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What would you like me to cover in the new DVD?
Hey, guys. I'm researching for my upcoming retouching DVD and would like to know what are the three biggest problems you had when you were trying to become a successful retoucher/photographer or maybe you are still struggling with right now. And I would also like to know what did you tried and didn't work or tried and did work to overcome those obstacles. Please, help me create a better product. If you can imagine two circles. One represents what I want to teach and the other represents what you want to learn. The place where they overlap is what the DVD will be. I already have idea of what I want to do and I have prepared a lot of material after interviewing dozens of prominent retouchers and photographers. If I release it just by what I know now I'm sure you would not be disappointed, but I can always improve and expand the area where those two circles overlap. P.S. I will post more info in the near future and thank you. I appreciate your input.  Oct 01 12 12:53 am Link Hello Kruno, what I would be interested on a DVd would be "color". To describe it a litte bit, the following info: the pic is "basic retouched" (healing brush, clone tool, freq separation, d&b,liquify...) what to do next? I am allways impressed what can be done with the colors. Sometimes the pop, sometimes there is a certain mood in the pic, sometimes one color is dominat,... For me this would be a nice theme for a DVD. Regards Frank Oct 01 12 02:10 am Link There is so much talk about technique here on these forums yet in practice it's not always proving to be a apt solution for what is really usable. For example frequency separation. The only time I've seen a solid example was on where there was a badly creased shirt. Most examples I see on MM etc are terribly wrong for reproduction in offset or large prints. Everything looks good on internet! Problem with things like Frequency separation are the colour information below the layers can quickly become a mess of coloured spots. shows some real world examples where one technique can be the ultimate solution. By that I mean I can't do it in LR, and the results are by far superior to any other way. The other thing that needs to be reviewed for most is quality selections for hi res. Many here do not make clean selections usable for press. I've become lazy in the internet world but I can tell you when you do images for Cartier, Hermes, Shiseido, as I have the selections are make or break deals. The other stuff is optional like smart objects etc. While being efficient in workflow, for me the only important thing is the quality of the image not what workflow gets you there. Oct 01 12 02:28 am Link Have a 4 hour interview of Neil Snape explaining how to master lightroom. Oct 01 12 02:44 am Link Hi Kruno, I second Frank's suggestion. One can spend hours healing, cloning - focusing on the tiny imperfections but I struggle with evening skin colour and then adding this extra something colour-wise to make the image worthy of a high-end magazine cover. Also, there are so many techniques for frequency separation - I understand that it all depends on what works for a specific person but I would like to see your way of working on a image using this technique. Finally, I have always worked on images that would appear on the net and so working in sRGB colour space. It would be nice to see how you prepare the image for a client that would be using a professional print press. I can't wait for your DVD! Regards, Aaron Oct 01 12 02:45 am Link I would like to see you take a number of before and after images (from the masses) (RAW and PSD) and then pick them apart, and make them better. Kind of like - "You missed this", or "I see what you were trying to do here, but this is a better result (or a better way)". Oct 01 12 03:17 am Link Hi Kruno, It's great that the new material is being prepared for another DVD hosted by yourself, which I'm sure will be an absolute banger ! As mentioned by Neil, I think that it would be great to cover some principals related with prints because right now we've got an ideal Internet-world, and hundreds of retouchers that can create an ideal artwork for web-circumstances, and the mysterious world of printing magazines and billboards, which is a whole new level when it comes to preparing a retouched image. What else.... it would be great if you will manage to surprise the retouching society with more 'black magic' knowledge related with color treatment, sharpening etc. regards, Mat Oct 01 12 04:00 am Link Thanks for the replies, guys. Keep them coming. Many relies are matching my original idea already. I guess the circles are overlapping more than I expected. OK. So the original idea was fairly simple, one image retouch using multiple raw conversions. Some Smart Object use and masking. nothing to spectacular, and that was supposed to be a free You Tube tutorial. And than I got talked into making it into a DVD. Well that is way to little material for a proper DVD project so I went on exploring the options. What else I could do. What hasn't been covered or wasn't explained the way it should have been. First of all it's not fashion and/or beauty I will be working on this time. For the most part I feel that area has been covered around these parts a lot and it's not the only topic available. I'm sure people who are not exclusive at it might feel like they are being left out at times. Another thing I have noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of real world application tutorials out there. I mean, really from start to finish. Everything, from client collaboration, preparing for print/press to file delivery. High quality project in mind. Not many tutorials in that context. And especially not done in a comprehensive manner where everything is in one place. Where there is theory and practice combined in a nice fluid manner. Sure there are KelbyTraining, Lynda.com, Video2Brain etc. But I feel like after you get the basics down, you have essentially outgrown what they are offering, and much of it is not real world application anyway. I don't mean quality of instructions, but simply the context they are showing it in leaves you with a lot of questions unanswered. You know how the tool works, but it doesn't give you that feeling how to apply it is real world, client based workflow. Anyway, once you watch all of those tutorials you realize that you are still not ready for the world, so you have to learn from somebody who is or you learn by trial any error. What essentially started as a simple double raw conversion of the file has now turned into a full blown magazine shoot project simulation. Here is the brief version of what I want to do. There are a lot of retouchers and ven photographers who retouch their own work out there and have the age old problem of CATCH-22. They can't get an experience without an opportunity, but they can't get that opportunity without the experience. Everyone longs to be published in a magazine. It's good for professional pride, for exposure, for networking, for portfolio, for everything. Aim of this DVD would be to among a lot of other things tries to provide a solution to the CATCH-22 or at least make it easier to experience how it would be to work on a project like this in real life. I would like to simulate the project that involves retouching, preparing for print and delivering files to be printed in a magazine. Off course all of this is a simulation. I invented the magazine and the client. And now I'm trying to simulate the real deal as close as I can. You know; client marking up what images they want and what they want to change on those images. I would also simulate revisions and different requests from the client. The basic idea is to work on four images, one to be printed for the cover, one printed as a two page spread and two printed for the article. So I would retouch four images in total. I chose images that would allow me to make it look real but also different enough to allow me to show them different work flow approaches and different retouching techniques. But there is one area I would like to show in the DVD because I think it's important. And that is preparing the files to print or at least making the whole process smother during the collaboration. Color management done right. It seems that a lot of retouchers and photographers shy away from that feeling it's intimidating. If you look for answers online there is a lot of good information out there but there is also a lot of miss information and contradicting information. Typically you either find very technical crowd and you feel inadequate in following the conversations, plus a lot of it is theory based or you find tutorials on just the basics that leave you with a lot of questions unanswered. And even though they might tell you what profile to use, without understanding the why, you are left dependable on who ever gave you that information. I would like to make it easy to understand, real world application with both why and how answered. So it's theory combined with the real world project simulation. That way you are not just learning what color is but how to use it as well. Another thing I would address is workflow options. There are more and more photographers who use Lightroom as their primary database and they combine it with Photoshop for deeper pixel based editing. I want to approach the project with them in mind. So its Lr + Acr + Ps workflow 1. But coming from a retouching background I know there are a lot of pure retouchers who work with only one of a few images per project and there is no need for them to use Lightroom. So workflow 2 would include them as well. Essentially it would be two workflow approach to the same project to addresses all of the potential audience. So I started planing. Now I'm still researching but I have gotten pretty far and will be ready for recording pretty soon, maybe next week. I'm also planing on several bonus videos and a nice surprises that I won't mention here. Don't want to spoil the surprise. Sufficient to say there are a lot of techniques and tips & tricks, composeting, masking, sharpening, third party plugins and more in the project as is but I would like to also maybe include something that will actually help you get a job with this knowlage as well. Here is the concept or sketch of how I wanted to approach it, just to give you an visual idea of where I'm going with this. The project is with the athlete a cyclist in the race track and as the image shows at the bottom in nature. But the way I will set it up is that you can replace my project with any one of yours and still have all the color management and other stuff work for you. So if for example you are doing fashion editorial or a beauty project, even commercial stuff you will simply use your images instead of mine with the appropriate retouching techniques but the underlying principles remain the same or flexible enough for you to adapt. Client's markup  Concept of how migh a finished printed magazine cover look  Oct 01 12 04:19 am Link Frank Sanders wrote: Yeah, by my previous post you can see that will be covered. Neil Snape wrote: Couldn't agree more. Neil Snape wrote: I think that topic has been almost beaten to death around here and will probably not be addressed. Neil Snape wrote: All of that is already on the list. Dan K Photography wrote: If he is up for a webinar, I'm game. I'll be the boring hosts who keeps asking dull questions. Hehe. BeauTouch wrote: It's on the list as well. Actually it's big part of it. In Balance Photography wrote: The closes thing to that will be client asking for revisions and telling us what we missed. Mateusz Musielak wrote: Thanks. Mateusz Musielak wrote: I'm way ahead of you. Oct 01 12 04:19 am Link I am a big fan of Mert and Marcus's work, and will appreciate if you can touch some of your insights on their way of color manipulation. Thanks. Oct 01 12 11:19 am Link I'm glad I read far enough to see "Color Management" and prepping files for publication (RFP). I know Color Management is boring stuff but it's crucial and nothing is more disappointing to a client than viewing a print that differs from the digital images. Good stuff. Oct 01 12 11:35 am Link I like to read, and see the workflow when a job is done to someone else' specs, and really like when you show the strategy map on the Pro Bicycling mag cover. maybe show a few start to finish jobs that have different challenges and workflow Oct 01 12 03:15 pm Link mshi wrote: That is very specific and it's for somebod else's work, I don't think it fit's into what I'm trying to do but if you want to know more you should probably start another "how do they do this" thread about it. Michael Pandolfo wrote: I agree, but I'm still not convinced color management always needs to be boring if presented in the right way. That's one of my challenges now - how to provide the proper information but in a practical and interesting way. Motordrive Photography wrote: If I do more than one separate job than I'm not really giving any new information because a lot of the underlying principles are pretty much the same, but to I understand what you are saying. And to cover different challenges and workflow, I'm showing two workflow's and four images within the project, each with it's own set of challenges. Oct 01 12 08:04 pm Link I like your idea with the cycler...it's along the lines of what I was going to request: A retouch of a non-beauty image that deals with different elements than simply the face and hair...preferably something that requires retouching/tweaking/compositing the background and foreground. Oct 01 12 10:20 pm Link Actions and batch processing a series of similar images. Oct 01 12 10:39 pm Link SterlingHein wrote: Yes, that will be included. There is one image that is the same cyclist but shot in a stadium and there will be retouching/tweaking/compositing of that stadium and the track in the foreground. There are other stuff that I won't give away now, but there will be something for everybody I suspect. The Effective Image wrote: That is a bit bacic for what I'm trying to do but there will be some work with the presets in Lr and ACR and matching of color/tone. Oct 01 12 10:39 pm Link Hi krunoslav, this time i think that you take more time to explain the carving trick and tips because in my opinion that is the most difficult thing. Oct 04 12 10:53 pm Link The dvd sounds great, thanks for asking us what we would like to see on it. Here's my story, over the past few years years i have been just copying background layer working on it, then copying that, then working on it, then copying that layer and working on it. Doing different fixes, changes etc... But the problem came when i was asked 'Oh can you bring that bit back in, go back and can change that bit a little more etc... Basically meant for me having to go back and throw away several steps, layers in the psd then redo which was time consuming. I realized that if i had done it 'right' from the start this could have be avoided by working with selections copying to new layers using adjustment layers with masks.... The past few months i've been trying to change my workflow to do this so that changes i make to my psds are fully changable at a later date thus saving time if some thing needs to be redone/redeited at a later time. I still haven't nailed this down 100% so anything that covers this would help. Maybe it's basic for those who deal with this everyday but i'm sure i'm not the only one who would benifit from this being covered. Thanks again and hope the dvd is a huge success! Oct 05 12 11:43 am Link Can't wait the DVD to be finished...or do you need more feedback? Dec 02 12 05:35 am Link richy01 wrote: Sure, here are some additional info for people who want to take a sneak peek at what I'm doing. So far I had positive feedback with few minor technical corrections I need to fix. The biggest problem with feedback that I had so far is that I have a vision and I know what I have recorded and what I want to record, but the videos people see are bit's and pieces out of contexts, so it's hard for them to put together all the pieces and naturally start asking question like; are you going to do this or are you going to do that. Dec 02 12 06:05 am Link For curious and inpatient people here is a sneak peek at few random samples from the DVD and they all are part of the section on Bit Depth. Since I won't post the whole section on Bit Depth that has more than 5 h of footage, I would appreciate if you can try to think of them as individual videos. Thank you. But off course they are meant to be part of a bigger whole and when all of it comes to gather than it really works. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28508998/Jeff/B … .Depth.zip http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28508998/Jeff/T … he.box.zip http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28508998/Jeff/B … le.One.zip http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28508998/Jeff/B … le.Two.zip It's still WIP (Work In Progress). Cheers! Dec 02 12 06:09 am Link Krunoslav-Stifter wrote: Appreciate the testfiles you send me...but are you calling me impatient..?.. Dec 02 12 06:19 am Link richy01 wrote: Krunoslav-Stifter wrote: Appreciate the testfiles you send me...but are you calling me impatient..?.. Video editor? I'm a one man band. I do everything myself. richy01 wrote: I was thinking about it but sharpening is pretty straight forward for most uses, except if you really want to go deep with it. I don't know if I will do so myself. I need to see how much time will I have and what is the demand for it. Dec 02 12 06:36 am Link BeauTouch wrote: Exactly! All these things would be amazing. Print worthy skin retouch, frequency separation in more detail, and someone mentioned mood and color. Dec 02 12 08:32 am Link Megan E Griscom wrote: skin retouch - I covered that in my Dodge and Burn DVD, not sure there is need for me to talk about it again Dec 02 12 08:41 am Link Thanks for sharing those clips. I do think however too much time is spent on the 16bit vs 8bit and the debunking youtube vids or other peoples opinions on what should be used in all cases.... I think you should just show how you see it, make your own case and show it in your workflow (what and when). I'm not saying its not important but i just think you need a faster horse on this part . You make some good points and the theory is interseting, with - 15+1 good to know. The outside the box, now that's what i call magic! . It demontsrated the idea really well at good pace with nice extra tips. Creating a fully editable/re-editable workflow is still a bit tricky for me, hope you will be touching on this. Thanks again for sharing! Oh most of my stock images are in uploaded in argb 8bit .Dec 02 12 10:53 am Link Feverstockphoto wrote: The reason why I start slowly is that based on my experience most users are not capable of following the more advance stuff and for many users 8 bit vs 16 bit is still a conundrum. The only way I can make it happen is if I build it up from ground up slowly. Example by example. Every example is more advance and I have so far six of them plus some other stuff. So that way a beginners can learn and more advance users can skip ahead if the want to. It's not a movie in a theater it's easy to choose the any video you want and go back and forth as you wish. But like I said at the end it will all make sense, these are out of context and that is what I pointed out at the beginning because that was my main concern about people's reactions. Dec 02 12 11:33 am Link Thanks for the reply and i'm sure when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place it will be a great dvd! .Dec 02 12 12:54 pm Link Definitely, definitely, definitely, color grading - It's covered virtually nowhere and it's being used absolutely everywhere. Dec 02 12 01:00 pm Link Feverstockphoto wrote: Thank you for the feedback. John Allan wrote: Oh, boy, I knew this will come up. lol Dec 02 12 01:43 pm Link hi kruno, i found on the web some people who told me your previous dvd is fantastic, so i thought to buy it.. but my first problem is to understand what you say.. ok, i know to learn english is good, but it isn't so simple and i know there are other many people like me so, my suggest is to create subtitles: even if subtitles are in english, i could understand your lessons reading your words. i think it is no so difficult, you should simply write what you are saying, but for someone like me, it would make the difference. other things could be: - what is and when i could use a saturation mask - how can i mask the hair with blends mode - color of the skin rafa  Dec 02 12 01:54 pm Link raffaele montillo wrote: First of all thank you for the support. Dec 02 12 01:58 pm Link Krunoslav-Stifter wrote: yes, it could be but: Dec 02 12 02:34 pm Link raffaele montillo wrote: Well, for your future I would say that learning English is a better option for you because it allows you to read, write and listen to things that are not in Italian. After all, I'm not an English native speaker as well, and if I did not learn English I could never learn what I know now. So even if my DVD would be with subtitles you would miss out on all the other DVD and wonderful content that is still without subtitles and worthy of listening. Let this obstacle be a point in your life where you adapt to the ever-changing world instead if trying to adapt the world to your little corner of it. And I'm saying this with best intention. Dec 02 12 02:43 pm Link Krunoslav-Stifter wrote: So far I've watched youtube videos that were reccomended in this forum..and bits of Natalias dvd. I have followed HFS to the letter many times and I just dont see any difference. The changes are so minimal that it is not worth the effort. Perhaps I'm missing something but I dont how, I have done it so many times from so many diff sources. Ive reached out to retouchers on this forum to ask what their process was and many have told me they dont even use HFS. Dec 02 12 02:57 pm Link Megan E Griscom wrote: I guess what you are saying is that you would like someone to put it all together for you in a nice packet and narrate it. There is an idea for the DVD. Unfortunately it has been covered a lot so I want to do something different and that is what I'm doing now. Dec 02 12 03:09 pm Link Krunoslav-Stifter wrote: kruno, i really know i must improve my english and i really don't want to change the world around me.. Dec 02 12 03:21 pm Link raffaele montillo wrote: Thank you for the suggestion, but I don't think it will be available on this one. Sorry. Dec 02 12 03:23 pm Link In Balance Photography wrote: Check him out for this work http://www.zarihsretouching.com/ Dec 02 12 03:42 pm Link Megan E Griscom wrote: If you have Natalia's dvd, she demonstrates one major advantage the split frequency seperation technique offers in the skin retouching segment. Essentially, healing on the high frequency layer ignores color and luminosity but instead, focuses on texture which is particularly useful when retouching around edges. Were you to use the healing brush on an empty layer or a duplicated layer, it would transfer and blend texture, color and luminosity in one fell swoop. If that isn't a concern, then a split isn't necessary. If you want to work on those elements individually however, then doing a split is advisable. Dec 03 12 03:52 am Link |
