Pelleron Art

Create a Serene Fantasy Photo Manipulation

2012-01-12T00:49:00.000-08:00

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to compose magical scene from different stock images, how to create strong atmosphere and add interesting lights and shadows. You’ll also learn many different ways of color adjustments to get the exact images you’ve always wished. Let’s get started!

Step 1 – Preparing the Upper Part of the Background

Create a new file in Photoshop. Set the dimensions on 600px (wide) and 900px (height). Download the picture of the background and drag it into the just created file. Name this new layer e.g. UPPER BACKGROUND. To set the proper size of this layer press Command/Ctrl + T on your keyboard (or go to Edit > Free Transform) and resize it on proper size. Hold Shift while doing it to remain the same proportions. To apply changes press Enter on your keyboard.
Place the layer UPPER BACKGROUND to the upper part of the image.

I like the overall serene atmosphere of the stock photo. It has an enigmatic, foggy mood which I find to be especially attractive. But I also like drama in my images. To bring some drama here you’ll create higher mountains on the left and right side.
Grab the Lasso Tool (L) and select the right part of the rocks. Press Command/Ctrl + C to copy this selection and then Command/Ctrl + V to paste it. Name the new layer RIGHT ROCKS and place it above the original rocks. Below you can see an example of what I mean.

As you can see it looks very unrealistic right now. To make it better looking you need to blend it with the rest of the image.

You could do it with the Eraser Tool (E) but I have a better idea for you – using layer mask. When using the Eraser Tool (E) the erased parts are lost for good and it’s very hard to reappear them if you realize you want to do something differently. If you work with layer masks the parts are just hidden (not erased) and you can easily make them reappear.

The principle is simple: if you want to hide something, paint on the layer mask with black over that part, if you want to have something visible, paint over it with white.

Make sure you’re on the RIGHT ROCKS layer. Click on the button Add layer mask. You can find this button in the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don’t see this palette press F7 on your keyboard or go to Window > Layers and it appears.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush and set the Master Diameter on about 70 px. Lower the Opacity on 40% and pick black color. Make sure that the layer mask is active (just click on it) and start blending RIGHT ROCKS with the background.

Now do the exact same process with the left part of the rocks. On the picture below you can see how your manipulation should look like after this step.

Step 2 – The Bottom Part of the Background

Download the stock photo of sea listed in the beginning of the tutorial and drag it into your manipulation. Name this new layer SEA. Press Command/Ctrl + T and change its size to fit the rest of the manipulation. Press enter to apply the changes.

You need to blend the SEA with the rest of the image. You’ll do it same as you’ve blended rocks in the previous step. Add a layer mask and paint with the Brush Tool (B) over the transition between see and rocks. Use the same brush settings as in the previous step. Paint till you create nice soft transition. On the photo below you can see how the blending should look.

Another element, which needs to be added, is the stone in the foreground on which the woman sits in the preview picture. Download the stone photo listed in the beginning of the tutorial. Drag it into your manipulation, place it on the top of all layers, resize it and name it STONE.

As with previous parts of the background you need to blend the stone with the rest of the picture properly. To do this, add a layer mask to the STONE. Grab the Brush Tool (B), pick some soft round brush, set the Master Diameter on about 150 pixels, lower the Opacity on 50% and pick black color. Paint over the areas of the STONE you want to hide. On the picture below you can get the inspiration how the layer looks with the layer mask.

And there is shown how the overall manipulation looks so far.

Step 3 – Darkening the Sky

In this step you’ll focus on adjusting the sky. Right now it’s too bright, which doesn’t fit to the mood you want to achieve with this work. In this step you’ll darker it little bit and then you’ll make some more adjustments in following steps.

Download the stock photo of the sky listed in the beginning of the tutorial and drag it into your photo manipulation. Place it on the top of the layers and name it SKY. Press Command/Ctrl + T or got to Edit > Free Transform and resize it on proper size. Press Enter to apply the changes.

You need to do two things to blend this layer properly with the rest of the image – to change its Blending Mode and to blend it with the help of layer mask.

Let’s start with the changing of the Blending Mode. You can find it in the upper part of the palette layers. Change it from the mode Normal to Multiply and then lower the Opacity on 50% to get more gentle effect.

Add the layer mask to the SKY and blend it the same way you did it in previous steps.
On the following photo you can compare how the sky looks before and after this step.

Let’s take a look at how the layer order should look like:

Step 4 – Adding the Woman

This is very quick step. Download the stock photo of the woman and drag it into your photo manipulation. Place it on the top of all layers and name it WOMAN. Press Command/Ctrl + T on your keyboard and resize it on proper size. After you’re done press Enter on your keyboard to apply the changes.
On the photo below you can see how the photo manipulation should look like so far.

Step 5 – Adding Faces

As you can see the side parts of the stone, on which the woman sits, looks really weird because of the very soft edges. But don’t worry in this step you’ll add stone faces on each side to fix it.

Download the stock photo of the face and open it in Photoshop. Cut out the background. You can you the Lasso Tool (L) or the Pen Tool (P) or any other method you are comfortable with to do it. After that drag the face into your photo manipulation. Name it RIGHT FACE and place it on the top of all layers. Press Command/Ctrl + T on your keyboard and resize it on proper size.

To blend the face better with the rest of the image change its Blending Mode from Normal to Overlay.

On the following picture you can compare how the face looks when it’s set on Normal and on Overlay Mode.

You want to have the face also on the left part of the stone. Right click on the layer RIGHT FACE and choose the option Duplicate layer. Name the new layer LEFT FACE. You need to flip it so go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Grab the Move Tool (V) and place it on the left side of the image.

Read the rest of the tutorial!

Playing with Lights and Shadow to Create Dramatic Photo Manipulation

2011-11-11T04:55:00.001-08:00

I´d like to show you different ways how you can play with lights and shadows in your photomanipulation to create completely different light scene. I believe these skills are crucial for every photomanipulator.Let´s get started!

Step 1 - Preparing Background

Download picture of background from the list above and open it in Photoshop. Double click on the layer (if you don´t see the palette Layers go to Window > Layers) and rename it on BACKGROUND. It´s really useful habit to name all your layers because once your manips become more complicated it will be easier to navigate through them.

Before you´ll add woman and dinosaur let´s focus on slight adjusting of the background. You´ll desaturate it and make it bit lighter in this step.

Let´s start with desaturating. Add new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation. You can find the button "Add new fill or adjustment layer" in the bottom part of the palette Layers.

Set the value Saturation on -40.

The second thing mentioned in this step is lightening. You´ll do it very easily by using Levels adjustment layer. So add it and then set the Input Levels on 0; 0,94; 181.

If you look closer at the adjustment´s window you can see there are three values for the Input Levels (and two for the Output Levels). First value represents value of shadows, second is value of midtones and third value of highlights.

By the adjutment you´ve just done you´ve made midtones and highlights lighter while shadows (darks) remain untouched.

Below you can see how these three adjustments change the picture.

Step 2 - Adding Woman and Dinosaur

Download the photo of woman and dinosaur and drag it into your photomanipulation. Place it on the top of all layers and name it e.g. WOMAN (to keep it short). Below you can take a look at the order of layers so far.

You won´t make any changes in this step but I´d like to discuss what and why you´ll change in the following steps. It´s nice to follow tutorials but without knowing why such things were done tutorials are not much useful.

Before let´s take a look at how the image looks right now.

The most essential thing (on which the whole tutorial focuses) is that woman with dinosaur were shot in completely different light scenery than the background. They were shot during sunlight which causes hard transitions between lights and shadows.

On the other hand the background image was shot when it was cloudy and foggy and light was very soft - you can barely see difference between lights and shadows.

On woman and dinosaur the ligt source comes from the left. You´ll add this light source also to the background and create more visible difference between lights and shadows. You´ll also soften transition between lights and shadows on woman and dinosaur.

You might think that I talk only about light scene but not cover the topic of color adjustments. Well, you´ll make these kind of changes too, but I want to focus especially on changing lights and shadows in this tutorial because I think it´s essential skill for photomanipulator, which is often ignored. I believe that many manips could be significantly better if author thinks more about lights and shadows.

Step 3 - Adding Sun Rays to the Background

Let´s start with changing the light scene of the background. As I said light source on woman and dinosaur comes from the left but there is no such thing on the background. You´ll add some sun rays coming from that side in this step so the picture will make better sense.

Add new layer under the layer WOMAN and name it SUN RAYS. Download the sun rays brush listed in the beginning of the tutorial and install it into Photoshop. If you don´t know how to install custom brushes into Photoshop you can take a look at this tutorial.

On the picture below you can see the layer order.

Grab the Brush Tool (B) and select one of the brushes you´ve just installed. Set the Master Diameter on proper size and lower its Opacity on about 50%.

Hold Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool (I) and pick some very light color from the background.

While doing manipulations (painting, making lights and shadows etc) try to avoid using pure white and black color. They both are very harsh and very rarely look realistic. You can very rarely see pure black and white in real life. Even if you think something is black, it´s more likely dark grey, dark green... The same with white color.

Make invisible the layer WOMAN. To do it click on the small icon of eye next to that layer.

Now paint some light rays. Keep in mind that to get realistic look they all should come from the same site. Also don´t paint much of the rays, it wouldn´t look realistic.

You can get the inspiration of what to paint on the picture below.

READ THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL

Resources: Woman in Red

2011-10-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

Final Image

Resources

Click on them for bigger version!

Clouds

Woman

Sky

Dramatic Sci-Fi Photo Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial

2011-09-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial you´ll learn how to use different blending modes to professionaly blend images, you´ll see different ways of adding lights and shadows and discover the way how you can add realistic fire to your pictures. Let´s get started!

Step 1 - Preparing Background

Download the picture of background and open it in Photoshop. Double click on the name of the layer and rename it to BACKGROUND. It´s a good habit to name all your layers properly because it´s easier to orient in them later.

Let´s make the very first adjustment. Right now the picture has very low contrast. To fix it add new adjustment layer Levels. You can find the button Add new fill or adjustment layer in the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don´t see this palette go to Window > Layers or simply press F7 on your keyboard.

Set the Input Levels on 43; 0,80; 216.

Your image should look like the one below so far.

Step 2 - Cleaning Foreground

In this step you´ll remove roofs in the trees in foreground because they´re quite disturbing.

Add new layer on the top of all layers and name it e.g. CLEANING FOREGROUND. Grab the Stamp Tool (S), select some soft round brush and set the Opacity on 100%. Remove the roofs which are circled in the picture below.

If you´re not familiar with how to use the Stamp Tool (S) I recommend you to read some tutorials about this excelent tool. Time spent with learning about this tool is definitelly worth it.

Be careful to not to use the same source spot all the time to avoid the repetitive pattern you could get. Below you can see the example of correct and wrong cloning.

Step 3 - Adding Sky

Download the picture of sky and drag it into your photomanipulation. Place it on the top of all layers and name it SKY.

To blend the layer with the rest of the image change its Blending Mode from Normal to Multiply and lower its Opacity on 70%. You can find both these options in the upper part of the palette Layers.

As you can see on the following picture the upper part of the sky is blended properly. But the bottom part needs some adjusting. You´ll fix it in the following step.

Step 4 - Blending the Bottom Part of Sky

As I already said the bottom part of the sky needs to be blended better. Right now it causes that the city on the horizon is too dark which doesn´t look believable. There is also very sharp transition between the added sky and the rest of the image. You´ll fix both in this step.

You could use the Eraser Tool (E) to give away the unwanted parts of the sky but I would recommend you to avoid this solution. If you use the Eraser Tool (E), the erased parts are lost for good and you can´t let them reappear if you need.

I´ve got better solution for you - layer masks. If you use them you don´t erase or delete some parts, you just hide them and you can let them reappear any time you want, which is very practical. Especially for photomanipulators.

Make sure that the SKY layer is active - just click on it. And then add layer mask by clicking on the button Add layer mask in the bottom part of the palette layers.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush and lower its Opacity on about 30%. Pick black color and paint over the areas of sky you want to make invisible. To get the inspiration where to paint you can take a look at the following image. Areas which should be hidden are red highlighted.

Note to how layer masks work: If you want to hide something paint over it with black. If you want to make it visible again paint with white. E.g. 50% grey color makes the picture 50% invisible etc.

READ THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL

Tunisia Through My Lens

2011-09-12T02:17:00.000-07:00

It´s been four days since I came back from a lovely vacation in Tunisia. I spent there ten days with my boyfriend and it was such a lovely time that I still have to think about it. In this post I´d like to share couple of photos from there with you.

Hope you´ll enjoy them!

How To Enhance Ambient Light

2011-09-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

In this article I´d like to show you how you can create more interesting and contrasted ambient light and how you can bring details into darker areas of your photos. To achieve the effect shown below you´ll use these adjustments:

Levels,
Selective Color,
Color Balance,
Hue/Saturation.

Let´s get started!

About the Photo

The photo is part of the set I took for my client on a very photogenic old train station. It was so hot outside that it was pretty hard to focus on shooting and not on how hot it is :)

It was the very first time Nikola (model) was standing in front of camera and posing. To help her with posing I sent her couple of images with interesting poses so she could try them in front of the mirror to see what looks best.

Nikola was little nervous in the beginning but after couple of minutes she seemed to enjoy the whole shooting.

Video

Let´s watch the promissed video, shall we?

More Photos

As I said the featured photo is only part of the set of photos I took during the photoshoot. You can see the rest of the photos below.

Which one is your favorite? I like the one in black and white the most.

Little Habit of Mine

I´ve got a little tradition - after every client´s work I go on coffee or drink, only me to enjoy the feeling that I´ve just spent several hours doing what I absolutelly love.

It was so hot out there while shooting and I needed some serious refreshment, which is why I didn´t order my usual coffee but some tasty mix of fruit juices.

The Worst Thing They Could Say Is "No"!

2011-08-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

For past two or three months I´m trying to setup my own photography business. It´s definitelly not easy thing, especially with my impatient nature. I always find interesting articles of people who are longer on the path of building business, especially the photography one. And I also follow lots of blogs of fellow photographers.

From time to time these photographers post interesting articles related to starting photography business, marketing etc. I really like their insider´s view and it always encourage me to pursue my dream and don´t give up or don´t find excuses for why I shouldn´t do something.

In this article I´d like to share list of articles with "photography business" topic. I would be really happy if you help me complete the list because it´s always interesting to see other´s view on given topic.

Major Clients and Phone Photography vs Pro Photography by Rosie Hardy
Why is it interesting? Two big truth are said in the article. First - if you want to get jobs people need to know that you take photos first. They don´t read your mind :) Wish I realized that sooner.

Second - if you want something you need to ask. Especially in your beginnings it´s unlikely that some bigger clients come to you and offer you a job, they probably don´t even know you exist. But you can always email them and offer them your services. It´s possible that fifty say no but there is still one who says yes. And that´s what counts!
Starting a Photography Business: What I Wish I Knew by Jasmine Star
I´ve mentioned Jasmine Star several times on this blog. She´s something like blogging superstar plus excelent wedding photographer. Her life story is like dream come true because she has built her business out of nothing. When she decided to start wedding photography she didn´t even know how to use camera well. But still she drop law school and pursued her dream.

I especially like one thing in the featured article. Her advice is to realize what´s the worst thing which could happen if you fail. You can end up in debts from buying expensive camera or lenses etc. But once you realize that you can mentally prepare for that situation and then focus only on building your career as a photographer :)
Tips about photographing people by Christina Greve
The article contains advices mostly about lighting posing etc (which could be useful too!) but I mention it here because of its latest paragraph about comparing yourself with other photographers and trying to achieve absolute perfection. I used to do it a lot and it costs me lots of my sanity and it also often ruined my selfesteem.

Basically if you´re still trying to be perfect you rather not dare to try something new and creative because of fear that you can do some mistake and won´t be perfect. But making mistakes is part of the creative process, isn´t it?
A Guide to Pricing Your Work by Elizabeth May
Elizabeth is very talented photographer and soon to be published novel writer. Her photos often appear on book covers and are very popular on DeviantArt and similar sites.

As the title says the article is about how much you should charge for your services. The article doesn´t give you exact answer as that you should want $10 for a photo, it would be impossible to give you such direct advices. Instead Elizabeth give you handful list of question you should keep in mind while setting your proces.
A Happy Life Means a Passionate Lifestyle by Brooke Shaden
This article by very talented fine art photographer gave me the idea for creating this list of business related articles.

After reading it you simply must admire the strenght of Brooke. She said she wanted to have her photos in galleries and was determined if none of the galleries would show her photos she would open her own gallery! That´s the kind of thinking which makes you successful in any kind of business!

What could i add to this articles? Well, as headline say: "The worst thing they could say is "no"! And after you realize that fact so many doors will open in front of you. It´sobvious that you´ll hear no more often than yes but what life would be about if there are no obstacles between you and your dream?

Super Busy!

2011-08-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

As the super original title says - I´m really busy during these days. I got lots of photoshoots and now I need to edit photos from them before I leave the digital world and fly to vacation with my boyfriend. Ten days full of swimming and sun. I couldn´t be more excited!

I met two amazing photographers on last Monday - Lucie Kout and Julia Dresch, and three lovely models - Denisa, Míša and Markéta. I took photos of one of them - Denisa and let me say that she´s trully amazing. And have one of the coolest tattoos on her leg I´ve ever seen.

Final photo of Denisa

And here is few backstage photos from the photoshoot.

My sister visited me here in Pilsen during the weekend. As I already mentioned on Twitter we drunk too much cofee and Cola Light (welcome caffeine addiction :) ), bought many clothes and took even more photos (We wanted to take some candid photos in caffeteria and to get the correct casual expression we shoot almost 300 photos! :D)

"Casual" photos. I´m on the left, my sister is on the right.

Yesterday I shot a lovely model who will be a psychologist soon and I´ve came back from a photoshoot of hair styles for a hair dresser´s competition just 30 minutes ago.

Below is very quick unedited preview from today´s photoshoot. You´re the first who sees it (even before the client herself!)

How Can Light Change the Atmosphere of Your Photos?

2011-08-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

The other day I was editing photos from a client´s photoshoot. She chose two quite similar photos to edit (half body, same outfit and similar pose), but each photo was shot under different light condition.

I was amazed how big difference light can make and I´d like to share it here with you with some additonal notes.

What was the light condition?

We vere shooting in the morning at the beach near beautiful lake in Pilsen. The photo on the left was taken first when sun rays didn´t reach the beach yet. Model was standing in shade and the white sand below served as very very gentle reflector.

The second photo was shot about half hour later. Sun was already shining on the beach. I told model to turn her body and face towards the sun to alluminate it. Sun was the only ligh source. I didn´t use any reflector or anything else.

What are the differences of these light scenes?

The main difference between these two photos is in their contrast.

Light on the first photo is very soft, you almost can´t see difference between lights and shadows. In studio you could achieve similar effect with softboxes.

On the other hand light on the second photo (black and white) is hard and create significant difference between lights and shadows. The transition between them is very sharp.

When to use each lighting?

There is no rule or receipt which would tell you when you should shoot in shade or on sunlight. It depends more on your intention and personal taste. I used to like shooting in shade or while cloudy days for very a long time because I really liked soft looking images. Recently I´ve started experimenting with harder light because it creates more dramatic effect.

Basically if I want to create something soft or fragile I go for soft light. I use it also in cases when dark shadows are not prefferable. It´s also easier to shoot in soft light because you don´t need to worry so much about shadows and highlight positions.

If I want drama I go for harder light. While working with this kind of light you always need to be aware of position of lights and shadows because some ugly shadows over e.g. model´s face can be created very easily and such things are quite time consuming to retouch. Also pay attention to under- and overexposed areas, especially if you´re using cheaper camera. They don´t have big enough dynamic range.

Conclusion

Best advice I can give you? Don´t worry to experiment and see what suits you best. Everyone is different and has different taste so everyone needs to find its way.

Would you be interested in more articles focusing on lights in photos? Let me know in comments!

Have a lovely week!

One more photo from the photoshoot

Resources: Morning Jogging

2011-08-11T02:48:00.000-07:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

Final Image

Background

Woman and Dinosaur

What Do YOU Think About These Wedding Photos?

2011-08-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

I´ve realized that I never shared photos from a wedding I shot in the end of April here with you. So I guess it´s time to fix it because next month I´ll shot another wedding!

Story of the day

The bride wanted me to shoot her since the very early morning when she visited her hairdresser to make her beautiful hairstyle. It was amazing to be a witness of how she was changing from a normal girl into a georgeous princess for her groom.

We woke up early - at 5am and since then I shot hundreds of photos (and eat only small quick breakfest. Damn I was starving during the ceremony :D)

The ceremony was in the church on the opposite site of town so we needed to go there with cars. I´m always saying that during such big events as weddings there has to be some problem, it´s simply a law :) And this wedding was no exception. The car I was in decided to stop working so I almost didn´t make it to the ceremony!The orhas already started playing to announce the beginning of the ceremony when I entered the church!

After the ceremony I shot also lunch. There are two typical habits during lunch in Czech Republic. First a couple has to clean shreds from the broken plate. According to a proverb shreds bring hapiness so they should bring happy marriage.

During the lunch bride and groom eat the soup together from one plate with one spoon. I don´t know reason of this habit but it´s always fun to watch it because it´s usually soup with liver dumplings and these dumplings are huge and not so easy to eat :)

Great Resources for Wedding Photography

On this place I´d like to recommend you couple of blogs and articles about wedding photography. Hope you´ll find them as useful as I did!

1. Jasmine Starr Blog
Because her photos are awesome and her blog is filled with amazing, insightful tips.

2. Be a Bridal Resource: Professional Photographer Magazine by Lindsay Adler
Great and practical tips about how you can marketing yourself on the internet to establish yourself as wedding photographer.

3. Wedding FAQ by Rosie Hardy
Because you can find honest answers about wedding photography business there and also lots of insightul tips.

I would me more than happy to complete this list with your links. So don´t hesitate and recommend me something in comments :)

Photos from the Wedding

And finally here is selection of photos from the wedding.

I especially love this photo and its symbolism. She´s leaving her children room to become woman.

Light in church was delightful!

Conclusion

I trully hope you´ll enjoy this article and would be really happy if you give me some feedback on the photos.
Do you know any other useful site about this topic? Let me know!

Till next week have a lovely time

Photoshoot: How to Make Ballons Fly Without Helium?

2011-08-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

I´m little behind with writing about my photoshoots, partly because of the exam period, partly because I shoot more often than once a week. Today I´d like to talk about photoshoot I had with Hanka in May.

Someone asked me on facebook what I´m thinking about while composing a photo and preparing a photoshoot so I´d like to focus on that in this article.

It was really hard to set up a date for the photoshoot which would suit both me and Hanka. Originally we wanted to shoot in February but then had to postpone in for long three months because of our busy schedules, very cold winter and Hanka´s ilness. But I don´t complain because in the day of the photoshoot it was very pleasant, warm weather and the light was amazing which is essential for a good photography.

How Did I Develop the Idea?

Hanka contacted me asking if I´d like to take photos of her. I agreed and asked her back what kind of photos she would want to shoot. She described me that she would want some cheerful photos with ballons and colorful clothes.

"Colorful and cheerful" is not my thing as you may notice so I started thinking about some alternation which would suit both of us since it was TFP photoshoot. I liked the idea with ballons so I came with the idea that we could use black ballons instead plus some black dress to give it bit glamorous feel. Hanka agreed so I bought black ballons on ebay and waited till the day of shooting.

How to Make Ballons Fly?

I really wanted to make the ballons fly but didn´t want to spend more money on helum. I was thinking really hard about how to cheat it - we could use wire or some thin wooden sticks instead of strings. But to be honest none of that works as I wanted.

We ended up with not so much elegant solution - Hanka always threw the ballons up (is it right verb?) and I quickly shot while they were falling down to create the illusion of floating :)

What Was I thinking About?

Now I´d like to show you some of the photos from the photoshoot and described why I composed the photo the way I did it.

While composing photo you need to keep in mind where the light source is and what kind of lights and shadows it creates. You need to look for unwanted dark parts or highlight which can easily destroy the image.

I like movement in photos. In this photo I wanted to shoot some so I told Hanka to be rotated with her back on me and turn on me when I call her. She would make more natural pose this way than if she was standing in the pose the whole time.

I also asked her to make her left hand band to create a triangle with it. Because of that the whole pose looks more dynamic than ii she had the hand straight.

I wanted to have more variety in photos. Because of that I took also some(e.g this one) photos without ballons. While Hanka was preparing for shooting (changing clothes and doing small adjustments of makeup) I looked arround for interesting places to shoot.

The fallen trunk immediately caught my attention because it´s interesting place to sit on and also because it´s nice composition element - it´s line which helps viewer to lead his eye to the focal point of the image.

I made this image black and white simply because it looks better than colorful version :)

While shooting this image I said Hanka to sit in shadow of tree with sun on her back. It created nice aura arround her hair. That I asked my boyfriend/assistent to reflect the sun light with silver reflector back to Hanka´s face.

I shot on Manual mode to get the exposure right because the AV mode I normally use tended to underexposed the image.

Behind the Scenes

Let´s take a look at some behind the scenes from this photoshoot.

Hanka balancing on the same trunk as she sat on the black and white photo.

Jarda (bf/light assistant) showing Hanka what to do with ballons to make them flying.

He really enjoyed bouncing light into Hanka´s eye :)

So after the photoshoot Hanka wanted to make a revenge...

But with sunglasses on Jarda really didn´t mind :)

Conclusion

I would be really happy if you let me know if this article is useful for you. If so I´ll definitelly write more in this style because it was fun to do!

Till next week have a lovely time and enjoy summer!

Cheap Solution for Your Product Photography

2011-07-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

It´s quite a long time since I shot these photos but I didn´t have time to share them with you till now. They´re actually Christmas gifts my sister made for my parrents.
I´ve thought that they´re simply amazing and look very professional so I suggested her that I take photos of them. She could use them for her portfolio and I try different genre of photography.

As you surely know I´m not a product photographer (and won´t be, working with people is bigger fun for me) and because of that I don´t have proper equipment for this kind of shooting. So I made an improvised studio which suits great for these photos. I would like to share it with you in this article.

To make a cheap product studio you´ll need:

window with curtain,
white wall,
white clothing,
glass,
awesome products to shoot.

I believe that you can find it all in your home so the expenses are basically zero dollars :)

Endless White Background

Most of the product photos are shot in endless white background. It means that you don´t see transition between floor and wall. To achieve the same effect you can use big white carton and gently bend it.

I chose different option (quicker because I knew it´s just for one shooting) - I shot on white clothing against white wall. And because I use very shallow depth of field (f1.8) the transition was very soft, light and blurred. After shooting while post processing I made the transition even lighter with Levels adjustment layer.

Creating the Reflection

I wanted to have reflection of things I photograph. I solve this demand very easily by puting glass under the products.

Lighting Setup

For lighting I decided for a very quick and easy solution again. I used diffused light from window. It was cloudy day so light was already nicely soft and I made it even softer by using diffuser (= curtain). This type of lighting wouldn´t be good for shooting glass or metal because of the unwanted reflections but for this type of products works just fine.

Post Processing

Post processing was even easier. I shot everything in RAW and only correct the exposure little bit in Camera Raw. Photos were bit underexposed and I wanted to have the background purely white.

Other thing I did was to lower the saturation little bit to achieve the same color the actual products have.

In some photos I also made the transition in background bit lighter with using of the Levels adjustment tool.

More DIY

As I mentioned my sister makes very nice stuff. Expect those shown above she also make bags, pen cases etc. If you want to see more I truly recommend you to visit her fresh new blog on tumblr.

Conclusion

I believe that this article could be useful for everyone who is ocassional product photographer - who e.g. wants to shoot his DIY project or projects of their friends.

On the setup I described I like the cleannes (is it correct word?) which is caused by white background and underground and also by the reflection.

Do you have any good tips for cheap shooting of product photography? I would love to see them in the comments section below!

Have a beautiful Monday!

How´s It Done: Summer Vintage

2011-07-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

Many of you asked what kind of post processing I did on my photo "Summer Vintage". Luckily I recorded my screen while doing the editing and today I´m bringing you that record for you to see exactly what I did.

Post processing of this one was easy and rather quick which is why I decided to not to speed up the video. So it´s as long as I actually edited the picture.

The main two things done in this video are:

cleaning skin and adjusting lights and shadows,
transforming picture into black and white with the Gradient Tool.

Video

Below you can see it on screen :)

Light Conditions

Not to speak only about post processing I´d like to say few words about light scene during shooting. There will be also separate article about overall photoshoot after I write and publish posts about photoshoots from May and June. I know I´m little behind the schedule but I had so little free time during June because of school.

The photo was shot almost during the noon, just one hours before. On direct sun the light was really hard and creates sharp shadows as you can see on the following photo.

Notice the shadow under woman´s hand on her neck.

I don´t mind the shadow on the picture above but with the photo we´re editing in this video I wanted to avoid that kind of shadows. I placed the model in some shadow. Sun was behind her and I bounce some light back to her face with silver reflector.

I din´t turn the reflector directly on her face but I turned it a little to bounce less light on her.

In Details

And one more thing I´d like to show in this tutorial. Below you can see how woman´s face looks before and after editing.

If you click on the picture you can see it bigger with more details!

Conclusion
I really hope that this article was useful for you and maybe that you´ve learnt something new while watching the video.

If you have any questions feel free to ask and I´ll do my bes to answer them.

Till next time have a lovely week!

Please Hire Some Professional Graphic Designers!

2011-07-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

OK, I admit. Sometimes I can be a real pain in the ass when it comes to aesthetic and graphical side of things. But seriously - how can someone be willing to print this on large bilboards??

1. Lady with boobs on her belly
The poor lady below has her breast in the place where normal people would have waist. And her waist is so thin that I am worried what if she break during some stronger wind?

I rather won´t comment her super white teeth and eyes.

2. Children from different world
What irritates me on this picture is totally different lighting on all elements. If the sky is so red trees on the horizon should have more of that tones. There should be some backlight on the dinosaur and dino bird (too lazy to look for proper name :) ) because of the flash.

It seems there is some light source in the foreground on the right judging according to dinosaur. But there is no light from that source on children and trees.

Children are chapter for itself. They are more yellow than the rest of the image and obviously were shot during noon which is completely different light scene again. And I don´t even want to start talking about overexposed parts of the image. Buy some higher quality stocks for God sake!

And how the hell did you blend the trees? To make them semi transparent on the top isn´t certainly the way how it goes in nature! Did you hear about blending with Channels if you´re too lazy to use the Lasso Tool?

I´m sorry for being too emotional today but the idea that someone gets paid for such a bad job is making me mad.

Resources: The Last Chance

2011-07-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

Preview Picture

Stock Photos

Background

Clouds

Rock

Sky

Woman

Hand

How to Use Light and Shadow to Create a Dramatic Photo Effect with Photoshop

2011-07-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial you´ll learn how you can change light scene in your photography or photo manipulation to get dramatic atmosphere. I´ll also show you how you can use Channels to easily change sky, how you can use different filters to create dreamy effect and give you several tips on color adjustments.

Resources

Step 1 - Preparing the Picture

Open the photo of a girl in Photoshop. Right click on the Background and select option Layer From Background.

Then open photo of sky and drag it into previous picture. Place it on the top and name it SKY. Below you can see how your layers should look like.

Step 2 - Blurring the Sky

Right now the sky is not blended with the rest of the picture. You´ll fix it in this and following steps.

As you may notice picture of the sky is sharper than the background. It´s because it was taken with different (higher) f-number setting than the rest of the image. If you start blending sky now you won´t get realistic result because of that. To fix it you need to blur the sky a little.

Make sure that the SKY layer is active (just click on it). Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set the value Radius on about 3,5 pixels and press OK.

Below you can see how the image looks so far. Still lots of work need to be done.

Step 3 - Blending the Sky

Before you´ll start to adjusting contrast and colors of the sky let´s focus on blending. Click on the layer SKY and change its Blending Mode on Multiply. You can find this option in the bottom part of the palette Layers (same as your layers). If you don´t see it go to Window > Layers or simply press F7 on your keyboard.

Then lower the Opacity on 80% to get even better result. You can find this option right to Blending Mode changes on Layers palette.

Below you can see how the picture looks so far. It´s much better but still needs some adjustments to look perfect.

Step 4 - Soft Transition

As you can see on the photo above there is a harsh line between SKY and the rest of the image. To fix it add new layer mask to sky. You can find the button Add layer mask on the bottom part of the palette Layers.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush, lower its Opacity on about 40% and pick black color. Make sure that the layer mask is active - click on the thumbnail of it.

If you´re not familiar with how you can work with layer masks let me explain it to you. It´s similar to what can the Eraser Tool (E) do - you can hide some parts with it. But in compare to the Eraser Tool (E) you can let these parts reappear whenever you want. If you want to have some part hidden you simply paint with black on layer mask, if you want to see it again you paint white on that area. You can´t do this with the Eraser Tool (E), you can go back few steps (depends on your History settings) but you always loose also the progress you did so far.

But back to the tutorial...
Grab the Brush Tool (B), pick black color and paint over the harsh line of the sky to make nice, soft transition. On the picture below you can get inspiration what to achieve.

Step 5 - Channels

Women´s face is still darker because of the Multiply mode and if you look carefully you´ll see that upper part of trees is bit darker because of that too. You need to create mask of which sky should be hidden.. To do that you´ll use Channels.

First make the layer SKY invisible. To do that click on the eye icon left to the Layer thumbnail.

If you don´t see this palette go to Window > Channels and it will appear. On the palette you can see four different lines - RGB, Red, Green and Blue. If you let visible only one of the Channels you´ll see only values from that Channel.

Let´s make visible the one where is the biggest contrast between sky and trees. In this case the biggest contrast is on the Blue Channel.

Right click on that Channel and select the option Duplicate Channel... . Make the original Blue Channel invisible.

Let´s adjust the Blue Channel copy to create good mask from it. Click on that channel and go to Image > Adjustments > Levels or press Ctrl + L on your keyboard. Set the Input Levels on 50; 0,55; 233 and press OK.

Make visible rest of the channels again and the one you´ve worked on invisible. Also make visible SKY layer on Layers palette.

Click on the layer SKY and then go to Select > Load Selection and as Channel choose Blue Copy. Press OK.

Mask based on the Blue copy Channel appears. Go to Select > Inverse or press Ctrl + Shift + I on your keyboard to invert it.

Click on the layer mask of the SKY, grab the Brush Tool (B) and pick black color. Now paint over women´s face and upper parts of trees. After you´re done press Ctrl + D to deselect it.

READ THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL

Photoshoot: How We Almost Ruined Local Dinopark

2011-07-04T04:55:00.000-07:00

Jana contacted me because she was interested by photomanipulations I do from some photos of clients. She sent me several pictures to show me the atmosphere she wanted to achieve, I devised the concept, then we set up a date and tada we were ready for shooting.

Portrait of Jana for my project "Frozen Moments"

About the Photoshoot

Originally we had planned to shoot in a small lane near the town square. But then Jana called me cirka three hours before the actual time of shooting and asked me how to get to the local ZOO. In the very same moment she asked that question I realized that there is Dinopark nearby and photos from there could be really fantastic. Jana agreed with the change so I packed up quickly all necessary stuff and drove to the ZOO.

Despite the fact that we shot in half on April (I know I´m little behind with my photoshoots reports), it was georgeous weather. Sun was shining and promissed us many warm days ahead after long, very cold winter.

We should meet in the parking lot in front of the ZOO. It was quite complicated because they thought that I´m able to find some car by its brand or other parameters. But in fact the only thing I am able to distinguish is car´s color :D

Jana arrived with her boyfriend and they both were amazing. We talked the whole time, visited the ZOO and all the cooperation with them went really well. The whole photoshoot was more like some trip with friends :)

First we shot in ZOO and then moved to the Dinopark nearby. An idea came to my head - it could be interesting if one of the dinosaurs was trying to eat Jana. Vašek (Jana´s boyfriend) very willingly offered that he could hold Jana up into dinosaur´s mouth so I can shoot the picture I wanted.
Take a look on the behind the scenes photos to see it :)

I want to keep this article shorter than usually because I have lots of behind the scenes photos I want to show you.

Morning jogging didn´t turn out as she expected.

Behind the Scenes

Some of the photos are taken by me and some by Vašek (Jana´s boyfriend).

Conclusion

The photoshoot was real fun and I hope that we will work together again!

On the other note I´m currently writing in depth tutorial about the first photomanipulation shown in this article and guess I´ll write about the second one too!

Have a lovely Monday!

How to Get Perfect Realistic Skin

2011-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

I have so many photoshoots and tips for post processing to write about but so little time. I´m going to France next week and then go to water (is it right expression?).

In this article I´d like to show you video with skin retouching I did yesterday. I used the same method I described here but I think it´s useful to show you more examples of using this method.

Before & After

On the following photo you can compare how the skin of model looks before and after editing.

Click on the picture to see it in full size. It´s part of the image which is 100% zoomed.

What You´ll Use

To clean skin similarly as on the picture above you´ll use:

the Stamp Tool (S) to clean smaller blemishes and hair in model´s face,
two layers of Levels adjustments - one for lightening and one for darkening.

It´s easier to retouch if you have tablet but it´s not necessary. You´ll only need bit more practice with mouse.

Video

Enough talking, there is the video :) It´s speed up on 500% to not to bore you to death. If you have any questions about post processing feel free to ask in comments and I´ll do my best to answer.

More Photos

Photo is part of the photoshoot I had week ago with very photogenic client. She was absolutelly natural in front of camera, came up with different poses and in all was really great to work with.

Below you can see more photos from that photoshoot. Hope Markéta (client) will like them all!

Conclusion

I really hope that the article was useful or interesting for you! As I already said feel free to ask in comments and I´ll try to do my best to answer your questions.

Do you have any useful tutorials, CDs or books about retouching?
And do you agree with all this unrealistic beauty?

Let me know in comments and have a wonderful Monday!

How to Change Ordinary Photo into Fantasy Photo Manipulation

2011-06-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial I'd like to show you how you can change ordinary photo into a fantasy photo manipulation and also different ways how you can play with lights and shadows.

Preview of Final Results

Resources

Step 1 - Cleaning the Background

Open the photo of woman in Photoshop. Right now it's bit boring, ordinary photo. It was shot during day but you want to turn it into nigh. You also want to change the light from soft, diffuse light into spotted light coming from the butterfly. You'll learn how to do it in this tutorial.

Let's start with cleaning the background. There are few bright spots (see the image below) which are distracting. You'll remove them in this step.

Create a new layer above the BACKGROUND and name it e.g. BACKGROUND RETOUCH.
You can find the button "Create a new layer" in the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don't see this palette simply press F7 on your keyboard or go to Window > Layers and it will appear.

Grab the Stamp Tool (S) and cover the highlighted area with some darker bokeh. (If you don't know how to use the Stamp Tool you can take a look at this video.)

After this step your background should look like below.

Step 2 - Preparing Selection of Girl

In the following step you are adjusting the bottom part of the background - leaves. To be able to adjust only them and not the rest of the image you're creating mask of the girl and forest in this step.

You need to create sharp mask of girl, you're using the Lasso Tool (L) for it. For the forest you should create mask with soft transition on the horizon. Using the Brush Tool (B) is ideal for it.

Click on the layer BACKGROUND and grab the Lasso Tool (L). Then make a selection of the girl. You don't need to care about the part of her body which is in front of the forest but you should be very careful with selecting the bottom parts.

I know that masking is quite boring and very uncreative part of doing photo manipulations but it's crucial to create realistic looking picture. So be as patient as possible.

Below you can see how the mask of the bottom part of the body should look.

Click on the icon Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q) which can be found on the Tools palette (or simply press Q on your keyboard). Because of this mode you see mask painted with red.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush and pick black color. Now paint over the forest. You should get something like this:

Press Q on your keyboard to switch back to normal view. You're seeing only borders of the mask again.
To be able to work with the mask later you need to save it. To do that go to Select > Save Selection... and name it e.g. LEAVES.

Let the mask activated.

Step 3 - Adjusting Leaves

In this step you're changing color of leaves to give them little bit more magical atmosphere. To do that you'll use two adjustment layers - Selective Color and Hue/Saturation.

Using of adjustment layers is much better than using direct adjustments. With adjustment layers all the changes you do are always reversible. If you use direct adjustments you can make only as many changes as your History goes plus you'll loose all the later steps.

You can find the button "Create new fill or adjustment layer" in the bottom part of the palette Layers same as the button "Add new layer" mentioned in earlier steps.

Let's begin with Selective Color. Click on the button "Create new fill or adjustment layer" and, surprisingly, choose Selective Color. Set it as on the next image.

As you can see because of the activated mask (from previous step) adjustment layer affects only leaves. On the thumbnail of the adjustment layer you can see which parts is adjusted - it's white. Part without adjustment is black.

Move on saturation. Before you're adding adjustment layer Hue/Saturation you need to activate the mask again. To do that Ctrl + click on the thumbnail of Selective Color adjustment layer. Mask activates again.
Now add new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation and set it as on the following picture.

Because of the activated mask only leaves are adjusted again.
Below you can see how your image should look so far.

Step 4 - Desaturating the Forrest

In previous step you added colder tones to the leaves. To create balance you should make also forest in the background colder looking. To do that you're using adjustment layers again, this time Color Balance and Hue/Saturation.

If you look closely on the forest you can see some greener moss which is bit distracting. To make it less saturated and less distracting add new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation and set the value Saturation on -100.

Click on the thumbnail of the adjustment layer. Grab the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and fill the thumbnail with solid black color. Adjustment disappears.

Grab the Brush Tool, select some soft round brush and lower its Opacity on about 30%. Pick white color and paint over the green parts of the forest. Adjustment appears again in that areas and desaturates moss.

Step 5 - Cyan Tones to the Forrest

Now it's time to use Color Balance as I mentioned in previous step. You use it to create colder, more magical atmosphere.

Add new adjustment layer Color Balance and set it as shown below.

You want to change colors of forest, not the whole image. You need to change layer mask of the adjustment layers. Same as in previous step grab the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and fill the layer mask with solid black color. Then grab the Brush Tool (B) and paint with white over the forest to make the Color Balance adjustment visible again.

On the picture above you can see where I painted with white. As you probably notices I also painted over the woman's hair to give them similar tone as the background.

Your picture should look similar to the one shown below so far.

Step 6 - Adding Mist

If you've read more of my tutorials you probably know that I really like using mist to create magical or fantasy atmosphere in my images. And this image is no exception so in this step you're adding mist to the horizon.

Download the mist brushes listed in the beginning of the tutorial (or any other mist brushes you're comfortable to use) and install them into Photoshop. (If you don't know how to install them you can take a look at this tutorial.)

Create a new layer on the top of all layers and name it MIST. Grab the Brush Tool (B) and select one of the brushes you've just installed. Hold Alt to activate the Eyedropper Tool (I) and select some of the very light colors from the background.

It's better to avoid using pure white and black color in your work because they're very rare in nature. Most often you can see some light shades of blue, yellow or green instead of white and dark shades of e.g. brown instead of white. These shades don't look so harsh and are more realistic.

Enough talking just paint the mist :) Below you can see where I painted it to get the inspiration. Mist is behind the girl so avoid painting over her.

READ THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL

How to Create Summery Vintage Portraits

2011-06-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

I´m back from my ten days long trip in China. In one word it was absolutelly awesome. Wait .. it´s two words :D Anyway I´ll post more about it once I download all the photos (I have 1300 of them plus some videos).

I came back yesterday late night so it was no time to write my regular Monday article. But I hope that Thuesday is as good as Monday :)

Todays article is about post processing of one of my recent photos which you can see below. It was requested by many people on Facebook and Tumblr and I don´t want to keep you waiting. So let´s get started!

In this photo I wanted to use almost washed out but still warm color palette with slight vintage feel because of the old board standing in the background. To achieve that effect I used:

Levels four times,
Hue/Saturation three times,
Color Balance two times,
Curves once.

As I´ve already mentnioned in many of my previous articles about post processing it´s always better to do more gentle changes and combine effects of different adjustment tools to get more interesting and unique effect.

Resource Photo

Here you can download the resource photo to be able to follow steps of this tutorial exactly. If you like more freedom in editing feel free to use whatever photo you want. The point is not to be able to repeat this tutorial exactly but to understand how different adjustments work.

Post processing

Step 1 - Increasing contrast
Let´s start with increasing contrast of the photo. First add new adjustment layer Levels and set the Input Levels on 12; 1,00; 243. Then add new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation and set the value Saturation on -15.

And finally add Color Balance adjustment layer on the top of all layers and set it as shown on the following picture.

Step 2 - Warmer color palette
Let´s begin with first color changes. In this step you´ll desaturate the image even little bit more with Hue/Saturation and then add warmer, more summery colors with Levels.

To desaturate the picture simply add new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation on the top of all layers and set the value Hue/Saturation on -30.

It´s only couple of weeks since I´ve discovered that you can use Levels to not only adjust contrast but colors too! Since then it´s one of my favorite adjustment tool and I use it in most of editing. And this photo was no exception.

But enough talking :) Add new adjustment layer Levels on the top of all layers and follow the picture below to set it as I did.

Your photo should be similar to the one shown below.

Step 3 - Vignette
I decided to add vignette to this picture to create more plasticity and also to direct viewer´s eye more into the centre of the image.

Add new adjustment layer Levels (I told you it´s my favorite :) ) and set the Input Levels on 0; 0,21; 255. You want to adjust only corners of the image and not the rest. To do that grab the Gradient Tool (G) and pick black color.

Make sure that the layer mask is activated - simply click on the thumbnail of it. Then fill it with solid black color. Adjustment dissapears.

Grab the Brush Tool (B) and select some soft round brush. Lower its Opacity on about 25%, pick white color and paint around the edges to create gentle vignette. You can get the inspiration from the picture below.

Step 4 - Second color adjustment
According to me colors of the picture are too heavy and flat right now. I´m looking for more fairy effect. To achieve that you´ll make the image brigter, warmer and less saturated in this step.

Let´s start with brightening. Add new adjustment layer Curves on the top of all layers and adjust the curve similarly to the one on the picture below.

To make color even more warmer add new adjustment layer Color Balance and set it as on the following picture.

And finally lower the saturation by adding new adjustment layer Hue/Saturation on the top of all layer and setting value Saturation on -30.

After this step your image should look as the one below.

Step 5 - Final adjustment with Levels
To get the exact same result as on the preview you need to add two more adjustment layers.

Add new adjustment layer Levels and set the Output Levels on 25; 255 to make shadows of the picture lighter. Then add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, choose Yellows and set the value Saturation on -30.

And voilá! You´re finished.

Finished photo

You can take a look how the finished photo looks.

Conclusion

Hope that the article was useful for you! If you have any questions feel free to ask in comments and I´ll do my best to answer them.

It would be amazing if you share this article so more people can learn from it. You would have my gratitude!

Have a lovely day,

I´m in China!

2011-06-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

I´m in China from Saturday so this post is bit shorter than my usual posts. Instead of anything concrete I´d like to show you some photos from my recent photoshoots. I´ll definitelly write more about them in future article. This is just a little teaser :)

At the end of April I had a photoshoot with absolutelly photogenic model Jana in local ZOO and Dinopark. We almost ruined Tyrrannosaurus Rex while shooting :D

Ten days later I finally shot Hanka. We were trying to set up a date for shooting for long three months. Remember this article? It was the second time when weather ruined our plans.

Week ago I had quick photoshoot with my sister. I need to test my new camera on someone and she is always the best choice :) I plan to write tut about post processing this photo soon!

Few days back I had a fashion photoshoot with very talented cloth designer and beautiful model.

I´ll post some photos from my trip after I´ll be back home :)

How´s It Done: Princess in Black

2011-05-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

It´s been a while since I made the last "How´s It Done" article. It seems that you really enjoy them so the other night I recorded editing of another photo.

In the video you´ll see how you can work with Liguifity filter to give someone´s body nice shape and how you can combine different color adjustments to achieve great color result.

In the video you´ll see how:

you can use Liquifity filter to give body nice shape,
to use the Stamp Tool (S) to clean up background,
to use Levels to fix highlights and shadows in model´s face,
to combine different color adjustments to achieve desired result.

Let´s get started!

Video

There is the promissed video. I made it twice faster to not to bore you :)
If you have any questions about post processing feel free to ask. I´ll be really happy to answer them!

Finished Photo

And there is the finished photo. It was taken with sun as back light and I bounced some light back to model´s face with reflector I´ve recently bought.

I´ll definitelly write more about this photoshoot soon so stay tuned :)

If you want to see more photos from this photoshoot check out my Facebook or tumblr!
I would be really happy if you follow me there too and if you send me links on your tumblrs or FB fan pages so I can be more in contact with you!

Conclusion

As always I really hope that the article was useful for you and am looking forward to see your comments :)
Have a lovely day. Do you have such a nice, sunny day as here?

Pros of Props: Cheap Eye Shadow Palette

2011-05-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in one of my previous articles that I´m thinking about doing makeup on my models when I don´t need some more complicated look. It would make my life much easier if I don´t need to coordinate date of a photoshoot with many people plus it´s nice excuse to buy more makeup for myself :)

I decided to buy the eye shadow palette from ebay because honestly you can buy almost everything cheaper from there than from usual stands. I was surprised how wide range of cheap palletes is offered there. I was choosing between two different palettes - one with very natural shades and one with bright shades.

I decided to buy the palette with natural shades because it suits better to the kind of photos I prefer to shoot. On this link you can see the exact product I bought. It costs unbelievable low $0.99! Among eye shadows, the seller offers wide range of products (not only makeup related).

When I order from ebay it takes around three weeks before the goods arrive. But this time it took very long five weeks! I already wanted to send a complaint about it but the palette arrived the exact same day I wanted to do it :)

The palette contains both shimmer and matte eye shadows. It seems to me that the shimmer ones are little bit more pigmented but both have enought pigments.
I think it could be less almost white eye shadows in the palette. Also the seller says that the palette contains 88 eye shadows but some of them have same color.

Except from that I´m really sattisfied with the pallete. The eye shadows stay on the eyelids for more than 8 hours, it´s easy to apply them and colors are very nice and natural. They´re also very easy to blend.

I shot few photos using these eye shadows to give you some idea on colors and pigmentation. There is what I call "blossom eyes".

And here are smokey eyes. I shot them with my brand new camera! I´ll definitelly dedicate one post to reviewing it too but right now let me say that it´s damn awesome! Even in this small resolution you can see how better the quality of the photos is.

This article is bit different from my usual post but I really enjoy preparing it. Hope you´ll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing.
Would you be intrested in review on concealer palette?

Have a lovely day!

How to Add Enigmatic Atmoshpere to Your Landscape Photos

2011-05-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

Few people on facebook asked my how I edited the photo below so I´ve decided to write quick tutorial about it. The post processing is quick and easy and is mostly about increasing contrast and adding cooler tones.

To achieve the effect you´ll use:

Selective Color,
Color Balance,
Levels.

Sounds easy? It is :)

Attention, please!

If you tweet this article you may win amazing fog brushes! Look on the bottom of the article to discover more!

Where was the photo taken?

I took this photo during one of the first nice spring mornings. It was still bit cold but you could feel from everywhere that nature was coming back to life. First flowers started blooming, birds finally sang again and everything looked nicer and more optimistic.

Me and my sister woke up early that day because we needed to arrange some stuff in town and what was supposed to be boring visit of grocery quickly changed into a beautiful walk. We spontaneously took few outfit photos and I also shot the photo above.

But enough rambling and let´s focus on post processing, right? :)

Resource photo

You can download the photo below and try the steps on it. If you decide to upload finished piece somewhere please include link on this article so more people can follow my blog.
Thank you!

Post Processing

As I said post processing is quick and easy but sometimes you just don´t have enough time or just don´t want to make it complicated, right?

1. Colder tones with Selective Color and Color Balance
First let´s add new adjustment layer Selective Color and set it as shown on the picture below.

Add new adjustment layer Color Balance and set it as on the following picture again.

After these two very easy adjustments you should have your photography similar to this one. As you can see it already has stronger atmosphere.

2. Adding depth by vignetting
If you add vignette it would look like there is more depth in the picture. The "mechanism" is that darker objects usually appear that they´re closer to us and lighter are more in distance.

Add new adjustment layer Levels and set the Input Levels on 0; 0,41; 255. Grab the Gradient Tool (G) and fill the layer mask with black color.

Then grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush and lower its Opacity on about 20%. Pick white color, make sure that the layer mask is active (just click on the thumbnail of it) and paint arround the edges of the picture.

Below you can see how the photo looks after this step.

3. More mist
I wanted to add more magical atmosphere to this photo. That´s why I added bit more mist. To do that download some mist brushes (I used these) and install them into Photoshop.

Select one of the brushes you´ve just installed. If necessary lower the Opacity of the brush (wth mine brushes you can work on 100%). Press Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool (I) and select some very light color from the picture.

Paint some gentle mist. You can get inspiration where to paint below.

4. Colder tones again
With this photo I wanted to have really cold color palette. It was still more winter than spring and I wanted to have that feeling in the photo.

First, even if it may sound little weird given the first paragraph, add new adjustmen layer Color Balance and set it as shown below.

Now add new adjustment layer Selective Color and set it as below again.

And that´s it :)

Final Result

Below you can see how the final photo looks like.

Tweet and win!

First five people who tweet about this article win the amazing mist brushes used in this article! And then three more random people! So don´t hesitate and tweet! :)

Photoshoot: Weather Was Finally on My Side

2011-05-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

On February I contacted cloth designer Michaela Naušová if she would be interested in collaboration. She agreed and last week we had a photoshoot together.

Final resul

Final Results

Arranging Photoshoot

Originally I should take photos of some urban clothes Michaela designed but she decided for another photographer whose style fits better to that kind of clothes. For some time I thought that our collaboration won’t happen but then she contacted me and wanted me to shoot her 30´s inspired dresses. And I happily agreed.

As usually, when you have to find free time for more people, arranging of photoshoot took quite a long time. It´s usually hard to find suitable date for two people and it´s almost impossible to do it for four people, especially when models don´t have modeling as full time job or need to have babysitting.

(And sometimes it´s just impossible to find a nanny and you need to take a baby with you.)

Luckily after some intensive facebook communication we were able to set up a date for shooting. I was bit nervous that it was going to rain because it had rained three days in row before. But the morning we took photos it was one of the most beautiful weathers of this spring.
On the following picture you can see Michaela (cloth designer) enjoying that lovely morning.

Why do I love to shoot with reflector?

Few days before photoshoot a silver/golden reflector had arrived from China so I was really eager to try it outside. And let me say that it has quickly become one of my favorite equipment while shooting. It makes really big difference to shoot with and without it. According to me photos where reflector is used look more interesting and I think also more professional.

I hadn´t seen progress in my photos from few photoshoots before and had been really upset about it. Thus the reflector was my salvation from going crazy :) I really hate when I start feeling that my work is not becoming better and then I´m pretty depressed and can´t think about anything else than how to make my photos better.
On the photos below you can compare how big difference a reflector makes. (Both pictures are only very slightly edited – I just increased their contrast.)

Shooting in hurry isn´t good for photos

The whole shooting was in hurry because the cloth designer had only two hours of free time and wanted me to shoot five models. It caused that photo of one of the dress didn´t turn out as well as I imagined.
Imaginary note to myself: Next time I need to be more specific about how much time I need for shooting.

I didn´t shoot many “behind the scenes” photos because it wasn´t time on anything else than shooting. But I was able to snap this one where Michaela is adjusting clothing on one of the models.

There were a lovely woman with a huge dog

And I almost forget one lovely woman who offered that we can borrow her huge dog to shoot with it. I haven´t time to edit photos I took with it properly but there is one quick snapshot.

Conclusion

I really hope that you enjoy reading this article. Would you be interested in seeing post processing of one of the photos? If so let me know in comments and I´ll try to do my best :)
Have a lovely Monday!

Photoshoot: Another Lovely Time With My Sister

2011-05-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

During the weekend I had photoshoot with my lovely sister and absolutely beautiful model Chrysseis. As usually it was very nice afternoon spent in beautiful forrest with pleasant company.

First Birthday Celebration...

It was the day of my sister´s birthday so we went to out granny first for a little celebration.

I´ve already mentioned it in one of my previous blog posts, that I´ve got quite weak memory and remember e.g. very few things from my childhood. It´s the reason why I try to capture as many things as possible with my camera to be able to bring these memories back in the future.

I would love to have portraits like the one below of all of my grand parents and have the possibility to show these portraits to my children and tell them stories about how great persons they were.
Or do you know what would be even better? If it become a tradition and our family have the whole photo family tree.

My granny

After the visit we hed out to a beautiful forrest near our town. The main aim of this photoshoot was to shoot some nice outfit photos for our accounts on Chictopia. I did styling of Chrysseis´s outfit because I found a maxi skirt I bought year ago and would love to wear it but wanted to see it on someone else before :)

The whole day was sunny so I looked forward to shoot in that light condition but the minute we left our granny´s appartment the sun dissapeared behind some clouds and didn´t shine till next day morning. I told you before that fate is against me when shooting :D

Obligatory Hair Adjusting Photos

Have you noticed that all the time when I post photos of behind the scenes with Chrysseis, it´s about hair adjustments? I swear it´s not purpose and we are only a little obsessed with our hairs :)

Note to myself: I should definitely visit my hairdresser to color roots of my hair.

Background Matters

Since I have 50 mm f1.8 lens I take it down very rarely from my camera. I love the blurred background it creates but sometimes it can be double edged sword because it may happen that you stop paying attention to the background. It happened to me while shooting portraits during this photoshoot.

First I shot against white sky and some branches. The portrait still didn´t look good no matter what expression Chrysseis had. So I told her to shoot me instead. She posed me against some green field which creates beautiful background. That was "it" whast was missing in my portraits.

On the picture below you can compare how big difference it makes.

I love this portrait of myself which Chrysseis took.

I love spring and summer. One of many reasons is that you can spontaneously decide to go outside and shoot as long as you want without freezing and threat of ilness. I truly hope that I´ll be able to do many photoshoots during this lovely time. It would be waste not to do it :) Do you feel it same?

Conclusion

I really hope that it was interesting reading for you. We had real fun while shooting (as always).
Does some of you have account on Chictopia? Let me know so I can add you as friend!

I wrote an article about post processing of photo below. Read it here - "How to Edit Fresh Spring Photos"

Have a lovely day!

Pros of Props: Silver/Golden Reflector

2011-04-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I´ve discovered magic of cheap purchases on ebay. It´s amazing how you can get some things for only fragment (?) of usual price.

One of recent arrivals is silver/golden reflector from Singapore. If you remember article "DIY: Silver Photo Reflector For Only $6", you may ask why do I buy another reflector. Well, there are several reasons:

You´ll never have enough reflector :)
The one I made is smaller that the one I bought.
You can´t pack up the hand made reflector into small case, actually you can´t pack it up at all.
Who could resist buying 110cm (4,3´´) big reflector for only $12?

The one I bought is from the seller named mekingequipment.He offers bunch of photography related stuff such as flashes, backdrops and camera bags. And I have to admit that it´s tempting to not to buy these super cheap external flashes :)

But back to the review. Seller sent the item day after I paid it and shipping took long, but inserted three weeks. It´s normal that it takes so long to deliver stuff from that region.

Reflector arrived well packed and undamaged. And for my surprise it was sent as registered letter.

What Is the Quality?

The quality of the reflector seems to be good so far but only time shows how it really is. I´ve packed and unpacked it ten times so far and haven´t noticed any damages.

The reflective part is made from material similar to the one, which is used for car shields but it´s thinner. It´s visibly creased. The clothing which holds reflective part and rim together is similar to elastic pants, I guess :)

The only disadvantage I´ve discovered so far is the fact, that it´s quite hard to bend the rim to be able to put it into the case. But I guess that it´s matter of practice.
If I find some more disadvantages I´ll put them here to make this review complete.

How big is 120cm?

On the photo below you can see how big the reflector is. When I was buying it I couldn´t imagine how 120cm looks like :) so maybe this will help someone with the same problem.

Nothing, silver or golden?

Let´s take a look at how portrait looks with no reflector, silver and golden reflector.

As you can see the golden side of the reflector bounces warmer light but it´s not so strong as silver side. And on the following picture you can see how it looks on "real" photo on location. The golden side was used because I wanted to have really warm tones in photo.

Conclusion

I really hope that this article was useful and maybe inspire you about what you can buy to expand your photography equipment :)

If you havy any questions or opinions don´t hesitate and write them in comments below!

Oh and I almost forget to mention - I´m going to move this blog from Blogspot to Wordpress soon so please actualize the adress from http://pelleron-art.blogspot.com to http://blog.pelleron-art.com .
I´ve got redirection from blogspot to my own adress so far but it´ll stop working after I´ll move on Wordpress.

Have a lovely day!

How to Edit Fresh Spring Photos

2011-04-25T01:01:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial I´ll show you how you can very easily edit your portraits to give them fresh, spring look. You can apply this tutorial not only on the photo used in this tutorial but on lots of others where is large amount of white/ light grey color.

To achieve the effect shown on this photo you´ll use only basic Photoshop tools:

Curves,
Selective Color,
Color Balance,
Levels,
Photo Filter,
Gradient Map.

Six easy tools to give fresh look to your photos, how great is that? :)

The photo above is a rollover. If you move your mouse over the image you´ll see unedited version of the photo. It may take few seconds before the second photo appeart.

Resource Photo

Here you can download the exact same photo I used to be able to follow the tutorial. If you decide to upload the finished result somwhere please put in description me as a photographer and link on this article so more people could be able to find this blog and follow the tutorial.
Thank you.

Post Processing

As I said you´ll use six different adjustments to achieved the spring effect.

Little note before you start: Using of adjustment layers is much better than using direct adjustments. With adjustment layers all the changes you do are always reversable. If you use direct adjustments you can make only as many changes as your History goes plus you´ll loose all the later steps.

1. Curves
Add new adjustment layer Curves. You can find the button Add new fill or adjustment layer on the bottom part of the palette Layers. (If you don´t see this palette simply press F7 on your keyboard.)

Set the curve similarly as shown below. Give it the "S" shape to increase the contrast. Make the upper part more curvy to make light even lighter.

2. Selective Color
Second step is to use Selective Color adjustment layer and play a little with warm color tones - red and yellows. And also with greens.

Add new adjustment layer Selective Color and set it as shown below.

And here is how the photo looks so far after these two adjustments.

3. Color Balance
As you can see the photo already has more contrast and bit warmer tones but it still needs more work. One of the thing you do right now is to add new adjustment layer Color Balance and to set it as below.

4. Levels
Because it should be really bright portrait I think that right now it needs to be bit more lighter. To do that add new adjustment layer Levels and set the Input Levels on 0; 1,24; 255 .

Right now the portait looks like the one below. It´s much better than at the beginning but it still needs few more adjustments.

5. Photo Filter
One of the remaining things is to add more yellow tones to highlights to create impression of beautiful, sunny day. Who cares that it was cloudy, right? :)

To make the weather more pleasant add new adjustment layer Photo Filter. Choose some very bright yellow color for filter (I used #fff600) and lower Density on 15%.

6. Gradient Map
The photo would look better if it´s even bit more lighter. This time you´ll use Gradient Map to do it. So add new adjustment layer Gradient Map and set the gradient same as shown below.

To make this adjustment layer for lightening change its Blending Mode on Luminosity and to make the effect more subtle lower its Opacity on 70%.

And that´s it. You´re finished!

Conclusion

With this tutorial I wanted to show you that it´s always better to use more subtle adjustments instead of drastic one. This way you´ll get more interesting and realistic results.

If you´re interested in "seasonal" post processing you should defitinely read also this article - "Bring Summer in 6 Quick Steps (At Least in Your Photos)".

I have a little giveaway for you prepared! The first ten people who´ll tweet about this article recieve Photoshop action inspired by this tutorial! So don´t hesitate and tweet!

I really hope that the article was interestin for you. Let me know what you think in comments!

Have a lovely day!

More Spring Photos

Me as Model? Unexpected Became True!

2011-04-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I had a great opportunity to meet with very talented photographer – Lucie Kout. Originally we planned to photograph together someone else but it was pretty hard to set up some date so Lucie came out with another idea – she´s going to shoot me!

I have to admit that I was nervous because I don´t have many (= no) modeling talents, but I agreed because I really wanted to meet her and see how she works because I admire her work, especially the way she works with light.

Dream Come True?

Lucie´s flat is like my dream comes true (except it´s her flat and not mine :) ) because she has her own studio there! I totally agree with her philosophy: Who needs living room when he can have studio instead? :) I may reconsider to move out my roommates and turn their room into atelier :D

Lucie was great. She was patient with my awkward posing (let me say that to hold piece of paper in some elegant way is harder than you may think) and it´s admirable how careful she was with light set up. I really need to learn that patience.

And do you know what was even better? She gave me constructive critique on my work and shows me some great Photoshop tricks. And because of her I´ve started dreaming about new camera body. :)

Two Themes To Shoot

We shoot two themes. First was bit conceptual and second highly experimental. You can see photos from the conceptual shooting in this article.

Lucie also wanted to try shooting through dirty glass to create soft focus and through some clothing to add texture on my face. It end up bit different because at the end she shoot me behind the clothing but it doesn´t matter because results are great.

Below you can see how the setup looked. Quite scary, isn´t it?

I´ll post photos with the second theme as soon as they´ll be edited. I´m very courios on them.

Conclusion

It was very pleasant afternoon we spent together. Except shooting we also planned meeting with fellow photographers during summer holidays. I´m very excited about it because it seems that very talented photographer Julia Dresch will visit us from Austria!

Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!

Resources: The Raven Queen

2011-04-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

Girl and Background

Sky

How´s It Done: Frozen Moments

2011-04-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

As you may know I´m working on series of portraits called "Frozen Moments". In today´s post I´d like to show you editing of one of the portraits belonging to this set.

I recorded the whole process of editing.
In the article you can find two videos. Both show the same process but one is sped up and meant to those who don´t have enough time or aren´t interesting in watching the long version but still would like to know how I achieved that effect. Second version of video has normal speed and in an hour and couple minutes shows exactly what I did.

Place mouse over the image to see how the image looked before editing. (It may take few seconds before the second picture shows up.)

In videos you´ll mainly see:

how I use the Liquifity filter,
how I adjust lights and shadows with Levels,
how I convert photo into black&white,
how I increase contrast with adjusting only parts of the image.

1. Quick Version
Here you can see quick version of the video. Ideal if you don´t have enough time but are still interested in how I achieved the effect.

2. Long Version
For you, who want to see exactly every step of post processing.

Notes to Videos

I usually don´t do so many changes with the Liquifity filter. Romana doesn´t need the changes, I was just practising with that filter.
Originally I wanted to add narration but I´ve got really funny accent (English is not my native language), plus speaking English is much harder for me than writing.
If you change eyes with Liquifity be very careful with shape of pupils. Every little distinction is very visible and most of them don´t look realistic.
The way I adjust lights and shadows is described in this article - "Dodge and Burn Technique: Retouch Skin Like a Pro!".
I would be happy to answer your questions about post processing I did in videos!

Frozen Moments project

I started this project at the beginning of 2011. I really like to work on different projects and what can be better time to start one that beginning of new year, right? :)

I really like B&W photos and wish to have more of them but most of the time I try to convert colorful photo into monochromatic I start feeling sorry for all the colors I will loose :) That is the reason why I started this project - to learn how to work with black&white colors, how to make conversions and how to shoot them.

To make the photos of the project consistent they should have following features:

shoot in B&W,
landscape orientation,
women with flying hairs as subject,
shallow depth of field.

If everything goes right I´ll try to shoot every model I will be working with also for this project.
In first phase (which I´d like to finish in 2011) I´d like to have 10 portraits. In the second phase (not sure about the deadline yet) I´d like to have 20.

Below you can see more photos from this project.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this article. If there is anything you´d like to discuss I would be really happy to see your comment!

Have a beautiful, sunny a spring day!

Sometimes I think that some “higher power” doesn´t want me to do photoshoots

2011-04-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

I have no other explanation for the very bad weather which always comes the day I want to shoot outside, for serious ilnesess of my model (well, for this one maybe I have other explanation) and all the other things which stand in my way when I want to take pictures.

Let me give you an example - for this week I had planned three photoshoots and guess how many times I actually shoot? You guess right, zero times. I´m pretty frustrated :(

To at least make sure that my camera still works I´ve done little set of self portraits this afternoon. I like the one shown above a little, but am still sad that I couldn´t go outside and shoot someone else. Hope it will work on Friday.

I planned to shoot with beautiful black baloons I ordered almost two months ago.

Originally I wanted to do a review on these baloons but then I realized that there is not so much to write about :) Because what you can say about them? Well, they´re rounded and black, exactly what I wanted :)

There is one big question in front of me - how to make these baloons flying without hellium? Any tips?

Conclusion

I know that this post is not much informative. I just needed to share my disapointment with someone :) Do you sometimes have that feeling too? That something is always stands in your way to taking photos?

I really need to solve this problem because summer holidays are coming and I want to shoot during that time as much as possible.

Let me know in comments and have a lovely day! Hope that at your place there is sunnier and warmer because there is very cold and cloudy. Seems on rain the whole day.

Photo Project: Capturing Journey of My Cousin´s Childhood

2011-04-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

I´m always very fascinated by photographic project showing long period of life of someone. Partly it´s because I have bit weak memory. E.g I have only few memories on my childhood, in contrast my sister seems to remember almost everything.

Second reason why I like such project is that they´re documenting changes, you can find not only changes of appearance but also in mood and way how photos are composed, which can bring you memories on events from that time.

Because of this fascination I´ve decided to take photos of my cousin every year on his birthday with something showing his age. Unfortunately this idea came to me when he was already three years old so first and second year are missing.

When he was three I took photo of him holding paper with number 3, at four he was showing his age on his hand. I had hard time with preparing something original for his fifth birthday. But then I found big white carton and idea came alive.

Shooting was challenging because my cousin is in that age when he can´t stand still for more than few seconds. Plus he was making funny grimaces almost all the time, which are funny on most photos but I wanted to capture him with his “normal” look.

After he allowed me to steal few photos of him, he decided to shoot me instead and forced me to do funny faces he made before :)

On the following slideshow you cas see few more photos from that day.

Similar projects

On January of this year I´ve started with another bit similar project. It´s called “12Months/ 12 Self Portraits” and surprisingly it´s about taking self portraits once per month. You can find it here. I´ve got three photos so far but truly hope that I´ll be able to finish it and at the end of the year to show you the complete set.

I´ve tried to look for more similar project on the internet but wasn´t as successul as I wished to be.

Miss at la Playa -not exactly set of photos taken during some longer period of life, but you can see there one model styled in different ages from 16 to 70. It´s amazing what can makeup and styling do.
Yotam - you may know photographer Gilad Benari. He took photos of his sone in years 2004 - 2008, but unfortunately it doesn´t seem that he continues with this project.
9 months of gestation in 20 seconds -Lokim takes photos of his wife during her pregnancy every day.

Thank you to all who gave me suggestions on these projects on tumblr!

Conclusion

Do you have similar projects of your own? Or do you know any interesting made by others? And what do you think about them? I would be really happy if you let me know in comments.

Hope you have beautiful day and are happy!

How´s It Done: The Raven Queen

2011-04-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

It´s been a while since I did some article about post processing so I think it´s time to fix it now! In this post I´d like to show you how I edited one on my latest photos from photoshoot with Romana.

This article is not meant to be step by step tutorial but I´d like to give you a view on how I work and hopefully provide you some ideas on how you can work in Photoshop. I didn´tuse any fancy plugins or tricks while editing this photo. I worked with good old:

Levels,
Curves,
Selective Color,
Liquifity,
Channels.

For some minor adjustments I also used Vibrance, Black & White and Photo Filter adjustment tools. And I also played with different blending modes.

Post Processing

1. Liquifity Filter
Usually, and this picture is no exception, I start with Liquifity filter. I really like big hair and big eyes so I do it right on the beginning.

2. Adding Sky
I really wish to cameras are able to capture all color which human eyes can see. If it would be possible you could have well exposed both sky and foreground. More expensive cameras have bigger dynamic range but unfortunatelly I don´t have fortune to spend on buying some.(But I´m thinking about buying some gradual filters.)

In this case I had to choose between well exposed face and over exposed sky or well exposed sky and under exposed foreground. Guess what won.

I´ve decided to add sky in Photoshop because you surely agree that there nothing interesting or even dramatic on purely white sky. So I made a selection of the sky with help of Channels (the method is explained e.g. here and I´m planning to write a separate article about it soon), save this selection and then drag some sky I shot earlier into the picture.

I changed its Blending Mode on Multiply to blend it better and lower the Opacity on about 50%. Then I load the selection I made before and hide some parts of the sky which were on the trees and made them darker.

3. Changing Lights and Shadows
You´ll probably agree with me that the picture is very flat right now. To fix it I added two Levels adjustment layers on the top of all layers. First one makes picture lighter, second one makes it darker. I filled the layer masks of these layers with black and then painted over the areas I want to make lighter/darker.

On the following picture you can see which the areas I adjusted.

4. Mist and Selective Color
If you follow more of my tutorial you surely know that I love adding mist to my pictures. I really like the enigmatic mood which can be created with this element. So this picture couldn´t be an expection :)

Another adjustment I did was adding Selective Color adjustment layer. I made Blacks bit lighter and added little red tones to it. Then I made Greys little darker and added blue tones to them. It helped me to get closer to the mood I wanted to create.

5. Levels and Photo Filter
In the last part of editing I added adjustment layer Photo Filter and set the type of the filter on Deep Yellow. It helped me to create this vintage effect I wanted to achieve.

To add bit more drama I increased contrast with adjustment layer Levels. I set the Inptut Levels on 2; 1,09;244.

Similar photo, different year

After editing the photo I realized that almost exactly a year ago I took photo with similar atmosphere and color palette. You can see it below.

I´m wondering if it will repeat next year :) And I would also like to know how big effect different seasons of the year have on people and their mood. Do you feel that e.g. weather affects you when you create something?

Conclusion

That was pretty much all I did. Post processing took me about five hours. Most of the time I spent on painting lights and shadows on Levels adjustment layers.

I´m going to write more in depth tutorial about quite similar photo (from the same photoshoot) very soon! Till then you can e.g. read more about that photoshoot in article "Photoshoot: People in Train Usually Don´t Share Our Artistic Nature".

I really hope it was interesting reading for you. If you have any questions feel free to ask in comments and I´ll do my best to answer you!

Have a beautiful day!

Photoshoot: Sometimes It´s Nice to Keep Things Simple

2011-04-04T01:01:00.000-07:00

We were super active

I and my sister weren’t able to arrange a photoshoot for long four months. But this weekend everything has changed and we shoot even twice! In this post I´d like to talk only about the indoor photoshoot we had on Saturday.

On Sunday we took few outfit photos outside. I may mention it in some of the next posts. I´m not sure yet, because there is actually not so much to write about. :)

I wanted to keep things simple

The aim of Saturday’s photoshoot was to test the eye lashes I bought few weeks back. Read more about the product in this review!

I wanted to keep this shooting simple and not to try anything new because I was bit tired of recent photoshoots where I always had to focus on some new element or unexpected situation.

Me by Chrysseis

Light setting

Because of the above reason we chose to use natural light coming through window, avoid complicated makeup and wore neutral white shirt.

Light conditions were ideally easy because it was a cloudy day which produces nice, soft light. So we didn´t need to worry about over/underexposed parts of the face and using of a reflector wasn´t as necessary as e.g. shooting while direct sunlight.

On the following diagram you can see our light setup. Pretty easy, isn’t it?

Preparations

Originally I and Chrysseis planned to take photos where both will be. Because of that we had matching makeup, hair styling and clothes.

Hehe, we have lots of products by Yves Rocher. I like to have 100% natural cosmetic because my skin is very sensitive.

As I already mentioned we originally wanted to shoot some photos on self timer where we both will be. But it turned out that it´s pretty hard to coordinate ourselves and look intelligent while doing it :)

The photo below is the only one photo which looks at least a little interesting. You don´t want to see the rest, trust me.

And no, we don´t look similar :)

Post Processing

Post processing was quite easy. You can see the progress of retouching of one photo on the diagram below.

The process was following:

On the first picture you can see the original file right from the camera. It´s bit overexposed.
I fixed it in Camera RAW. It´s great advantage of shooting in .raw that you can save many details while post processing.
Then I cleaned the skin with the Stamp Tool (S) for blemishes and dodge and burn technique to correct light.
It was necessary to increase contrast. I added new adjustment layer Gradient Map of the top of all layers, choose Black, White gradient and change its blending mode on Luminosity.
Final thing to do was to convert picture to black and white. I used Gradient Map adjustment layer again.

Below you can see final result.

Conclusion

Thank you very much for reading this article. Hope you enjoy it. I would be really happy if you let me know what do you think about photos and article.
Any ideas how to improve it?

Have an amazing day!
- Jarka

Readers Ask #1: How do you apply textures?

2011-03-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

I got that question quite few times so I think it could be interesting post to write an answer on it :)
I have no special secrets in applying textures. To blend it good with the rest of the picture and to make it interesting, you need to consider following points:

Try to use different blending modes. Every texture is different which means that it needs different blending mode. My favorite are Screen and Soft Ligh, but I always try all of them to see what´s really the best. You should try it too.
According to my experiences the texture looks usually better if you lower its opacity. Normaly I set it on 15 - 35%. The effect is not so harsh thanks to it. But there are excepions of course.
I usually use desaturated versions of textures because I just want to add details and not to change colors.
You can get really interesting results by combining more textures.

Most of the time I use only one texture I shot about two years ago. You can see it below. I use it from two reasons:

It´s decent but still creates nice grunge effect.
By using still the same texture my photos looks similar to each other, which helps with building my "style".

Most of the time I use it with blending mode set on Soft Light and Opacity on about 20% and desaturate it so it´s not affecting colors. Sometimes I let it visible only arround the edges because it creates interesting vignette.

Let´s take a look at few examples of photos with and without the texture.

Conclusion

I really hope that this article helps you or give you some idea how you can work with textures. Using textures is a great way how you can add more "personal" feeling to your pictures but you need to be gentle to not to "over texture" your image.

For the next "Readers Ask" type of articles I´m preparing Channels and how you can work with them.
Do you have any other questions? Let me know and if it will be in my powers I will answer them :)

Have a beautiful day
- Jarka

Photoshoot: People in Train Usually Don´t Share Our Artistic Nature

2011-03-28T01:01:00.000-07:00

I thought that this photoshoot is cursed.

Me and Romana tried to arrange this photoshoot for very long time. So long that I had started to think that it´s cursed - she was sick twice, once it was the coldest day of whole winter and on last try the whole day looked on heavy rain.
Luckily it was´t raining and I´m really happy that we were able to shoot because it was a very pleasant afternoon I spent with Romana. It was definitely worth of long waiting.

Ideating

I knew quickly what theme I want to shoot - moody story about a girl leaving her home with big, old suitcase. I had wanted to shoot it with Kristýna before but we end up with something different so this time it was easy choice.

As the main prop I used an old suitcase of my mum. For me it´s very photogenic but let me say that most people in train or public transportation don´t share the same artistic vision and they looked at me more like at some lunetic than a creative person. :D Plus if you enter the bus with big silver desk (reflector) you get even less understanding.
Hard life of a photographer :)

Location Planning

Originally I planned to do the photoshoot in a city park. It´s very nice place but quite busy for purpose of photoshoot. Plus I didn´t want to get even more public attention. I have my limits :) So I decided to change the location on a small field near river not so far from my flat.

Below you can see few photos from location scouting I did on November.

You can use reflector without assistant

Since I made the reflector I´ve never had the opportunity to use it outside. I hoped to use it that day. I´ve even found a way how I can use it without assistant - you can hang it on your tripod. It doesn´t give you so many possibilites like working with someone else but it can be a good alternative.

I didn´t use the reflector because it was cloudy weather and because of that very diffused light and I saw no point in using it. Don´t get me wrong - I like shooting with these light condition. Light is very soft and creates nice transitions between lights and shadows, you can get almost the same effect with softbox.
It´s just that I was really looking forward to use my reflector :)

(During almost the same light condition I shoot with Ifka. You can read more about it here - "Photoshoot With The Biggest Softbox in the World".)

Does seasons affect mood of your pictures?

On bit unrelated note - I´ve realized that every year when winter turns to early spring my pictures are most depressive. But according to my"logic" they should be the most optimistic because the annoying winter is finally gone and there are at least six months with good weather to come.
Do you observe something similar with your work?

Fun in Photoshop

As usually I really enjoyed post production in Photoshop. Mostly I played with lights and shadows to create more magical atmoshpere. For that I used dodge and burn technique (read more here) and also bit of direct painting. For color adjustments most changes were done with Selective Color adjustment layer. I also used Levels several time to increase some local contrast.

Following video shows post processing of one picture layer by layer.

Resolusions to see your progress

I remember that in one of the previous article describing my photo journey I give myself some resolution in which areas I´d like to become better. I think it could be interesting to look at them and see if I actually become better.

Here they are:

finally shoot in RAW (I don´t know what I´m waiting for),
make the photoshoot les spontaneous and more prepared,
add some conceptual twist to the photos,
make photos more fashion looking.

Ad 1) As I read them I have to say that I´m satisfied with my progress. I shoot in RAW during every photoshoot since working with Ifka.

Ad 2) Before when I and Chrysseis went shooting it was something like:

Me: "Let´s take some photos today!"
Chryss: "OK! Where could we go? What about that nice forrest near town?"
Me: "Sounds great. Let´s grab some clothes and go!"

I´m not saying that it was all bad. I really like many photos which were shot this way and it was always lovely afternoon I spent with Chrysseis but I think that with more preparation you can get more professional results (for Chrysseis: I´m really looking forward to a new photoshoot with you! Prepared or not, you´re my best model!)

E.g. for this photoshoot I knew what I´d like to shoot, which props and mood, what kind of clothing, hair and makeup. And I had also prepared few poses in advance. It was much easier to concentrate on actual shooting. Hope that it will work with every photoshoot :)

Ad 3,4) I´m not sure if I get better with mentioned "conceptual twist" because I´m not completely sure what it was supposed to mean :) Conserning the fashion flair I think I get better but only very little. It´s definitelly something I need to work more.

And what are the actual resolutions?

Definitely become better with posing - let model more interact with props and environment, use more dynamic poses.
Make the story line of photoshoot stronger.
Find more interesting locations.
As always - work better with light.
Become makeup artist.(?)

Conclusion

This article becomes longer than I expected. Hope it was still interesting reading for you cause it was fun for me to write it :)

If you havy any questions or tips, don´t be shy and let me know in comments! It always makes me happy :)

Have a beautiful Monday
- Jarka

Pros of Props: Fake Eye Lashes

2011-03-24T01:01:00.000-07:00

If you want to take interesting photos you quite often get in the situation where you´re going to need some prop. It can be some clothes, makeup, interesting things etc. And all those cost some money. If you don´t have big budget (like me) which you can spend on photography, you probably want to find some cheeper alternatives.

Recently I´ve discovered that ebay is a great place to find cheap props (I know, I´m bit late :D). I bought some of them and would like to give you reviews once they will arrive.

The first arrival are the thick eye lashes so todays review is about them.

Chrysseis with fake eye lashes

The above photo is a sneak preview from a photoshoot I had with my sister during the weekend. I will write more about it in some of the future articles. By posting it here I just want to show you how the eye lashes beautifully open her eyes and make them bigger.

I don´t know how´s it in your coutry but here in Czech Republic one pair of eye lashes costs about $8. On ebay I bought ten pairs for unbelievable low $2.5 and even shipping was free.

You can buy exactly these from colorfulstore09 but there is lots of other buyers. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly they arrived - in less than two weeks. I was counting with month.

I wanted to buy really thick lashes which creates nice, dramatic effect on photos. They´re made from plastic which looks fake in real but on photography you won´t see it. They´re also too thick for everyday use but on the other hand they´re well visible on photos (makeup and similar stuff tends to be less visible on photos).

The eye lashes don´t have glue on them so you need to buy some. It usually costs about $4. I bought black one but the white one is definitely better because when it dries it becomes transparent. The black stays black and if you accidentally touch your eyelid with it, it leaves black stain.

I´m really satisfied with these eye lashes. As I said they´re not for everday use but they´re not even meant for it. I´m thinking about buying some colorful or e.g. with feathers cause it could look really interesting on photos too. And also thinking about buying some more decent ones to wear them from time to time.

Do you know any good store with eyelashes? Do you use them? What are your experiences with them?
Let me know in comments!

Photoshoot: Is It Easy to Be a Baby Photographer?

2011-03-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time...

Let me say you a quick story.
Till previous week I hadn´t folder with my art photos on my private Facebook account. I don´t exactly know why. At the beginnings of my artistic career it was mostly because I was insecure about my work and I wasn´t good enough to let know my friends. And also because I´m bit private person who doesn´t need to share everything with everybody :)

As time went I didn´t think about my private fb page as a good promotional place. But few days back I realized that if I want to be a professional photographer one day people should probably know that I take pictures, right? It´s really nice that people from different countries and even continents know that I´m photographer but it´s most likely that they won´t visit my studio one day asking me to shoot them :)

Is it easy to shoot me?

So after some thinking and hesitation I uploaded some of my best work on my private profile. And let me say that the reaction was amazing. Not even that they like my work but after two days I already have two comissions. Isn´t that great?

First an old friend from elementary school contacted me that she wanted some nice photos of her six months old baby. I´ve got few experiences with shooting babies because of my little cousin so I agreed.

To be or not to be ... baby photographer?

During about half hour I had over 100 cute photos so the photoshoot was done. Post processing was really quick because you don´t need to retouch skin of babies (yet, God know how far our desire for perfection will go in next years). So I only made few color corrections and photos were done.

The whole photoshoot and post processing took me no longer than two hours and I was able to deliver eight photos to my client. It makes me think that compared with e.g. fashion photography it can be easy earned money. To make eight professional looking fashion photos I would spend on it more than 50 hours!

Another thing speaking for baby photography - your customers (= parrents) will most likely love the photos because how many parrents don´t think that they´re children are cute on simply every photo? And now imagine how choosy fashion magazine´s editors are.

Pros of being fashion photographer? Definitely more creative freedom. And the work is still refresing. To be honest I can´t imagine to shooot babies the whole life :)

How to shoot good photos of babies?

I´ve had the opportunity to take photos of lots of babies and children. I can´t even count how many photos of my cousin have I shoot and it seems that everyone around me is having babies this past two years :)

Thanks to those hundreds of children photos I´ve discovered some tips how to make them good looking and parrent´s favorite:

Children move all the time and won´t wait long till you focus and compose the picture. It means that you need to be quick. Take rather more photos and at least few turn out as you wish.
Lens with low F-number will help you with quick focusing and also create nice, soft depth of field which looks especially good on children photos.
According to me photos of babies look the best in soft, pastel tones. I would recommend using natural daylight and white background. In people it evocates pureness and inocence.
You might consider bright colors for children photos (e.g. with toys) - it creates cheerful mood.
I adore children´s eyes which is why I always take at least one photo from above to see child´s eyes wide open. These photos are usually parrent´s favorite too.
Shoot connection between baby and parrents.

Conclusion

Do you have any other tips for good photos of babies? Or do you know any interesting blog about baby photography?
Let me know in comments!

Have a beautiful Monday!
- Jarka

1+7: Cannelle et Vanille and 7 Interesting Articles From the Web

2011-03-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

Writers Note: Originally I wanted to make this post on 13rd but was quite busy by that time. Our friend come to visit us and we went to a very beautiful pub decorated in style of medieval Bohemian tavern and ate with our hands delightful smoked pork ribs.
The interior of the pub was very photogenic. I´m planning to do there some photoshoot in the future. But back to this article...

This article is part of the "Numbered!" series. You might already read "The Fabulous First" and "Seven Secrets Of...". On 17th of every month I feature one of my favorite blogs and seven interesting things I found on the internet during the previous months. It may be interesting articles, tutorials, videos etc. It will change every month.

What: Cannelle et Vanille

About: Blog written by Aran is about food recepies and food photography. As Aran says: "This blog is a journal of all my recipes, travels and life stories."
Recepies are not only accompanied by her beautiful photos of dishes but also with nice short stories from Aran´s life.

Why: Blog contains one of the most beautiful food photos I´ve ever seen. It´s a visual pleasure to go through her light yet colorful images even if you´re not planning to cook any of the recepies.

Let´s take a look at some of her beautful photos.

What: “Your Camera Takes Really Nice Pictures”
Where: Erin Farrell Photography Blog
Why: Article shows that it doesn´t matter if you have professional camera or not because it´s not the camera what takes good or bad photos. It´s you!

About: Imagine that you’re baking dessert for a party. It’s your special recipe: the one everyone asks for. You make it from scratch, of course, never looking at the recipe that you committed to memory so long ago. Sugar, beaten eggs, sift in the flour… you’re crafting something delicious from basic elements. Now you’re at the party and everyone is gushing about your dessert. The flavor! The texture! But most of all you’re being asked, “what kind of oven do you have? It makes great cakes!”

Read More >>

What: Studio portrait lighting
Where: Lucie Kout´s blog
Why: Article shows really great way of portrait lighting with using only one artificial light and home made reflector. You can take great photos even with low budget, you know? :)

About: There are many ways to light the scene. I prefer using more light sources but not all of us are lucky enough to have a couple strobes. This setup will work with 1 key light only and selfmade reflector. Let's share the informations needed to do a studio portrait lighting.

Read More >>

What: 20 Tips on Social Media Etiquette for Photographers
Where: Lucid Dreaming
Why: In easy funny way you can learn the basics of your virtual life on social networks.

About: Let's face it: social media has become vital for photographers. Aside from helping to bring in business, it gives artists a chance to interact with one another, more easily learn from one another, all on a global platform.

Which is precisely why social media etiquette is so important to learn. But, why? Because it helps to maximize impact on these sites. Lack of etiquette creates a tendency to lose followers - and word of mouth is vital in social media and to business.

Read More >>

What: Being a Photographer takes INTELLIGENCE!
Where: Lindsay Adler photography
Why: Interesting reflection written by professional photographer about the fact that if you want to have successful photography bussiness you need to know not only how to take good photos.

About: When I was in high school many of my friends and teachers told me not to be a photographer because I was ‘too intelligent’. I was valedictorian of my senior class, and people expected me to be a doctor, lawyer, professor, or something ‘smart’. I eventually concluded that the ‘smartest’ thing I could do would be to pursue what fulfilled me in life. I realize today the reason I have succeeded is because being a successful photographer involves having multiple types of intelligences.

Read More >>

What: Reflections: Natural Reflectos
Where: Jasmine Star Photography
Why: Article shows great way how you can work better with natural light, even in such a hard light condition as direct sunlight.

About: This time of year can present tricky lighting situations and when I shot this photo session a couple weeks ago, it was no exception. I usually arrange the a session about an hour and a half before sunset if I'm shooting along the coast. I can usually find open shade to shoot the couple in until the sun has fallen and created a nice, orangey glow around sunset. However, when you're shooting on a boat dock, you're not given that luxury as open shade isn't readily available.

Read More >>

What: Miller Mobley on Making Work for Your Portfolio

Where: Strobist

Why: Yet another very inspirational article about possible ways how to light a photo.

On the photo you see below only three light sources were used. Would you believe it?

About: This image was made with a combination of three lights. To camera left was a Profoto Compact 300R w/ Reflector. This light served two purposes.

First, it was the backlight that kicked the car and the subject -- it gave both a nice separation from the background. You can see that the background is somewhat dark, but the left edges of the car and also the edge light on the subject somewhat separate them from the background and pull you into the image a little more.

Conclusion

So what do you think about this type of articles? Would you be interested in reading something similar next month?
Please let me know!

Inspiring Light Bulb Photo Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial

2011-03-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial I'd like to show you an easy and quick way on how to blend glass and apply lighting effects and color adjustments to get the exact picture you want.

Resources

Light Bulb, Holder and Sunset- Pelleron-Art
Desert- night-fate stock
Crack - nighty-stock
Fractal - PinkMonkeyLove
Flowers and leaves - in the following text

Step 1 - Preparing the Document

Create a new document in Photoshop. To do that go to File > New... or press Ctrl + N. Set the value Width on 600 pixels and Height on 400 pixels. Press OK.

Download the picture of the sunset and the picture of the ground and place it into the new document. Name the layer with sunset SKY and the layer with ground GROUND. Place layer GROUND above the SKY. Click on the layer GROUND and press Ctrl + T. Then resize the image on proper size. Do the same with SKY. Below you can see how your image should look like so far.

Step 2 - Cutting Out the Sky From the Ground

In this step you´re going to cut out the sky from the ground picture. You can do it very easily thanks to Channels. To do that click on the palette Channels. If you don´t see it go to Window > Chanels. On the palette you can see RGB, Red, Green and Blue channel. Right click on the Blue channel and duplicate it.

TIP: If you cut out something with Channels, always duplicate the channel where is the biggest contrast between the object you want to cut out and the rest of the image.

Let make only the Blue copy channel visible and the rest invisible.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels... (or press Ctrl + T on your keyboard) and set the Input Levels as on the picture below.

The channel should look like on the following picture. You did this thing with Levels because you want to have solid black and white color - it indicates where the selection will be. White color will be selected, black stays unselected. Grey tones between will be selected with different opacities. E. g. 50% mid grey color will have selection with 50% opacity.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some hard round brush and pick white color. Paint over the grey parts of the sky. Be careful along the horizontal line. You do this because you want to have selected the whole sky - you want to cut out all the clouds not only some parts. Below you can see how the image should look like.

Click back on the RGB channel to be able to see the image in colors again. Click on the GROUND on your palette Layers and go to Select > Load Selection... and in the box Channel choose the option Blue copy. Press OK.

This step activates the selection based on the "Blue copy" channel. Everything which was white will be selected, black stays unselected. Now simply press Delete on your keyboard to delete the sky from the picture with ground. After this step you should have picture similar to the one below.

Step 3 - Adjusting the Mountain

If you take a look on the picture above you can probably see that the mountains on the horizon should be less blue and more orange because of the sun nearby. You´ll fix it in this step.

Add new adjustment layer Selective Color on the top of your layers (To do that click on the button "Create a new fill or adjustment layer" which can be found on the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don´t see this palette go to Window > Palette or simply press F7 on your keyboard.)

I write it in all tutorials but I feel I need to mention it here too - try to use adjustment layers instead of direct adjustments as often as possible. This way you can change it during the whole process of doing manipulation not as long as History remembers your steps. In other words - thanks to adjustment layers adjustment is always reversible and changeable.

Set the adjustment layer Selective Color in the same way as you can see on the following picture.

Right click on this adjustment layer and select the option Create Clipping Mask. This way the adjustment affects only one layer bellow which means the GROUND. Click on the thumbnail of this layer (see picture below), grab the Gradient Tool (G), pick black color and fill the thumbnail with it.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), pick white color and paint over the mountain. This way the adjustment affects only the mountains and not the whole GROUND. Your image should look like the one below so far.

As you can see on previous picture the adjustment makes mountain bit more orange/rose but not over all parts and because of that they look badly stained. To fix that create a new layer on the top of your layers. Create clipping mask from it and name it e. g. MORE ORANGE.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush, set Master Diameter on about 20 pixels and Opacity on 30%. pick some color similar to colors of the sky and gently paint over the parts of mountain which stay too blue. Once you´re finished your image should look like the one bellow.

Step 4 - Reflection of Sun

If you look at some sunset photos you may notice that the sun creates "aura" on the objects behind which it shines. You will create the aura in this step.

TIP: You can take a look at two examples of this aura - photography "Sunset" by satomy79 on deviantart and painting "Cretaceous Sunset" by kerembeyit.

Make GROUND invisible for a while (click on the small eye icon).

Grab the Marquee Tool (M) and select the bottom part of the sun with the aura.

Copy the selection (Ctrl + C) and paste it on the top of the layers (Ctrl + V). Name the layer SUN AURA and change the Blending Mode on Color Dodge. Lower the Opacity on 80%. Make the GROUND visible again. Add vector mask to the layer SUN AURA. You can find the button Add vector mask on the bottom part of the palette Layers.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush, lower the opacity on about 50% and pick black color. Paint around the edges of the aura to blend it properly. On the following picture you can see how your image should look like.

READ MORE HERE

Resources: Butterfly from Broken Glass

2011-03-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

Background and girl

Bokeh texture

Big Bokeh

Dodge and Burn Technique: Retouch Skin Like a Pro!

2011-03-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

In previous article I asked if some of you would be interested in post about dodge and burn technique. I got pretty big positive response, so here it is :)

Dodge and burn is mainly used to retouch skin.The biggest advantage of this technique is that it preserves (unlike using filters, Stamp Tool, Brush Tool etc.) skin texture. You don´t change the surface of the skin, only make some parts lighter - dodge them (like blemishes and circles under eyes) and some darker - burn them.

Because Photoshop is very complex tool you can get same results with different approaches. Dodge and burn technique is no exception. In this article I´m showing you my way, but know that it´s not the only way.

Let´s take a look at what can you do with these technique. Move your mouse over the upper and following images and wait few seconds till the unretouched photo appears.

Note: Making big hair is not aim of this article. I´m working on workshop about beauty retouching in Photoshop where this will be explained among other things such as features improvement, eye enhancement, more in depth explanation of dodge and burn technique and also email consulation!

How do I do it?

As I said there is more ways how to make this technique. What´s the same in every approach is that you need one layer for dodging (lightening) and one for burning (darkening). I´m most comfortable with using two adjustment layers Levels.

So what´s the exact process?

Add new adjustment layer Levels on the top of all layers and set the Input Levels to make the picture very light.
Fill the layer mask with solid black color.
Grab the Brush Tool (B), set Master Diameter on 2 - 5 pixels and lower the Opacity on about 5%.
Paint over the areas which should be lighter.
Add new adjustment layer Levels on the top and set the Input Levels to make the picture very dark.
Fill the layer mask with solid black color.
Grab the Brush Tool (B) and use the same settings as for lightening.
Paint over the areas which should be darker.

The theory is pretty easy isn´t it?

How to achieve great results?

Despite the above description may sound very easy you´ll need some practice to get the best results. Below you can see list of things which can help you to improve this skill.

Practice! With every image you retouch you´ll become better.
Be patient. This technique is not meant to be done in 10 minutes. Count with one hour or more.
Use very small brush and work with low opacities.
Zoom in e.g. 300% to see every little imperfection.
Zoom out to make sure that you didn´t deform shape of the face by changing lights and shadows.
To see imperfections better place Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on the top and desaturate the image. You won´t be distracted by colors, you´ll only see what´s lighter and what´s darker.
It so much easier to do this with tablet instead of mouse.

Nice ... but how exactly should I do it?

Below you can take a look at the video I´ve recorded while retouching the very first photo from this article.It took me to retouch the face 30 minutes but if I have to retouch only head photo (and not the whole body like in this case) it would last much longer. I would have to retouch bigger area with more details.

I speed up this video four times to make it shorter and not boring :)

As you can see I´m working with desaturated image to see better which parts should be edited and not to be distracted by colors.

Try to find the variant best for you!

As it has already been said there is more ways how to use this technique. I work with Levels adjustment layer but it may not be the right thing for you. You can try following instead:

use Curves instead of Levels,
paint on new layer filled with mid grey (#808080) set on Overlay Blending Mode with black and white brush,
in Camera RAW set three different exposures for your image - light, normal and dark and then put all these in one document. Hide light and dark picture and make visible only those parts which shoul be ligter/darker.

Do you know or use any other variations? Please let me know in comments so I can complete the article!

Conclusion

Dodge and burn is powerful technique. You get the best results if you work slow with patience and small, low opacity brushes.
Would you use this technique? Is there anything I forgot to mention? Let me know in comments!

Also let me know if you are interested in workshop. I´m planning to make it smaller (like for ten people) to be able to really help you.

Have an amazing Monday.
- Jarka

7 Secrets: Jarka Hrnčárková

2011-03-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in previous article I´m still trying to make this blog more interesting for you. That´s why I´ve decided to create series of articles based on dates of months. You already know that on the first day of each month I publish "Fabulous First" and seventh day of month is perfect time for another article from this series.

7 Secrets is series of interview with talented photographers and digital artists. I will ask them seven questions which should not only show you their work and personality but also should give you useful tips about their area of expertise.

Jarka Hrnčárková

I think it would be great if I started this series with interviewing myself because we haven´t been introduced properly so far.
And it would be really awesome if you write me something about yourself in comments below because I´d love to know you, my dear readers!

Let´s move on the interview...

1. Tell me about yourself and how you get into photography?
My name is Jarka Hrnčárková. I´m 22 years old girl from Czech Republic. I´m student of economic university but my heart is with photography and am dreaming that it will be my full time job after finish studies.

It´s been 3 years and couple of months since I pushed the trigger of camera for the very first time. It has quickly become my hobby which turns into desire to make living from it. I started as nature photographer but felt limited by weather condition, not so much interesting locations etc. Now I shoot mostly portrait photos and feel to have more creative freedom.

I try to catch dreamy, bit melancholic mood in my photos and want to show the fragile side of my models.

Frozen Moments II (Read more about the project here.)

2. Why do you create art?
Since my early childhood I have a need to express myself. As a child I invented different children´s games, draw, later I´ve written short stories (and still do from time to time) and have made fantasy world for RPG.
Sp I guess that creating art is part of what I am. I also like to share my visions of beauty and my inner world with others.

3. What´s the most important thing you´ve learnt about photography so far?
Definitely patience :) Let me give you one example - post processing. At the beginnig I was always so eager to have some result and upload it on DeviantArt that I rushed the post processing, wasn´t gentle with PS tools, didn´t pay attention to details etc. Because of that my work looked very unprofessional.

As time went I´ve learnt that (like everything in life) you need to spend time to get good results, be very careful and detail oriented. It´s not only case of post processing. You should be patient with lighting and posing while shooting, make good preparation before photoshoot etc.

I think it´s better to publish e.g. two good photos that ten average.

Visitor (Read more about different uses of reflector here.)

4. How do you get a job?
Thanks to recomendation of my friend and clients who are satisfied with my work. But to be honest right now it´s not enough to make a full time job from it. I´ll have to find some more active ways of finding job.
I´ll let you know when I will know more :)

5. How are you marketing yourself?
I use social media to marketing myself. I´m very active on Fotopátračka (Czech alternative of Model Mayhem), write two blogs - this one and tumblr, publish in online galeries - e.g. on DeviantArt and Flickr and use Facebook and Twitter.

I also have my work shown on my personal fb profile so people in my friend list know that I´m photographer and can give me comission (btw very effective).

Drowning (Read how the photo was taken.)

6. What´s your favorite photo you´ve taken and why?
It´s hard to choose only one because it´s usually one from my most recent photoshoot :)
I think that right now "Against the Storm" is my favorite (it´s more manip than photography) because I finally achieved certain style I tried to replicate for quite a long time.

Against the Storm (Read walkthrough of this work.)

7. What would you recommend to aspiring photographers?
Practice a lot of course. When I say that lots of people usually say to me that they would like to shoot but don´t know what. I got that problem too. Because of that I found a list of conceptual ideas (unfprtunately don´t know the author of the llist) and tried to recreate them. I shoot one photo a week – I think it´s good frequency because you still shoot a lot but don´t have so much pressure like if you want to shoot one photo every day.

Another advice – try to read about photography and post processing as much as possible. Internet is full of very useful resources and you can learn almost anything there. Just try google or look at more articles from this blog “Pelleron-Art”:)

Don´t worry to experiment before you find what fits to you best. Try different genres, lenses, analogue/digital etc. Then try to experiment with different composition, lighting, angles. Until you don´t try everything you won´t know what´s the right for you!

Conclusion

Would you be interested in more interviews with photographers and digital artists? Do you have any concrete people you want me to interview? Would you choose different questions?

Dreams About the Past (Read about this post processing.)

numbered, interview, photography, photo, photographer, czech republic, jarka hrnčárková, pelleron, 7 secrets,

The Fabulous 1st: World Press Photo Winners

2011-03-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

I always think about how to make this blog better and more interesting for you. One of the "improving ideas" is to make a series of articles based on the date numbers. This is the first from the series called "The Fabulous First". Every first day of month I´d like to publish article about something (not necessarily art related) what caught my attention previous month.

I have prepared three more types of articles in different dates but don´t want to reveal them right now. So keep visiting the blog so you won´t miss it :)

World Press Photo Winners

In the middle of February winners of World Press Photo contest were announced. Some of the photos were so amazing and sad in one that I have to still think about them. Below you can see three which have amazed me the most but I strongly recommend you to go through all the winners.

Our world can be the most beautiful and the most cruel place...

1st place: Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old woman from Oruzgan province in Afghanistan, fled back to her family home from her husband's house, complaining of violent treatment. The Taliban arrived one night, demanding Bibi be handed over to face justice. After a Taliban commander pronounced his verdict, Bibi's brother-in-law held her down and her husband sliced off her ears and then cut off her nose. Bibi was abandoned, but later rescued by aid workers and the U.S. military. After time in a women's refuge in Kabul, she was taken to America, where she received counseling and reconstructive surgery. Bibi Aisha now lives in the United States. World Press Photo of the Year 2010, Jodi Bieber, South Africa, Institute for Artist Management/Goodman Gallery for Time magazine.


17th place: This one almost made me cry. A man throws a dead body at the morgue of the general hospital, Port Au Prince, Haiti, January 15, 2010, following the 7.0-magnitude quake on January 12. First Prize General News Stories, Olivier Laban-Mattei, France, Agence France-Presse

18th place: A suicide jump in Budapest, Hungary, May 22, 2010. First Prize Spot News Single, Peter Lakatos, Hungary, MTI.

I think that all selected photos are amazing and that they show dramas of our world in outstanding way. The only photo which doesn´t impress me so much is this one. I don´t see anything special in it. Do you?

12th place: Self-portraits for social networks. Second Prize Portraits Stories, Wolfram Hahn, Germany

Conclusion

What are your favorite photos from the contest? And what do you think about "The Fabulous First"? Is it interesting for you?
I would be really happy if you let me know in comments.

I would also appreciate your help for next article. Would you write questions which you would ask me if you do interview with me? I would answer them next week :)

Oh, I almost forget: Do you know that you can follow this blog with bloglovin?

Have an amazing March, 1st. Can you feel the coming spring?
- Jarka

Create a Mysterious Fashion Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

2011-02-28T03:19:00.000-08:00

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use different custom brushes to create stormy weather, save your masks to save your time, work with different adjustment layers, and make adjustments only on small parts of the image to achieve the exact result you want. Let's get started!

Resources

Step 1 - Preparation of Background

Download the picture with girl and main ground and open it in Photoshop. The photo was taken with slightly different intention, that's why there is some orange clothing. You'll get rid off that in this step.
Create a new layer above the background. You can find the button "Create a new layer" in the bottom part of the palette Layers. If you don't see this palette simply press F7 on your keyboard or go to Window > Layers and it will appear.

Name the new layer e.g. REMOVE CLOTHING. It's good to name your layers because you can orient better than if you don't do it.
Grab the Brush Tool (B). Press Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool and pick some light color from the sky. Now start painting over the clothing to make it disappear and let sky appear instead.

You can get the inspiration of where to paint on in the picture above. As I said paint over the clothing but don't paint over the straws! They create nice impression of space so you want to let them in the picture.
Then paint over the bush in the right bottom corner. It doesn't look photogenic and you'll add some better in following steps.
After this step your image should look like the following.

Step 2 - Creating Selection of Woman

As you can see the sky and whole background is very uninteresting right now - it's just some light blue color and nothing more. To improve it you'll add mountains to the background and sky in following steps.
Before you'll start it's necessary to make selection of the girl and save it. To do that grab the Lasso Tool (L) and select the girl.

Be as careful as possible while making the selection. If you don't do it carefully your manips will never look realistic. It can be boring and time consuming but it's totally worth it.

If you're not sure how to use the Lasso Tool (L) or want to know about other methods of blending you can take a look at the article "A Photomanipulator's Guide to Blending" here on Photoshop Tutorials.
As I said you need to save the selection to be able to use it later. To do that go to Select > Save Selection ... and as Name write e.g. Woman. Press OK.

Press Ctrl + D on your keyboard to deselect it. You'll came back to the selection soon.

Step 3 - Adding Mountains

Download the picture of mountains and drag it to the picture. Press Ctrl + T on your keyboard and resize the picture on proper size. Then press Enter to apply the resizing. Rename the layer on MOUNTAINS and place it on the top of all layers.

To blend the layer with the rest of the picture change its Blending Mode on Overlay. You can find the Blending Mode option in the upper part of the palette Layers.

Your manipulation should look like the following picture. As you can see the mountains are well blended with the sky but they're also on the woman which looks really weird.

Now it comes time to use the selection you've created and saved in previous step.

Add new layer mask to MOUNTAINS. You can find the button "Add layer mask" in the bottom part of palette Layers (same as the buton "Create a new layer").

Go to Selection > Load Selection ... and select Channel Woman. Press OK.

Grab the Brush Tool (B) and pick black color. Make sure that the layer mask is active (just click on it) and paint with black inside the selection. It causes that the mounatin on woman dissapear.

You should get something like on the picture below.

READ THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL

Have an amazing Monday!
- Jarka

Photoshoot: How to Create Lighting for Cinematic Portraits

2011-02-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

It´s been quite long since I wrote short article about creating cinematic portraits. It was mostly about post processing. This time I´d like to tell you bit more about lighting.
Let´s get started!

Final Result

Arranging the photoshoot

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I couldn´t take photos for quite a long time. But at the end of previous week I finally had a new photoshoot. I worked with really beautiful model Veronika which contacted me via Fotopátračka.cz again and tallented MUA Jana, I´ve met during previous studio photoshoot.

It took almost two long months till all three of us were available for shooting. We have to combine Veronica´s school schedule, Jana´s job and free schedule in studio. Let me say that it was much more complicated than I imagined. But I´m glad I waited because I´m really thrilled about the photos.

Final Result

Something always goes wrong

I´ve already get used to the fact that during every photoshoot something goes wrong and you have to use your improvization skills to save the situation. Sometimes it´s worse (like when you go to studio and they don´t have correct lights - read here), sometimes you can work with it.

This photoshoot was full of little glimpses. Everything was solved at the end but left me with pretty headache.

It started already at the station. Veronika arrived from different city so I waited there on her. The problem was that it was the bussiest hour of the day when the station was full of people and I wasn´t completely sure how Veronika looks like. Photos can be pretty confusing, you know.

Luckily we found each other after few confused phone calls and headed to the studio to wait on MUA. To save time I started preparing the backdrop. There were two in white available so I though: "Awesome. One less thing to worry about!" But I was such a naive girl!

First backdrop was too short, it didn´t even reach the floor. The second one was long enough but it didn´t hold on the stand. I was afraid that I was going to use black backdrop, which absolutelly wouldn´t fit to the photoshoot and the grey one wasn´t available. But then well proven idea came to my head: you can fix everything with a duck tape! So I did it :)

Final Result

I wanted to create "movie poster look"

I had planned to shoot with soft box as main light source. In the studio there is big one and I always used soft box during previous photoshoots so it was a safe choice for me. But ... another problem showed up. Holder of the soft box was melted and because of that I couldn´t attach it to the strobe.

Right now I´m very grateful that the soft box was broken. Because of that I´ve learnt how to work with beauty dish and think that photos look better than they would look with soft box. Beauty dish has bit stronger shadows and according to me it preserves skin texture better.

Originally I wanted to use three lights - soft box as main light and two lights from back to recreate "movie effect" similar to this one . There were enough strobes in the studio but guess what? There were only two tripods!

You may ask why I still visit this atelier when there is so much problems with equipment. Well, I have one really strong reason - it´s for free :)

On the photo below you can see how the studio looked durin shooting. On the left site there was the beauty dish. As you can see I put reflector on the opposite site of the beauty dish to create very subtle shimmer on that side.

And here is the light diagram.

I think it would look better if the strobe is on the opposite site than the beauty dish but I didn´t realize it while shooting.

Let´s look behind the scene

Below you can see few behind the scene photos. On the first two Jana is making "big hair" and adjusting clothing.

And here she creates smokey eyes which fit better to next outfit.

Both Veronika (model) and Jana (MUA) were great to work with. They´re very nice persons and full of patience and creative ideas. I hope that I´ll be able to work with them more often in the future.

We were so concentrated on shooting that we lose track of time and receptionist had to ordered us out :) (Is it correct verb?)

Post Processing

The main objective of post processing was to preserve the skin texture and get better in dodge and burn technique. It may be little time consuming but offers best results. I spent around six hours on every photo and I can´t imagine how much longer it took me if I used mouse instead of tablet.

Below you can see zoomed in part of the photo showing Veronika´s face. It´s rollover so if you move your mouse over the image you´ll see non retouched version.
(It may take few seconds before the second photo shows. Be patient please.)

I may write about d&b technique in some of the future articles if you´re interested. Just let me know.

You may wonder why I spend so much time on retouching. According to me it´s important part of portrait/fashion phohotographer´s work. If you look at any magazine you´ll see nothing else than perfect skin. And if you have aspiration (like me) to become professional photographer you must have photos with perfect skin even with 100% zoom.

Final Result

Conclusion

I´m really happy because of the photos I took during this photoshoot. I think that they´re my favorite so far! And I finally feel bit more confident about shooting in studio.

Thank you very much for reading and hope it was interesting reading! Let me know in comments what you think about the article and photos and if you want to know something more!

Have a great Monday
- Jarka

Final Result

Let´s Make Some Networking!

2011-02-15T02:43:00.000-08:00

I would love to meet fellow blogger and support them by featuring their blogs, doing interviews and creating blogrolls.

If you´re here please let me know! I would love to follow your blog! If you know some interesting blog you´d like to share (and has related topic) don´t hesitate and write its adress in comments!

Also I have bunch of other accounts. It would be awesome if you follow me there. By doing it you could see more of my work, some glimpses of everyday life and many more. Here they are:

On tumblr blog named "Photos, Manips, Retouching" I upload all work I create. It´s always first place where it appears. Besides that I post lots of additional info such as before & after photos, wips, in depth comments, random quick tips and from time to time personal photos. Follow me on tumblr!

Facebook fan page is place where I can be in touch with all amazing people who likes my work and tutorials. I love to talk there with you and hear your opinions. Some articles here were written on demand of some of Facebook users. Follow me on Facebook!

Let´s have real time conversation on Twitter. I love to know you, what you think about tuts and photos, who are you. And Twitter is ideal place to connect. Let´s follow me on Twitter!

On DeviantArt I try to upload only my best work. It´s the first community server I´ve joined and it has special place in my heart. Would you visit me there? Follow me on DeviantArt!

I would love to meet you on another accounts and have chat with you! Also I´d like to meet more bloggers and would be very grateful for every comment.

Have a great day!
- Jarka

In Vintage Style: Give Attitude to Your Photos

2011-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be great to create an article tailored exactly for you, my amazing readers! So what do you want to know about vintage post processing?

Time for experimenting!This week I´ve got little experiment prepared for you. I´ve recorded video of post processing of one of the vintage portraits I shot some months ago. I won´t write anything about the post processing but I´ll answer in depth all your question and next week update this article with answers.

I think it could be a great way how to show you exactly what you want to know. So will you ask now or now? :D

Below you can see what´s the video about.

And there is the video. I recommend you to watch it full size in high res to see every detail.
Don´t forget to ask your question!

Conclusion

I´m really interested how this experiment will work. I think it can be a great way to create articles which answers your exact questions.
Let me know what you think!

Do you know that you can follow me elswhere other than my blog?

RSS	Facebook
Twitter	DeviantArt

Have an amazing Monday!
- Jarka

Shoot Macro Photos Without Macro Lens

2011-02-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

Wouldn´t it be amazing to shoot macro photos without expensive macro lens? You say it sounds like a dream?
Read this article and you´ll see that it´s reality!

Hard Life of Economy Student

Last three months it was exam period in my university. It always has bad impact on my life. During that time my social life was very near to death. When friends come to visit us the only social interaction I was "allowed" to do was to say quick "Hello" and then had to go back to learning statistics, management and other quite boring stuff.

My "photo life" was quite similar. I had last proper photoshoot at the beggining of December and since then I have been publishing only photos from this and older photoshoots.

Because of lack of the time I shot some macro photos and have found real interest in it. And you know what is the best? I can use my normal lens to shoot it without spending any extra money on it.

Reverse lens may be solution

If you don´t want to have macro photography as your main photo subject (like me) or don´t have enough money to buy macro lens (like me:) ), shooting with reverse lens is great alternative for you.

The technique works on similar principle as the real macro lenses but it´s harder to work with reverse lens because it doesn´t allow you to work with auto focus and you always have to be very careful about not to scratching your lens and to avoid light leaks.

Great but how to do it?

To change your normal lens on reverse lens is very easy. To do it you´ll need:

DSLR camera,
lens.

The technique can´t be used on point and shoot cameras because they don´t have changable lenses.

As the name of the technique says - you reverse the lens the opposite way it´s suppose to go. You´ll do following:

Remove the lens from your camera.
Turn the lens the opposite way to the camera.
Hold the lens with your hand the whole time while shooting.
Shoot some amazing macro.

Cons of the technique

As you can see it´s very easy to do it. Basically the only thing you need to do it to turn your lens the opposite way. Since it´s not the primar use of the lens there are also some cons of this techniques and things you should be very careful about if you don´t want to scratch your lens. Let me name them.

You won´t be able to use auto focus and it would be better to work with manual exposure settings to have maximum control over the shot.
Be very careful to not to scratch your lens. I recommend to use UV filter to protect it.
Try to use natural light and avoid using internal flash - it would create ugly shadows and overexposed areas.
Lens has to be pressed on the body. There has to be no space between them because otherwise you get overexposed shots.

If you realize that you want to use reverse lens technique more often you can buy reverse lens adapter to make shooting easier because you won´t have to hold the lens all the time. I´ve found this one on Amazon and it costs only USD 8.

Adapter helps you to avoid most of the scretch. If you want to have it on your camera permanently don´t forget to protect the opposite side from dust and scratches too!

Examples of photos taken with macro lens

On the following pictures you can see the maximum distance I can shoot with normal lens and with reverse lens.

Post Processing

Once you have your macros shot shot you may want to edit them in some graphic program. You may want to read following two articles to see some ways how to do it - "Enhance Colors in Your Macro Photos II" and "Enhance Colors in Your Macro Photo" .

Useful resources on internet

If you want to know more about reverse lens technique (e.g. how to use two lenses instead of one) you can read following additional articles on other photo related sites.

Conclusion

The thing about photography equipment I really like is that even if it´s quite pricey with little wit you can get very cheap alternatives. Reverse lens technique may be example of it. Another one can be home made reflector. You can read more about it here - "DIY: Silver Photo Reflector For Only $6".

As always I really hope that the article help you in some way and would love to see your opinion on both article and described technique in comments below. And it would be even better if you send me photos shoot with this technique.

Have an amazing Monday!
- Jarka

Resources: Against the Storm

2011-02-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

There are private stock photos of mine. You can use them only to complete my future tutorial. Thank you for understanding.

You can find plenty of free resources of my on my stock account on dA.

3 The Most Common Photomanipulation Mistakes

2011-01-31T13:58:00.000-08:00

When I started with doing photo manipulation I´ve read tons of tutorials. They´re excellent way of learning in Photoshop but most of them are walkthroughs which don´t give you more general advices such as why your artwork doesn´t look realistic or why something looks weird but you don´t know what.

In this article I´d like to give you list of ideas what you should keep in mind while creating your manips. You can use it as a checklist if everything is correct before publishing your work or if you´re trying to discover that "something what looks weird".

There are three areas of things to consider:

perspective,
colors,
light.

Unpredictability

1. Perspective

Basically objects which are farther are smaller, close objects are bigger. It´s very basic thing which is taught in primary school but people (me including) forget about it quite often.

TIP: If you´re not sure how to set the scale properly, perspective of your plate should give you the idea. E.g. if you use some alley with trees as background picture you can use the trees to see how big should be other objects.

Another thing related to the perspective topic is fact that in natural daylight things in the distance are lighter than things closer. Distant objects have also smaller contrast, less visible details and colors more similar to the colors of sky.

TIP: If you want to make the impression of space and perspective stronger you can make distant objects blurred.

Conclusion of this area

Farther objects are smaller.
Objects in distance are lighter.

Confession of a Toxic Generation

2. Colors

It can be written a lot about colors - which impact they have on person, which atmosphere they create, which colors immediatelly caught attention etc. Right now I´d like to cover only some basics. I might write more in some future article.

Most of the problems with colors are caused by wrong contrast, saturation or color tones. They all can be very easily fixed.

1. Contrast
I´ve seen a lot of manipulation which have too high contrast so I would recommend you (if you think there is something wrong with your work) to try to lower it. You can lower contrast of the whole scene or of separate objects to see what works best.

There are several ways how you can play with contrast. Let me name a few tools which can very easily do that:

Brightness, Contrast - most often used but according to me it doesn´t give you much control,
Levels - personaly my favorite tool, you can play with Shadows, Midtones and Highlights separately to give you the best result,
Curves - even more control, you can also adjust each Channel separately.

2. Saturation
Most of the beginners (and I was no exception) tend to work with very saturated colors. But most of the time it looks unpleasantly for eyes. I guess that this tendency is caused by the fact that they don´t use Photoshop tools gently and set extreme values. E.g. instead of using Color Balance in -+10 range they set -+80 to get SOME result and have it quickly done.

So if you´re looking what may be wrong try to lower saturation. It may help a lot. And then try to combine more tools to get more rich and interesting colors.

3. Color Tones
Sometimes tones of each objects don´t fit together. Some objects use colder color palette, some warmer. But because they´re all in the same light scene they should use the same palette.

I´m not sure what advice should I give you to get rid off this problem. I guess that it comes with practice.
There is many tools which can be used to play with colors. Lets name some of them:

Color Balance,
Selective Color,
Gradient Maps,
Curves.

Conclusion of this area
If you´re trying to make your manip better looking check out following:

Isn´t contrast too high?
Aren´t colors too saturated?
Did you use same color palette for all objects?

Mother Nature

3. Lights and Shadows

The whole book written about lights and shadows can be written and have been many times (if you know some good let me know, I´d love to read it). I´d like to mention some basics here only.

According to me correct and interesting light is what makes a good manipulation. That´s the reason why I spend most of the time on it and you should do it to.

The main idea of working with lights and shadows is that on one side you have lighter parts and on the other you have shadows. Easy as that :) I´d like to mention few points to keep in mind:

every subject casts a shadows in the opposite direction from which the light source is comming,
if one subject stands on another, there is thin shadow between them (read more in "IYM #1: Everything Has Shadows"),
hard light means hard transition between lights and shadows, soft light source = soft transition,
color of the light affects color palette you should use.

There is plenty of ways how you can create lights and shadows. You can use the Dodge and Burn Tool, paint them on your own, use combination of adjustment layers and layers masks and many more. If you´re interested, one of the future articles can be dedicated to the topic of creating lighting. Till then you can take a look at my collection of manip tutorials. In almost every one of them there is some method described.

Conclusion of this area
Working with lights and shadows should become the key part of manipulating. If you´re unsure about some light conditions you should try to look for some reference. If some lighting don´t work just try to work from beginning on different one. Different light scenes can have big impact on the atmosphere of overall picture.

Black Swan

Checklist

Bellow you can download quick checklist which can help you with finding and correcting mistakes in your artworks. I really hope that it will be useful for you!

Conclusion

There is surely more things which you should care about while doing manipulation but I´m pretty sure that you will find them out after some manips done. I wanted to keep this simple but it´s possible that I forgot about some basic thing.

If you know about anything which should be added let me know and I´ll do it!

Would you be interested in article about creating lights and shadows? Or anything else which was briefly drawn in this article? Let me know and I´ll try to do my best :)

Have an amazing Monday
- Jarka

Idea of Life

3 Quick Steps to Add Dreams to Your B&W Photos

2011-01-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

In this article I´d like to show you how you can very easily create dreamy, black and white photo with using of Motion Blur Photoshop filter. Let´s get started!

Before and After
Let´s take a look at what you will create in this tutorial. Basically you´ll use only three tools to get the following effect:

Motion Blur filter,
Black and White adjustment layer,
Color Balance adjustment layer.

You can see more photos from this photoshoot in the article "Photoshoot With The Biggest Softbox in the World".

Resource Photo
Below you can download resource photo. Use this photo only for completing the tutorial please and don´t upload it anywhere. But feel free to use this effect on your own photos!

Photo was taken during a cloudy day which creates beautiful, soft transition between lights and shadows.

Technical data:
Exposure time: 1/100 s
F-Number: 1.8
ISO speed: 200

Post Production
As I said at the beginning of this article the post processing is quite simple and can be devided into three main steps.

1. Motion Blur
First of all you´ll add the Motion Blur which has the biggest impact on creating the dreamy atmosphere in this example.

Press Ctrl + A to select the whole picture, Ctrl + C to copy it and Ctrl + V to paste it.
Now go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and set the window similarly as on the following picture.

The angle set on 60° isn´t random. I wanted to the lines direct to the women´s face - the focal point of the image.

The whole picture is blurred but it looks weird. On the preview picture there is blur only over the background and edges of the clothing.

To hide unwanted blur add layer mask to the blurred layer. Grab the Brush Tool (B), select soft round brush and pick black color. Paint over the areas you want to be hidden - especially face and inner part of the body.

You should get something similar to the picture below.

2. Conversion to black and white
Another thing which needs to be done is to convert image into black and white tones. To do that add new adjustment layer Black&White and set it as on the following picture.

As you can see I set the Reds and Yellows are lighter which causes that the skin becomes beautifuly pale.

Note: If you use older version of Photoshop the adjustment Black&White may not be there. For conversion you can use e.g. Chanels and check the option Monochromatic in the bottom part of the adjustment window.

If you look how your picture looks so far you can see that the camera and part of the sweater is too dark and it looks unbalanced. It looks better if it´s lighter.

To lighten it add new layer on the top of all layers. Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush and lower the Opacity on about 30%. Hold Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool and pick some light grey color from the picture.

Paint over the dark area. After this step your image should look like the one shown below.

3. Sepia tones
Last thing to get the look from preview is to add sepia tones. It´s very easy - you can do it by adding adjustment layer Color Balance on the top of all layers and setting it similarly as on the following picture.

Final Image

Conclusion
Thank you very much for reading! Hope that the article was interesting for you and would love to see your comments or your results!

Have an amazing Monday
- Jarka