Donnie's Photography Blog » Retouching

Cropping in post-production

Donnie — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:14:36 +0000

I typically prefer to crop or compose the photograph while shooting. However there are instances, such as the example below, where cropping in post-production can add a completely different dimension to the photograph. Furthermore, shooting with a 24mp camera allows me to make such crops without concern for image degradation.

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Today’s retouching…

Donnie — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:55:11 +0000

The first image of Paul is the original and the second is the retouched version. The best retouching, in my opinion, is retouching that isn’t noticed. Although extensive retouching was done to the hands, nails, skin, and forehead, it still maintains the realism and integrity of the original image.

Side note: In case you were wondering, I used a forehead from another photo that wasn’t covered by Paul’s hair.

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Beauty Retouching

Donnie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:01:48 +0000

Sometimes retouching is pretty straightforward. At other times, it requires a little more imagination and finessing. This first beauty shot of Ieva Aniulyte came out very well, but the left hand is visually distracting. So, I found another image that I could use to “copy and paste”(see photo 2).

Here’s the basic process I went through:

First, I copied the knuckle edge from the right hand of photo one. I flipped this and positioned it appropriately (if you look closely, you can see that the edges of the knuckles are the same on the left and right hand).

Second, I copied the finger from photo 2, rotated it slightly, made it a bit smaller, and then positioned that accordingly. Finally, I blended everything together with the original image till it became what you see in photo 3, the finished version.

Ieva Aniulyte and her sister, Aida, just finished doing a show for Donna Karan. There are more photos of Ieva to follow plus a behind the scenes video, which is still in the editing process. Stay tuned!

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Lip Retouch

Donnie — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:00:10 +0000

This image wasn’t one of my favorites at first. Although the gold line was straight, my camera perspective made it look slightly crooked. I found this very visually distracting. I decided to take it into Photoshop and see what I could do. I first cleaned up the details on the skin. Second, I slightly rotated the gold line in the upper right corner. Third, I thinned out the line on the left side and did some final cleanup of small hairs around the lip. I like how the gold line provides “left to right” movement in the photo. The color scheme also works very nicely.

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