So Ive been dealing with a lot of personal/depression/anxiety things lately, and they have really been putting a damper and my editing. Not only have I barely done any retouching at all, whenever I do try and force myself, I cant finish it. Like it has literally been months since I actually finished retouching a photo to completion.
So I guess my first question would basically have to do with being able to complete images, I know that you guys probably wont have any advice for the personal stuff, but I think one of the other big things that I have that is hindering me is my level of skill. Basically when I come across something that I don't know how to do, I get very frustrated because I want to be amazing at it. Ive grown a lot since I started, but I still am nowhere near where I want to be, so whenever I cant figure something out I just get so angry that I just stop working on the picture.
So I guess, how do you guys deal with that? How do I force myself to try even if it isnt as perfect as Id like it to be?
Question number two..along those same lines, here is an example of one of the challenge photos that I started working on, its one of the SBourson pictures, this particular one that I'm linking was retouched by Kristopher Ray Fuentes.
Here's the the original,
and here is Kristophers,
There are a ton of retouchers here that I look up to, he happens to be one of them. We ended up working on the same photo and after I started mine I saw that he was able to perfect something that I wasn't able to figure out.. the eyebrow. I'm not sure how he filled it in and made it so perfect. I tried SO many things, but I wasn't able to get it, so I ended up just giving up on the picture. Which sucks because everything else that I was doing was going great, I just couldn't completely perfect it, so I felt that it was better to abandon it rather than have poor work.
So finally onto the question, how was that done?!
Im trying to turn over a new leaf and really try and get back into retouching, and force myself to stop quitting, but in order to stop quitting I need to ask for help, and you guys always seem to know everything! lol
Joe Diamond
Posts: 219
Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Im not a retoucher but both look unnatural to me, the eyebrow on the second one is too exaggerated clean and they both missed the eyelashes reflection which are usually seen not matter where is the angle of the light. Skin is ok but the rest looks artificial too me ...
Not that I condone fixing a botched makeup job but the second the eyebrow looks a little too exact and artificial. It looks like there was a selection made to keep everything contained and maybe some very careful clone stamp work.
Again I think it came out a little artificial and perhaps someone could offer a better way of doing, no offense to the second retoucher.
Elise Copeland wrote: So I guess, how do you guys deal with that? How do I force myself to try even if it isnt as perfect as Id like it to be?
That's what practicing is. You try new things and keep on trying until you know how to do it and are able to do it.
It's good to know that you don't know everything yet. And it's also good to ask how things are done or how you can improve.
Quitting is not an option if you want to achieve something.
Sure it's hard to realize that you are not as good as you would like to be. But it also means that you can tell the difference. Try to figure out what makes the difference between your work and that of someone else. And if you can't figure it out on your own or you don't have the time to figure it out on your own, you ask for help.
There is no shame in asking to learn something new. Just don't expect the answer to magically make you better.
wikipedia wrote: Unconscious incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognise their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.
Conscious incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
Conscious competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.
Unconscious competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Elise Copeland wrote: ...
So finally onto the question, how was that done?!
...
So, anyone out there? =]
If you stack the images in Photoshop, you can compare what he/she did to the orignal to get to the end result. And basically, the hairs were already there.
There was just a lot of cleaning up done on the eyebrow. Removing unwanted hairs and darkening, probably even sharpening, the ones that were already there.
Yeah, I guess youre right, I just cant let myself quit! Well, Ive been working my ass off on this one, Im not anywhere near you guys but Im very happy with it so far, but again.. stuck on something. The skins shinyness/gloss.. how?!! lol
There is a thread that started to get into it, but never actual how to's
Ive dodged and burned until they were white in the face, Im pretty sure there is something else to it.
After the D&B Amy Dresser would do the following:
5--this may possibly be my only "trick." This has to be done as a
final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in
nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure
white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select >
Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by
default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of
selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit
OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too
much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit.
Another from retouchpro:
ray12;266883 wrote: Skin Shine - Arms - Legs - and Face.
One of the main tricks for creating skin shine is to use the "Flow" control on your brush. Keep the flow to 1% ONLY (Opacity can be whatever you want 100% or 50% or 17% etc). If you use a higher flow rate than 1% then it will look fake. The flow control makes sure that whatever you do is limited to 1% maximum effect per stroke. Using this methodology is very subtle and the highlight is built up over a number of brush strokes.
So, you might want to work on the highlight part of an arm or leg to start with.
To do this: Make a separate transparent layer above your image using the "New Layer" icon at the bottom of the Layer Pallet. Then choose a white soft brush with opacity set to 100% and the flow set to 1%. Then stroke down the highlight area in one single continuous brushstroke action. You will barely see what you are doing because the effect is limited to 1% of what is possible. Do another full length single stroke down the whole length...then another. Pretty soon you will see your highlight developing ever so gently. Use the visibility icon on your separate layer to turn on and off the work you are doing...so you can see the subtle effect you are creating. Do more strokes in the center of the highlight and fewer at the edges to give it a more 3 dimensional look. It might take 5 or 10 strokes to build up the look.
If you dont like what you are seeing or if you want to change it, no problem...just selectively erase the white strokes on the transparent layer and start over again in the area you are working in...or... you can delete the whole layer and make a new one. Often retouchers will go through the extra trouble of creating a new transparent layer for each area of shine they are working on to keep the shines separated and totally controllable.
You can also choose layer opacity to adjust the intensity of the shine. You can also get a more subtle and more transparent looking highlight depending on skin type by first using the "Softlight Blend Mode" on the layer you are working on (upper top left of your layer pallet...it usually says "Normal" but make it Softlight instead). This "blend mode" helps the layer you are working on to blend into the layers below it in many different kind of ways...its a whole other important retouching subject by itself.
You can also use gaussian blur on the highlight layer to spread out the highlight and smooth it out some if you like. If you use the "make ready for smart filters option" in CS3 and above (under the Filters menu) then you can adjust and re-adjust the gaussian blur effect interactively without needing to erase the effect and starting all over again.
To get the most believable effects it is helpful to know where to add the highlight. Study how to shade a 2 dimensional circle to make it into a 3 dimensional sphere. It will give you the shading mentality of how to make something 2d look 3d by using shading (highlights, shadow and specularity). You can also enhance the effect through low-lighting the edges of the arm to give them some more 3 dimensional depth as well. Knowing the "Still-Life" painting skill of how to create dimensionality is a great help for the retoucher.
Sometimes believable highlights and shadow placements follow the direction of bone structures or muscle structures underneath the skin...so a bit of Grays Anatomy can also enhance a retouchers skill set. It also helps to study other pictures and to watch where the shine naturally occurs in an image... and what it looks like... so your own work will be more believable.
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