Digital Transformer Blog

Dumplings and D.A. Wagner

2010-07-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

I became a fan of D.A. Wagner's work when I came across his website last year. Balancing deliberation and spontaneity with great concepts D.A. creates some fantastic still life images of food. To see for yourself just take a quick visit to his website here: www.dawagner.com.

After looking through his work I sent him an email letting him know how much I liked his work. One thing led to another and soon we were working on a few portfolio images together. The image below is one of these new portfolio images.

Being an experienced shooter, D.A. knew that trying to actually photograph the dumpling in boiling oil would probably lead to a few nasty kinds of disasters. So instead he used water in the tank along with a bubble making attachment from an aquarium. But this also meant the shot would need something 'extra' to really make it pop.

And as a retoucher I liked how D.A. made the process of collaborating with him easy. As we worked on this image he sent along suggestions about what he was looking for and was open to any ideas I had about how to really make this image sing.

After cleaning up the little floaty bits that inevitably come with this type of food, and after removing the pins that prevented the dumpling from floating by itself I started to work on pushing the color and the contrast of the image to get the rich look D.A. was looking for.

In the end it was one of those "Hey, Cool!" moments that led to the final adjustment the image needed to achieve the look D.A. had been after. Now that's a dumpling I'd like to eat!

Be sure to catch D.A.'s side of the story at: blog.dawagner.com

What's the most important skill for a retoucher?

2010-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

In reading various blogs and articles by and about retouchers I see lots of folks focus on the dramatic before/afters as proof of a particular retoucher's skill.

Sure, that can be pretty impressive. But on some level that seems like we're focusing on the sizzle and not what's actually the more important skills a retoucher needs to have.

For instance when I'm working with a photographer such as Matthew Jordan Smith, or Jeremy Cowart, or Bob Stevens they give me a really good starting place and aren't looking for the dramatic difference in the final image.

What they're looking for is a collaborator who can help them get an image that really expresses their vision. After all as the retoucher, I'm working for them. And it's important for me to keep this in mind: in the end it's their vision and their image that we're working to perfect.

So for me Listening is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the skills I need to have as a retoucher.

Listening to my clients to gain a thorough understanding of what they're looking for and where they're looking to take a particular image will help me in working through all those little subjective decisions that come up along the way.

And it's only by listening will I be able to make sure I'm helping my clients get just the image they're looking for which will help me gain a happy client. And that's what I'm looking for.

So what do you think is the most important skill a retoucher needs to have? I'd love to read your comments and see where this leads.

Betty White is Hot In Cleveland

2010-06-23T18:01:00.001-07:00

Recently I had the pleasure of working with Brad Johnson and all the great folks at Arsonal Design in Los Angeles creating images for the ad campaign promoting TV Land's latest new show "Hot In Cleveland."

With three women featuring long, wind-blown hair this project was quite the masking challenge. As Brad said this design was all about the hair and it had to look perfect.

For those who have worked on high end retouching you'll know that most of the masking plug-ins don't hold up well to close scrutiny. The edges usually need so much work after using the plug-in shortcuts that it's not often worth the trouble. But as I worked on this image I decided to try Photoshop CS5's new Refine Edge Brush and was pleasantly surprised to find that in this particular case it gave me a much better starting point than my usual method of carefully painting out each fly-away hair. Here is an example of one of the images that was used for Jane's hair, (yes there were several.)

On the right is the mask I created for her hair, and what the Refine Edge tool helped create here was the softer transitions necessary for the hair to properly blend with the other shots behind it. If the mask did not blend properly we'd have problems with the gray background adding a nasty fringe around the flying hairs.

Of course the mask as generated by the Refine Edge Brush did need some massaging before it worked properly, but in just a couple of hours using this tool I was able to get a much better result than spending many, many hours masking and painting the 'old school' way.

Subsequent experiments with this new feature showed it helped in some cases and did not in others. I'm still getting a good feel of when it will and when it won't be worth the time spent. But for this project it was truly a Life Saver. Thanks Adobe!

To see more about the complete campaign created by Arsonal go to: http://news.arsonal.com/ and read their blog post about it.

The Last Airbender

2010-06-17T17:13:00.002-07:00

Next week the 'other Avatar' movie, "The Last Airbender", is due out hoping for a big debut weekend. Here in Los Angeles one of the local ad agencies I work with, BLT & Associates (www.bltomato.com), did a great job with the print campaign for this movie. Over the last couple of months I had the opportunity to help them out with doing the final retouching (Finishing) on several of the posters and billboards for this project. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Shadow Work

2010-04-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

A recent discussion on ASMP's email list touched on creating realistic shadows so I thought I'd post a quick tip here describing one of my favorite ways of creating realistic shadows when creating composited images in Photoshop.

The most important things to remember about creating shadows are: 1) Proper shadows tend to be subjective - imagining what the perfect shadow looks like will drive you nuts. Everyone will have a different idea of what looks right. 2) Studying real light and shadows will help you 'see' what a realistic shadow looks like more accurately, making your subjective opinion just a little bit better bit by bit.

When painting a shadow it also helps to remember that 'real' shadows tend to have different parts. If the object casting the shadow is resting on something (like the ground) it will tend to have a core shadow right where it lands on the ground. And there will be a softer, gradating shadow as it blocks the light from hitting the ground.

The image above is from a series of images I worked on with photographer Richard Radstone last year. In this particular one of the challenges was to wrap the accordion around the palm tree. That particular task generated my first tutorial on the website, www.psd.tutsplus.com, which can be found here: http://bit.ly/3YEVfT

And of course after wrapping the accordion around the tree it needed to have some shadowing added to make it look like it really belonged there which brings us back to the topic at hand.

Adding the shadows involved creating 2 layers, one for the core shadow, and the other for the cast shadow. In this case I used the Multiply blending mode for both shadows because I like the way the colors of the shadows blend more naturally with the objects in the image.

The way the colors of the shadows blend is very important because shadows do have their own color and this is affected by the color of the ambient light and the color of the object the shadow is landing on. Using the Multiply mode while sampling 'real' shadow colors tends to work pretty well for me.

So for these shadows I sampled a darker color from the palm tree and experimented with a few strokes before deciding on a final color. Remember the darker the color the stronger, darker your shadow will be - but you can easily adjust that with the opacity of your shadow layers.

After settling on the right shadow color I made one layer, called it "Core Shadow", set the blending mode to "Multiply" and then using a smallish brush I painted along the area where the accordion was touching the palm tree. To keep this shadow layer from splashing over onto the sky I clipped it to the palm tree's layer as a clipping group.

After painting the core shadow I then made another layer set to Multiply blending and called it "Cast Shadow". Then I used a much larger brush and painted in the softer cast shadow keeping in mind the shape of the accordion and the direction of the light the accordion would be blocking to cast the shadow.

To get the gradating effect of the cast shadow you can either use a low opacity brush and build up the strokes closer to the object, or use a layer mask, or use the Eraser tool (set to a low opacity) to erase it away until you're happy with the result. I alternately use all 3 methods at times depending on what strikes my fancy that day.

The point here is that the shadows are painted with 2 layers, one for the core and one for the larger cast shadow. By making them independent I can then play with the opacity of each one and use the Move tool to nudge them into the right place if needed.

Using this method I've found it's much easier to create shadows for everything from accordions on trees to vitamin bottles on white. Simple eh?

Steve Austin and Damage

2010-03-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a recent image I worked on with the good folks at BLT & Associates. This version is a poster sized crop of the overall image which was built to also accomodate billboards as well.

Just to give you an idea of the work that went into this image Steve's head was stripped onto another body (there are 2 guys with a build like that? Yikes!). Detail was added to the neck showing more collar bone & muscle definition etc. Since the shot of Steve's head was pretty blurry & low res looking detail had to be added along with lots of sharpening. Thanks to Joseph at BLT for a new sharpening technique involving the HiPass filter and the Linear Light blending mode. Cool new trick!

The background is built from various shots of crowds. Finally the smoke and color treatment was added overall to create the dark moodiness of the overall image.

Jeremy Cowart and the Blue Girl

2010-02-15T14:27:00.001-08:00

As a digital artist/retoucher I love collaborating with photographers producing beautiful images like this one from Jeremy Cowart. From the dramatic backlighting he used to the inviting look in her eyes Jeremy created a great shot and it was a pleasure to work with him in creating the finished image shown here.

In working on this image with Jeremy I wanted to keep everything very subtle. The model had this beautiful, enchanting look and I loved the dramatic lighting Jeremy used to make her seem almost angelic. With such a great starting point I mostly worked on eliminating many of the stray, fly-away hairs that were highlighted by the backlighting or that ran over her eyes and face. I also worked on showing off her beautiful skin by smoothing out the extra texture picked up by the side lighting. Then I added just a little more light in her eyes and added just a touch of highlight to her lips.

Before -- After

Click here to see more of Jeremy's work.

Syncing ColorSettings or What's Safe about "Safe CMYK"?

2010-01-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

A recent post to the APA Digital email list brought up an important topic I thought would be good to discuss here. When Adobe bundled their programs in the Creative Suite the idea was to make life easier for users. As all the programs now work together seamlessly the process of creating placing them in layouts and then printing those layouts should be easier than ever.

And with a thought to making Color Management just as easy Adobe enabled coordinating all the Color Management preferences through Bridge. But there is a big ‘Gotcha’ hiding here that could mean big problems for photographers and designers.

You see the problem lies in a preference nick-named “Safe CMYK”.

Normally “Safe CMYK” would sound like a good idea. But the question “Safe for Whom?” applies here. You see there are 2 sides of the equation: The Creative side (photographer-designer) and the Output side (printers). What’s safe for one is not necessarily safe for the other.

Safe CMYK was designed for the Output side of the equation. It's safe for the guy who runs the printing press because it will cause the fewest problems with the RIPs these guys use when outputting files on their presses.

But this same Safe CMYK setting also means if you’re not using a RIP you’re very likely going to see bad color on your own outputs.

The problem comes down to this, Safe CMYK tells InDesign and Illustrator to ignore any profiles embedded in CMYK images that are used in those programs. This means these programs will now assume all your CMYK images are all set to the same profile as the default CMYK profile for the program.

So if your default CMYK profile is something like the commonly used “US Web Coated (SWOP) v2” but you used something like “US Sheetfed Coated v2” when creating an image that was placed in an InDesign layout when the layout is printed to the non-RIP controlled printer (ie and Epson inkjet) the colors could come out pretty far off from what you expected.

Not so safe now, eh?

Now the question comes down to: What to do?

Fortunately there is a simple answer that just takes a few steps I’ll outline here. Setting the preferences correctly for your Creative Suite programs will ensure your Color Management policies work the way you expect and you’ll get the results you’re looking for.

The way Adobe envisioned us synchronizing the Color Settings for all the Creative Suite programs is to use Bridge as the central place to set these preferences. By setting them here in Bridge all the Color Settings will be automatically set the same way which should ensure that colors look the same across all the various Creative Suite programs. If you go to Bridge and choose Edit>Creative Suite Color Settings you'll see a dialogue box like this:

Note that here I have North American Prepress 2 chosen. This choice is supposed to be good for users who are working with RGB and CMYK images in the US. The important thing to note here is the phrase "CMYK values are preserved". This is the 'Gotcha' I was mentioning earlier.

Bridge can still be used to "Sync" the Color Settings across the Creative Suite programs if you have a Color Settings File with the proper settings chosen. The catch here is that since the setting we're worried about is something InDesign and Illustrator use, not Photoshop, you have to make your Color Settings file in InDesign or Illustrator and then go back to Bridge to "Sync" the Creative Suite Color Settings.

Both InDesign and Illustrator work the same with regards to making this Color Settings file so let's take a look at how it's done in Illustrator. As with all the Creative Suite programs you can bring up the Color Settings dialogue by going to Edit>Color Settings. That will bring up a dialogue box like this:

You'll see the CMYK policy is set to "Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)". This is the dangerous side of "Safe CMYK" and means that any embedded CMYK profiles will be ignored. To fix this setting all you have to do is click on that setting and choose "Preserve Embedded Profiles" like shown here:

Now click on the "Save" button and give your new settings a name you'll remember. I called mine "Prepress 2 modified". Next go back to Bridge and bring up the Color Settings dialogue once again. Once you're there if you scroll down the list you'll see your new setting listed there. Below you can see where I have highlighted the file I made:

Now all you have to do is choose the new settings file, click on Apply and you're done.

Easy? Yes! More work than it should be? Definitely. But now that you know you'll be practicing truly "Safe CMYK" in no time.

First Things First

2010-01-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

As an artist some issues such as Workflow tend to come across as being stuffy and boring. How many of us just want to get in and start working on creating something really cool? That's where the real fun is, right?

But running around in circles isn't much fun either. I'm thinking here of the times we jump right into the image adding color corrections, maybe a few effects etc. And then later decide to do the more boring spotting retouching out the little dust specks and stray hairs etc that are always somewhere in the photo.

The problem is what happens when we decide we need to go back and tweak the color, or change one of the effects. If you've done the retouching after those steps odds are you're going to have to do it all again because changing the image below changes the way your retouching blends in.

I see students and even intermediate level artists do this all the time. And it becomes one of the reasons why they hate the spotting and cleanup work all the more.

This is where the idea of Workflow comes in. If we keep in mind Stephen Covey's reminder "First Things First" and do the boring retouching/cleanup first we'd avoid that running around in circles and have more fun working on the cool parts of the image.

So my suggestion here is to get down and do the the basic, necessary parts first. This means starting off by doing the spotting and cleanup first then move on to creating clean masks for those parts you're going to need masks for, (how many times have you had to repair 4 or 5 copies of a bad mask?). And then going on to the fun stuff.

A little work here to start of goes a long way towards making all the work flow much easier. And you'll find you're having more fun along the way too.

Hmmmm.... maybe Covey had a pretty good idea, eh?

Pserpective Grids in Photoshop

2009-11-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

Illustrators often will draw out perspective lines when beginning a complex illustration to help them keep everything looking just right.

The old way involves defining the vanishing point and then drawing a series of lines all intersecting and passing through that vanishing point. While effective this could be somewhat of a time consuming process.

Then while working with one of my students I recently discovered this great little trick for using Photoshop's Vanishing Point filter to render perspective lines. Now whenever I need them Perspective Lines are just a few clicks away.

To show you how easy it is take a look at this image of New York's Public Library:

The perspective on this shot is pretty exaggerated, but that just helps illustrate my point. If I wanted to add something to the front of the library, or maybe add another building next to it it would be a big help to have some guides that showed me how the vanishing point lines lay in proper perspective.

Now I know one of the common uses for the Vanishing Point filter is to be able to clone and paste things in while keeping the proper perspective. But using the Vanishing Point filter only works well if the object I'm pasting in is "straight" to begin with.

Suppose the new building I want to add already has some perspective happening in the shot? This is where some guides showing me the correct perspective could be really helpful. And luckily that's something the Vanishing Point filter can easily do.

By just following a few easy steps we can have those guides on a separate filter ready to help us keep everything looking right.

Step 1) Make a new layer so you have a place for the Perspective Grid to go. (Hint: give this layer a name that makes it easy to remember what it is.)

Step 2) Make this new layer the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers palette. Then go to Filter>Vanishing Point to bring up the Vanishing Point window.

Step 3) Using the Create Plane tool define a plane that follows the plane you want the perspective lines to follow. (I used the corners of the banner as an easy way to define the plane for the front of the library.)

Step 4) Once your plane has been defined expand it out to fill the necessary area by clicking on the handles in the middle of each side of your plane and dragging them out until they cover the area you need.

Step 5) Now here is the magic part: Looking at the menu bar in the Vanishing Point filter you'll notice a small icon that looks like 3 short horizontal lines with a tine triangle just to the left of those lines. Clicking on this brings up a submenu like this:

Here is a close-up of that submenu:

See where I've highlighted the "Render Grids to Photoshop" option? If you choose this and then apply the filter by clicking on "OK" in the upper right corner of the filter window Photoshop will now render out those grids to that new layer you made just before bringing up the filter. You should get something looking like this:

And now all you need to do when adding that new building is to make sure the lines of the new building follow the lines in the grid and you'll have everything following the same perspective.

Cool, eh?

Cafe: The Land of Flavors

2009-10-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year Dennis worked on a campaign with photographer Richard Radstone featuring surrealistic scenes representing different regions in Colombia. This image highlights the coffee growing region that is known the world over for the great flavor of the coffee it produces.

In building this image Dennis began with a sky he had shot while on a trip to Lake Powell. Then he added in stock elements of the hills covered in coffee trees being careful to blend in the edges around the trees. Next he created the foreground by combining Richard's shot of a grassy meadow with the coffee cups and the model shot in the studio. Finally the rainbow steam was composed by adding shots of smoke with a rainbow gradient to get the colorful effect the client wanted. After retouching the model and removing a few extra wrinkles from his shirt the image was ready to go.

Here is a before and after image showing some of the elements used in creating the final image.

Quick Tip: Checking your Masks

2009-08-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

Of all the skills needed in doing High End Retouching, (or "Finishing" as they call it in the movie poster biz), masking is among the most basic and essential. When combining several images together a mask is used to determine what parts of the image are kept and which are not seen so the quality of your mask will have a big effect on the final image.

Think of it this way if you were going to add this palm frond to an image you'd want to make sure only the frond itself showed so you wouldn't have any of the background or the guy messing up the image.

One quick way to make a mask for something like this is to copy one of the channels from the image and manipulate the contrast in the copied channel to make sure the background is separated from the frond.

A quick look at the Red, Green and Blue channels told me the Blue channel would make an easy starting point and so after copying that channel and Curves, (my favorite tool for this), I pushed the Black and White points over to get this:

Pretty easy, eh?

Before moving ahead, in order to work correctly there are a couple of things we need the mask to do properly:

1) The edges have to have the right amount of contrast to them to make it look right. If the edges are too hard it'll look cutout, and if they are too soft the image will look mushy and out of place.

2) The parts of the mask that are supposesd to be White need to be completely White and not have any 'dirty' specks. And the Black areas need to be completely Black and not have any 'holes'.

If the mask has parts that are not clean you'll see holes in the palm that don't belong there, or you'll see flecks of the background showing up in unexpected places. Hunting these mistakes down can be a time consuming hassle.

So here's the long promised Tip: Use the Curves tool to double check the White and Black parts of the mask. Basically the idea is to make the mask as you think it needs to be, with the edges adjusted to the right hardness, then once again open up the Curves tool and push the White and Black points way over like these examples below:

In the top example I temporarily moved the Black point way over to the left so I could check to see if there was any 'dirt' in the Whites of the mask. And sure enough there was quite a bit on the left side of the image.

And in the lower example I moved the White point way over to the right to check for any 'holes' in the black areas. Once again there was some in the middle part of the frond.

Note: An important thing to remember is that you're only using this method to check your masks, be careful NOT TO APPLY these extreme Curves to your mask. You're only looking for any problems that will need to be fixed.

Now that I knew where the problem areas were I could solve them using any of several ways, usually some combination of pushing the White and Black points over just enough along with some painting using the Brush tool to finish up the job.

The key is by temporarily exaggerating the Whites and Blacks of the mask you can see where the problems are and solve them before they become something more bothersome like unexplained specks on your beautiful composited images.

Until my next post Happy Masking!

The Magical Land of Bucaramanga

2009-08-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

Recently Dennis created a series of images with photographer Richard Radstone featuring surrealistic scenes representing different regions in Colombia. This image spotlights the Magical Land of Bucaramanga where Lollipop Trees meet up with friendly Alien Moss Balls while passing bicyclists stop to read their favorite science fiction stories.

The work on this image began with Pre-Production meetings between Richard and Dennis where they planned out a strategy that would allow them to work efficiently and quickly. Working from the client's sketches Richard shot various elements to be used for the background and foreground pieces. Next Dennis and Richard moved into the studio where Dennis worked on creating low res comps stopping to drop in a few quick frames as Richard shot the model to be sure the perspectives all lined up properly. After a week of shooting various models and props for the complete series of 30 ads Dennis and Richard then moved their operations back to Richard's office where they proceeded to work closely together creating the final ads.

For this image, representing the region of Bucaramanga, Dennis began by extending the grassy field Richard had shot for the foreground. Next they experimented with various skies until Dennis achieved the final effect by layering multiple sky shots together to build up the density and tonal range the client wanted for this image. Various flocks of birds were then stripped out and combined with the sky. Then he moved on to rendering the triangle frees and moss balls from elements Richard had shot in the studio. Since this region was known for it's moss covered trees a search through various stock libraries finally resulted in an image the client liked which was then carefully masked out and dropped in place.

The bench and lamps were added in to give the image more of a park-like atmosphere, the bicycle was placed in and changed from red to black. Next Dennis took a shot of gravel from his own library of textures and used it to create the path that runs through the background. Finally lighting effects including highlights and shadows were painted in to give the image a more mysterious feel.

Here is a before and after image showing some of the elements used in creating the final image.

Amazing PDF Tricks

2009-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Just the other day a client was having problems converting a PDF file to a JPEG. After seeing the results she was getting and helping her solve the problem I thought this could be a good topic for a blog post/tip.

PDF files have many strengths, and can be amazingly flexible. Several years ago I discovered two of my favorite uses for these files while working on various projects that had certain challenges. The first was when I was working on an ad campaign for a cruise ship line. In that job they had created a new paint scheme but did not have any photos of the ships with the new paint. So they sent me some older photos of the ships and a PDF showing the new paint scheme. As I was trying to figure out how to map the various swirls onto the older photos I discovered that when I opened the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator all the paths and fills were there making it easy for me to copy them into Photoshop where I warped them into place. Very Cool!

Here's a before/after from one of the images in that campaign.

The next favorite use came up when I was working at a smaller ad agency as their production manager/retoucher. As with many agencies it's hard for them to stay on top of every new version of the various programs they use. For instance it could take several months after Adobe would come out with a new version of Photoshop or Illustrator for them to update everyone's systems with the new software. (One of the things I loved about being the Production Manager/Retoucher was that I was usually first in line for the new stuff.) So on occasion we'd get a file from a client that was saved in a newer version than we were running at the time. With something like a logo or template set up in Illustrator this could be a big problem.

It was then that I discovered my second favorite trick with PDFs: Illustrator files can be opened in Adobe's Acrobat and saved as a PDF! By opening the newer Illustrator file in Adobe Acrobat and saving it as a PDF I could then use trick number 1 and open the PDF in my older version of Illustrator without problem! Now we would not have to call the client and make them think we were too behind the times to do the work they needed. Again Very Cool!

With all these cool uses in mind for PDF files the point I really wanted to talk about here was how to convert PDFs to JPEG files so they can be used in even more ways. Before we get into this it's important to remember there are basically two kinds of files used these days: Vector files and Bitmap files. In short Vector files are based on formulas etc that tell the computer exactly how to "draw" the elements in the file. And Bitmap files are ones that are based on pixels, all that the computer knows about these files are what color pixel goes next to that color pixel. Illustrator files and live type are good examples of Vector files while almost any Photoshop file is a good example of a Bitmap tile.

PDF files can be a mix of these two file types. And because of this they don't really have a set resolution. This is part of what makes them so flexible but for some uses such as on a web page it can be better to save them as a JPEG file giving you a smaller file that will load faster. The challenge lies in how you do the conversion from PDF to JPEG.

When you open go to open a PDF file in Photoshop you'll see something like the dialogue box shown below.

This PDF has several pages as you can see. The first step is to choose which page you want to open and convert to JPEG, (sorry, Photoshop can only work with one page at a time). Next you see the Page Options, this option determines how you're doing the initial crop of the page as you bring it into Photoshop. I usually have this set for "Bounding Box" as shown here, but the other options are such things as: Media Box, Crop Box, Bleed Box, Crop Box, Trim Box and Art Box. Since they are basically different cropping options, choose whichever one works best for your use.

The next option to pay attention to is the Image Size option. Here you can take advantage of the PDF's flexibility to make your file a little bigger, since elements such as type are usually vector elements (based on a formula) this can be a good time to render the type as cleanly as possible. After setting the dimensions and the desired Resolution, (be sure to check the Constrain Proportions box!), the Mode option is where you choose the destination Color Space. Since I was converting this file for the web I chose sRGB, but you may want to use whatever your preferred RGB, or CMYK space is depending on what you're going to do with the file when you're done.

The final option is to set the bit depth. While some users find an advantage at times in working in a higher bit depth than the usual 8 bit for this is not one of those times. Since we're not working with RAW captures just go with the 8 bit option here. Clicking OK then opens the file in Photoshop where you can then do any final cropping and scaling needed before saving as the final JPEG.

Keepin' it Simple Take 2

2009-07-02T19:07:00.001-07:00

Back in September I wrote a post about naming layers and how that can help you keep things clear while you work, (see "Keepin' it Simple with Layers"). While working on a recent project with Richard Radstone there was one particular image that was a great example of just how helpful this can be. In this image the client wanted the sugar cane stalks to be topped with cotton candy making for sort of a surreal scene showing just how sweet that region of Colombia is.

Now putting the cotton candy on top of the sugar cane was pretty easy. But the challenge, (isn't there always one?), came in when the client kept asking for the cotton candy images to be "sharper, no softer, rotate this one right, this one left. No go back the other way. Etc. etc." You get the point, eh? This kind of tweaking is pretty common, but if I had not set the layers up making all the adjustments could have made for some pretty big headaches. Just imagine having to constantly search through all the source images for the right cotton candy shots over and over. (Richard must have shot at least 70 variations on the cotton candy alone.)

Instead, because I had taken advantage of my own advice it was pretty easy. All I had to do was put my cursor over a particular cotton candy shot and then holding down the Command + Control keys while clicking I could bring up the pop-up window showing all the layers affecting that part of the image. Then I could select that cotton candy layer and have it highlighted in the Layers Palette. Now with just a few more clicks I could copy the name of the layer, go to the Finder, paste that into the search bar in the directory window and let the system find all the files with that name. Once the right file was found there I could open it up in Photoshop and easily use it to replace the blurred and rotated version.

As the work on this image progressed I had to do this several times, and just by following that one simple tip, (naming the layers), I kept the job manageable and relatively headache free. And lord knows we get enough headaches without needing our jobs to give us more!

Quick Tip: Reducing Artifacts

2009-05-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Whew! It's been awhile since my last post, things have been busy the last couple of months as I worked on a long project with Richard Radstone (http://richardradstone.com/). As soon as we get the OK from the client I'll post some new technique ideas that came to me while working on that job.

But this week I've been working on some PR images for a client and while these images are all pretty simple their tight budget presents it's own set of challenges. Today I wanted to share an idea that helped quickly solve some of the problems I ran into.

Since these were almost all pre-processed images more than a few of them showed artifacts that are typical of really aggressive sharpening as well as some JPEG artifacts. Here is a close crop showing what I mean.

Looking at the texture of the skin you can see it has a bit of a speckly texture to it. On some images there were little crystal-like whitish specks as well. Retouching these out would normally mean taking a fair amount of time cleaning them up one by one. With the combination of budget and time on this job I needed to be more efficient than that and so I turned to one of my favorite tools in Photoshop, the Reduce Noise Filter.

Normally I use this filter to reduce grain and excessive noise in an image. It can be really useful with skies that have to be blown up a lot. With this filter there are sliders for settings like Strength, Preserve Details, Reduce Color Noise and Sharpen Details. There is also a check box for "Remove JPEG Artifact". When I'm using it on a sky it's not unusual to maximize the Strength and Reduce Color Noise settings while I set the others to 0% .

But when I was working on the images for this PR job I remembered the Remove JPEG Artifact feature and thought "What if..." When I set everything to 0% and left the Remove JPEG Artifact turned on I saw that it did a great job of smoothing out most of the specks I was concerned with. Here's what the same image looked like with the filter set this way:

Using the filter this way looks a lot like a very subtle blur, but the edges are kept pretty sharp. For the skin areas of this image it was a good start on the job. Applying a layer mask made it easy to keep this effect out of the parts of the image that did not need this and with just a little more work on smoothing out the lines etc. I was on to the next image.

Type Safety

2009-02-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Jeff Witchell writes a series of quick tips for Adobe's Layers magazine. While these tips are aimed at users of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign occasionally there is something really useful for Photoshop users as well.

The tip I've copied here comes from today's newsletter and reminded me of my days as a Production Manager when we had to make sure everything was as bullet proof as possible.

Here's Jeff's tip for Feb 4th:

"Layers magazine Tip of the Day

Adobe InDesign CS3 Tip – Being Safe with Outlined Type

In preparing an InDesign layout for production of a poster print, I took a look at the printer's specifications and noticed that all type in the design needed to be Outlined (Type>Create Outlines).
Before doing this, however, I decided to play it safe. I selected my “Type & Logos” Layer in the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and under the panel's Option menu chose Duplicate Layer “Type & Logos.” I clicked the Visibility icon next to my Copy of the this Layer.
Then in my original type Layer, I selected all of the text and chose Create Outlines under the Type menu and saved my work.
Less than five minutes later I got a call from my client who asked, “Did you send out the poster yet?” “No. Why?” I questioned. “I have a quick copy change,” he replied. “I knew you would,” I jumped in laughing.
Ah! Murphy's Law circumvented."

NOTE: While Photoshop doesn't have the "Create Outlines" command for Type but you can still get the same thing by just going to Layer>Type>Convert to Shape.

You can subscribe to the Layers newsletter from their website at: http://www.layersmagazine.com/

Workflow Tip #1

2009-01-09T20:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick tip that make a big difference when working in Photoshop: Name Your Layers.

Ok, this sounds really simple, but it also really can make a BIG difference as you work. Ever since Photoshop added Layers it's gotten harder and harder to keep track of what you're doing and even more so what you've done.

What I'm talking about here is situations where you look at your layers palette and see lots of layers named "Layer 1", "Layer 2" etc, etc. When you have to make some adjustment how can you know what "Layer 37" is for and what it does? This gets to be even more important if you're working on a composited image that has bits and pieces from more than one image being combined into a single image.

Simply naming the layers in some way that tells you what the layer is for can help you immensely as you work your way through the project.

When I'm working on an image one of the first things I do is make sure the background layer is named the same thing as the original file. For instance if the file I'm is named "Katie_img_002" I will make that the background layer's name.

This is really easy to do to, all it takes is 3 or 4 steps. (Since I use a Mac I'm gonna give you the Mac shortcuts here - if you're on a PC you'll just have to translate.)

Step 1) Bring up the "Save As" dialogue, (Command + Shift + S).

Step 2) Copy the file's name, (Command + C).

Step 3) Close the dialogue without saving, (Esc).

Step 4) Double-Click on the layer's name in the Layers palette and Paste the copied file name.

With this done no matter what you call the file from now on you'll always know where you started. And if you're copying this layer to another image the file's name is copied with the layer so you'll always know where that piece came from.

Taking the layer naming idea a little farther I also will name layers according to what any filters I've run. For instance if I run a 6 pixel Gaussian Blur on a layer I'll name the layer something like "GBlur 6". Now if for any reason I need to redo this layer I'll always know what I did and what if any change I need to make.

While it doesn't make a tough job easy, it sure helps me keep track of what I'm doing and that always helps!

Dustin' & Bustin'

2009-01-07T13:25:00.001-08:00

Dustin’ & Bustin’

Every once in a while we come across an image that seems like it’s been through a dust storm. Lots and lots of little specks that all need to be eliminated, one by one by one by… well you get the idea.

Here’s a section of an image that suffers from this very problem. Notice all the whitish specks that cover the face of this watch?

While we can wonder how they got there the question we’re concerned with here is how do we get rid of them?

The first thought that may come to mind is to use Photoshop’s Rubber Stamp tool, also known as the cloning tool. This could work, but keep in mind that this means having to carefully work around all the gradations etc we can see on the face of the watch.

Maybe the Heal Brush could work well here. While I really like the Heal Brush for a lot of tasks, (it can be really great with skin), there are a few things you have to watch out for with it. With an image that has as many spots as this one there can be a little delay each time you click with the brush. It’s not uncommon to get ahead of the tool and have to wait for Photoshop to catch up to our work so we can see how effectively we’ve dealt with the problem. If you’re working with a good sized file, like a couple of hundred Megs, that could be a lot of waiting, and waiting.

In cases like this I’ll go back to an old tried and true technique to make this job as simple and quick as possible: the Dust & Scratches filter.

Found under Photoshop’s Filter>Noise menu the Dust & Scratches filter is basically a variation on the Blur filter. From this screen grab you can see that the filter’s dialogue has settings for both the Radius and the Threshold.

The challenge is to find the balance between the Amount of Blur being applied with the Radius and protecting the smaller details with the Threshold setting. While that can sound a little tricky the way this is used in practice is to find a setting that knocks out most of the dust without blurring out too many little details, (on a duplicate layer of course).

Then the trick is to use a Layer Mask filled with Black to mask out the filtered duplicated layer. Now all you have to do is using the Brush tool paint white in the layer mask wherever you see those nasty little spots and magically they disappear. (Ok not so magically, but it’s more fun to put it that way, eh?)

Since the Brush tool works more quickly than the Heal Brush and the combination of the filter and the layer mask is simpler to use than the Rubber Stamp tool this can be a pretty quick way to knock down the majority of those troublesome spots.

There are a few things to watch out for when using this tool to bust those specks. In this side by side enlargement here you can easily see the small type has been blurred, but what can be just as problematic and more difficult to see are the borders around some of the larger specks.

When viewed closely these borders can be objectionable artifacts that should be avoided. This means that the Dust & Scratches filter usually won’t do the job alone, when you see some artifact like these borders use the Heal Brush or the Rubber Stamp tool instead.

So while it’s definitely not a cure-all solution the Dust & Scratches filter is certainly a very useful one.

Bob Stevens and the Smart Smileys

2008-11-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

While working on a recent project with Bob Stevens we had an interesting challenge. As part of the Kaiser Health campaign for the ad agency, Campbell Ewald, we needed to create an image that featured the control panel of a cardio workout machine.

In keeping with Kaiser’s Thrive campaign the panel needed to show a series of happy Smiley Faces in place of the lights measuring the intensity of the workout. Now re-working the panel was pretty easy stuff but knowing Bob and the Art Director, Marge Bornais, I knew those 20 or so little happy lights would need to be tweaked and adjusted until they were just right.

Remembering that we had a pretty tight deadline, (what job doesn’t?), I decided it would be a lot easier to get one light looking great than 20. But of course Bob and Marge needed to see all the lights in place before they’d know if they were right or not. Hmmm….

This is where Photoshop’s Smart Objects proved to be the smart answer. You see one feature of the Smart Objects is that you can use it to embed one image into another. And when you change the embedded image it automatically will update in the file you’ve placed it in. What this means is that I could make the Smiley Face light as a separate file, place that in the cardio panel image as a Smart Object and make several copies of this Smart Object to build up the number of lights we needed in the image. So far pretty ordinary, right?

But here’s where the advantage came in, when I needed to change the Smiley Face all I needed to do was double click on one of the copies in the Layers palette, this opened up a separate image that had all the layers of my original Smiley Face. Then after I made the necessary changes to this file and hit “Save” Photoshop automatically updated ALL the copies I had made in the cardio panel.

Huh? All 20 at once? Yup! Just by changing one I could get Photoshop to do all the work of updating all the lights at the same time. Pretty smart, eh?

Wick Beavers & the Ascension

2008-11-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

Florida photographer, Wick Beaver, had a problem. He was working on creating an updated version of Jesus’ Ascension for one of his clients but was having trouble getting the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands just right.

That was when Wick sent me the image looking to see what solutions I could see for his problem. While I’m not a trained illustrator working as a digital artist for nearly 18 years has taught me to look at images with an illustrator’s approach. And that experience proved to be just what I needed to create the ‘holes’ Wick needed.

Beginning with the idea of the hole itself I added an adjustment layer set to Multiply blending to create the illusion of depth. Then I thought about how the skin would look around the hole and added another adjustment layer to desaturate giving it just the right ‘deadness’. Some illustrated highlights around the edges helped a lot. This was followed by another adjustment layer that was painted in to create the bruises surrounding the wound.

After all that I felt something was still needed. Then I realized, it needed the right texture and shadow detail to really finish pulling off the effect. I grabbed a ‘comp shot’ of some meat and placed that into the holes using a layer mask to control how much detail was apparent in the wound.

Finally I sent a layered file back to Wick with the suggestion that he replace my rough shot of the meat. Rushing out to his compost pile Wick tells me he found some days old chicken breast and some bow tie pasta which he quickly shot and dropped in to finish off the image.

Here’s what Wick had to say about the collaboration:
“I had the great fortune and real honor of having Dennis Dunbar out in LA work the nail holes in the hands of Christ in my Ascension of Christ Ft Lauderdale photo. He immediately grasped the illustrative and kitsch nature of the task and returned me his 15+ layers, masks and adjustments to "get" the rotting, splayed back, bruised nature of the nail holes. Below is a close up of the forward hand. I attach a copy of the final full image as well for a look at the whole image. He left me a single layer he titled "MEAT", for which I shot week old chicken bones and bowtie pasta dug out of our nice compost pile. Yes, gross to the max, but worth the effort in the end!”

Plastic Wrap and Running Shoes

2008-09-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Recently I worked on a project with photographer Bob Stevens, (www.bobstevens.com), that was pretty fun. For me it started with a call from Bob seeking input on how to tackle a particular challenge. You see he was bidding on a job for Kaiser Healthcare and this one image involved shooting a pair of running shoes that were packaged up like a choice steak at the grocery store complete with foam tray and plastic wrap.

The challenge was how could he shoot a few different sets of shoes on the foam tray, get them combined to create a “generic” shoe and then have it all wrapped in plastic wrap.

After thinking about it for a little while I took one of my own shoes and did a couple of quick shots of it with and without plastic wrap and then looked at them carefully to see if I could figure out an approach.

Then it occurred to me, since the wrap is essentially clear it basically showed up in the image as subtle shadows and highlights depending on how it interacted with the light. But each of these qualities also had a certain kind of ‘organic’ look to it so while I could just paint in the shadows and highlights I’d have to be careful to match the way the stretched plastic really caught the light.

So the solution I offered to Bob was simple: Shoot the different shoes without the wrap and then shoot some examples of shoes wrapped in the plastic so we had some good ‘organic’ examples, (otherwise how would we know when it looked “real”). Then all we needed to do was build the generic shoes by compositing bits and pieces and finally I’d illustrate the wrap onto the composited shoes. Easy, eh?

On the day of the shoot Bob had his crew along, with the Art Director, Marge Bornais, and I all meet at the studio. While Bob and his assistants shot the various pairs of shoes I started “comping” together the shots working to build a lo res version of the generic shoes. When every one was confident we had this part covered we moved on to shooting the plastic wrap examples.

To make sure the wrap showed up as well as possible Bob had a pair of black shoes standing in as the hero shoes. Then Bob and his crew shot somewhere between 30 and 40 shots of the plastic wrapped shoes. As they went along they realized that with the reflective nature of the wrap they needed to concentrate on shooting bits at a time. One shot might have a great look over the toes and another have a good highlight over the heel. As they went along the Marge and Bob circled the areas they liked and passed them on to me.

Finally it came to assembling everything together in high resolution for the final ad. First I worked on combining the parts of the shoes to build the generic shoe. When everyone was happy with the new shoes I started working on adding the plastic wrap.

Marge had a great insight oserving that the wrap added some slight darkening effect overall. So first I added a curve that darkened the shoes and the tray just enough to define a shape for the illustrated wrap.

Then I opened up the shots of the plastic wrap and studied them closely. It became pretty apparent that the wrap had a subtle shadow, a more diffused highlight,S and then a sharper, hotter highlight on top. Basically this is the same way you illustrate wrinkles in fabric. I decided to approach it by making a series of layers, one to darken slightly, one to lighten a little and another one for the hotter highlights.

After working that out all I needed to do was to trace the various shapes we liked from the sample shots of wrapped shoes and copy those shapes to the various layers I had made in the hi res file and fill them in with the right color of paint. Sliding the opacity of these layers gave me the control I needed to make sure they had just the right transparent quality.

With Marge and Bob art directing me as I went I then took the shapes I made and gave each one a few tweaks to get them looking good. When that was done I then went around the edge of the foam tray illustrating little wrinkles along the way to complete the illusion.

The final step was to work with Bob and Marge to adjust the overall color and saturation getting the “Feel” Bob was after.

Easy as pie.

Here is a before/after of the base shoes and the final wrapped composite image.

Channel Pulling Masks

2008-09-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we get lucky. Every now and then there is actually one of those “Quick and Dirty” tricks that actually works and saves us hours of extra work. Depending on the shot “Channel Pulling” is one of those tricks.

Basically the idea here is if one of the channels in the image shows enough contrast between your subject and the background you can make a quick mask based on that channel and save yourself all the work of having to hand paint the mask.

Here’s how a quick run down on how it works. First let’s take an image like this one I got from Jupiter Images. You can see this is just a basic shot of a person against a white background. While this technique can work with more complex images I just wanted to use an easy example to get the idea across.

The first step is to go to the Channels palette and look at each of the channels in the image. This one is an RGB image so we’ll look at the Red, then Green and finally the Blue channels to see which one offers the best contrast between our subject and the background.

Looks like the Blue channel is our best bet so we’ll use that one. Next we’ll click on that channel and pull it down to the folded page icon in the menu at the bottom of the palette. (Ahhh, now you know why it's called "Channel Pulling"!) This makes a copy of the channel called “Blue copy”.

Now click on that channel in the palette menu to select it and see it on the screen.

Looking at this channel we can see that it needs a little work to be useable as a mask. Remember that you need a mask that is mostly black and white with just a little gray in between them to soften the edge and make a good transition between our subject and whatever the new background will be.

Obviously this means we need to add some contrast to the channel so we can push most of the gray values to black while making sure the rest is truly white. My preferred method for adjusting the contrast is with the “Curves” tool. You can get to the Curves adjustment by selecting Image>Adjustments>Curves from the menu, or by using the shortcut Command + M (sorry, I always have trouble remembering the PC equivalent).

Once we bring this up the adjustment itself is pretty easy, just slide the black point (in this window it’s on the lower left) over towards the right until you see the grays start to fill in to black. Then slide the White point (it’s the one on the right) over to the left until the lighter grays turn to white.

It’s good to note that you want some shades of gray around the edges. Since Black and White are the extremes shades of gray give us some feathering around the edge. How much feathering we need all depends on the image itself. As I noted in a previous post the right combination here depends on how crisp or soft the edges in the image itself are. You want your mask to have a similar amount of crispness or softness as your image. Here is a close up view of the bits of gray I’m using to feather the edges of this mask.

Now the next step is to fill in the areas that need to be black but aren’t quite there yet. Depending on what seems easiest I’ll either use a big brush to paint it in, or use the lasso tool to select those parts and then fill them with black. The same thing goes for any areas that really need to be white.

When you’ve completed this you should wind up with something that looks like this:

And now that we have our mask channel made all we need to do is turn it into a layer mask. Doing this is really simple. First make sure your layer is not set as the background layer. (Background layers cannot use layer masks.) If it is all you need to do is double click on it in the Layers palette. With this done now load the channel we just made as a selection. Again I like to do this by command clicking on the channel’s icon in the Channels palette but you can also use Select>Load Selection from the PS menu as well.

With the selection loaded look to see if the crawling ants are running around the outside of the image. Since by default White in the channel indicates the area that will be selected the channel we made will mean the background gets selected instead of the subject. No worries, all you have to do is choose Select> Inverse from the menu (Command + Shift + “i” on a Mac). This flips around the selection and now your subject is selected instead of the background.

Then the last step is to go back to the Layers palette and click on the little “Add layer mask” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Here’s a screen shot of it:

Now we have our layer mask and your image should look like this and you’re ready for the next job. (Don’t forget to Save your image.)

Keepin' it Simple with Layers

2008-09-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe this comes under the “Pet Peeve” heading, but as a retoucher I see a lot of Photoshop files with lots of layers that have names like “Layer 1” or “Layer 2” etc. While I know this is Photoshop’s default naming system what happens is pretty quickly you need some sort of guide to tell what layer is doing what, a sure-fire formula for confusion!

So the suggestion I want to make here is take the brief moment it takes to name the layer in some way that helps whoever is working on the image get an idea of what that layer is for.

For instance when I’m working on a beauty shot typically I’ll have a layer where I do the majority of spotting work that’s called “Spotting”, there will also be a layer called “Stray Hairs” etc. This keeps it easy for me to tell what layer to go to when I need to make some further tweaks.

Taking this a step further if you’re combining several images into a composite image it really helps to name the layers with the names of the source images themselves. Since I work on a lot of movie posters it’s common for me to see layers named something like “boy’s head”. This at least tells me what’s on the layer, but gives me no idea which source image the head came from. Have you ever had to search an entire server looking for the correct shot so you can replace it with a cleaner version? Not fun.

But there is help. Here’s a really easy way to copy and paste the name of the source image so the layer is properly named.

Step One: With the source image open use Photoshop’s “Save As” command (Command + Shift + S on a Mac), then copy the name of the file as it shows up in the dialogue (Command + C on a Mac). Then hit the Escape key.

Step Two: Go to the Layers palette and double click on the layer named “Background”, now paste the name you copied in Step One (Command + V on a Mac).

Step Three: Now drag that layer into the composite image. Note that the layer is now named for the source file.

After doing this a few times your fingers will start to automatically go to the right key combinations and you’ll see that with just a few key strokes and a double click or two you’re done and things are organized and easy to figure out.

See, I feel better already. ;-)

Divide & Conquer: Color to B&W

2008-08-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

Black and White imagery has had a long tradition in the world of photography. And in this digital age Photoshop goes a long way to honor that tradition giving us many different ways to convert our Color images to Black and White with more control and finesse than ever before.

What I’d like to talk about here is how to make use of some of that control to easily get results that couldn’t be achieved before without a lot of effort. Suppose you have an image like this one I took at Lake Powell a couple of years ago.

Having grown up loving the dramatic skies in Ansel Adams’ images. When I looked at this image and thought of doing a B&W version I wanted to get close to that kind of drama in the skies. But as I worked on it with Photoshop CS3’s B&W adjustment layer I realized that I wanted to also bring out the detail and contrast in the cliffs. The adjustments that gave me a cool looking sky just didn’t seem to do what I wanted in the cliffs.

Here is a screen shot showing the image adjusted for the sky along with the settings I used to get that.

And when I worked to get the detail and tonality in the cliffs the sky just seemed to miss out on the drama. Here is a screen shot showing the image adjusted for the cliffs, again with the settings.

Luckily Photoshop gives us an easy way to have the best of both adjustments. The secret is to use both adjustment layers combined with layer masks that makes sure they’re only affecting the areas we want affected. To do this all I did was start out with one adjustment, in this case the one for the cliffs, and then by painting black in the layer mask I kept this adjustment from affecting the sky.

Here is a screen shot with the layer mask shown as a Red overlay:

Then all I had to do was copy the mask from the Cliffs adjustment layer to my Sky adjustment layer and invert the values so I had the opposite part of the image covered. That looked like this:

Finally all I had to do was give a quick look over the image to make sure none of the original color was showing up in between the two adjustments and voila I had this as the finished image: