dLQ Retouch

Retouching Learning Platform Launched!!

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:15:00 +0000

The Final Touch Platform for the members is finally here! You can get a
Full Lifetime Membership to my entire retouching training platform for a ONE-TIME FEE.
Here's where you can get immediate access: HERE

I'm holding this special sale as a way to say THANK YOU to all the people who
read this retouch training newsletter.

Be one of the first to Try My System for a Full Lifetime Membership Fee and NO Monthly Subscription Payments Plus Get the Four Free Bonuses below.

* Bonus 1: FREE 20 Minutes of One-on-One Coaching
(This is something I've never offered before but it's exclusive to all the new members)
I will personally take you through what you want to learn for free. All training uses broadcast quality audio and video to deliver concise and informative training right to your desk. It does not matter whether you use a Mac or a PC.

* Bonus 2: Personal Phone Consultation
So you're stuck with something? Or you're not clear about something. As a member, you can make an appointment for a one-time FREE Consultation.

* Bonus 3: Free Resources
Want to know where all the Top Retouchers/Photographers hang out online? Want to know where to find the best actions, software and information for retouching? Most people haven't been exposed... it will be available on the inside

* Bonus 4: ONE-TIME Fee
Since our platform is in it's beginning stages, you're one of the first to see this. We're charging a one-time fee to our fresh members but this won't last long. Once we officially launch, new members will be charged a monthly fee but all founding members, such as yourself, will not be charged monthly to have full access. Once you're in NOW, you have us for LIFE!

Go HERE right now and claim your Full Membership before the limited offer expires!

My #1 Retouching Secret Revealed

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:42:00 +0000

I received a call from a potential student recently and our conversation took about 15 minutes and I noticed as I spoke to this person that he really didn’t know what he was looking for and how a “Coach for Retouching” can assist them with improving their retouching skills and taking it to the next level.

Since I released the “Meela” video, lots of folks have written in and asked about my techniques.So here’s a video that explains my secret weapon which is my most effective tactic. I'll show you how you can use it to deliver excellent value to your images.

To see this video go to Final Touch NOW!

May Day CS4 Tip!

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:09:00 +0000

You can drag a layer between documents even when the images are displayed as multiple tabs in a single document window. With the Move tool (V) active, click within the layer you’d like to move, drag it onto one of the other tabs, pause until that tab comes to the front, and then release the mouse button to move the active layer. Via Planet Photoshop

Final Touch: Episode 1 "Meela"

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:55:00 +0000

I’ve been wanting to post the first "Final Touch" episode on this blog, and I’m just now able to, finally! I did this beauty retouch shot for a Nicholas Gordon of Styx Photography. I enjoyed working with him, he continues to set the mark for innovative photography as it his passion!

You can check out more of Nicholas' profound work here!

Thanks man again I can't express enough how much I enjoy that video and appreciate your talents. WE HAVE TO COLLABORATE again, I do beauty photography and you do beauty retouching! Come on that's a match made in heaven. - Nicholas Gordon

Music Credits
Intro: Cool Kids - Black Mags
Main: Daft Punk - Digital Face

The Official New York Gear

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:12:00 +0000

The last few days have been horrendous as I haven't gotten much needed sleep closing in on deadlines. Do you know who TONY G is? I do, but that has a lot to do with me being there at the right moment when he needed my services. Nevertheless, there are a whole lot of people who are interested in seeing the role I played in his latest. Enjoy the quick browse!

TONY G's a Fashion Designer from New York City... Go check out his impecceable collection HERE.

Krystal Nicole Photography [New Website]

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:23:00 +0000

This week I'm working with the Incredible Krystal Nicole! She's based in H-Town, TX and is amazing at what she does! As you're working on images, it’s rewarding when a photographer is excited about your creative input that they want to make an investment in your product. A photographer's work is very delicate in the sense that their projects take a piece of their soul as they go along. So I work cautiously around that to accomplish greatness without interferring with the photographer's vision. (I'm just the "contact lenses".) There's a certain magic in knowing that I'm working with the best out there, it creates a great energy to push the envelope and to give 110%.

Krystal Nicole recently launched her
new website! Go check out her work HERE.

Recent work with Krystal Nicole:

The Wacom 4 Finally!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:56:00 +0000

First off I should apologize to you all, I haven't been posting in a while but now I'm back at it and coming in strong.... with that said, I introduce to you... Wacom Intuous IV!

That’s right! The wait is over. Today at the Photoshop World keynote Wacom introduced the new line of pressure sensitive tablets. The new Intuous 4 boasts a host of awesome new features.

"Like the new LED displays which indicate what express keys are programmed for. This is especially nice because before I would program the keys and never remember what they did. Also they have added a touch ring which is programmable in four modes. You can set it to scroll, zoom, scrub video, or whatever. Other nice enhancements include twice the pressure in the grip pen. Where previous models would register 1024 levels of pressure the Intuous 4 has 2048 levels of pressure. The new design is very slick and has all of these controls on one side of the tablet for easy access. There is also a detachable USB cord and two USB ports on the tablet which makes it easy to flip it around for right handed or left handed users. I am super excited about this new product and hope you find these new features as exciting as I do. You can find out more about this tablet and other Wacom products at the Wacom site." Also, Planet Photoshop has a brand new course over at Kelby Training site called Getting Up To Speed With Intuous 4. Click here for more info. via Planet Photoshop

Creating Shiny Hair Like Shampoo Ads

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:06:00 +0000

I found this tutorial to be interesting! I have my own technique of getting this same
look but I found this to be a quicker process. You might want to try this technique.

Start by opening an image of a girl with flowing hair.

Create selection of a part of hair using lasso tool. Press Alt+Ctrl+D to feather the selection. Press Ctrl+J to copy paste the selection in a new layer.

Press Ctrl+L to open level settings. Apply settings as shown.

Change the layer mode to "Exclusion".

Duplicate the layer. Select blur tool from the tool palette. Adjust brush settings from the options bar at top.

Apply the brush on this layer.

Change the layer mode to "Linear Dodge".

Source: http://www.photoshopbuddy.net/shinehair.html

Accessing Tools in a Tool Group

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:21:00 +0000

Let’s say that you are using the Magic Wand tool, but would rather be using Photoshop CS3’s new Quick Selection tool. No problem! Just press-and-hold the Shift key while pressing the group’s keyboard shortcut (W, in this case) and you can access all the tools within that tool group.

Photoshop Tool Basics

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:33:00 +0000

I've dedicated this post to a dear friend of mine, "Smarty". You know who you are!

This is a quick summary of Photoshop’s Tools palette with a description of each tool’s functions and shortcuts. Great for those brand new to Photoshop.

I've decided to start at the beginning. The very beginning. There are those people who just “picked up” a copy of Photoshop and might not have any idea what to do with it. So I'm going to break down some important tools for you.

Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a rectangular shape. This changes the area of your image that is affected by other tools or actions to be within the defined shape. Holding the [Shift] key while dragging your selection, restricts the shape to a perfect square. Holding the [Alt] key while dragging sets the center of the rectangle to where your cursor started.

Move Tool (V)Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around after it has been placed. Hold the [Shift] key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal.

Polygon Lasso Tool (L)Ok, this should be the Lasso Tool, but I use the Polygon Lasso a lot more often. Use this to draw selections in whatever shape you would like. To close the selection, either click on the beginning point (you’ll see the cursor change when you’re on it), or just double-click. When holding the [Ctrl] key, you’ll see the cursor change, and the next time you click, it will close your selection.

Magic Wand Tool (W)Use this to select a color range. It will select the block of color, or transparency, based on wherever you click. In the Options Bar at the top, you can change the Tolerance to make your selections more/less precise.

Crop Tool (C)The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the [Enter/Return] key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.

Slice Tool (K)This is used mostly for building websites, or splitting up one image into smaller ones when saving out. It’s kind of an advanced tool, and since you’re in here for the basics, we’ll kind of skip over it. Kinda makes you mad I made you read all that for nothing, huh?

Healing Brush Tool (J)This is a really useful tool. Mildly advanced. You can use this tool to repair scratches and specs and stuff like that on images. It works like the Brush tool (see below). You choose your cursor size, then holding the [Alt] key, you select a nice/clean area of your image. Let go of the [Alt] key and paint over the bad area. It basically copies the info from the first area to the second, in the form of the Brush tool. Only, at the end, it averages the information, so it blends. (Retouchers, this works great for removing pimples and blemishes)

Brush Tool (B)This is one of the first tools ever. It’s what Photoshop is based off of. Well, not really, but it’s pretty basic. It paints one your image, in whatever color you have selected, and whatever size you have selected. There’s a lot of options for it, but this is basic, so you don’t get to learn them yet.

Clone Stamp Tool (S)This is very similar to the Healing Brush Tool (see above). You use it the exact same way, except this tool doesn’t blend at the end. It’s a direct copy of the information from the first selected area to the second. When you learn to use both of these tools together in perfect harmony, you will be a Photoshop MASTER! Not really, it’s just less irritating.

History Brush Tool (H)This tool works just like the Brush Tool (see above) except the information that it paints with is from the original state of your image. If you go Window>History, you can see the History Palette. The History Brush tool paints with the information from whatever History state is selected.

Eraser Tool (E)This is the anti-Brush tool. It works like an eraser (duh) and erases whatever information wherever you click and drag it. If you’re on a Layer, it will erase the information transparent. If you are on the background layer, it erases with whatever secondary color you have selected.

Gradient Tool (G)You can use this to make a gradiation of colors. Gradiation doesn’t appear to be a word, but it makes sense anyway. It creates a blending of your foreground color and background color when you click and drag it. Like a gradient.

Blur Tool (R)The Blur tool is cool. It makes things blurry. Click and drag to make things blurry. The more you click and drag, the blurrier things get.

Dodge Tool (O)This tool isn’t as bad as the car brand. It’s actually used to lighten whatever area you use it on. As long as it is not absolute black. Absolute black won’t lighten.

Path Selection Tool (A)You use this tool when working with paths. Since this is all about the basics, I won’t go into details. It’s related to the Pen Tool (see below) though.

Horizontal Type Tool (T)It makes type. Or text. Or whatever you want to call it. You can click a single point, and start typing right away. Or you can click and drag to make a bounding box of where your text/type goes. There’s a lot of options for the Type Tool. Just play around, it’s fairly straight-forward.

Pen Tool (P)I mentioned this tool above. It’s for creating paths, in which you would use the Path Selection Tool to select the path. Paths can be used in a few different ways, mostly to create clipping paths, or to create selections. You use the tool by clicking to add a point. If you click and drag, it will change the shape of your path, allowing you to bend and shape the path for accurate selections and such.

Rectangle Tool (U)By default it draws a Shape Layer in the form of a rectangle. It fills the rectangle with whatever foreground color you have selected. It’s pretty complicated, don’t hurt yourself with this one.

Notes Tool (N)Like post-it notes, but digital. You can use this tool to add small little note boxes to your image. These are useful if you’re very forgetful or if you’re sharing your Photoshop file with someone else. I’m pretty sure it only works with .PSD files.

Eyedropper Tool (I)This tool works by changing your foreground color to whatever color you click on. Holding the [Alt] key will change your background color.

Hand Tool (T)You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It’s for moving your entire image within a window. So if you’re zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the [Spacebar].

Zoom Tool (Z)Pretty obvious what this tool does. It allows you to zoom into your image. No, it doesn’t actually change the size of your image but don’t feel dumb. Hold the [Alt] key to zoom out. Holding the [Shift] key will zoom all of the windows you have open at the same time. Double-click on the Zoom Tool in the palette to go back to 100% view.

BONUS!!These are your color boxes. Foreground (in the front) and Background (in the back). Click on either one to bring up the color select dialog box.

CS4 Now Shipping Out

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:03:00 +0000

The wait is over! The entire Creative Suite 4 is now shipping, started on the 15th. This includes Photoshop and Photoshop Extended and all the other apps that make this suite the standard for design, photography, and web. Be sure to check on which versions you currently have to make sure you qualify for an upgrade. You can use the eligibility tool over at the Adobe site to be sure. Also, check the site for more info on all the individual apps in the Suite. There are so many options now, you’re gonna want to be sure you get only what you need.
Don’t forget to check out the new NAPP Photoshop CS4 Learning Center to get up to speed on all the new Photoshop features, as well as, the new Creative Suite 4 Learning Center over at LayersMagazine.com

3 Methods To Adding That "Whole Grain" To Your Images

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:40:00 +0000

There are several ways to approach this subject of adding grain.

1) Digital noise produced in-camera rarely looks pleasing to the eye and it is not
"random" in the way that the eye easily accepts. It is an annatural pattern created by
various factors, but usually the excessive noise is due to increasing the sensitivity
(ISO) of the sensor in the digital camera.

2) In film-like noise, the pattern of the noise can be made more natural looking (softer
and more random for a start) - i.e. something that's not as "harsh" and doesn't
immediately look like it doesn't belong to the image.
You might want to add grain for several reasons.

Adding noise is also good for adding texture to an image. This may sound weird, but sometimes if you have an image (especially from a digicam) and it suffers from excessive noise reduction, it may look better and more natural if you ADD noise in one of the following ways. The image's noise reduction could be due to heavy in-camera noise reduction or noise reduction done in post processing to a high-ISO image. In either case, the idea is to add some texture back to the image so that it does not look too flat. The main disadvantage of noise reduction is, that it tends to remove details and natural texture from an image and leaves the image looking "flat" and unnatural - with areas that are
too smooth.

You might want to take look at this good primer to b&w pics by Petteri Sulonen about grain here: http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/How_to/n_Digital_BW/a_Digital_Black_and_White.html?page=5

This is how to add grain step by step. Method #1:

1a) One of the ways is to make a white layer and add noise trough filter -> noise -> add
noise (amount ~4.0) and then blur it with gaussian blur amount ~ 0.2- 0.5. Then INVERT
the layer and change blending mode to screen and expriment with different opacities. You
can make several such layers with different amounts of blur and different opacities and
you can duplicate the layers to make the effect more intense. You can also resize the
grain layers to affect the appearance of noise and size of the particles.
Some other blending modes like ´linear dodge´ work too.

1b) Make additional layers but do NOT invert them DO change the blending mode to multiply. These levels must not have the same grain pattern as some of the ´screen´ noise layers, or they will cancel each other out...
Some other blending modes like ´darken´ work too. And you can experiment with levels,
curves, etc to change the appearance of the noise layers.

Method #2:

Then there is of course the way explained by Petteri - scanning slides for noise,
which may be a bit of work but gives good results.

Method #3:

Third way, "from the can" solution (and a horribly expensive one) is using the
Photoshop plugin Grain Surgery

Ofcourse I can't give away all my other ingredients, but hope this is a good start for
you all. If you have any requests make sure you let me know in your comments or email
me. Keep making it happen.

Stay Fresh!

- L²

Image shot by Paul Cox
Edited by dLQ Retouch

Zoom Lens Coffee Mug Keeps Photographers Caffeinated

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:42:00 +0000

It takes a lot for a coffee cup to impress photographers. If no cups were available they would probably have the Barista pour coffee into their cupped hands. Still, it is hard not to be taken aback by the nerdy coolness of this zoom lens design. Unfortunately, the cup is only a concept at this point, and making one for yourself could prove to be an expensive little project :). But I'm sure all you photographers would be the first in line to buy one if someone produced a version at a reasonable price. [via Dvice]

L²

When Photoshop Goes Bad

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:12:00 +0000

This is what happens when Photoshop is not executed properly, lol! I saw this post today I had to share. Can you spot the extra arm in this Gap ad? [ONTD_FF via Fashionologie]

Photoshop Actions

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:13:00 +0000

Not too longer ago I made a new friend... literally 20 minutes ago, lol... Several people have been asking me how I did this. Yes it looks simple, and it is simply simple. It's just how you use it.

So the questions I get are how? where? what? ...why? lol, not so much. Well, I talk to someone who actually gets the same question on the daily.... "its that old film look. i get asked about it daily. it's one of those 'i wish i knew how to make this look' kinda things."

I realize when I started sharing my tricks, I learnt even more. So I have to share people! I'm feeling pretty share-like today. Ok back to what you wanted to know. I used actions for the color processing. I found some unique color actions for photoshop that I never stopped using but I tweaked them to my own settings. You too can tweak them however you like. It's like early Christmas everytime, just without the tree.

Get the set of color actions I use HERE.

Image shot by Nicole-Jean
Retouched by dLQ Retouch.

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3 Things You Should Do To Get Your Name Into A Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:29:00 +0000

1. Collab

2. Collab

3. Collab

Hasn't your Mom taught you any better? The key to getting free stuff is by spending a little, investing some time into something... basically there's no free lunch in the universe.

So I recently worked with an amazingly talented photographer,

Yann Feron. He's a fashion photographer from France based in New York City.

These where Beauty shots that he took and I retouched. Even though it's not as easy as I say it is, the "beauty" of Beauty retouching is that you are just enhancing what's already there... you don't have to overdo anything. You'll be learning some of these quick, "easy" tricks later on, so make sure you subscribe if you haven't already.

Things to Look for When Retouching Your Beauty Shots:

Whitening of Eyes & Teeth, Removing Blemishes (Pimples, Wrinkles, Spots), White Balancing (You'll learn that later on if you stick around), Sharpening Overall Look to Recover Details, Balancing Midtones & Shadows.

So go out there and collab a little it doesn't hurt to get your work out there.

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noreply@blogger.com (dLQ Retouch) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:56:00 +0000

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