Damien Symonds

Yes, and make sure they DON'T do colour correction on them.

Yes. You think the prints came back dark, but actually the prints came back correct. Short of a lab cock-up, which is rare, prints are ALWAYS correct. The disparity is because your screen was too bright.

Zero is fine. It's not common, but it's not unheard-of either. Does zero give you a print match?

https://www.damiensymonds.net/what2buy_cal.html

Online and other monitors are meaningless. ONLY the print match matters. Do you still have them?

Right. So you're not calibrated at all. Calibrate again.

That kind of stuff is minor details. I just wanted to reiterate that the heart of this look is the aggressive midtone darkening layer, with the "Blend if" sliders being used to take it off the bright end.

That's ok, just bring in the white slider on the RGB channel on that final levels layer I just gave you.

Next step?

Just by taking readings from the sample photo you posted.

Good. Finally, to get the right colour tinge, add this Levels layer on top: R 0/0.98/255 and 17/244 G 0/1.00/255 and 14/242 B 0/1.02/255 and 9/244

No, this is what I said: You must do your skin smoothing on the colour version.

No, the smoothing must happen BELOW all adjustment layers. NEVER allow a pixel layer above adjustment layers.

What the heck??????? Show me a screenshot of your layers panel.

As you can see, I moved mine to 118. But play around and see what you like.

Thank you. Now, select the Levels layer, and go to Layer>Layer Style>Blending Options. Are you familiar with the "Blend if" sliders? I need you to Alt-click on this white slider and drag it in to about halfway: (You probably already know this, but using Alt breaks that little slider in half, allowing only one section to move).

Because you're a Premium Member, of course!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For now, please follow my lead on this. I may surprise you and actually know what I'm doing ? At the end of the process, you might decide that you like 0.5. But for now, please show me 0.4.

Because I needed you to be able to see your skin retouches in the context of the aggressive black-and-white edit. Otherwise you might not have smoothed her enough.

I just fiddle around with the values until it looked right. There's no science or "trick" to it, I assure you. This is still a disaster. Post your raw edit in class please.

Have you got out the prints you used to check your calibration? Do they still match, or is the screen brighter than them now too?

Let's take this in steps ... First, make sure you process this raw file in 16-bit rather than the usual 8-bit. We'll need all that robust data. Then do your BW conversion again, exactly as you've done. Then add the overall Levels layer. You'll probably find that you can bring the white slider in to about 250. (DON'T bring the black slider in. Despite what you think, I don't believe there's any black clipping in this edit.) Then move the middle slider aggressively darker, I suggest to about 0.40. At this point, you'll begin to recognise some of the characteristics of the other photo. Not all, but some. Enough for now. Then return to the Background layer, duplicate it, then perform all your skin smoothing and blemish removal in the usual way. Post for me once you've done that.

For the second photo, a Solid Color layer on Soft Light mode: 107/81/87. For the first photo, can you do the raw processing then show it to me again?

This is going to sound seedy, but I'll need a 100% crop of her chest so I can see the problem.

Sorry, I've got nothing.