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If you’re on Google+ and reading this blog, you’ll probably want to become a member of the Google+ Retouching Community!

There didn’t seem to be a great deal around in terms of commercial retouching news, articles and discussion, so for photographers and retouchers of all levels we now now have a home on Google+. Click here to view and join us.

Danny

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Hi all, last weekend I was asked to contribute to some of the shots for designer Katharine Hamnett’s Climate Week t-shirt for 2012, so I wanted to let you know a little bit about what’s happening with that. I’ve had little chance to blog much recently but it seemed a worthy cause to get behind and use my keyboard for something more useful than the shortcut keys I bore it with daily. [Read more…] about “Save the Future” Climate Week T-Shirt 2012 for EJF

In the Dodge and Burn tutorial I covered the basics of D&B, using the curves and soft light methods, pixel level and carving. In this article I’ll cover a few extra tips that’ll help your eye make the right decisions and to avoid any unwanted colour shifts.

Enhancing the Problem (temporarily)

There are a couple of good ways to temporarily alter the image to show up the problem areas and help you dodge and burn what you otherwise might miss. The first is simple, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and pull the saturation slider to -100. After all, we’re dealing solely with luminosity, colour can be an unwanted distraction. [Read more…] about Dodge and Burn Tips

Dodging and Burning is a method of lightening and darkening specific areas of an image, regulating local exposure to even out texture and contours. It digitally acheives (and with much more control) an old darkroom technique of witholding light (dodging) to keep an area light, or increasing the exposure to darken (burn) areas.
You’ll find the dodge and burn tools on the toolbar to the left of the default Photoshop setup, or by pressing ‘O‘.
The problem with using the standard tools is that they work destructively, they won’t operate on a blank layer so you’ll be making permanent changes to your working layer. This would be fine if none of us ever made an error or changed our minds, but to give us the option, we have a couple of methods available. [Read more…] about Dodge and Burn Tutorial