Digital Masterclass - Postproduction

[Music] hi my name is joanna kustra welcome to my second part of digital master class i hope you were with me during my first part where i showed you my photo protection in southern spain if you still haven't seen it go to my youtube channel you'll find it there let me tell you briefly what can you expect out of this video at the very beginning i'm going to show you how do i make selection so that the fashion editorial is coherent interesting and dynamic you won't be able to retouch all the setups together so i prepared few psd with retouched photos so i will explain each layer step by step later on i will show you how do i make a custom color profile thanks to color checker passport so that my page photo has natural and real colors and i will also explain why is it important and why is it helpful of course these curls will be edited i will do some unrealistic color grading however so that the final effect is consistent with one of the color harmonies i will also tell you a bit about my equipment which i use for editing and we will also do a calibration at the very end i will show you my editing workflow i will retouch one of the photos from the very beginning until the very end so make yourself comfortable and enjoy [Music] let me share a few tips and thoughts on the selection process how to build an interesting fashion story as you can see i narrowed my pictures down to a few pictures per each outfit usually in the fashion tutorial there is only one picture per outfit selected it's going to be published only one picture so i need to make up my mind which are the most interesting and which are actually going to build me an interesting fashion story so first of all i need to look at my poses for instance this picture this pose is really interesting for me it's very original it's very editorial-ish and i'm definitely not going to use the same pose in the same editorial because it's too characteristic and it's too similar so i need to make up my mind and pick only one of these in the same editorial when it comes to full body like that let's say and they are similar of course but they are not identical so i might use both of them however not together so not as a pair because obviously when you look at the magazine you've got two pages and two pictures you're browsing to pictures side by side so what do i do let's say i'm picking this whole outfit so i need to pair it with something dynamic so let's say portrait like this or a totally different pose like that the next thing i need to take into consideration is color so what kind of colors i've got this intensive pink dress i need to pair with something neutral so something let's say that one yeah that picture could work and definitely not something as intensive as this red dress or that also i don't think it could work because the yellow dress is very intensive um in saturation and also pink dress so again while pairing this pink dress i need to look for something i don't know maybe something like that or as i said one of these one of these pictures out of the white outfit these tips actually can apply to any type of platform you're showcasing your work so whether it's instagram or your website you need to make sure the poses are different the crops are different and the composition is different also when you do your exhibition even if the pictures are from different sessions different styles they still need to kind of like work together so you don't have similar poses or similar crops or whatever yeah hopefully these tips will help you to build more dynamic stories now i will tell you briefly about my editing equipment as it seems to me this is quite an important topic when it comes down to the retouching process my main monitor is benq sw 321c it has 32 inches 4k resolution and has a very accurate color reproduction which is extremely important to me because colors play a huge role in my editing style the monitor is quite big what means it's convenient for editing it allows me to fit whatever i need on the screen windows panels and sliders while still leaving plenty of workspace for the photo itself thanks to 4k resolution and high pixel density you can see a lot of details it has really great image quality is smooth tunnel transitions this feature actually saves time because there is no need to zoom in and out so often while editing and what i mentioned earlier for me the most important advantage of this monitor is the coverage of adobe rgb color space in 99 which basically means that i can see a very large spectrum of colors and it gives me the opportunity to control all hues and all the tonal transitions and these all small nuances which obviously adds up when it comes to the quality of the final images regardless of the monitor you have calibration is a must for that i use this little device called colorimeter it was previously known as x-rite i1 display pro while now the company has rebranded and you can find it as calibrate so when you buy a new decent monitor it is theoretically factory calibrated so that means that colors are reproduced correctly however when using the screen it heats up these pictures work and stretch and over the time colors begin to be distorted the screen may give you a blue tint yellow or any other color that comes to your mind imagine now that your screen your monitor is way too blue and you're editing a portrait taken at sunset and you want the colors to be warm and reflect the atmosphere and warmth of the scene so what do you do you order you add a lot of orange to correct it as a result your eyes will perceive this image correctly but on a calibrated monitor this will be way too warm also remember that monitor manufacturers push saturation brightness and contrast to make the screen look more impressive however it has absolutely nothing to do with being correct or being close to reality even when working with cheap equipment it is worth performing calibration and although we will not extend the gamut of our monitor but at least we will be closer to the correct one [Music] a few words about calibration i tried to calibrate my monitor on a regular basis every month or two i usually do it before the photoshoot or before the editing itself if it's some kind of important assignment where color accuracy is crucial for calibration i used this little colorimeter which was previously known as x-rite i won the stick pro and currently is called calibrate the calibrator works with thank you software which is called palette master now i will show you the calibration process i open my software for calibration and here obviously there is my monitor calibration device is still an old one i want display pro from x right however after updating the software they will probably add calibrate i press advanced and start profiling and next as for the settings you always should verify what is the best for your software version here i keep white point at d65 rgb primaries i press panel native in terms of luminance i can set here anything from 80 to 120 the number here depends on the brightness of your working environment and when the photos are intended for the internet the amount should be higher gamma 2.2 and black point here 0.3 for the best tone coverage and i press next calibration preset 1 i keep the name profile version 404 profile type matrix and patch set size medium and i start measurement now you can open your colorimeter device make sure that you tilt your screen so that the colorimeter fits to the monitor surface and i press continue okay here we go and continue now i can make myself a coffee here we go our calibrations complete now we'll validate our calibration which will check the results as you can see the calibration went perfect and now we only press finish if you do not have monitor with a calibration software provided or you would like to calibrate your laptop then you can use the colorimeter software in this case it will be program called calibre profiler all the settings will be very similar the only difference is that the calibration is done in this case on the graphics card not in the monitor itself however keep in mind that if your monitor's manufacturer provides a calibration software always use the monitor one [Music] let's talk about color trigger passport photo 2. you probably noticed that i photographed it during my previous photo shoot when i was satisfied with the light i gave it to my model and i made sure i've got a photo at each lighting setup i still have an old version from xrite however it is exactly the same in terms of functionality with the currently offered model from calibrate so what is this and why do i use it thanks to the fact that i photographed it in each set regardless of the conditions i will be sure that my output colors are accurate and true to reality and of course if you photograph any products or like me fashion this is an indispensable tool to be sure that the colors are correct also when you've got two different cameras this color checker helps you to bring down the colors to the same base to the same level also it will help you to get rid of any color bias because each camera has some tint even if i photograph a fashion editorial where these colors do not necessarily have to be real i always try to use color checker and color profiling because this is easier and faster for me to color grade a bunch of photos while having the same starting point also if you have presets and you should in different lighting conditions it will save you time and help you to make the whole session more coherent now i want to show you how to create a custom color profile first of all i need to open my raw file with color chocolate passport whether it's going to be camera raw lightroom or capture one it doesn't matter because the idea is the same i need to convert it into dng file here we go save as dng on my desktop and i'm going to open a software dedicated for this color checker now i'm going to drag my newly created dng file here we go to this tiny square and it's going to load an image and try to find these tiny color squares let's see how it's how it does here we go it detected my squares my colorful squares i can drag it just to make sure it's exactly where it's supposed to be and i'm going to create a profile i'm going to name name it as d850 pingdress save it's going to save my camera profile i'll need to reset my camera row and reopen my picture again in camera here we go now i'm going to find and look my newly created profile in here however it won't be right away here because these are only highlighted these are only favorite profiles which i use often so i need to go here browse profiles here we go d850 pink dress i'm going to highlight it and go back to the menu here we go this is my adobe color default and this one is my newly created profile again as you can see the difference is huge let me show you side by side so basically what i gain by using this color checker passport is intensivity look at the blues pinks well basically they're more saturated and they look much much nicer and more natural and what else i can do in while having this color checker passport i can do my white balance usually i'm using that square this is well making sure that my white balance is correct however these two rows are also dedicated for the white balance this is for the portrait neutral while this is for the landscape it works like this that if i would like to warm up my portrait i can just basically click click here and it warms it up this is neutral again this one in the middle with this tiny half of the circle is neutral but this is dedicated for landscapes when i press on minus it's going to cool down my picture and when i'm going to click here it's going to warm up my landscape so that would be it as you can see the difference is absolutely immense [Music] the last thing i want to mention in this section is my working environment especially the light i use a led lamp from benq called screen bar plus this little lid panel especially designed for monitors and it fits on top of the screen it has adjustable power and color temperature i can set the color to 5000 kelvin which is a recommended temperature for editing the screen bar has also a built-in light sensor which can auto adjust the power and color to the working environment it also eliminates reflective glare of the screen and the manufacturer ensures that it reduces harmful blue light emitted by monitor which theoretically reduces the eye fatigue for me the most important thing is that they work in constant and unchanging lighting conditions so regardless of the time of the day definitely that translates into consistency of colors and contrast during my editing remember that the environment you work in and reduce your photos is very important for the perceptions of colors and contrast so preferably the light temperature should be constant the surface behind the monitor should have a neutral color the best would be 50 percent gray [Music] now i would like to walk you through my psd files and all layers tell you what exactly i did and how so let's take a look at my first picture this is a raw file this is camera raw and let me just reset the default this is the original file so this is picture straight from the camera these are the things i did i applied in camera so first of all i created a blue dress custom color profile so let me show you the difference also i recuperated my highlights so they're not overexposed i slightly slightly push the exposure and basically that's it so i open this picture let me do done so this is a final file retouched one but let me show you again before and after okay and now we're going to go step by step i'm going to show you what did i do okay so this is the retouch group okay let's pick inside first of all i straighten the image because it was off slightly and then as you can see i borrowed a bit of information from totally different picture and i just extended it on the right hand side i usually crop my pictures usually 8 by 10 so i needed this information on the right hand side okay what's next this is just cleaning the floor and then i've got frequency separation let me just pick inside what's what's in there so it seems a bit of overwhelming but it's actually not there are actually only a few things which i did here first of all these two layers low low are exactly the same it's just a copy just in case i did some mistake and i just wanted to go back so in terms of a low working layer which is um which is basically taking care of the colors i did not a lot as you can see slightly on the face and on the windows then i created dodge and burn 50 gray layer and i did a lot i usually prefer to retouch on dodge and burn it's less invasive and you can destroy basically less your picture while working while painting and then i recuperated slightly color as you can see on the ear for example and just um kind of like painted few areas i turned this layer this is basically that layer copied on top of that dodging burn and turned and changed into color mode so it's just evening out the tones i basically painted with my brush as you can see on the face they're really tiny changes you can spot them only on a good and decent monitor okay and then high working there is not much actually okay so let me show you before and after frequency and dodging burning in here i decided that this area is basically kind of like too much it's too intensive oops so what i did i copied a bit of hair and i just pasted it in this little tiny hole then i did a lot of liquify well maybe not that much let me show you just fixing some things also i decided there are a few things on the windows so my retouch looks like this before and after then i started to play with colors and contrasts so i'm usually creating two groups one is for retouch the other is for contrasting colors because they somehow for me are very close to each other and let me show you what i did here first of all i'm usually pushing the contrast up so as you can see here i've got levels now this is actually curves and i created a so-called luminosity mask let me quickly show you how do i do it so let's say i'm creating curves let me just drag it out of this group so you can see i'm going to exaggerate on purpose so you can see i click on the mask and i go here to image and apply image i've got an action created so i don't need to walk do these things again and again and i click ok that's it and as you can see it creates your image in black and white on your mask so what does it mean all the areas that are whiter and brighter they are going to be affected by whatever i do here so whether it's color adjustment mask or curves levels it's going to be like more visible i can inverse it so command e and i can do exactly the same to my shadows so let's say i want to deepen all of my shadows i would do it this way yes also what's really good let me just inverse it command e i can click on my mask and perform levels so command l is going to open my window with levels and i can narrow down as you can see it's changing the color narrow down the area it's going to effect as you can see less and less colors less and less area is going to be affected so basically i'm deciding where these levels where these curves are going to be performed see and this way i'm basically adding some minimal contrast i can still obviously erase whatever i don't like so let's say i don't i don't like that much contrast on my background but this is the idea and i use it a lot so what i did here i basically performed a luminosity mask and curves on the layer and then i only selected my model as you can see it's only my model okay then additionally what i did i created another layer brightness and contrast and i took down the contrast and brightness from my background so it's somehow like my model is the most visible here while the background is kind of like less is more blurry and less contrasty then because i pushed my collar contrast in here i decided to make the dress darker yeah so let me just show you but not i didn't want it to change the color so on a dress darker let me see it's with their selective colors and with probably cn and blue okay then i did levels again again as you can see luminosity mask i applied luminosity mask a little difference then hair coral let's see closer what did i do here i created again selective color adjustment mask and i painted the hair so it's more vibrant i think it's probably reds yes because you can see reds and yellows okay again i'm creating levels and only applying to their dress this is only the area i applied it so i added local contrast only to my dress can you see it i hope you can see it okay i made the whole picture slightly warmer so i'm already trying to think about the color and let me show you in the meantime what i had in my my mind while thinking about the color so i opened for your website which is called adobe color and i uploaded my kind of like raw this is not a raw picture but this is a jpeg with my natural colors and as you can see it just reads you can you can replace it you can kind of like move it and pick and put it wherever you want these are my main colors so what does it show me it shows me that my colors are quite random let me see extract the theme so i've got i've got blues and i've got a bit of oranges and greens these are quite earthy nice colors um if there is any color harmony well there is almost color harmony i might probably push this color somewhere here maybe greens or this way so they're more symmetric and it could work but what i decided to do and let me show you i decided to put and add magenta to it so what i had in my mind take a look so i've got this dress on the opposite side while all the warm colors are on the other side so i've got analogous scheme on one side colors are close to that each other and they are quite symmetrical so kind of like on one side i've got these greens on the other side i've got these browns and like magenta magenta hues and then just in the middle i've got this dress so my idea was to kind of like add magenta to my shadows in order to build the scheme and because i created this on my first picture as you can see i added this magenta so i needed to add added also to all my pictures in my whole editorial so let me show you how i did it again i did selective color i went to blacks and i added a lot of magenta and also i applied a mask this is luminosity mask and i decided to remove a few areas for example from the eyes from the hair from the dress as well as you can see so this pink color this magenta color is not too heavy for example on the dress because it would change the color of my dress totally anna and i didn't want want to do this and then again i applied it twice so selective colors again probably i did exactly the same let me see this is playing with magenta and this is again selective color and black so i added more and more and then at the end i put all this magenta in my shadows in a tiny group and then i removed from the model because i thought let me show you i thought it would be too much let me see yes it would be too much on her on her body on her face on her dress obviously if you add magenta to [Music] to blue color you will end up with violet with purple so i didn't want it to mess up with this kind of like with this color i didn't want to add it to my scheme okay skin color what did i do here i think i corrected it let me see closer there is only a little difference i probably added some reds yes and again levels i push the lever so there is more contrast as you can see i pushed it here then removed it from the areas that i could overexpose so i removed from these areas i don't want to lose my information i remove the vibrance remember that whenever you're adding curves or levels or any color changes then usually it pushes your saturation so it's good to uh desaturate it slightly and i prefer to do it with the vibrance because it's less kind of like destructive or it's a bit different then i added as you can see really local contrast to her face again with luminosity mask and then putting into the group and just highlighting and painting her face and at the end what do they do let me see more red i decided to add more red in the whole picture and this is it this is my before and this is my after and again let me show you once again palatin this time so these colors were my a basic output color so i had blue dress and a bit of kind of like yellowish green color in the background and then kind of like earthy very brownish colors and then i decided to add this color in my shadows so i ended up with analogous complemented by blue analogous accented analogous is gold yeah so something like this worm on one side accented by complementary color on the other side i hope it's clear for you now let me show you another psd file and let me walk you through all the layers so take a look at the original picture this is straight from the camera and let me show you what i did in camera so this is it so first of all i applied my custom color profile which is this one so this is the default this is my from the scene then i slightly play with the sliders here not a lot basically what i did i made the picture more dull so less contrast i usually prefer to work on the less contrasty picture as i want to add contrast where i want not where the camera is applying so what not default by the camera and i'm going to open this picture and this one is the final one let me show you before and after so this is the before and this is the after with all the retouch and all the color corrections let me just pick inside what's in here so first of all retouch as you can see on the right hand side i added some green space right hand side green space so when i was shooting this particular scene i did some of the picture more to the right some to the left i wasn't sure which side of that this beautiful area this beautiful corridor i want at the end i decided i really like this green in my picture so i basically borrowed from some other shot it was shot basically from the same distance the same height so it was quite easy as you can see here it's a different picture with more space on the right hand side it was really easy to put it on the mask and on this green area with soft brush just to select it so this is my right hand side it's not ideal but i don't think anyone could spot it okay now i clean some floor and ceiling as you can see so this is patch tool and stamp tool then with patch i clean slightly her face it's barely visible from this distance a little bit as you can see on her face on her neck the dress and then i performed some dodge and burn just keep in mind that if you've got picture this size so the face is so far away from the viewer um thinks when you zoom in they won't be too visible obviously it depends where you're going to publish the picture if it's going to be printed in some big size obviously i would zoom in and work on these details closer however if it's going to end up like this i'm not too bothered i'm not going to spend my life on retouching and what else i liquified slightly her dress her leg and also removed hair from the from the mirror i thought it's just this color is too distracting so let me just show you again this is retouched before this is after then i started to add contrasts and a bit of color probably let me just pick inside i'm going to open and go step by step so curves brighter i applied a mask this is luminosity mask i showed you before how do i do it on curves so i brightened only highlights then i did the reverse see you can see the mask is in reverse i darkened whatever was like all the shadows okay then i decided to make the whole picture a bit warmer with color balance hair corrections you can see i'm trying to name my layers it's much much easier than to come back and just to correct something i'm not always doing this it depends on my time and deadline you can see the hair is slightly more it's warmer tiny changes but it's that all adds up then leg color correction if you can see so what i did this is selective color and i just corrected the legs so they're more closer to the to the rest of the skin they were too pink they were too magenta i brightened them slightly obviously it was the light coming from above so they were they weren't lit enough then again as you can see face and face plus warm so i added some warmth to the face with color balance really tiny changes it's really important to have a good decent monitor to see all this tunnel kind of like um all these details okay contrast contrast for the body so what i did i decided to kind of like a pop the person out of the background and i added a locally level so only i painted on my mask as you can see i painted the person um how did i do this it usually works perfectly let me show you on my on my layer on my picture i need to grab this tool and usually when i select it usually works really well or pretty well let me show you it selects the person quite as you can see just some things are not selected ideally you can fix it but in majority majority case it works perfectly so this is contrasting colors let's see what do they do with color grading okay so at this point i already decided that my picture is going to have a magenta tint in my shadows because well i started from first picture i decided okay i like it so i kind of like need to continue it so let me just quickly show you in here what colors do we have so i've got greens i've got a bit of browns and oranges and i've got this a really intensive red reddish dress and basically this is a great analogous scheme um when i was shooting this scene i was thinking maybe to add a complementary so let me show you complementary color on the other side in my whites as you can see i've got a lot of white walls and if i added bluish tint in my whites i could end up with this scheme however i tried it and i well i didn't like it yeah it was okay but it didn't work with my whole story so what i decided i added let me just reverse it i added a bit of a bit of magenta in my shadows so the whole editorial is kind of crazy so it has the same feel it's still it is it's an analogous style it didn't change my harmony let me show you here so it looks like this roughly yeah or probably it doesn't read all them all the colors so i just need to pick it here we go so this is analogous style all the analogous harmony all the colors are very close to each other and by adding this magenta in my shadows i didn't change well literally nothing in terms of the harmony so the only thing was like a visual visual thing that i wanted to fit and to kind of like look the same as the other pictures from this editorial so what i did here as you can see a lot of layers this is brightness contrast so i took the contrast out of my background as you can see so the model is contrasty and it's very like she pops while the background is less contrasty then i added my magenta in my shadows with selective color in blacks and then i removed it from the areas which i didn't want it to affect so a bit of this area and a bit of face i just felt it was too much so we just erased it then i'm adding some local contrast to the hair as you can see again with my favorite tool luminosity mask and with the curves then some tiny real little changes i decide that the face is going to be a bit warmer these are things that i'm applying after the break i usually take the break from the picture i go to another picture and then i come back with my fresh eyes with my fresh look and then again i'm just correcting few things and it's really good to do it kind of like take tiny breaks and then some contrast even more contrast as you can see i decided this picture is not bright enough so again there are a lot of here we go so there is a bit of yellow in highlights curves normal curves then there is only face as you can see everything almost everything on luminosity masks levels remember that your eyes are adjusting to the picture so it's really good to take a break and also at the end to put all the pictures together and kind of like decide oh maybe this one needs to be brighter darker on whatever just even out all the effects and vibrance a bit of eyebrows i took it out from the whole picture and what else oh here we go less yellow in white i decided the whites are too yellow and then i played also with green i thought maybe i may i will make the green a bit less yellowish but at the end i decided against it it's just i what i just told you that i put all the pictures together beside each other and i thought well you know what let's leave these leaves as yellow so let me show you again before and after this is before and this is after so let's see the next pictures and actually i'm going to show you two at the same time because as you can see they are from the same setup so it's a headshot and it's a full body these pictures are straight from the camera you can see they're slightly overexposed in the background so what i did let me show you here reset to open obviously i pushed these highlights to the left so i made sure there is no overexposed or underexposed area the same here let me show you before and after and obviously it was done in camera raw so this is the original this is well all the changes i did in camera row as you can see i changed the profile to to my custom color profile and the same here so this is original and you can see it's a little more vibrant the same here and with this one and as you can see there is some kind of pattern in my pictures i'm always well majority of the pictures i'm opening them quite flat i'm reducing the contrast so let's see in photoshop what i did let's start maybe from this picture let me show before and after so this is before this is after a lot of contrast as you can see this is before and this is after they're basically treated the same way the only thing is that i made sure here well i did a little bit more with the skin here while here i focused on the surrounding yeah but the colors are identical so let me show you again i added a little bit of space on the left hand side as i thought okay if i want to crop the picture to the 8 by 10 i will lose a little bit of well head or leg and i didn't want to lose it i had few pictures which were further away but i really like this pose i really like these fingers here so i decided well i just steal it from some other picture just this curtain on the left hand side as you can see then i think there is nothing here frequency separation again if you pick inside a majority of the things are done on the actually on the dodging burn but let me see okay i did few things so you can see on the face on her leg on the lower layer let me just zoom it in so we can see better so this is this is color layer and this is dodging burn so a little more i usually prefer to fix things on dodge and burn but inside frequency separation and then low working copy as always i'm just correcting color on on a mode color mode here you just it's a it's a blending mode yeah okay and then let's see what i did with texture really tiny changes well it's actually not visible okay so let me show you before and after and i flattened i merged this layer here then i started to kind of like take care of the contrast and again you will see again some kind of pattern i'm creating this luminosity mask so curves highlights brighter shadows also brighter because i decided i want this picture to be really really bright but because of this luminosity mask i can treat them somehow a bit separately i just use my eyes and step by step i work it okay hair correction i decide to paint the hair slightly warmer as you can see this is my selection so with selective color probably reds and yellows i'm just adding a little more more red and orange then i do thing which i call skin pop this is exactly this the same thing what you know already it's a luminosity mask but i push the contrast on the mask so i click on the mask i click command l and then i push my contrast so the mask is a little more contrast as you can see here yeah and then only i select the areas which i'm interested in so skin only skin and this just basically adds local contrast to my skin it's just it's a bit a little bit more kind of glowing okay so this is contrast then it's a color in terms of color here there's really nothing interesting happening let me show you on the color wheel maybe this one because all the colors are quite close to each other i've got pinks i've got a bit of pink i've got a bit of orange and i've got a little bit of kind of like this this yellowish green color so still this is analogous scheme i'm not going to change it i could possibly add something complementary on the other side i've got a lot of white but i decide against it i try it i use my eyes i decide it doesn't work for the whole editorial it might work for this particular picture but it doesn't work as a whole story i always try these things okay i never kind of like take things for for granted i just go to let's say selective color i would do it like this let me show you let me do on top i just created for you i go to white because i've got a lot of whites and then i try to make these whites really really kind of like a bluish as you can see i will just push it to the limit so i can see whether i like this effect or not and then i can obviously make it less visible so this is a possibility but it changes totally my skin i would need to probably work more on that but it's just to visualize myself whether i like it or not whether it's a way to go or not but i decided against it so it's my kind of like decision aesthetical aesthetics which tells me not to do it okay so contrast color what else there are a lot of tiny changes so magenta in my shadows i did it in my previous pictures so i'm just going to be consistent with that and i'm adding as you can see and magenta so my blacks in selective colors as you can see and i'm removing this part of the face i will show you why let me show you what would happen if i kept as you can see her eyes are a little bit too pinkish a little too magenta for my taste so i just slightly remove it from my from from the model's eyes okay then what i do i correct the skin i decide to make it warmer skin red color i just wrote it here then the whole image brighter so normal curves as you can see head color correction what does it mean here let me see i decided the hand is a bit different color is probably not a saturated face and whenever his head is close to the face it's good to correct it color corrected because obviously it's really visible so i corrected it so it's a bit warmer then the whole skin is a bit more orange as you can see i just selected fair face less purple and more magenta what does it mean i decided that the dress is going to be more pinkish okay i can do it only because it's editorial if it if it was shot for this client for this designer i would need to make sure these colors of the dress are like true to the reality correct they are accurate and now i'm playing with the greens i'm just saying just removing probably yellow from them and i'm making these highlights a little more warmer so i'm going to selective color i'm going to white as you can see and i'm just adding yellow in my highlight just to make sure just to make these colors a bit more closer to each other if that makes sense and blacks up i decide that some of the blacks are too too deep and i remove them and more yellow in red these are changes again which i did probably after a break so i make myself a coffee or retouch another picture i come back and i do these tiny adjustments okay so again before and after and let me show you the other picture if you've got pictures from the same settings and you decide to publish them it's really crucial to put them together side by side and retouch them kind of like um at the same time because it's really easy to go with the colors especially or contrast in some other way okay so it's good to put them together and again before as you can see i also decided i don't want to crop the whole thing let me show you so i wanted to keep a little bit of this nice angle here and let's see inside just really quickly because it's going to be roughly the same thing so retouch so what i did again here i removed this vase i took grass from some other picture and i just quickly added i thought well the way she's standing it's not too visible what is this it's just kind of like hanging out of her i don't know between the legs it just wasn't too readable wasn't like obvious what was in this shot in this particular shot so i just fix that dodge and burn as you can see i'm not even opening frequency separation there's little dodging burn on her face again i'm retouching pictures i'm looking the picture like that so i'm not zooming it in as much as let's say like that because no one will see it unless it's going to print unless it's going to be a huge huge picture printed it happens to me that sometimes i need to come back to some picture from the past and i need to re-retouch it because once the picture was intended for internet or for a small print and then someone wants to let's say print or do something bigger i need to come closer and touch the face some details which obviously weren't visible but there is no need to spend your time orientating things which won't be visible so again contrast as you can see i added a lot of contrast it's basically the same way and actually we can copy from this picture just what you need to do just to change the mask here yeah so it applies to this particular picture highlights shadows hair correction so it's warmer skin pop step by step is exactly the same and then color i play exactly the same so magenta in my shadows let me just close everything again so you can see magenta in my shadows there are not too many shadows here but luckily my dress is pink so it will be cohesive it will be kind of like similar to the rest of the editorial okay skin a little more well darker and more reddish then the whole thing brighter then again brighter but only what did i decided to make it brighter let me see i just areas i think these parts which were too dark less contrasty on the background okay what else skin i'm looking at the skin really tiny changes you can see if you take a look at the mask i added orange to my legs and to the skin and a bit of face i'm just correcting it slightly so it's i'm evening out and then less purple and magenta so the dress fits they're the same color as you can see this one is more well pinkish and this one is also more pinkish and less purple okay so we're here and then warm highlights so literally step by step all the layers are exactly the same it's just what changes is where these masks where these changes are applied so i decide to add contrast to her face and then some levels at the end okay so this is before and this is after and just quick quickly i just want to show you again these two pictures so you can see all the all the colors close to each other on one half of the color wheel and this one is pretty much the same one half of the wheel okay let's do the next one the last two pictures i'm going to show you are going to be again from the same setup i thought they will be quite interesting for you because i had a great daily dilemma in terms of color grading up until now i don't know what i'm going to decide i'm going to show you okay so take a look at these two shots they're pretty the same from the same setup the right hand side the full border i retouched during my previous master class for a polish audience so what happened here and why i am not satisfied so let me show you the original picture here an original picture here and i'm going to analyze colors here so what happens here i've got two perfect pairs on the opposite sides of the collar so i've got oranges and on the opposite side i've got saiyans so these gloves and then i've got blue and this yellowish okay so this is my original original photo and we thought it through really carefully with the stylist and i was really happy on the set that i have decided i managed to match it as nicely this particular color scheme and let me show you again on this scheme so this is adobe color website you just replace you can upload picture here so this is original original one without any magenta in the highlights so i'm just going to extract the theme and coral wheel and you can see two pairs beautifully placed exactly on the opposite side i couldn't pull it off better obviously you always look at the pure hue here it doesn't matter whether it's here or here it just what counts it's it's the pure pure hue the the shade whether it's darker brighter it doesn't matter okay so you've got this gorgeous pair then obviously i decided at the beginning when i was retouching this editorial i added magenta to my shadows so what happened i cannot all of a sudden abandon this idea and i kind of leave this picture without well magenta so i've got two options either i i will come back to all of these pictures and just get rid of this well this magenta or i will try to add it let's see what happens okay so i've got this picture with the magenta inside so i keep all these colors the same just i add magenta so this like kind of like well pinkish hue in my shadows here we go this is what we've got still still i've got a pair however i've got this tiny little guy here in the middle and i don't know what to do i feel i will keep it i will keep the whole story with the magenta i'm not entirely happy i feel that this picture would look much much stronger without magenta if it was standalone picture so let me show you without magenta here let me get rid of the website here here we go i'm just going to show you only one picture it's easier and better so this is without magenta i feel sometimes limiting the colors is better it's just more well more it's more pure yeah well it's my obviously point of view but at the end i feel i will add this magenta because it's still kind of like symmetrical on the color color wheel and obviously it fits the whole story so let me show you briefly what i did here i don't have my layers named because i kind of like i retouched it while doing the master class so i was a bit sloppy i tried to speed it up but roughly i'm going to show you what i did here so first of all retouch so i straightened the the whole picture and then i retouched the dress here i think i took it from some other picture i liquefied a bit some normal things not too much heavy retouching what else then i've got this color grading so i've got a lot of contrast every single layer is the same what you what you saw up until now so i've got a lot of contrast so they're luminosity masks levels hair correction some this is probably ear correction this is brightness contrast so reducing contrast on my background as you can see this is something what i often do to my pictures so the patient pops it's really more visible more contrasty than the background what else there is some selective color so i played with blue so the the the blue is more saturated levels then i added this magenta which i'm not happy about but i will keep it i guess okay vibrance because all of these things are adding saturation so i need to make sure that i'm taking it down okay then again i selected the person i just added some i think yellow color to the dress again contrast to her face only as you can see this is only her face what else there are a lot of tiny tiny changes and now i think it's more yellow in the dress the person is more contrasty and in general i pushed the curves and this tiny correction is done when i okay i open something in the other window when i open two pictures on the same side by side and i just corrected her face to be roughly the same tone and here you will see exactly the same all the steps so retouch skin i i think i retouched here more obviously because it's more visible i added some freckles i just corrected them slightly i'm not retouching super super as you can see like i will i will make a close-up and you can still see a foundation here but i know this picture is not going to be browsed like this so i don't care if that was a beauty image i would definitely need to spend more time on that so just let's make it clear but because it's a it's a fashion it's going to be browsed like this i just leave it also don't you need to be careful when you retouching uh headshots when you're attaching portraits from this kind of like fashion shirt to not to over attach them i can see that sometimes people tend to over attach portraits because you've got a lot of skin and then you take care of all these details and then fashion pictures is totally different and then your portrait your your your headshot is over retouched overly retouched so you need to kind of like keep the same level of retouch on each every picture you you have in your story i hope it makes sense okay and contrasts you will see the same story luminosity masks curves there is some evening out the blue less contrast on the background there is some selective color oh i think it's a yellow here and color yeah so also contrast and color so before and after again and let me show you before and after i keep these pictures on layers just in case i will need to fix something later also if i have opportunity if i have not always sometimes i've got deadline and i need to deliver pictures by yesterday yeah but if i have all the time for that i leave them for a bit so for a couple of days and then i open them with fresh eye it's much easier to see some i don't know inconsistencies in colors and i usually fix some things after this time okay so now let's do some retouching here is a picture i would like to retouch with you but before we start i would like to analyze these colors so i uploaded my photograph to adobe color website you can do it here exactly and then i'm going to point these tiny dots to the places where i want to read my colors i'm looking at my main colors right so it will be skin the hairs roughly here and also maybe wool i think these are my main colors and let me read what we've got on the color wheel as you can see we've got four colors it just red roughly blue here's my well red hair and skin green and a dress so now i'm thinking what can i do with these colors one option is something what i did before in this editorial to keep these colors close so i might even add some yellow to my greens and create an analogous scheme on one side complemented by a blue so so-called analogous accented scheme this is one option but the other option is which could be also doable in this case to push this hair a little bit this way so a little more yellowish or the other way around push my blues a little bit towards sean so these two colors are opposite to each other and they will complement each other while the other pair i could add more blue so made my greens more colder and i will create another straight line another complementary repair and i would end up with double complementary scheme i think it's possible to do it in this case okay let's see so let's start from the profile in here i'm going to apply my previously created profile which was d850 pink dress here we go and i will also apply on the other image let me just do it okay and i open also picture with color checker because i wanted to make sure my color balance is correct so i'm just going to select both pictures i'm going to outer correct color balance so i'm going to take this one here we go so this is well theoretically correct image in terms of colors in terms of weight balance now i can start playing with this so first of all i'm going to push the exposure slightly not a lot i don't want to lose any details then obviously i'm going to push the highlights down so i don't want anything to be too well too too bright yes i've got only this thing which i'll probably retouch but her skin is quite all right okay and the same i'll do with the shadows i'm just going to recover them slightly so i'm looking i'm trying to achieve some dull uninteresting picture i think i'll keep the whites black i think it's fine let me see i don't want to exaggerate i will slightly take the vibrance down i don't want it to be as vibrant as now and then i'm going to go to color here we go and i would like to go to my greens because my greens were too yellow so i can try now to move them a little bit closer to blue so let's see how it goes so first of all let me go to here and i'm pushing this green so you can see they're a little more well a lot actually well greener yes not yellow green but the color is very fake so what can i do about it i will just push down the saturation down push down yes i will just remove the saturation here we go so it starts to look a little more and natural let me just slightly recover i'm just looking at the picture and just adjusting with my eyes okay and let's see luminance if i can do anything about i think i will keep it in the middle so this green is already a bit closer probably in the straight line to my uh well dress okay let's see what we can change else so i'm not going to push any magenta let me see go go go through them saturation i might slightly desaturate the dress as you can see and maybe just maybe let me see the luminance i'm going to make it brighter a little bit okay just add a little bit contrast okay what else uh in terms of optics i'm not changing anything color grading i'm not doing anything in at this stage geometry well this image is really distorted but i don't think this thing will help me well let's see well anyway i'm losing a lot of pictures i think i will do it manually when i open my picture because i want to keep the this bit of dress so i'm just saying and no i think i don't need to remove the noise i think it still defines i'm just going to keep it i'm making sure i'm opening my picture in adobe rgb 16 bit per channel and i'm opening into photoshop okay so first of all i'm going to take care of the distorted image because it bothers me a lot so i'm going to copy my picture and start working bit by bit in order to straighten up also i'll keep in mind that i'll probably crop this picture somehow like probably like that so i don't need to be bothered by bits which are basically around my crop so let's go so i straightened the walls basically roughly i speeded it up because it's not too interesting to watch it now what i need to do i need to clean these walls so what i'm going to do i'm going to copy parts from a good wall well not broken and i'm going to try to fix this one so i roughly cleaned the wall it took a bit of my life i should have actually moved this sofa and i should seen it on the day of the shoot but because i i didn't see it i needed to fix it now okay i'm going to flatten it and let's do some dress cleaning i'm just going to go with patch tool and just roughly remove these bits which i feel should be slightly removed okay so for example this one this one okay now i'll do a bit of liquefy i'm trying to liquify at the beginning because later obviously when i've got my masks and everything it changes a lot so what what i want to do here it's slightly push her waist she's a very slim and tall model but obviously in this cupcake dress she looks big she doesn't have any weight so i just slightly want to not destroying anything push it with small moves in order not to just go too much okay i think that would be it let's see so it's before and after i straighten also some walls um so now i'm just going to make sure where is my crop so roughly i'm just going to decide i think i'm going to see a little more up here i'm going to put two lines so i don't waste my time on retouching something around someone here i just made some guides okay all right now i'm going to perform frequency action frequency separation i've got this one which is called advanced let me just go the store i'm going to remove i'm not going to need them i've got two two lower working layers and two up i'm going to work first on that one there is not too much to be retouched roughly i'm going to smoothen these edges and tunnel tones and then on the higher i'm going to take care of the texture i need to be really really careful i think i even zoomed too close i don't want to remove everything especially that some of these spots are freckles then i'm going to do a dodge and burn layer in between i prefer to work on the gray layer however if you prefer to do two curves two areas with curves it's up to you it works the same it's just a matter of being used to so i'm just pushing these pixels here and there the nice thing is that if i press r i can turn around my image and i'm massaging these pixels to even out the tones i'll probably speed it up so i speeded it up so you don't need to watch me doing every single move and what i did here i did a little bit of dodging and burning i put a color um color in the color mode new layer on top just to even out the tones i slightly also clean it on this layer and few tiny adjustments on the high working so texture so for nine now i'm pretty happy i'm going to create a new layer on top of them so what next i'm roughly happy i just saw this one so i'm just going to remove it with the retouch for now i might want to come back but at this point i want to start to work on contrast so i'm going to put these into one group i'm going to call it retouch i'm not using this one as i think it's too much so i'm just going to put retouch here and then i'm starting to build curves and other adjustment layers first of all i will add some well some contrast here and i'm going to run my action it's here so high luminous mask so i'm just clicking on it and running is exactly the same which i showed you before you can do it coming to the image and apply image let me see basically what it did it pushed my highlights let me see already looks much much better however i don't want this well this curves on the whole picture so what i'm going to do i can put a group on top of this put inside and create a mask and delete out of all the places i don't want this contrast to be so basically the backgrounds let me see it won't be visible i don't want any highlights or any dramatic highlights around here i want only hair to be well very visible i prefer to do it on the in the group on the new mask because if i go too far so if i were to remove from this mask and there is no coming back if i kind of like go too far while here i can still see i can still paint on that with x changing with x slightly let me see so my model pops what else i will go now to selective colors i will just take a look at my skin color my skin i want to add a little more a little more a color to my hair let's see i'm adding colors to the whole picture however i will do later in mask i'll just drag this group hide everything comment eye and paint only hair it's still way too red but i'm just going to correct it it's too much red i'm just playing with these sliders and just finding some sweet spots i can see i selected too much so i'm just going to retouch out of the dress like remove it paint it out i'm always working with soft soft brush i think this is it so this is hair then i'm going to the skein i'm just going to push it slightly again i will need to select it later as you can see changing a lot i'm just going to paint on the skin again very soft brush i'm painting my skin and maybe a bit of hair let's see now i want to add a little more a contrast to my skin only so i'm going to curves again i'm going to add a little bit a little bit of contrast and curves and then i'm going in my actions to perform again the same action you can see and now i'm going to press and click on the mask comment l so i'm performing i'm opening my levels and pushing contours i'm just looking only in my skin so i want to make it more contrasty only my skin i think that will be it let me see [Music] okay let me put it again in the group i prefer it this way create a mask hide everything common eye and paint areas oops paint areas only which i want so i'm painting maybe a bit of dress let's see but with lower opacity okay i feel like exaggerated so i'm just going to turn the opacity down i'm going to put these in one group i'm going to call them color and contrast now i think i need to even out the dress it's too bright at the bottom so let me go to selective color i'll go straight to magentas and mate i will make it a bit darker i'm just going to paint this bit i will do the whole image a bit brighter sometimes i need to look at the levels and just check how much space i've got still here left so what's overexposed i can see that the only overexposed spot is in the background there is is still a long way from being closed so i can actually push a lot here you can see i could actually leave it somewhere here uh in terms of the well shadows this is my color so it will be with the color is very intensive so it will be exaggerated it will be i will lose some details i'm just going slightly to push it here okay let me see so here here now i want to take out a bit of somewhere here a bit of contrast out of my background so what i do i create adjustment layer brightness contrast i lower it down so let me just do something more dull and then let's see how it's how photoshop where will work with selecting my model so something like this well not so bad and i'm just going to here we go and then i will paint the rest with soft brush full opacity okay the image is way too bright let me just adjusted something like this and i'm putting things inside let me see before and after what i supposed to do now i should take a break come back drink some coffee and take a look with fresh eyes but because i don't have this opportunity so what i'm going to do i'm going to take a shot again so i'm going to here we go i'm taking snapshot i'm going to upload my picture to the webs i'm going to check my colors so i'm opening my adobe color i'm going to replace the image as this one as this one actually yeah here we go there's a lot of happening this one i'm going to double check my colors where they are oops upload it again here we go here we go i could do basically the same thing with palatine with this one it's just i need to go one by one with colors i prefer palette and just i wanted to show this time adobe color website did i miss any color i think that that would be it so let me see so well this is perfect but here i went over the board basically i pushed it too much so i need to add a little bit of yellow in order to keep it in the straight line so let me just do it right now i'm going to get rid of this i'm going to add some yellow so selective color let me just go to greens and add some yellow here we go maybe a bit more i'm going to copy it something like this maybe a little lower and now what i need to do i need to add some magenta in my shadows because in the whole editorial i did it so let me see i'm creating new layer adjustment layer i'm going to my blocks and adding some magenta how to be sure that my shadows are in magenta i'm clicking on the um upper layer and i'm just basically checking here it doesn't matter where where it comes stays here it's it's all about the pure color here so about about few pure hue so this is already as you can see pink this is more reddish so i could work on that let me see obviously this will be orange but i'm looking at these spots let me go back and now i will do a mask a luminosity mask this time only black tones so i'm applying it and i still going to as you can see there is a lot of black here i'm still going to remove a little bit outer out of her face so again i'm putting into the group i prefer it this way a mask and i'm removing from her face also maybe a bit of here what i'm going to do i'm just going to make the blues a bit more visible so selective color blue i need to be careful not to change the hue okay and seams let me see it's a lot of contrast okay what i missed here and it bothers me still i'm just going to come back here and turn this off for a second so command j is this little tiny spot i want to get rid of this the well this white spot so i'm just going to darken mode darken and opacity full i'm just going to paint it or maybe actually i'm going to [Music] do it green let's see maybe this one as well let's see i think that looks better okay what else i think i would work a little bit more on on the face so because now with the contrast everything is visible more so let me just turn this off i'm going to flatten it and slightly maybe create dodge and burn and just paint slightly under eyes i'm never removing the box under eyes because they are natural it's just slightly making them softer but i feel because i added a lot of contrast they well they are more visible okay okay so sometimes i just do it twice this one let's see it's a lot of contrast probably i exaggerated with everything let's see totally before and after i'm going to put a group this is all i will also take down the vibrance let me find it somewhere i prefer to do it with vibrance and saturation for some reason saturation leaves sometimes the picture a bit of gray is kind of like washed out while a vibrance is well i prefer it and i feel there's a little bit too too much black i mean this is too contrasty on my background so i'm coming back to this magenta and i'm going to do with the selective color to my blocks i'm just going to push my blocks so it's going to be up here let's see [Music] maybe not as much what else i could do this one comes here selective color i'm going to go to whites and see where do i have white oh well i can see on the skin i can pop the skin a bit more so i'm just going to push it a little bit and maybe add a yellow tint so it's kind of like golden and glowing and i'm hiding everything under my mask and i will paint on my skin so a good habit would be to flatten everything on top and mirror my image horizontally so all of a sudden i see my image with fresh eyes and i spot right away new things so for example some things in the background and whether i exaggerated with something maybe this thing is not straight uh well maybe i need to straighten this one well this one is actually okay or that one something here so if you well turn it this way for a split of a second you can see your picture with fresh eyes let me see maybe i can work on the crop but i'm going to delete it now what else i can do as i said i need to take a break i need to look at the picture with fresh eyes but this is basically the direction i would go with this image i'm going to save it and that's it at the end let me tell you a few words about where to look for inspiration and where to get the knowledge from if you're serious about photography and retouching i encourage you to browse a large number of good photos and arts photography albums exhibitions good fashion magazines these are things that could greatly influence your development so one thing is to learn and master the tools light using camera and gear working with model and crew you will find a lot of decent videos on youtube and the same goes for touching youtube is actually a great place to look for knowledge however totally different thing is to learn how to look and how to see you may know all the tools be profession in all the editing tricks but if you can't see the difference between your photo and the good photo in a fashion magazine well the journey is going to be longer than needed i have been photographing for more than 15 years constantly learning how to see and how to look i have been studying photos of other photographers and artists that i admire it's a journey it's a never-ending process and great exercise is to be inspired by someone else's style and i mean both in terms of photography and editing and the inspiration is actually a bit like coping some small parts elements so if you take a closer look at the photos that you like and break them down into smaller parts so what was the light what was the model how did the model pose whether the background is complicated or simple when it comes to editing whether it retouches minimal or strong what are the contrast why colors in blacks and whites etc if i like some particular retouching i put it to photoshop as a reference and i try to emulate it i try to copy it and this is a way to learn it and remember that working with other creatives also other photographers is better than alone as you motivate each other you inspire each other as great artists used to do in the past and obviously lots of practice repetition and patience okay so that will be it i have prepared for you thank you very much for staying until the very end if you like what i have prepared for you and you would like to support me in creating similar videos for free please subscribe to my youtube channel like this video leave a comment with your thoughts also you can support me financially i will leave a paypal link in the description below every little amount will help me in order to devote more time to create more free stuff if i plan any additional workshops i will definitely share info on my social media also i wanted to thank the illumesca group so thank you and calibrate team for motivating me helping me out to put this master class together i definitely wouldn't pull it off without them so thank you very much warm greetings from spain hasta luego [Music] you

Channel: Joanna Kustra

Views: 18,694

Keywords: Joanna Kustra, retouching, masterclass, tutorial, free retouching, class, photography, benq, calibration, free tutorial, colorgrading, color wheel, color wheel tutorial, retouching photoshop tutorial, retouch colors, photoshop, calibrite, color checker, adobe, color correction, free masterclass, post production, editing fashion photography, Editing fashion photography photoshop

Id: kDwIEuVGg2k

Length: 99min 24sec (5964 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021