Pelleron Art

Sneak Peek: Missed Chances

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Hello everyone,

it´s been pretty while since my last post. I´m finishing school and starting my photography/graphic design business so I´m preeety busy as you can imagine.

Today I´d like to show you my recent photo manipulation because I´m planning to write a tutorial about how it was done in one month.

Here´s the final version:

And here you can watch layer by layer how the manip was done. Everything will be described in depth in my next tutorial!

Create a Serene Fantasy Photo Manipulation

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:49:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:55:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:35:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:13:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:17:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0000

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"!

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:43:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:48:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:48:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:11:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:13:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:33:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:04:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:10:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:07:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:55:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:09:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:23:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:21:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 30 May 2011 12:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jarka Hrnčárková) — Mon, 23 May 2011 06:39:00 +0000

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!