robert christopher wrote:
i think lighting has a lot to do with the final effect. my deeper softboxes give a different look than my octobox. i dont think he is shooting wide open, the depth of field seems too large to me for that. he has a wonderful color palette in each of these that may be where the post work comes to play.

just my guess

Yeah the lighting certainly plays part but my guess - it still wouldn't be anywhere close to the final result. I'd be interested in seeing how that colour palette is achieved

sdgillis wrote:
look at the shadows and see all the flaws in the comps.

Which comps? I'm 100% certain that at least some of those are not comps.

cwwmbm wrote:
Now, where do I take it from here?

Somewhere here?



And this would be grandma.

George Thomson wrote:
1) crop original
2) adjust luminosity by colour
3) adjust saturation by colour
4) colour correct (to get skin tones to target)
5) add some vignette
(and not a single brush stoke or mask, if we don't count the vignette)

suggestions - find green grass to get better contrast

Any chance you could post a bigger sample of the final image? I have a feeling all you did was colour-luminocity adjustments and this is not enough. I can do all of that by powering the strobe more 1 stop or so and then descreasing the saturation.

The final result does look good though, there is no argument here Just not what I'm looking for this time, at least that's what I guess, it's hard to say without seeing the larger example.

Tulack wrote:

I gotta say, I don't understand if you're joking or serious, but on the off chance you are serious - your final results have nothing to do with the examples I posted in the OP

cwwmbm wrote:
Hi there.

Does anyone have an idea of how his photos are retouched, some main bullet points? They have this painterly look to them and I can't for the life of me figure out how it's done.
I think I know the shooting / lighting stuff that goes into it - usually it's a big Octa lighting the subject pretty close to the ambient (not overpowering the sun or anything, but bringing model's face to the same level as ambient) + shot with a wide aperture, but it's not enough, there's certainly some serious retouching that goes into it that I'd like to understand.



That last one they actually underexpose the background but it still shows that painterly look. As far as I know these are not composites, at least not the last one.

Thoughts?

There is one nice plug in from Alien skin called snap art with pretty good results with paint effects .
You have a lot of presets there with great results ( mainly for landscapes and other types of files, I think even for models)  you can use that plug in and later in PS to make opacity on that layer with let's say 10-20% ( depend from your taste) and you can get great results .

Best,
ST

cwwmbm wrote:
Any chance you could post a bigger sample of the final image? I have a feeling all you did was colour-luminocity adjustments and this is not enough. I can do all of that by powering the strobe more 1 stop or so and then descreasing the saturation.

The final result does look good though, there is no argument here Just not what I'm looking for this time, at least that's what I guess, it's hard to say without seeing the larger example.

of course this is not a full retouch, just something that will get you "closer"
strobe +1 is a good idea, as long as you don't burn anything
maybe smaller size t-shirt, shades
and making those corrections should be in 16bit, or you'll suffer



if you are after the same look, also notice the horizon and the camera height, angle, etc

ps. yes, all I did was colour-luminosity adjustments

Peano wrote:
A few ideas you might play around with ...
- Another B/W layer to tint the grass (if you want it green)

Can you please expand on how you would use a B/W layer to tint the grass green?

As an alternative method, I merely selected the grass and used the Green and Blue channels in RGB. However, I am interested in how your achieved your green grass using a B/W layer. It's always good to know alternative methods.

Stecyk wrote:
Can you please expand on how you would use a B/W layer to tint the grass green?

Tick the "tint" box, experiment with the greens in the color picker, lighten or darken using the yellow slider.

EDIT: You could do the same with a hue/sat adjustment layer and tick the "colorize" box.

Peano wrote:

Tick the "tint" box, experiment with the greens in the color picker, lighten or darken using the yellow slider.

EDIT: You could do the same with a hue/sat adjustment layer and tick the "colorize" box.

Thank you!

cwwmbm wrote:
To make this more specific - I have a photoshoot coming up this Sunday and I'd like to get that look in the end.
I did a lighting test shoot last weekend and this is what I came up with:

Image is straight out of the camera with a bit of adjustments in the ACR such as exposure, fill light and colour temperature.

Now, where do I take it from here? Did I get the lighting right? I think I did, to a point. I don't have a deep octa, I used soft silver PLM instead. I think I should wrap it in softening fabric to make the lighting softer, but I'd say it's fairly close. Maybe I should allow the ambient to be a bit brighter (it was 5PM at that time) too. What else? How to go about retouching it to introduce that painterly feel, if that's even possible on that image? And if not, what did I get wrong?

RONALD NZ TAN wrote:
Place it close to the model such that when you have the composition and framing right, your light or the lights stands don't show up in the frame.

Why not let them show in frame if the lighting works, then remove them later?

de0rbit wrote:
I would consider including a softbox in the shot, closer to the model, and shooting a clean plate (tripod) to retouch it out.

de0rbit wrote:

Why not let them show in frame if the lighting works, then remove them later?

RONALD NZ TAN wrote:
Why remove them later in post when you could physically take care of it right then and there?!?!

What if keeping the lighting out of frame results in inferior lighting?!?!

?!?!

cwwmbm wrote:
I'm asking how to achieve the painterly effect these images have to them. Can we all ditch the third image and concentrate on the first two?

You posted a shot of a guy standing outside in a field. You want that shot to look like he's sitting inside a church with diffuse lighting through stained glass?

Lotsa luck, Charley.

Peano wrote:

You posted a shot of a guy standing outside in a field. You want that shot to look like he's sitting inside a church with diffuse lighting through stained glass?

Lotsa luck, Charley.

How about old woman in the field?

cwwmbm wrote:
How about old woman in the field?

I think you're attributing too much of the painterly feel to color. It's simple enough to mimic the color. But the feel of the target image comes much more from the clothes blowing on the line, the clouds, and the shadows. Those all convey the sense of a breeze blowing on a sunny day. Your image lacks all of those elements.

You can add clouds and a shadow, but it still won't have that breezy spring feel to it.