In the first part of the coverage on the RoyalBLUSH production, I talked about the shoot and the lighting technique. Now let’s have a look at the post processing and retouching.

We had a very tight schedule to shoot and process with only a few days to get everything printed up for a show at GREENshowroom in Berlin. So I had to find a way to speed up the retouching on the 9 images which the client selected. As you may know a regular retouching process on a fashion image can easily consume a day’s work or more. Clearly we did not have this kind of time here. So I decided to work exclusively in Adobe Lightroom 2 and see what I can achieve using only this single powerful tool. I figured I could still take the shots into Photoshop if things wouldn’t come to a satisfactory result… But let’s start at the beginning!

Continue reading after the break…

First of all I had LR (short for Lightroom) running on my MacBook Pro during the shoot and kept downloading the RAW images as I changed CF cards. By the time we were done I had everything in LR and started an export of JPGs to DVD while the model was still getting her make up removed. 20 min. later the client had all the images on disc, ready to select favorites that very same evening and returning results within 24 hours. So there’s the first time saver, buying you more time for processing.

Here’s one of the selects out of the box:

We like the look and pose of the model, the clients product is dominantly in the frame, all is well but the image needs work. I shot from a low angle, catching the upper right corner of the white seamless in the background where the background light fades about half a stop. In addition I was perhaps a little too conservative with my aperture. So this is where we start our processing.

I pushed the exposure about a third of a stop up, opening the shadow areas in the clothing a little. But the upper right corner still isn’t pure white. If I pushed the exposure more the foreground portions of the images would become too bright. This is where the new tools, introduced in LR Version 2, come in handy. With the Adjustment Brush (Shortcut K) you add what I call an “adjustment node” to the local area you need to correct, set the values which need correction (in this case exposure) and then brush away the areas which need the correction. It’s like adding a mask in Photoshop and it can be displayed as a colored overlay to check whether you missed a spot or included an area you didn’t want to correct:

After this basic adjustment, I added another mask to the parts showing the skin and hair of the model, as well as the bag, because I felt it needed some extra punch in terms of exposure and contrast. The important setting for the Adjustment Brush here is the Auto Mask function which will automatically limit your selection to areas of similar color and luminosity. This way you can easily create a precise mask for your adjustment:

As a result of this adjustment the saturation of the skin was increased, rendering it pinkish. But no problem, you can always go back and select an adjustment node (as created by the adjustment brush) and edit settings you hadn’t even touched before. I reduced the saturation by 20 points, resulting in this:

Mind you, I am only a few minutes into the post-production at this point! And we’re already looking pretty good. The next step is to zap away any unwanted spots on the skin or elsewhere. Use the Spot Removal tool (shortcut N) in either “Heal” or “Clone” mode. Since this is very similar to Photoshop I won’t go into much detail about it.

Next comes the skin smoothing, which really brings LR into it’s own! In Photoshop there are various techniques to smooth out skin, some simple, some complex ones. In any case, to get usable results you will need to invest some time. In LR it is fairly straightforward and blazing fast: Again, using the Adjustment Brush, create a mask (Auto Mask ticked on!) to make a selection of the skin, which needs smoothing. Once you are happy with your selection apply the following custom setting to your Adjustment Brush:

Lowering the Clarity setting to a negative value will defocus the portions of skin as defined by your mask. The difference looks as follows:

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Obviously the smoothed version is a little extreme. A medium value surely would be in order. Just go back to the settings of your adjustment node and reduce the effect to a believable level. And the finished shot looks like this:

Quite the difference to the camera original, isn’t it? And the beauty of it is, that it took no more than 30 min. to get there! Now I’m not claiming that this is the equivalent of a perfect retouching job out of photoshop. Perfection takes time and loads of manual labor. There is no technique or software which will ever change that! But this will take you a long way in fairly short time, enabling you to deliver a quality result - even on the tightest schedule! This kind of Lightroom based workflow even buys you time to over deliver. Whenever I have the chance to provide more options to the client, I go for it. And this is where the fun starts!

While plowing through the processing of the client’s selected shots, I felt that these images might benefit from some additional punch. The label RoyalBLUSH is all about natural materials, fair trade and environment friendly production. I started playing based on the retouched versions, looking for a more organic and somewhat raw rendering of the originals. What I came up with, was a high contrast B&W look, which reminds me of Kodak’s old Tri-X stock. That in addition to the clean white background provides a much more graphical feel to the images:

I saved the established look as a preset and applied it to the remaining set of images. A little tweaking of the exposure and settings of the grayscale mix to match skin tones was necessary, which only took a few minutes on each shot. I decided to add the B&W’s, alongside the color versions to the delivery items and the client loved it!

If you’d like to check out the preset, you may download it by clicking here! But please bare in mind that a preset is only a starting point. Depending on your source imagery the results may vary and the settings introduced by the preset may need to be adjusted accordingly. If skin tones appear too dark to you, raise the orange slider in the grayscale mix tab. Should the preset introduces too much grain, raise the color noise slider in the detail tab. (Stay clear of the luminance noise slider, it will just kill your details…)

Now go and play! Hit the comments with any questions you might have…

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Posted by nicolas_henri on July 6th, 2009 :: Filed under Making Of, Photography, Post Production, Technology
Tags :: Fashion, Nicolas Henri, Post Production, Retouching, RoyalBLUSH
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