files into Lightroom and then realized they were not time synced properly? If so, this quick 5-minute video is for you. Lightroom makes it incredibly easy to time sync your files so they all line up perfectly in chronological order by capture time. I'll show you how it's done in the video and read on below for some additional quick tips.

Photoshelter is hosting a webinar featuring retoucher Kristina Sherk this week, and to advertise the webinar they posted an animated gif showing before and after Sherk got her hands on the image. I was shocked, as Sherk not only easily erased 10 years off the model, but even more amazingly did it without making it look fake.

I am always looking out for ways to help people in regards to the cost aspect of post processing. We currently have a few options out there, some of which includes free software such as Gimp or Paint. However, I recently stumbled upon another option. 

Lightroom 4.4 is now available. The update will either automatically happen through the built in update system in the software the next time you open it or you can find it online at Adobe.com or in the links I have included below. The update includes additional camera raw support, lens profiles and addresses bugs in previous versions. Read on to see the specifics for the Lightroom 4.4 update.

The good people over at PHLEARN are at it again, this time with a great little tutorial on creating skin texture from scratch. I find that healing (or whichever method you use) under the eyes in particular tends to destroy the most texture, so this is a great way to put some back in.

As a type of person that loves to figure out everything I can about gadgets and software, I am always surprised by how often I meet up with photographers that really only use the powerful programs on their computers for the most basic functions. Typically we get comfortable with a few features and never really explore what else can be done. Maybe we run out of time, maybe we just have no interest. Either way, I hope to share some short, quick, easy to follow along videos over the next few weeks sharing some of my favorite tips and tricks in Lightroom.

As many of you know, Google+ has quickly become one of the top social networks for photographers. There is something beautiful about how the photos are displayed and how they scale as you roll your mouse across them.

We have featured Elena Jasic on Fstoppers a few times now. Most recently we featured a tutorial from her on how to utilize frequency separation. Elena's newest tutorial is on dodging and burning, and how she goes about doing it in her work flow. Dodging and burning can add dimension to your photos and take them to the next level.

When Google purchased Nik software in September, photographers were left wondering how the tech giant would assimilate Nik into its fold. It was clear that the company was lured by Nik’s mobile editing software Snapseed. Yesterday, Google, which had been mute on the subject since the purchase, unrolled a retooled suite of Nik software tools at a heavily discounted rate — $149 as compared to $499.

Lightroom is a great tool for photographers of all types, in addition to the powerful suite of editing tools at your disposal, there is a robust cataloging system to help you keep your collection manageable and easily navigable. But with the ability to create and manage an infinite number of separate catalogs, how exactly should one consider spliting up their collection, if at all?

In this behind the scenes video we follow the team over at Corridor Digital as they create a stunning and moving fanfilm after the video game mod of DayZ. Corridor Digital is made up of two friends, Sam Gorski and Niko Pueringer . Apparently, Sam and Niko are huge fans of the zombie video game mod and wanted to tip their hats to the creators of the game. In the behind the scenes video they talk about filming on location and the VFX process. Below is another video by Sam and Niko explaining their workflow while filming and editing.

There is no doubt Adobe Lightroom simplified the post processing workflow for photographers and retouchers since it came out. The simple layout, the easy to use sliders and the useful presets - all made post processing a much better experience. Then came Paddy, a personal code project by Dorfl, and made the process even easier. OK, not just easier - but way cooler. Paddy connects a MIDI Controller Desk to Lightroom, and lets you edit the photo directly from there.

Last week we posted about the new Autodesk's and filmmaker, Jeremy Hunt's, new short film, 'Fix It In Post' demonstarting Autodesk's Smoke for the Mac. In this behind the scenes video Jeremy explains on how he came about joining Autodesk and creating the short film and how much he enjoys the new editing software.