Stephanie : Commercial & Glamour Head Shot

Stephanie was so much fun to have in the studio. Great personality, beautiful smile and very professional.

For my commercial head shots, I'm using the Peter Hurley style of lighting but with a slightly tighter configuration of the lights. This style of lighting creates very even and virtually shadowless light on the face. It also creates an unusual catchlight in the eyes that some people like and some don't.

Casting directors and agents/agencies seem to love this light and identify the catch lights as something unique, interesting and high end. It's not desirable on theatrical or other head shots and the obvious lack of contrast doesn't create great portraits, with the exception of beauty because beauty lighting is very similar in that it also creates soft, even, shadowless light.

The glamour shot posted is something I love to do with girls, regardless of the commercial head shot lighting because they love the glamour pose and it's something I can throw in as a "What the heck, let's do it." shot at the end of a shoot.

Camera & Lens:
Nikon D700 & Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII

Settings:
150mm, ISO 200, f/9, 1/125s

Lighting:
Hurley lighting setup

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Robert,Well done.To each his own I say.It's art. Thank you for it.

Thanks, Joe.

Wow! She is beautiful both shots are great, number two does for me Excellent work Robert.

Once again Robert outstanding work and lighting. I'm never disappointed when looking at a new photo shoot you have done.

Could you briefly share some of your Photoshop techniques? Or point us to a You Tube tutorial on the basic technique you use.

I would be interested in seeing a before and after Photoshop photo sometime. I know it's make up and lights but it can't be that perfect every time. It would be interesting to see how much is done in post processing and how you got there.

Thanks

Absolutely beautiful model and gorgeous shot, Robert. Always nice to see professional work. And yeah....what Axeman said!

Sambr said:

Wow! She is beautiful both shots are great, number two does for me Excellent work Robert.

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Thanks very much, Sam. Very kind of you.

AxeMan - Rick S. said:

Once again Robert outstanding work and lighting. I'm never disappointed when looking at a new photo shoot you have done.

Could you briefly share some of your Photoshop techniques? Or point us to a You Tube tutorial on the basic technique you use.

I would be interested in seeing a before and after Photoshop photo sometime. I know it's make up and lights but it can't be that perfect every time. It would be interesting to see how much is done in post processing and how you got there.

Thanks

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fotojack said:

Absolutely beautiful model and gorgeous shot, Robert. Always nice to see professional work. And yeah....what Axeman said!

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Rick and Jack,

All good retouching (subjective, I know) is based on Dodge & Burn in one form or another. When I was learning how to retouch I watched all the YouTube videos and read articles, blogs and tutorials but never found the types of techniques that separate ok and mediocre from excellent and what is termed 'high end' retouching.

Most of what you find floating around the internet involves skin smoothing and no good retoucher uses skin smoothing techniques. They're terrible and make a big sloppy, mushy pixel mess.

Some of the plugins and applications like Portrait Professional and Portraiture do a few things very well but I find them to only be useful in the finishing of an image, used on a separate layer with the opacity reduced significantly. I would never pump am image through Portrait Professional and call it a day.

The down side of doing high end retouching is that it's time consuming and requires a lot of patience. It's certainly not for wedding or event work where you're finishing hundreds of images, but in the world of glamour, beauty, and fashion, it's a must.

OK, on to the method..

While this may seem unclear and complicated, it's the simplest way to describe my process of retouching an image.

1- Open image in Photoshop. Duplicate background layer, create 50% gray fill layer using Soft Light blending mode at top of stack, create high contrast Black and White adjustment layer at top of stack.
2- Use Patch and Spot Healing Brush tool to clean up coarse skin texture and stray hairs.
3- Paint with black and white on gray layer using soft brush with low opacity to Dodge and Burn the skin so that deep lines or hard shadows are lifted by dodging and white or raised patches are burned to even out skin tones. Too much dodge and burn equalizes everything and no longer looks natural or like skin. The black and white adjustment layer is used when doing D&B to help see contrast and because this process looks at luminance and not color. All color adjustment and correction is done after D&B is complete.
4- Adjust color, saturation and any skin color that needs tweaking.
5- Eyes, teeth, lips, etc are adjusted for brightness, saturation, contrast.
6- High pass sharpening is applied where needed.

If you guys have any questions or want clarification just let me know.

EDIT: Sorry but I don't post 'before' shots.

Thanks Robert. I was wondering how you "created" that soft smooth skin look. I figured it was done in layers and with some opacity, but never thought it would involve dodge and burn. The other thing I find interesting is you said you apply a high pass filter (sharpening) WHERE needed, were as I would apply it over the entire image, interesting.

When it comes to Photoshop I'm not a nob, but at the same time I feel I have a lot to learn and you have pointed me in the right direction and now I have an idea what I'm looking for without you giving away your "trade secrets".

I agree, I could not see doing this to every photo, but at the same time as you pointed out sometimes you run into a photo you want to pump up. The few times I have used Portrait Professional (playing around) I have been pleased with the results, but not happy. I find it a lot like HDR, it can be overdone easily, leaving you with a un-natural look.

Thanks for sharing. Might I add, I think you are a great asset and inspiration to this forum I hope you stick around and continue to be active.

Hi Rick,

Yes indeed, the best way to actually smooth skin and create that perfect or porcelain look is to dodge and burn at pixel level with soft brushes at low opacities. It's a process and you have to go slowly. If you use high opacities or try to make it happen quickly it usually doesn't work.

You also have to pay attention to the lighting and the contrast in the image. A very common thing that people do is to dodge and burn to get the skin looking great and in the end they reduce contrast so much that they've altered the lighting and really changed things in a negative way.

None of the one click solutions are great on their own, but when used on a separate layer with a lower opacity, they can really enhance an image and do a lot of the work for you.

None of what I'm doing is a big secret. I've just taken the tools available and applied them to my own liking and for what works for me and my style.

I have no problem giving away those 'secrets'. I just don't publish them, but if asked, I'll gladly answer.

Oh, one more thing, Rick.

Of all the various methods to dodge and burn, using the actual Dodge and Burn tools is the least recommended. Too much color shifting that then requires fixing.

My preference is using a 50% gray layer with the Soft Light blending mode. I then paint with white to dodge and black to burn. The layer is at full opacity and the opacity and strength is varied with brush opacity. I use a Wacom tablet and I generally find that having brush Flow on 80% and going between brush opacity of 5%, 10% and 20% give me all the control I need.

Since these settings and my workflow is something that's completely repeatable, I have Brush presets, Tool presets and Actions that automate and help me select tools and create D&B layers with a single click.