Blackula Photography wrote:
can you explain a little about what you do with the gradient map  and channel mixer, I tought myself photoshop and have'nt been able to find a solid use for these 2 tools in my editing

GRADIENT MAP:

yup thats an effect i have used a lot - i call it an effect because its independant of the fine tuning of color correction.

- assuming you have a basic understanding of effect layers -

- i make an effect layer with gradient map.
- it pops up the gradient options - click on the gradient bar
- select the black to white gradient preset
- add a point in the middle of the gradient bar
- open up the color selector for that point
- select a hue of "30" and put the selector a bit above middle center
- close everything and set the layer to 30% opacity, or more if you like, and then open up the gradient map again and play with it - play around.

how i came up with the hue of 30?

- it seems to be a useful color for muting the blue sky since its the opposite of blue roughly
- it lessens the contrast of problematic skin tones and distracting tones in a nice image
- its a good tone for skin in general
- it has that sepia quality just a bit warmer to serve as a suble color correction as well as the "effect" it serves

I would be glad to talk about other techniques as well as to make a video tut on this and other things if it means getting hugs and kisses from all of you. I wanna help so dont be afraid to ask me anything.

CHANNEL MIXER:

I use this one sometimes to darken the reds in an image by mixing in more green. the way i do this is by setting the channel mixer as an effect layer, and checking the monochrome (or greyscale i cant remember - same thing tho) box. then you can slide the red green and blue around and it will affect the bright and dark of various aspects of the image. try it with all green with all red, with half red, half green; i never like using the blue i set it to zero because its mostly spectral highs i think.

then you can leave your image as black n white, or do what i do and SET THE LAYER STYLE TO LUMINOSITY and play with the opacity of the effect layer - this way, you can have the advantages that BW pics have with filtering, but the luminosity is applied to your color info. if you make everything a little on the teal/cyan side of things, it might look a bit like an infra-red image

Mike in Maryland wrote:
How did I do?

Original (out of Lightroom) on the left, Post "Mojonation" on the right...

wow great image - location, model, pose, to name a few. - thanks for sharing a before and after! i love what you did.

Mojokiss wrote:

wow great image - location, model, pose, to name a few. - thanks for sharing a before and after! i love what you did.

Thanks!!

Mojokiss wrote:
SURFACE BLUR / ADD NOISE:

to elaborate on one element of skin editing, the blur i use is surface blur. a friend of mine showed me this trick - and i tweaked it to suit me - but basically once you have your skin corrected with patching, spot tools, etc and some light correction using paint brush set at 30 percent with a lighter adjacent color (ask me about this and i'll elaborate) then you can use the surface blur, and then add noise on top of that same layer.

you duplicate the basic image, or cut and paste any part of it that you want to use the effect on, into a new layer. you apply surface blue (settings are like 4 to 10 pixels and thresh of about 30) and then you apply it and then go to add noise and play with it - add some subtle noise, and then go to that same layer, mask the entire thing so it doesnt show up, and then paint in the areas you want to REVEAL!!!

asking about the adjacent color thingie ....
*offers cookies

normad wrote:
asking about the adjacent color thingie ....
*offers cookies

sure -

AIRBRUSHING:

- - - select paint brush
- - - color pick a place on the skin that is just a shade lighter than the area you want to smooth over or correct
- - - set opacity of brush to 30 (or less)
- - - sparingly and very carefully paint the troubled areas while using you keyboard to resize brush on the fly

Mojokiss wrote:
(added later - when doing the blur/add noise, you gotta mask/reveal that layer once effected)

INTRO:

Finally im going to sit here and try to make a tutorial on my methods - - - well it looks like NOTHING is working now - PS wont open, my mic wont work, etc. - - - so ill just make this an informative introduction - and informal informative intro and take it from there - - - people wanna know a few things about my techniques in my post production.

MY WORK FLOW:

1. from camera to my computer - some folder on my new hard drive - takes a few minutes
2. drag and drop into lightroom, name it, tag it
3. color correct best i can in light room
4. from lightroom, open an image in photoshop in 16bit adobe rgb mode
5. the real craziness starts - duplicate all or part of the image into a new layer
6. fix this new layer using patch tool, spot healing, clone, as needed
7. duplicate and edit further using paint brush set around 30 percent, sampling nearby colors usually lighter than the area being corrected for shadow or contour problems
8. duplicate and apply smooting and add noise (see post below) to make it all fit into the rest of the untouched image
9. merge newest layers to a completed image, duplicating as needed to preserve edit points/save points
10. use liquify
11. gradient map layer effect (see post below) with hue value of 30 added in middle of greyscale gradient and opacity 30%
12. color ballance - as needed
13. channell mixer if needed - various techniques
14. save, crop and resize to print or web size
15. unsharp mask set to 50% and 0.8 to 1 pixel
16. shadow highlight for extreme dark areas (can be used sooner)
17. use smooth/add noize technique to obscure noise or low quality areas of shadows if desired
18. flatten and save as .png
19. convert to 8bit and save as .png and jpg for web

I'll try and make a video of all this with narration and before and after examples. you might be amazed.

any questions? lets get started! theres a lot to cover - dont be shy at least say hey - - -

thats a lot of work, thank you for sharing

Mojokiss wrote:
little pic i shot tonight

This pic is awesome!!! How do I get the tutorial?

Mojokiss wrote:
NEWS - got an hour tutorial on post production of this image:



i'm working on an actual lighting tutorial now - but the post work tutorial should be available in segments tonight/tomorrow morning

email me either here or join up at mojokiss.com either way

I would love to see the lighting stuffs...