Black and white portraiture in Affinity Photo with Ivan Weiss

[Music] hi my name is ivan weiss i'm a portrait and headshot photographer based in kings cross in london uk welcome to another affinity creative session if you haven't already please check out the earlier session that i made on color grading for dramatic portraiture there should be a link to that somewhere down below or on the right of the screen and of course subscribe to the affinity channel for a ton of great content from other photographers retouchers graphic artists and designers if you'd like to see some more of my work you can find me on instagram ivanwes.london or on my website ivan wease.london today we're going to look at black and white portraiture if you're watching this live i'm available in the chat to answer any questions so please ask me anything if you're watching the replay then please let me know what you think in the comments below so let's jump in and have a look at black and white portraits pretty much every photographer i know likes working in black and white at least occasionally it offers us a chance to really focus the attention of the viewer on one particular aspect of the image as you can see from this image that i've got here i'm a big fan of the very contrasty look i like my black and white to be black and white rather than gray and gray and before we start i'm just going to show you a bit of the metadata and talk about how this was shot so the person in the image is ellen ellen peter's daughter who's an actor she came in maybe a year ago and we created some images for her portfolio usually i advise people if they're shooting black and white to decide that ahead of time and have that in mind while they're creating the images because i think it helps to focus the uh the intent of what you're doing for the final product that said in this particular case we were actually shooting for color images and um the black and white just kind of happened after the fact you can see from these shots these other final shots that i'm showing now i had ellen sitting in the corner of the studio and i was using the fact that there's a side wall and a back wall to create a bit of depth um using the difference in tonality of the two walls to have a bit of compositional interest um but then this shot when i was reviewing the the whole shoot later on this shot jumped out and i felt that it would benefit from being simplified if we zoom in here we can have a look at the lighting so i'm going to show you the catch lights in the eyes you can see that i have a beauty dish it's a 70 centimeter white beauty dish from elinchrom as our key light that's giving us the main shape to the image and on the right we've got a one foot by three foot flex panel from westcott providing fill if i zoom out just a little bit we can see that there's also a little bit of light kicking back off the wall just here and providing a touch more fill and stopping those shadows from going too dense before we jump over to see the original image um let's also just look at the metadata so this was shot on the canon eos r with the 50 millimeter 1.2 lens it's the old version the ef version shot at 1 160th of a second f 3.2 iso 200. let's go over to see our original image as you can see it's quite flat i tend to shoot with a flat profile and do my raw conversion in such a way that i've got a bit of room to maneuver in my post-production so the blacks are not all the way black the whites are not all the way white um it's quite flattened out contrast wise the colors are not too saturated either so again i've got uh some scope for maneuvering things if if i want to during post-production um this was converted from the raw file using i believe the technicolor flat profile that's designed for use for video but video producers very often do a lot of color grading um and so i find that's very useful for the style of photography that i do as well now when we look at this image as it is it all looks pretty good i mean it's fairly well balanced i've already cropped it to my preferred 4x5 crop and i don't see any major problems however because i'm going for black and white i want to decide where i'm going to direct the viewers attention and what therefore is distracting from that and needs to be removed because i'm going to be using a lot of contrast i'm anticipating needing to do a bit of skin retouching because the contrast will amplify any differences in skin texture and any uneven tonality in the skin and also this background with the the two bits of the wall joining here in the corner is probably going to be distracting so i'm going to take care of that as well the first thing i'm going to do is to give myself a new layer and i'm going to get the in painting brush tool and i'm going to start looking for anything that needs to just be removed so let's have a look we've got over here tiny little bit of hair that's catching the light there um i'm doing this on the new layer i'm gonna pan around here there's a couple of bits of hair that are just catching the light and not really to my liking i'm fine with hair being a bit messy that's what hair does uh but if it's a little more distracting then i will take it away so for example this hair over here i find that to be not to my liking so that gets zapped around the top here maybe these ones can go there we go and then around to the side again we've got a few bits here that are just unnecessarily sticking out so they get taken care of and then let's come further down these ones here are fine i think nothing to worry about there and then let's zoom out a little more yeah that all looks fine to me so i'm just gonna save my image because i've made some changes and that's good and then over here i'm going to merge visible and i'm gonna start working to increase contrast um before i get to crushing all those blacks down i like to make sure i've got a way to retain some of the detail in there and a great way that i i do that that i really like is to use the tone mapping persona um this is something that is very easy to overdo it's a question of taste of course if you like it really really strong a really strong effect then by all means go for that i'm going to overdo it and then scale it back and blend it in a little more gently so we'll just wait for that to load um and while that's doing that i'll say that that's actually a technique that i use fairly often and you'll see throughout this little video that i overdo things and then use the blending options to just pull them back to where they're having the amount of effect that i want but not being too strong so you can see that when the tone mapping persona opens up um it's got this very exaggerated look to it i'm going to go in here and tone compression 12 and on the uh local contrast which is the bit i'm most interested in i'm going to go to 55 and you can see that looks awful it's made the skin look really crunchy and dirty but that's actually what i want for now because this is on its own layer and because it's on its own layer it means that i can blend it in as i wish so the first thing i'm going to do is knock that down to about 70 opacity and then i'm going to open the blend options now all i'm interested in here is getting that local contrast in the shadows which in this image is basically the shirt and a little bit of the shadows around the sides edges of the face so i'm gonna first of all take my highlight slider and bring that all the way down to zero i don't want anything in the highlights i'm going to uncheck linear and then i'm going to get a point somewhere here and drag that across like this and then a point somewhere here just to make that smooth that transition so now if i turn that off and then back on you'll see it's affecting the shirt and really not much else which is exactly as i want it to be now let's see if we can deal with this background one way to do it would be to select the subject and then just drop in a completely white background which could be good but i'm quite interested in maintaining this little bit of uh fall off into shadow that we've got lower down in the image that feels natural to me with the pattern of the light so i kind of want to retain that and because of the position of the subject this problem of the um the joining of the walls only really exists at the top of the image so i'm going to get my flood select tool and see how much of this i can grab let's see what that does it's just gonna have a little think and i'm gonna tell it add and i'm gonna try and isolate the subject from the background using this so we'll just have a couple of goes there that's good and then come down here and get the bits at the bottom we're getting there this is a pretty good selection tool i like this it usually gives me a a really a really good um selection at the first pass so we've got our selection now i'm going to click refine and we're just going to make sure that it's treating the edges of the hair appropriately so i leave all of the um default values set and the adjustment brush is for matte i'm just going to make that brush a little bigger and go around the edges to make sure it's doing that the way that i want then go over the hair which is probably the most problematic part come down here and get into that bit where the hair is a little more transparent and then just finish that off by coming down here and let affinity do the hard work of making that selection there we go i'm now going to apply and using that selection i'm going to open a levels adjustment and i want that to be on its own so i'm going to release it so it sits up the top and this levels adjustment is only going to affect the selected portions so if i were to drag the black level all the way up for example you see it's only affecting the selected portion oh that looks kind of interesting um as we've got that we don't need to have our marching ants so i'm going to get rid of them and in order to flatten out that background the first thing i'm going to do is drag the gamma all the way over to zero and you can see that gives us this whited out uh background which is a bit too white for what i want so i'm going to drag the white level down to somewhere like let's have a look 70 73 looks kind of good if i switch that off and then on again that's looking about right now the thing is i don't really want it to be affecting the lower part of the image so i'm going to add a mask and in the mask i'm going to get my gradient tool and i'm going to tell it to apply the mask fully at the top not at the bottom i'm going to open this little dialog here and say that the end of that gradient line should be where the effect is zero so hsl sliders and drag that all the way across to black that looks pretty good to me now if i switch that off and then back on again you can see it's made the top of the image a little lighter which is good the bottom of the image stays kind of where it is i quite like it um i'm maybe gonna maybe gonna adjust that down just a little bit in opacity to something like 70 70 let's say 80. that's about right and then i'm going to just go in don't need to do that and merge visible so that i've got a new layer to work on because next thing we're going to do is go in and clean up some of the skin so save that and we're all good to go now the reason i'm going to go in and do some skin work is because we're going to have a very contrasty image let's just jump over and remind ourselves of what the final one looks like okay so if we were not to do any skin work some of the elements in the skin the freckles the shadow under the eye would probably feel too strong and be a bit distracting so we're going to tone those down somewhat and if i just zoom in a little here i'm going to open the frequency separation filter and this is great i love this in affinity um it gives me this preview screen which allows me to see what what amount of um separation i want ie what radius to set in the frequency separation dialogue so for example currently it's at 2 pixels which is the default if i'm looking to deal with just this bit of shadow here at 2 pixels it doesn't exist at all on the high frequency layer but i've still got the skin texture i still want to retain the skin texture if i go to a larger radius let's say drag this across to something like i know eight maybe 9 something like that and then look again at what's going on here we can see there's less of the shadow on the low frequency layer because some of it now exists on the high frequency layer now it's going to depend on the kind of work you're doing and the kind of look that you want if you're doing beauty work maybe you'll go for several rounds of frequency separation so that you can use a pixel value that's really specifically targeted at the issue that you want to correct for because i'm not going for something so sort of glossy and perfect looking i tend to find a compromise that works for all or at least most of the issues and and do everything in one round of frequency separation so in this image i'm thinking if i go for something like uh let's see five is probably going to be a nice uh sort of halfway point so we've still got a little bit of the shadow remaining on the high frequency layer but the majority of it is on the low frequency layer where i want it so i'm going to commit to that and that gives us a low frequency layer and a high frequency layer in between the two i'm gonna open a new empty layer and i'm gonna hit save and then i'm going to open a layer that's going to help me to see what i'm doing so in my adjustments panel i'm going to go to black and white i'm gonna click on that and i'm gonna go for this which i've called retouch reveal and essentially what this is as you can see from the sliders is an exaggerated black and white it makes the reds really very dark most of the problems that we're looking to correct for when we're retouching skin are going to exist in the reds so this just helps me to see them more clearly we're not going to actually leave that effect switched on in the final version we'll come back to our layers so that can sit at the top there we'll go to our empty layer i'm again going to get my in painting brush make sure it's set to current and below and we're going to zoom in and just look for where those problems are the deepest so for example around here these laugh lines by going over with the in painting brush i'm going to soften them somewhat they're not going to go away completely i don't want them to go away completely i don't want to make it look like there's no uh laugh line there and just want to make sure that when i add the contrast later on i don't get too deep a shadow in that line which will become a bit distracting so i'm going to do those little details there excuse me and this little detail here there's a few bits in the pores of the skin that are perhaps a little deep here on the chin as well where there's some more folds in the skin some wrinkles let's just get rid of those or rather tone them down we're not we're not getting rid of them that's all good now um of course ellen's got freckles in her skin so i want to make sure i'm not um removing any freckles i don't want to do that i just want to deal with the uh slightly deeper pause eyelids and in here and then on the camera left eye same thing so i'm just going to come into these bits that are deepest so that they get softened up just a little bit not too much there we go that's good then let's come up to the forehead i think there's a little bit here that's probably a little a little deeper than i would like so that's gone let's zoom out a little bit perhaps over here we can just soften that one as well and then let's come back something like this yeah this is good this is good i'm going to save so the next thing i'm going to do is add another empty layer oops i've added two i just need the one and i'm going to get my healing brush tool make sure that's set to current layer and below flow 10 opacity 100 hardness 0 and we're going to deal with this shadow under the eye so i'm going to select from somewhere here and i'm just going to paint that in like so lovely and then we're going to do the same on the other side that's good i'm just going to come in a little more detailed and just clean up a bit there and a bit there that looks good now that effect is probably too strong for me so i'm just going to back off the opacity somewhat to maybe i don't know 50 55 something like that let's switch it off and see that's just soften that up nicely i'm now gonna get another layer and let's zoom in a little and just use the same technique to deal with a few other areas where there's perhaps more shadow than i would like let's see here just a tiny bit so that when we add all that contrast in a short while it's not quite as strong that's good there and perhaps a little bit there and then perhaps even some more down here on the chin and you can see it's just taking a little bit out not too much i don't want it to feel unnatural and too polished and i'm gonna add a third layer for this this brush and just come up here and do the same thing with these deeper shadows in the neck i don't want to remove this completely neck wrinkles are normal we all have them oops that doesn't look so good there let's soften that out and soften that out and then probably just bring the opacity of that layer also down to something like 50 percent so it's still there let's zoom out and we can see if i select all of those layers and turn them off and then on again it's just tightening up the image the way i want it to be so next i'm gonna enhance a bit of the contrast and start drawing the viewer's attention into the eyes and the tops of the cheeks where i want them to be we're going to use some dodging and burning to do that and the way i like to do dodge and burn is to use a curves layer and i'm gonna have two of them so i'll just duplicate that and in my dodge layer i'm going to set my curve to the blend mode screen and then in my burn layer i'm going to set it to blend mode multiply then i'm going to invert and invert so effectively what we've done is with the screen layer it it's going to add that effect but we're inverting it so we can brush it in and in the burn layer same thing it's going to add that effect but we're going to brush it in just where we want it so let's go in and we'll call up a brush and the brush is going to be set to opacity 100 flow one percent hardness zero and it's a white brush i'm gonna make that somewhat larger maybe a little less than that and i'm gonna start just going in to where the highlights already exist in the face and just enhancing them somewhat let's zoom in a touch more so lower lip highlight and now on the upper lip a bit of a highlight bring that in like this bring this in like so so i'm just enhancing what's already there and we don't really need to be very precise here at all um again the technique is i'm going to draw this in it's going to look kind of comical like a caricature and then i'm going to back it off a lot but being able to see it so well while we're drawing it in is really really useful i find so then we come in here there isn't a highlight here but i'm just going to use this as another way to soften a little bit that shadow that's there and then amplify a bit the um the highlight that's on the cheek and again something like this we can always use it as well to enhance a little bit of the furrowing of a brow which is nice i like that adds to the expression enhances the expression a little so we'll put a bit more highlight at the top there just get that in there that's good and then some highlight just under the end of the brow as well while we're here will probably just help this little bit of highlight in the hair somewhat as well that's good now obviously there's a highlight on the forehead created by the light pattern it's fine already for me i don't need to amplify that i don't want to do anything additional there so we're going to now go to our burn layer and just burn in a little darker in the parting in the hair that's good and then we're going to come down and essentially do the opposite of what we just did with the dodge so where we've got the highlight above the eyebrow and below the eyebrow we're then going to put some shadow into the eyebrow itself so there we go same thing on this side a little more and then just amplifying that highlight by putting a shadow next to it so we create a bit more contrast a bit more pop corners of the eyes it's nice to always get a bit of shadow in there then let's zoom out a little bit and see that's starting to look good obviously as i said it's a very exaggerated effect at the moment but we'll see how that works so i just put a little shadow around there probably don't need much on this side of the cheek because the the shape of the light already is doing that for us and i don't want to overdo it in an extreme way but we can just shape the face a little more to make the middle of that face pop there we go and then again just as a way to enhance the um the highlights that we've put on the lip i'm going to come in and put some shadow in here in between and to make that lower lip protrude a touch more we'll put some shadow underneath it okay let me zoom out that's looking crazy and comical right maybe just a touch more on this side and just soften that up lovely okay it looks it looks like a very um pronounced effect first thing i'm gonna do is soften that up by calling up the blur um filter and i'm gonna put that at something like 30 pixels and i'm gonna blur my highlights apply and away we go then i'm gonna go to my curve for burn and again i'm gonna blur that at about 30 so they're softened up and now i'm going to duplicate that layer so i've got two lots of burn going on and i'm going to blur that second layer at a larger radius so something like i know 80 somewhere around there 79.5 80 apply that's looking good and then i'm going to select all three of those and i'm going to put the opacity at about 15 let's say if i switch those off and then back on you can see that's just drawing our attention into her expression just that little bit more when i do this in color work usually i'm working with the opacity around 10 but i find that with black and white you've got a bit more license to really amp that up so 15 maybe even 20 use your judgment and you'll see what it looks like once you once you get towards finalizing your shot so this black and white layer that we had before that was there just to help us we don't need that anymore so we can delete and what we're going to do now is go into our adjustments panel and we're going to get some curves we don't need that just yet and we're going to open two curves we're going to open one and when we're going to duplicate that and the second one we're going to set it to this okay so let me just explain to you what we're doing there our first curves adjustment this is restricting our range you can see that the highlights are pulled down and the blacks are pulled up and then there's an s curve a fairly gentle s-curve so we're just increasing the contrast in the mid-tones and flattening out the image in terms of its overall range if i switch it off it goes from there to there then with the second curve i'm not limiting the the range i'm putting in a bigger s curve so i'm really uh really amping up the contrast and when i put that on it looks like that this is kind of crazy at the moment but what i'm going to do in between the two is i'm going to add an adjustment um and it's going to be hsl hue saturation lightness and it's this one here and in this layer what i've got is each of the colors are pulled down to minus 100 saturation but you'll see that the luminosity shift is different for each one and that's just to fine tune it the way i like it for my images and it makes the skin pop the way that i like it too so we've got that first curved layer then the black and white adjustment and then another curves layer to really bring up the contrast that's looking pretty good i have to say perhaps we could go perhaps we could go even more on the contrast so i'm going to go underneath those ones that i've just added i've got this brightness and contrast adjustment and i'm going to pull up the slider even more on the contrast and see what that does for me something like that but it's now looking a little too hot so i'm just going to knock down the brightness a touch something like that so if i select all of those and switch them off this was our color image cleaned up and now we've got this and that's looking pretty damn good to me so i'm going to save it we're nearly done um it's just about the finishing touches now so um let's have a look at what we can do to see if there's anything else that we need and you can see i'm just switching flipping the image back and forth to see if there's anything that catches my eye that needs dealing with i'm liking it as it is i'm gonna flip it upside down looks pretty good okay so having a look at the histogram there's a little bit of space down the bottom and a little bit of space at the top so i'm going to get a levels um layer or adjustment and just drag my white point in to somewhere i don't want it to be pure white something like 95 96 maybe that's good and i'm gonna bring my black level up again i don't want it to be pure black but something like four percent so that's just again giving me a bit more contrast which i like then i'm going to bring in some film grain i like film grain this layer here is something that i got from i can't even remember where i got it from now um a resource on the internet and i'm going to drag that over i'm going to set my grain to overlay mode and i'm going to tell it to rasterize and trim so that it shrinks down to be the same size of my image and the reason i used it as a much larger size is because that makes the grain bigger and i quite like um the the grain to be big in a black and white image it feels somehow more authentic to me that's looking almost finished one last thing that i can do before i finalize i'm just going to have a look at what this looks like on different backgrounds so i'm going to go to user interface and i'm going to drag the slider up to the top here and see this is what it looks like on a white background you see that my image is not pure white it's just a bit under which is where i like it i'm going to pull it down to a black background and again the blacks are not pure black um which is where i like it so it's looking good i like it so we'll go back to having the mid gray which i find the most comfortable for for viewing the image and perhaps one last thing i'm going to add a layer so let's come into layer and we're going to add a new fill layer and we're going to set that to black and we're going to tell that to rasterize and trim so we've now got a plain black layer i'm going to get a selection tool let's get the rectangular marquee tool and i'm going to have it feather at something like 2 pixels that's good and i'm going to go in here and just pull that across something like that and then hit delete and voila we have a frame and there you go we've got a finished image looking pretty good thanks for joining you

Channel: Affinity

Views: 18,301

Keywords: Editing a portrait, portrait retouching, conversion to black and white, black and white portraiture, photo editing, portrait photographer tips, photo editing tips, portrait photography, using Affinity Photo to edit portrait, Affinity Photo

Id: xUIHuWAMgwc

Length: 51min 31sec (3091 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020