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Shooting Beauty Series
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Tamar on the Stairway.
Beautiful girl, sweeping stairway - a sure thing. These photos show the basic setup. One strobe in a 24" x 32"
Westcott
softbox was set high and slightly to the left, eight feet from the model. The exposure was 1/125, f/11, at ISO 100. The zoom lens was set at 17mm (contains full Photoshop command lines).
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Stairway.
The image of Tamar on the stairs is clean, with good color balance and needs only modest tweaking
First, we will work on her skin. Every model is different: some love their freckles, some hate them. Each shoot is a judgment call between the model and photographer. The current style is to smooth the skin. But remember, use the healing brush on Cindy Crawford’s mole and you’re unemployed. GW uses a modest amount of skin editing.
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Cleaning the skin.
While many photographers prefer the clone tool, GW uses the airbrush tool for most skin work. Select the brush tool, click on the airbrush box, right-click and select an appropriate size for the brush. Set the brush to 20% opacity and 100% flow. Pressing the alt key with the brush tool selected will call up the eyedropper tool. Use it to pick a replacement color adjacent to the area you want to work on and brush over any skin markings: freckles, lines on the face, darkness under the eyes, veins, bruises, etc.
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Intensifying the image.
Next, we will enhance the overall image. Using the levels command (\image\adjustments\levels\), move the left arrow slightly to the right or up to the point where the histogram slope begins. Move the center arrow slightly to the right to .90.
Using the brightness/contrast command (\image\adjustments\levels\), move the brightness slider 2 points to the left (darken), and move the contrast slider two points to the right (more contrast).
Taken together, these operations will make the image a bit darker, more crisp, and separate the tonal values.
To brighten the middle tones, and bring out the model, use the curves command (\image\adjustments\curves\). Select the diagonal line at the center and drag it left and upward. This can typically vary between 128 and 114, but here you should go to 121.
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Click to view a larger image
Smoothing the skin.
Here we use the GEM Airbrush Plug-in Filter to smooth the skin. Preview the effect of the various values using the blending slider in GEM. GW does not like strong correction here - he refers to such skin as “waxy” - so he typically chooses 40% for the GEM blending value.
Adding glow.
Select the diffuse glow filter (\filter\distort\diffuse glow\) and set the amount to 2%, the gain to 0, and the clear to 12. This results in a soft, airy look, but this will often blow out the highlights, so it needs to be cut back. To do this, select fade diffuse glow (edit/fade diffuse glow) and drop the Opacity down to 20%. This will leave a touch of softness without blowing out the highs.
Click to view a larger image
Click to view a larger image
Bark layer.
This is a macro photograph of tree bark which Burns shot in Costa Rica . The colors go well with the monochromatic tones of the staircase behind Tamar.
Modifying the layer.
Using the rectangle marquee tool, select the inner 75% of the bark image Then set the feather value at 150 pixels (on a 3000x2000 pixel image, proportionately less on smaller images) and inverse the selection to create a framework (select/inverse). This illustration shows how the frame would look on a white background.
Click to view a larger image
Click to view a larger image
Compositing.
Select the bark image, copy it (/edit/copy/), then select the Tamar image and paste (edit/paste) the bark image over it.
To soften the bark image, select the bark layer in the Layers box, and bring the opacity slider down to 75%.
Inevitably, there will be areas where the bark intrudes over areas you don’t want covered, especially over the model. To clean this up, Burns uses the magnetic lasso tool and, working on the original layer of the edited photo, selects a patch which he copies, using a 2 pixel feather value, and pastes over the corresponding spot in the layered photo. This technique requires very careful placement to avoid ghosting (misregistration) at the edges of the patch. My hand is not so steady. I would do this by selecting the bark image layer and using the eraser tool on the offending parts of the layered image. Try setting the erasing tool to airbrush mode (click the eraser tool and the airbrush button) and set it to 50% opacity and 20% flow.
Final image.
After patching, none of the bark layer should show on her body, only on the staircase. That is the final step.
You can download the full sized original bark, and final images
here
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