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

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

Each year, Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User magazine and the #1 best-selling Photoshop author, trains literally thousands of photographers on how to retouch portraits using Photoshop through his live seminars, online classes, DVDs, and standing-room only workshops at the Photoshop World Conference & Expo. Now you can learn the same techniques he uses in his own retouching workflow, in the only book of its kind–one written expressly for photographers who do their own retouching.

As a pro photographer himself, Scott understands that photographers make their living shooting, not retouching. But, delivering fully retouched images is now expected by clients. That’s why Scott put together this amazing resource for teaching photographers the quickest, easiest, and most effective ways to create professional-looking, retouched final images without spending hours grinding away at painstaking, detailed techniques.

LEARN HOW THE PROS DO IT

It’s all here–the step-by-step methods for fixing, enhancing, and finishing your portraits in Photoshop. Using the techniques in this book, you’ll create images that will absolutely wow your clients. You’ll learn:
• How to soften skin and still retain detail and texture

• The best tricks for beautifully enhancing eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes

• How to selectively sharpen portraits without complicated masking

• How to create gorgeous-looking lips

• How to remove blemishes fast and keep the most detail

• The pros’ tricks for body sculpting

• How to make your subject’s hair look fabulous

• How to give your retouches that natural look that sets them apart

• Plus, you get Scott’s complete 5-minute, 15-minute, and 30-minute start-to-finish workflows

If you’re ready to learn the “tricks of the trade”–the same ones that today’s leading pro photographers use to retouch, tuck, tighten, and tone their images for that pro-retouched look–you’re holding the book that will do exactly that. It will radically change the way you retouch your portraits from here on out, and give you the best-looking, most natural retouches you’ve ever done.

Digital Alchemy: Printmaking techniques for fine art, photography, and mixed media (Voices That Matter)

Digital Alchemy: Printmaking techniques for fine art, photography, and mixed media (Voices That Matter) Review

In Digital Alchemy, acclaimed printmaker Bonny Pierce Lhotka shows how to turn your standard inkjet printer into a seemingly magical instrument capable of transforming your printed images into true works of art. Using plenty of visuals and straightforward terms, Lhotka walks you step-by-step through over a dozen projects. Forget printing on boring old paper, in Digital Alchemy, you’ll learn how to transfer and print images to a variety of surfaces including metal, wood, fabric, stone, and plastic using the techniques Lhotka’s spent years developing.

If you’re a photographer looking for new ways to personalize your work or a digital artist who’s ready to take your work to the next level, you’ll find all of the tools, techniques, and inspiration you need in this book. Lhotka’s enthusiasm for experimenting with unusual printing materials and processes has led her to create new and amazing transfer techniques, including one that resembles a Polaroid™ transfer on steroids. She also shows you how to make prints using unexpected, everyday materials such as hand sanitizer and gelatin. You’ll even learn direct printing, the technique for sending your custom substrate through your printer almost as if it were paper.

In Digital Alchemy, you’ll learn how to:

• Transfer images to metal, wood, plastic, and other materials that will not feed through an inkjet printer
  

• Print directly on metal for a fraction of the cost of using a print service
  

• Simulate a print from an expensive UV flatbed printer using an inexpensive desktop printer
  

• Use carrier sheets and paintable precoats to print on almost any surface
  

• Achieve near-lithographic quality digital prints with transfer processes to uncoated fine art paper
  

In addition to the tutorials in the book, you can watch Lhotka in action on the included DVD-ROM, which has over 60 minutes of video footage where you’ll learn how to perform an alcohol gel transfer, transfer an image to a wooden surface, use your inkjet printer to achieve remarkable prints, and more. Simply insert the DVD-ROM into your computer's DVD drive. Note, this DVD-ROM will not work in TV DVD players.

Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It: Learn Step by Step How to Go from Empty Studio to Finished Image (Voices That Matter)

Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It: Learn Step by Step How to Go from Empty Studio to Finished Image (Voices That Matter) Review

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, YOU’LL LEARN ALL THREE ASPECTS OF WHAT IT TAKES TO CREATE STUNNING PORTRAITS
(HINT: IT’S NOT JUST THE LIGHTING)

Scott Kelby, the world’s #1 best-selling author of photography books, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Photoshop User magazine, and Publisher of the just-released Light It magazine, has reinvented how lighting books are written by finally revealing the entire process from start to finish. You see everything from the complete lighting setup (and all the gear used), to the shoot (including all the camera settings and a contact sheet of the progression of the shoot), to the all-important part that most books don’t dare include–the post-processing and retouching in Photoshop. This book also breaks new ground in the visual way it teaches you the lighting setup. There aren’t any sketches or 3D models–you see the lighting layout in a full-page photo, taken from above during the live shoot, so you can see exactly where everything’s positioned (the subject, the photographer, the lighting, the background–you name it–you see it all). Plus, you’ll see side, over-the-shoulder, and more behind-the-scenes views, so you can absolutely nail the lighting every time.

LEARN THE LIGHTING SETUPS THE PROS USE
Each year, Scott trains thousands of professional photographers during his Light It. Shoot It. Retouch It. LIVE! seminar tour and now, for the first time ever, he’s taken that incredibly popular style of learning and put in into book form. Now everyone can have a real-world reference for getting the same looks today’s clients are clamoring for.

You’ll learn:

• The step-by-step layouts for creating the most-requested and sought-after lighting looks
• How to get more out of one light than you ever thought you could (this is worth it alone!)
• How to control and shape your light without breaking the bank
• The camera settings, gear, and power settings for every shot
• The retouching techniques the pros really use to make their subjects look their very best
• How to retouch hair, eyes, lips, skin, and lots of other little retouching tricks that make a really big difference
• How to create high-contrast portrait effects without buying expensive plug-ins
• A host of insider tricks, invaluable shortcuts, and kick-butt special effects to give you a real advantage over the competition

Plus, Scott includes a special bonus chapter that shows how to create these same studio looks using off-camera hot shoe fl ashes and the modifi ers made for them. There’s never been a book like it.