Beginning or End?

With all of the hooplah recently about placing blame on image manipulation I thought it necessary to show one side of the equation that most never talk about. Everything that happens to "control" the image even before things like photoshop. Anyone that has been around stock shoots on location or advertising shoots for clothing know what the image would look like from the angle the viewer never sees. Duct tape, clips, pins - you name it everything and anything to make the clothes and the image look perfect. And this is not limited to just the clothes - anyone or thing in the picture would be subject to this level of perfection.
This is not to let the retouchers of the world off the hook as far as being responsible - more a spread of the responsibility. Take a look...

HDR to PS Options2

Here we talk about one way for us to use Photoshop after an image has been tone mapped.

OPTIONS - NOT ALWAYS BLACK AND WHITE!

In this tutorial Chris will walk through a few of the more important things to think about and how they may effect your final conversion to Black and White - at the very least they will show how they effect your results.

IT'S COMING! - PHOTOPLUS 2009

Huge Event with all the latest and greatest tools and toys for photographers as well as a lengthy list of excellent seminars and instruction - except for mine that is?! ha

• Conference

• Schedule

DOUBLE HEADER - POST PRODUCTION

On October 4th, Chris Alvanas will host a double workshop/lecture at CDIA. 10-12 will be on Extending Dynamic Range and 2-4 will be on Glamour Retouching. Seating is limited so please RSVP to calvanas@cdiabu.com. This event is free and not limited to CDIA stiudents.

024 RT Last One

This video represents the last phase of a serious retouch. There is a need to get away from the screen to give your eyes a break and come back to finish up. When coming back there will almost always be final tweaks in finishing the image.

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN...

...does not always mean you should. The ethics of beauty retouching - how far is too far! This topic has perplexed me for sometime and I know it does not take much to freeze me into the headlights but I think it really requires a bit of thought(the ethics that is). The following video shows a normal speed (I wish) sample of a retouch job. Now for the sake of showing techniques I show what IS possible, but think for a moment about what you require for delivery to your client. A nip and tuck here and there never hurt anybody - maybe. I enjoy post production work. Truly I do!

But ask yourself what you are doing and better yet why you are doing it. It has never been intended to be there as a reason for poor photography - more about making great photography even greater. Taking it to places that excite ones imagination not to mention the workflow advantages and do overs. I am appearing at PhotoPlus 2009 and have 2 sessions, one on HDR and the other on Glamour Retouching. We'll dig in and show how we can solve problems as a retoucher and we may also ask a few questions about when and why? Enjoy

T Soft2 High End Skin Softening

This is a repeat post of high end skin softening, but this time the audio works all the way through.
Cheers

Return Skin Texture

Returning the texture to the skin is often times what makes or breaks the softening technique. Here is what is important.

BACK!

Sorry to take a brief break in the action, but I recently moved - Wow, I thought Photoshop was difficult. Anyhow, I am back and ready for a few new trick and tips to show. Stay tuned as we will dive into some Skin Softening techniques in my next post. Thanks for standing by.
Cheers