Ok so this is my attempt to explain how to retouch a photo.  There are some things that I want to tell you first… 1) I had to use Photoshop CS because its all I have on my laptop so bare with me 2) I just picked a photo I thought could use some retouching, it isn’t my best photo :P  3) I am not the most savvy Photoshoper so I’m not completely down with the lingo 4) This is the method that I learned in class, it works for me and I hope it will work for you :) 

So lets get started!!! First of all you want to open up Photoshop.  (Duh ) Here is the original photo that I am going to work on…

Ok now the first thing that you are going to do is zoom in ok the photo so that you can work easily on the face.  Click on the healing brush tool and minimize the size of it to relatively small (you can adjust the size of the brush using the [ and ] keys.  Now you want to remove distracting blemishes and imperfections on the skin by pressing alt and clicking on a shade of the skin that is similiar to the area you are perfecting. 

Now the next step is to go up to Layer and click.  Go down to New and over to select Layer.  Once you have this new layer you want to select the Brush tool.  Once you’ve selected that you want to enable Airbrush.  The airbrush option is a botton that looks like a pen with a squigly line.  It is located at the top of the screen to the right of Flow.  Once you’ve selected that you want to lower your Opacity to about 18 or 19% (feel free to set your own opacity if you’re not satisfied with the result you’re getting).  Now for the Airbrush you’re going to was a relatively big brush.  Now select similiar shaded areas (like you did with the healing brush) and swoop the brush across the face in little swoops.  You’re going to want to do this around most of  the face, avoiding the eyes and getting into the hair  and such.  Don’t worry too much about getting into those area’s though because you can fix that in the next step.

Now you are going to go back up to Layer and click.  Go down to Add Layer Mask and go over to select Reveal All.  Make sure you are still on the Airbrush mode and then reduce the size the size of the brush to about the size of an eraser or a little smaller.  Press the \ button on your keyboard.  Now you you want to outline around the face that you don’t want the airbrush to effect.  Raise the opacity back up to about 80% or so and outline around the hair that is around the face, the nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, mouth and clothes if you airbrushed on ther neck or any other place.  It should be a red color as you outline.  It’s fun because they will end up looking like demons!  LoL

Once you’ve finshed outlining, you are going to click off of the white Layer of Layer one and click the gray and white checkered Layer one that is to the left of the layer you just outlined on. Notice up on the above pictures the layer tab.  Thats where you want to click.  Now you want to go up to Filter and go down to Noise and go over to select add noise.  If you raise the noise all the way you you should easily be able to see everywhere that you airbrushed.  You want to add about 5% or 6% to the photo to bring a little texture back into the face to match the rest of the photo otherwise your model might start to look like a doll.  So now you’re done!! At least with my method.  So hear is our finished product….

I hope all that made sense to you.  If you have any questions feel free to ask.  I suggest practicing!!! Again this isn’t my best photo, or my best retouching but it got the job done.  I have a head ache and I’m gonna go to bed now :p So I really do hope this helped :)  Let me know how it goes for you!!!

Annie

We had to throw together a quick ProShow slide show in class today so that everyone could familiarize themselves with the program.  I’ve made a couple before so I guess that theresn’t really no good excuse for it to be as badly put together as it is but oh well.  We did only have about two hours together and I started out not even having photos put together for the slideshow.  So don’t take it’s appearance into too much account.  I’ve done and can do better.  Just keep in mind it was a quicky.  So no judging! :p

TO VIEW COMPLETE SHOOT CLICK BELOW

SLIDESHOW

So today in class we went over how to retouch blemishes and skin imperfections out of our portraits.  This was my first time really doing more than just the healing brush or the clone stamp in Photoshop and the one that I chose was a challenge.  I am really happy with how the photo turned out!  So here is the before and after of my retouching and I’ll be working on many more of them later.  Let me know what you think!

Our second assignment was reflective or subtractive lighting or both.  I had a hard time with this one because the weather didn’t want to cooperate with my schedule so that was sort of a bummer.  But I think I came up with some decent shots.  Oh yeah I also suffered a lot from doing this shoot!!! I thought Jerry, my professor, was silly for carrying bug spray with him when we went outside but now I’ll never shoot outside with out it again!!! I was attacked my chiggers!! Oh it was terrible!!! I mean I had them everywhere!  It was miserable!! PHOTOGRAPHER’S TIP OF THE DAY: Carry bug spray in your camera bag!!!!! Apparently my model paid for it also.  She messaged me earlier saying she was also covered in bug bites.  I feel bad But anyways hopefully the pictures I paid three days of suffering of the most irritating itch all over me, was worth it! But I’ll let you be the judge of that….

To view a Slideshow of the whole shoot click below

SLIDESHOW

]]> http://aaphotography.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/reflectivesubtractive-lighting-assignment-2/feed/ Annie http://aaphotography.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/in-class-model-marie/ http://aaphotography.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/in-class-model-marie/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:05:46 +0000 Angelica http://aaphotography.wordpress.com/?p=222

Finally we got a brake from shooting each other in my Portrait class today.  It’s stressful having a class where you feel like you need to put some effort into your outfit for that class because you could be chosen as the model victim for the day and you definitely don’t want bad pictures of yourself floating all around people’s facebooks, myspaces, wordpresses, and flickrs!! Today was pretty nice because I knew there was no chance I would have to model because we had someone coming in today so I dressed comfortably!  Yay!! We shot a girl named Marie who was a great model!! She had beautiful red hair and, well…. look for yourself….

Our first assignment in my portrait class was Window Light.  I must admit when I did this the first time in Elementary Photography, my freshman year, I hated it.  I didn’t mind it quite so much this time around.  I think I did a bit better this time also.  But we’ll see what you guys think.

To view a slide show of this entire shoot click below

SLIDE SHOW

Yesterday we split into two groups and went around campus to practice shooting for our Reflective/Subtractive Assignment.  This is some pictures that I came up with.  We were also working on them in Lightroom so I figured I’d play with some of them a little bit.  Our first assignment is due on Saturday which is window lighting which I will be posting in a few days.

These are some shots I did for my cousin Tina.

Ok so I am one of those weirdos who does watch WWE.  I know I know, but hey it is entertaining.  So I went to Monday Night Raw in October of 2006 in Topeka and this year my boyfriend and I deceided to go to the one is KC. We didn’t have great seats because we got the tickets the day of the event.  We did have a great time though!!  It was a close call getting my camera in there though.  I didn’t have any trouble with it the first time I went but this time the guy started to tell me that I couldn’t have it in the arena but then he measured my lens with a card or something and it was just short enough.  Thank God I had my wideangle lens on and not my telephoto and the guard wasn’t the brightest and didn’t look through the rest of my bag…. So here are some shots I got.  They’re a bit noisy since flash wasn’t gonna do me any good and I had to have an ISO of 1600 but it was just for fun. 

Jeff Hardy

Mr. Kennedy

Shawn Michaels and JBL

Triple H

John Cena and Randy Orton