BOOK: Professional Portrait Retouching

I've been asked recently to recommend a book for portrait retouching. I've recommend a few in the past, but thought it was time to find one that was recent and can also talk about using CS5.

For the first time, Scott Kelby has assembled all of his best Photoshop techniques for professionally retouching portraits and collected them here in this groundbreaking new volume. Beginning with the essentials, Scott starts with the eyes--in many portraits, the most important part of the picture. Scott shows how to brighten the eyes, create and enhance catchlights, and remove dark circles from under the eyes. 

 

 

He then moves on to such techniques as softening and smoothing skin, removing blemishes, touching up clothing and backgrounds, retouching the nose, removing wrinkles, removing stray hairs, and retouching and whitening teeth. All of these are truly professional techniques that Scott has simplified into an exact, step-by-step process in Photoshop CS5 that yields great results fast. 

 

Toward the end of the book, Scott takes the reader through his entire portrait retouching workflow from beginning to end. Armed with the best retouching practices, and in his easygoing and clear voice and style, Scott Kelby has created an instant bestseller that will quickly become an instant go-to resource for all photographers who want to improve their portraits. 

 Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop (Voices That Matter)

You can have a look at some more information here.

 

Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop (Voices That Matter) 

 

Fuji Finepix X100

We played around with the Fuji X100 a few days ago. The hype around the camera has created a kind of hysteria which Fuji is somewhat over come by.Then  there's the anti-hype crowd. Most of those people aren't photographers and don't understand the reason for such a camera existing.

I've heard a few people say, "it's too big and looks overly retro." This is exactly what most people have been asking for. The retro looks simply come from the fact the camera has gone back to some basics.

Architecture and Patterns

One of the readers sent me this about architecture photography.


The key to this type of photography is to stop looking at buildings as whole structures and focus on the small pockets of interesting patterns and shapes they're made up of. 


Don't overlook the ugly looking buildings either as most of the time, once you're zoomed in and focused on one part, you'll find they're perfect subjects when you're on the hunt for architectural patterns.

Window Light Portraits

Using a the natural light form a window can give you some great portrait shots.



Place your model near the window and turn off the lights inside. This should give you a rather dramatic look. You can add a reflector to light up some of the other side of the model if needed. Just move the reflector closer or further away to adjust the amount of light being reflected.

BOOK: Welcome to OZ 2.0

Welcome to Oz 2.0: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

When the original book from Vincent Versace was released, I picked t up as soon as I could. This new book is even better. Creating memorable photographs is a process that starts before you edit an image in Photoshop, before you capture the image, even before you pick up the camera.