New retouching style

I'm learning a new retouching style. Inspired by the photographer Dave Hill, who I love, and his way of editing his photographs. :) These are just the two first attempts though, so they are not at all as impressive as his, of course. He's a fucking pro. :P

Self portraits!! :D

http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/467...34loresqq3.jpg

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/632...23lorescw8.jpg

Skin tones in that second one are scary! xD Made on purpose of course. Just experimenting.. :)

ha ha awesome! Rabies I'd say yours are pretty close to pro, whats involved with this technique?

Ha, thanks man. :) Hmm, first off HDR, then Shadows/Highlights in Photoshop, lots of contrasts, skin retouching, color adjustments and more.

I could tell what you'd done to it lawl, the shadow/highlight always leave the "halo" around the subject, boss tool though.

Also some channel mixer in there? Allows you to change the colors completely, its bossh. Nice photos too, you are teh secks.

wow very cool looking effects. do you have a link to that guy you mentioned? i'd like to see what your talking about:D

The halo effect is from the HDR processing, not Shadow/Highlights. Maybe a little, but mainly from HDR. No channel mixing was used. Only color layers were Hue/Saturation and Photo filter (sounds n00by, but I find it very useful and simple, I use it all the time).

http://www.davehillphoto.com <3 Hardcore shit coming up!

oh rofl, didnt realise. Btw, need to speak to you on msn about the HDR =) =)

Shadow/highlights is basically HDR but without making it look teh pwn (its good if you just need to slightly change highlights and/or shadows)

and hue/sat slash photo arent nooby lawl =p I use like everything on the adjustment menu =D

Those are some sweet pictures. That dave guys is amazing too! I can see why you want to try that. His pictures look crazy cool.

You look like the hulk in nr2 :D

-konfusion

Well, I wouldn't call it "basically HDR". Rather "fake" or "wannabe" HDR. :P It has nothing to do with the dynamic range, it just looks like it. But it's a really useful tool and you can get a really professional result with it!

Yeah, Dave Hill is one of my favourite photographers, that's fo sho.

pretty hawt rabie, interesting colors.. but red glasses would have been better composition wise... looks f'd atm

linkage to dave?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rabieshund

Well, I wouldn't call it "basically HDR". Rather "fake" or "wannabe" HDR. :P It has nothing to do with the dynamic range, it just looks like it. But it's a really useful tool and you can get a really professional result with it!

Yeah, Dave Hill is one of my favourite photographers, that's fo sho.

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But really, isn't that what you get when you tonemap your "real" HDR-image too?

These pictures are both very cool. I have played around with this technique, it's much fun. Have you generated the HDR-image from the same raw file or with bracketed shots?

Exactly, the HDR technique I use is not real HDR either, but it's much closer to HDR than shadows/highlights in Photoshop. And photographers call it HDR anyways.

ok cool i saw his website but how does he get things to look so...cartoony ,some look like he cut and pasted in PS.
could you explain please :cool:

to put it briefly it's a difference in lighting/colour to extract parts of an image and in different areas produces a more refined look and so it would look like it's been cut out in ps because the people may look as though they've been shot in a studio and surrounding areas look computer rendered or just a different style it's a mismatch of ideas and it comes out looking not too shabby

Some of his photos are actually photomanipulations btw :/ he uses HDR and rest is exactally what Stuart said. He uses different Exposure Values. -3,0,+3; or -2,-1,0,+1,+2 are usually used by other HDR photographers, don't know what Dave Hill uses, but it would be interesting to find out.

HDR essentially is trying to replicate the tones and shades we would see in real life onto a digital medium, this is difficult because the contrast ratio our eyes perceive is well above that of cameras or printings. Photographers use a process called Tone mapping to take the tones and shades of the different Exposures of the same image and blend them into an image the encompasses the different shades and detail of each of the images into one.

You could think of this process as.. coloring line art, where all the details are there when its composed, and different values are added as you color and add in shading.

The idea behind HDR is that it creates an image TOO realistic for the computer (lol) and it looks rendered or the lightsources look awkward.

wow thank you great explanations i just recently got a new cam its a kodak easy share 660 i think its nice but i don't know how to use it very well. i got it so i could take better close ups of camel spiders here in Kuwait. again great work keep it up ^^

Oh and btw, the Dave Hill formula:
Good lighting + infinite DOF (with wide-angle lenses) + HDR + Photoshop
Then exactly what he does in Photoshop is harder to figure out. But probably it's similar to what I did to my photos. Shadow/highlights, contrasts, color adjustments.

You actually can combine the last two steps :P as photoshop was designed to produce HDR images, though not as well as some other programs, which is why photographers tend to use programs like photomatix to create HDR images, and edit in Photoshop later.

But thanks for the formula, his use of infinite DOF is interesting, wouldn't think that would be the case, but it makes more sence when you look at his photos. Quite a few would be quite different if he used a DOF to suit just the subject and not the background, I wouldn't have thought of using that, probably since im new to photography styles myself lol. Thanks for the info rabies.

You should write a tutorial on this rabies :)

Haha, maybe when I have developed the technique a little further. :) I still need to experiment some with ISO 100 and my studio flashes and then edit with this style.

Here is a picture of my father, using this style. It looks kinda like a painting.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/7...34loressp0.jpg

yeah cs2 i think cs2 has a nice feature for hdr, cs3 better obviously but i don't know as of yet

Hmm, i don't dig what you did with the bit on the table, it looks as though it was done by hand, its not smooth but rather a bit too randomlu placed, maybe if the discolouring had gone under the plate too, it would look better, :)

I don't like the HDR merge in CS2. And it can't merge exposures that come from the same RAW-file. It reads the EXIF and think it is the same file, so if you dump the EXIF (copy, paste and save as a new document works) then you can, but it's not really smooth. Photomatix is MUCH better and easier IMO.

Well I can't tell you if its any better in CS3 than in CS2 because Photography isn't really my bag, I do photography (like in my sig) but I rarely fuck around with it, I just get it pretty first time and leave it at that, maybe use some colour correction in Photoshop if i ts needed.

hey rabie, i like this new photo about you dad much more, its must more closer to the artist you mentioned on the first page. good work, keep it up.

Needs to be more "cartoony" though, rabies ftw!

I just tried the HDR technique in CS2, and its shit, you have about 10&#37; of the control over the picture compared to photomatix pro =]

They look awesome!

LOL! I like the first one, it's so... realistically fake! It looks very professional. :)