Archive for the ‘portraiture’ Category
Skin Smoothing in Camera Raw
Posted on: 13 June 2010
Smooth, flawless-like skin can make or break a portrait. You can quickly make any skin look creamy soft by tapping the K key in Adobe Camera Raw 5 which will bring up the Adjustment Brush. Then set the clarity slicer to ~40 to start with. Brush over the skin you want to smooth and step back to review. If you want it smoother simply drag the slider farther to the left. This quick tip will help you to get good portraits and allow your patrons to quickly view proofs before any other changes are made with the Healing Brush in Photoshop.
Digital Anarchy, a leading provider of cost-effective software for photographers and digital artists, today announced their new Beauty Box Photo skin retouching software. The plugin provides an automatic, easy, and inexpensive way of smoothing skin and removing blemishes in photographs. Beauty Box Photo 1.0 is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS5 and earlier versions of Photoshop and Elements. (via CreativePro.com)
I’m all for anything that makes post-processing faster. I haven’t downloaded it yet, but I will. If you do, please post a comment and let us know what you think.
Yes, many professional photographers have seen a major downturn in business as digital enables even rank amateurs to capture some pretty good pictures. Some disenchanted professionals may even feel that it’s all over for the professional photographer. They are wrong! They must not know about our ace in the hole: the simple fact that people want to look their very best in photographs, at least for special situations. People still spend a lot on clothes, they worry about their hair, they spend tons of money on skin creams and makeup, and even expensive cosmetic surgery – all to look better. When it comes to photographs of themselves, while they may not care about snapshots that are going to go into the proverbial shoebox or stay forever as a digital file locked into some hard drive, they do really care about how they look in a serious lasting image of themselves. In fact, a major reason many people don’t go to the professional photographer for a portrait is that they fear how bad they are going to look!
Read this month’s issue of the Backgrounder and find out how you can turn this into a business opportunity.
Via the National Portrait Gallery:
Submissions are now being invited for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010, ‘the leading international photographic portrait competition’, which celebrates and promotes the very best in contemporary portrait photography. Entry is open to photographers from around the world, aged 18 and over.
Organised by the National Portrait Gallery, the Prize has established a reputation for its diversity of photographic styles, encompassing editorial, reportage and fine art images submitted by a range of photographers, from gifted amateurs and photography students to professionals.
The winner will receive £12,000. Entries must be received by July 18, 2010.
We all have to start somewhere. Right? Do you recall the first time you ventured outside of your comfort zone and began snapping photos in a totally different genre. Aaron Meyers is a guest contributor over on dPS and has recently ventured outside of the comfort zone. Aaron shares with readers 8 lessons learned from a first attempt at portrait photography. Briefly those 8 items include:
- Keep the background simple
- Use objects to help relax the model
- Pay close attention to hands and hair
- Use an assistant
- Use a sharp, fast, large focal length lens
- Pay close attention to the eyes
- Interesting clothing
- Have fun
I particularly like #8. I am a firm believer that if the photographer is having fun and clearly enjoys what s/he is doing then the subject begins to relax and have fun too. For more details on any of these items visit dPS or Aaron’s website.
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