How was your weekend?

So who of you managed to get your self along to Scott Kelby’s final Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It Seminar in London?

It was great to be asked to join Scott on stage as a Guest and go through some retouching techniques on one of the images he’d shot earlier of model Shaun Stafford. Talking of Shaun, without doubt one of the funniest moments of the day was Scott’s response of ‘Holy crap dude…are we even the same species?” when Shaun, who was in incredible condition, walked onto stage…classic

Anyway following on from Saturday’s Guest Retouching spot and indeed teaching a class at Photoshop World last month yesterday I recorded a video going through a series of Photoshop Retouching Tips & Techniques.

The video link and password has been sent out to all who initially signed up for the webinar and subscribed to my newsletter and sees me going through a number of techniques including:

• #1 Creating Realistic Lights
• #2 The Cartoon Effect
• #3 Compositing Tips / Techniques
• #4 Ugly Retouching
• #5 Using the Fill Slider
• #6 History, Thingys and Contrast

The video is just over 40 minutes long and in it I couldn’t resist adding in a few bonus tips and techniques that I’ve never shown before.

How do I get to see the video?
Easy. All you need to do is to subscribe to my newsletter which I have now set up to automatically reply once you do so with the necessary link and password…it’s as easy as that

Subscribe to my newsletter here [Link]

Or…click on the Newsletter Sign Up graphic in the side bar on the right of your screen.

After watching, if you have any questions or comments then please as always feel free to make use of the comments section below; that way anybody else who has the same question will get to see the answer too.

Right that’s all for now so have a great start to the week and I’ll catch you back here tomorrow,
Enjoy

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Ok so today I’m pretty psyched to have been told that yesterday I was featured in an article in the New York Times.

A couple of weeks back Scott Kelby posted on his Google+ page about a technique I’d written called the Invisible Black Backdrop. In it I explain how to take portrait shots in virtually any location, and using minimal kit and a few very simple steps make it look as though they were taken in a studio.

Since originally writing the post, it’s wonderful to have received so much positive feedback from folks who themselves have given the technique a try and achieved great results; completely unexpected though was to have had a call from the New York Times wanting to feature it…

I’ll be calling a favour from my buddy, superb portrait photographer Rick Wenner who lives over in New York to send over a couple of the printed copies (hey Rick ) but you can check out the online version here [Link]

Enjoy

>Here too is a link to the original Invisible Black Backdrop technique post [Link]

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Without question, the upgrade to CS6 is Amazing! There is so much that’s been worked on, added and enhanced that this new version of Photoshop literally is a Game Changer; it’s that good. Of course over time I’ll be posting tutorials and sharing new and updated techniques at my workshops and in webinars.

For now though, here’s a video I ended up putting together last night when I was playing around to see how CS6 could change some of my retouching techniques. In the video I cover a Beauty Retouching technique for extending the length of a model’s neck and I show how I used to do it in Photoshop CS5 and then show how I’m now doing it in Photoshop CS6.

Enjoy

ps> If you haven’t already done so, be sure to head on over to Adobe Labs, download the Photoshop CS6 Beta and give it a run; you’ll love it! [Link]

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It sure was great last week to receive so much positive feedback from my Invisible Black Backdrop technique that Scott Kelby very kindly shared over on his Google+ page; such a simple technique and yet so effective:

Looking at it, the technique is made up of just 2 parts:

• Set your camera to it’s lowest ISO, Maximum Sync Speed and then choose an Aperture that eventually gives you a completely black picture.
• Bring in the flash to light up your subject.

Enjoy

Any of you had your new New iPad delivered a day early?

Anyway just a quick post today taking a look back at a video tutorial I recorded some time ago…

Taking a step away from compositing (for today anyway) this video which is actually the last in a series of 5 covers the final stages of a beauty retouch that I went through from start to finish, and shows how to enhance make up and lengthen your subjects neck. You can check out the other videos over on my YouTube page here [Link]

As this retouch series of videos were recorded some time ago some of the techniques I use have since been enhanced a little now so I’ll be recording some new tutorials real soon.

Hey have a great Thursday and I’ll catch you tomorrow which is Friday which means it’ll be just one week togo until Photoshop World!!!
Enjoy

>Did I really say Oppaayyyyycity?

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As always any questions or comments you may have, please feel free to make use of the comments section below,
Enjoy

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Today I wanted to share a new picture that I’ve put together called Chained plus a little tip/suggestion to help with any compositing you may do…

The original photograph was taken during my time spent over in Germany hanging out with buddies Calvin Hollywood and Gabor Richter. Model Jessie was superb to work with turning up laden with cases full of different clothing and props and the fact we’d set aside a whole day to photograph her in 3 completely different looks gave plenty of scope to experiment.

In this particular shot Jessie is shot on grey seamless and lit with 2 spotlights either side and behind and then from the front a strip light was used. Initially the light from the strip was just too soft but taking out the inner and outer diffusion material and leaving the grid on the front did the trick; especially as that too gave a great pattern on the floor almost as if light was shining through bars to the cell Jessie was ‘supposedly’ in.

As for the scene Jessie has been composited into, this came from a shot I took when we went for a walk around Heidelburg Castle. I’ll always take photographs of walls, doors, textures and cloudy skies when I’m out and about. Stock photography can work out quite expensive, especially if you purchase an image and then don’t like the way it looks when you add it in, so collecting your own is something I’d highly recommend. It doesn’t cost a penny either so just keep them in a folder on your hard drive…you never know when they could come in handy.

There’s still a few more images of Jessie that I need to edit from our time together; one in particular was our take on the poster for the film Columbiana which I’ll call something like Gerlondonia…but then maybe not

And this shot was a suggestion by Jessie; not just a great model but great feedback and ideas too:

Right that’s all for now folks, so as always if you have any question or comments then please feel free to make use of the comments section below but in the mean time have a great day and I’ll catch up with you later,
Enjoy

> You can see a larger version of ‘Chained’ over on my 500px portfolio page here [Link]

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In the Studio
Again I’ve used a 3 light set up for this shoot made up of two strip boxes slightly behind and to the side of the subject and a medium octa to the front and camera left. The great thing about this set up is that it works for great for both full and 3/4 length composites by helping in the ‘cut out’ process but also used to mimic light hitting your subject from things such as the sun, the moon, street lighting and so on. Plus changing the look and feel of the lighting is a breeze by simply turning off one of the rim lights, the front light or indeed a combination of both…

The Composite
I certainly find that knowing what you want your final image to look like even before you’ve photographed the subject in the studio helps a great deal. You’ll go into the shoot knowing the angle you need to shoot your subject at and where the lighting needs to come from for starters and this alone can save you hours when it comes to editing as you can immediately start putting the elements together as opposed to trying desperately to find something that fits…if that makes sense.

Putting it all together
Below you can see the stages that the image went through from it first of all being opened in Photoshop to the final composite….

In the past I’ve mentioned about a stage in editing that my good friend Calvin Hollywood calls 20/80 meaning where the final 20% of the editing stage takes 80% of the entire time, and that’s exactly how it was in this case too. Putting all the elements together was a relatively quick process but it’s achieving the final look (colour, contrast, detail etc…) that takes the time and that was achieved by playing with a combination of Photoshop techniques and using some filters that come in the Nik Color Efex Pro 4 plug in, and when I say playing I mean exactly that…trying this, trying that, deleting this, deleting that, until finally I was happy and said enough was enough.

Knowing when to stop editing in my opinion can be one of the hardest things to do because there’s always that thought in the back of your mind of “I wonder what it would look like if I did this” but again, this can be helped by having a clear idea of exactly what it is you want to achieve before you’ve even started.

As for how long this composite took from star to finish, well I couldn’t tell you but what I can tell you is that it certainly wasn’t done in one complete sitting but rather quite a few short bursts in between other work.

Creative Composite Workshop
So there you have it…a quick look at the kind of work that went into putting the ‘Homeward Bound‘ composite together. Now if you’re interested in taking a closer look at what goes into an image like this from the photography and through all the editing in Photoshop why not come and join me at my new Creative Compositing Workshop where we’ll do exactly that and more.

Full details can be found on the Creative Compositing Workshop Page here [Link]

As always if you have any questions or comments then please feel free to make use of the comments section below but in the mean time,
Enjoy

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Unlike my day long Concept to Print workshop, this particular workshop runs for half a day with the focus on photographing and editing images to give them the Character Portrait look.

Each workshop has a theme and for last Saturday’s we went for a Newspaper Editor kind of feel with my great friend and N.A.P.P. Evangelist Dave Clayton stepping in as model for the day; and any day when Dave’s around is always sure to be fun

The workshop starts off with me first of all going through and setting up the lighting which sees us using 3 lights: two strip boxes and one beauty dish and shot against grey seamless:

Now, this is all well and good but my feeling about this is that what’s covered in the workshop needs to be something that can also be replicated outside of the studio because not all attendees will have access to or maybe the inclination to use a studio. So with that in mind we also replicate the set up using Speedlights and the new Hot Road Stripboxes and an Ezybox from Lastolite

This is very much a ‘hands on’ workshop so once I’d gone through photographing Dave to give me images to go through and edit later, it was then attendees turn to make use of both set ups to then Photograph Dave and each other.

Following a short break it was then time for the editing and although not essential some attendees bring along a laptop with Photoshop installed so that they can follow along each of the stages to take the image from out of camera to final edit. Like I said though, this isn’t essential as everything is covered step by step making it easy to follow along:

To give you an idea of what’s covered and what goes into creating the ‘look’ in Photoshop here’s a sneak peek at the Photoshop Layers I made that went into Dave’s edit.

Now just one thing about this particular image…there are some techniques in here that wouldn’t necessarily be needed to give the Character Portrait Look, such as the cartoon/painterly effect and of course lighting the unlit cigar, but that being said after we’ve finished the main edit we then move onto some Photoshop Tips, Tricks and Special Effects:

Giveaways
Each attendee will be receiving the Workshop eBook very soon, but also on the day Dave very kindly ran a couple of competitions with numerous gifts and give aways donated by the great folks over at the N.A.P.P. and Kelby Training plus there’s exclusive video content that attendees can access showing some of the Photoshop techniques.

And ofcourse as is now tradtition at the end of the workshop we all then reconvened at a local curry house for a bite to eat a drink and a good natter

Feedback

• Been on an amazing photoshop workshop run by the talented Glyn Dewis with the outstanding model Dave Clayton :0) ~ Lee Ramsden
• Just home from the best photoshop / retouching workshop ever. Very slick and professional a credit to Glyn and superb facilities at the studio ~ Graeme Clark
• Glyn, brilliant Character Portrait Workshop mate, really enjoyed it. Dave Clayton did a fantastic job as the model and a cracking studio. Cheers guys – had a great day ~  Steve Bryson
• Thanks Glyn for a great day yesterday. Was good to meet everyone. Loved the curry  ~ Colette Wilks
• Thanks guys, had a great afternoon,was good to meet you both! Learnt a load of cool tricks, and enjoyed it!! ~ James Hole

So there you have it…a quick look behind the scenes of a recent Character Portrait Workshop

Come Join me in January
The next Character Portrait Workshop is set for Saturday 28th January 2012 and I’m really looking forward to revealing the theme for the day.

So why not come and join me and learn how to create your own Character Portraits; a look that one attendee suggested would also be great for photographing children or maybe even animals too.

The latest workshop date was only announced a few days ago and already spaces are filling fast so be sure to book your place real soon! [Link]

See you there,
Glyn

Check out the Workshop link at the top of the page or use this [Link] for more information.

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To give you an idea of what my tutorial is about, here’s the picture of my good friend and NAPP UK Evangelist Dave Clayton who stood in as a model for me.

Now Dave isn’t, has never been and never will be a smoker but for this shoot I was kind of working on the theme of him looking like a newspaper editor and if Peter Parker’s Boss in Spiderman smokes a cigar, then I guess they all do…right?

I’m going to be really creative here and call this technique Lighting an unlit Cigar as it’s all about making a cigar or cigarette look as if it’s alight when at the time the photograph was taken, it wasn’t.

So, looking at the images below here’s how we can take the cigar from being unlit to lit using a technique in Photoshop that’s not only easy but incredibly fast; here’s what we have to do…

STEP 1: Make a Selection of the end of the cigar and copy this to a new layer using the keyboard shortcut CMD/CTRL + J or by going to the LAYER MENU…NEW…LAYER VIA COPY. I used the Eliptical Marquee Tool, but any selection method you use will work fine.

Now that we have the end of the cigar copied onto it’s own layer we’re going to apply a few Layer Styles. So, to do this we need to first of all get to where the Layer Styles are and we do that by double clicking on this Layer in the Layer Panel.

STEP 2: Now we’re there, we’re going to add 3 layer styles:

*Outer Glow with it’s Blend Mode set to ‘Color Burn’, Noise at 75% and Opacity of 100%

*Inner Glow with a colour of Black and Size of 25px

*Gradient Overlay with it’s blend mode to ‘Overlay’ and a Black to Red Gradient

Ok, so now the cigar kind of looks like it’s lit and you can change the opacity of this layer to suit how strong you want the ‘lit’ part to look.

However, there are a couple of things we can do to really finish off the effect…

Add some Noise by going to FILTER…NOISE…ADD NOISE ( 15% should do the trick) and then to really complete the look simply get a Red Brush, change it’s blend mode to Overlay and paint over some of the ash behind the burning section of the cigar.

And that’s all there is to it. Of course you can always go one step further by adding some smoke and this is easy to do by using some Smoke Effect Brushes that are available for free all over the internet.

Right, that’s all for now so I’ll catch up with in a few days, but just to let you know next week I’ll be posting a look at what went on at the workshop plus an insight into what kind of retouching goes into giving an image the ‘Character Portrait’ look. In the meantime, as always if you have any questions then feel free to shout them out in the comments section below.

Enjoy

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