Eran

Hi , Looking to pick your brain with some advise + creative cool idea. I've shot some studio pictures (high fashion style) vs gray and brown backdrop. The gray background was easy to manipulate (Attached before and after examples) in order to add some "wow / punch" to the image . For the brown background I wasn't sure what I could do to add some cooler/better effect . I tried using some textures (add 3 textures with soft light blending mode and 25% opacity ) but I don't think its "wow" enough. The model was colored with bronze makeup and the image is after raw and levels . I was wondering If I could pick your brain with your better richer experience and get advise what can be done with this image . Original : After edit : The gray edit I did + original

This look like a really efficient and required technique , reminds me the replacement of the kitchen cabinet. Will try doing it layer. Am I allowed to ask help with creative idea suggestion because in the rules it's says not to ask for critique on retouch and I want to enhance a backdrop of full retouched image I did in studio (tried using texture but it didn't give me the interesting pop effect I hoped for and maybe you have something in your arsenal ... "

Wow , this looks very good !!!

Yes , I want to "extend" it so I can straight the image , retouch it and later decide on crop .

Yes , the one that on backdrop... if I re create the backdrop , do I just use a blend mode that retrieve the shadow back and mask out the rest ?

what do I do with the shadow ?

Its medium format - Fuji GFX 50s

This is the photo without the crop , I already know not to crop before I finish edit !

Hi D , I would like to extend / replace this gray background , I exported the image SOOR as 16 bit. Tried using content aware fill but the result was very bad .

Oh , didn't realize it's a question from 2016 ?

Hi , First of all I mirrorless is technology , it has upsides and downsize , it's not relevant if it's apsc or FF (Sony a73 is FF while Fuji's x series are apsc) The main upside is that you see the exposure in real time which is very nice for natural light photographers and it's a lot easier to nail the focus since you use eye AF (if you have that feature ) or you can move the focus point to the relevant place on the screen instead of focusing and re compose (which isn't easy when you shoot open aparture ) The major downside is that the battery hold less , the cameras are more "fragile" than the dslr and while you do save some weight on the body , the lenses still weight the same as the dslrs one... A year ago I would also say that there are less lenses to choose from for mirrorless , but today it's not relevant anymore. Today I'm shooting only with mirrorless because I like the experience , I moved from Nikon D500 to fuji xt2 and than to Sony a7r3 and added also MF gfx 50s to the arsenal ?

Hi Victoria , I'm a fellow member here at the forum so I'm not sure if I may reply or not ? .I apologize if I'm being rude here . I'm shooting with 50mb camera so I feel your pain ? , as a rule of thumb , newly opened PSD with only background layer will take around 3 times more than the raw file size. If you use more pixel layers or smart objects than it takes a lot of more space (unlike adjustment layers which take much less space which is one the best things happened to me from learning retouch from Damien ☺️) There are some work around to keep the psds smaller , for example , if you clone a pixel layer in order to liquify or use specific part of that layer than don't clone entire pixel layer but a selected relevant region from the original layer (which means you have less pixels on that layer) Also keep in mind that some new cameras today have the option to save loseless compressed raws directly from the camera which means that the raw files take less space without losing quality but takes a little bit more time to open on the PC (since camera raw needs to uncompress it first ).

Hi , till today all my raws and psds are backuped up weekly to external USB storage. My raw file are huge (50mb seamless compressed ) and the psds are sometime 2-3gb (I also do composites ). I purchased a qnap Nas with 8Tb storage and also have backblaze b2 account . I have 3 HDs on my PC: 500gb M2 for Windows and programs . 4tb 7200rpm sata for raws and psds 1TB ssd as scratch disk for Photoshop . What would be the best way to backup /archive my raws and psds ? Should I also convert the raws to compressed dng (reducing the dynamic range but saving a lot of space also) Should I "sync" files to NAS and from there backup to backblaze or backup the HD to Nas and backblaze (the later is keeping me safe from ransomware but makes it terrible to access specific files if needed ) Any workflow will be welcomed ?

Hi , I didn't try to match the colors exactly , the cleaning process was fine with both pictures (you approved the SOOR and Levels) , If i'll try to make them identical (there is 2 minutes difference in time between the photos , and the exposure is very similar (F3.2 @ iso 100 vs F 2.8 @iso 125 ) , the brightness value is 5.36 vs 5.75 (according to exif and I'm not sure what it means) So I decided I'm not trying to match them because it will probably take me a lot of time and still I will not make them similar in colors ?

D , I would like to hear your thoughts regarding the following please ? ? 1. Are you against color grading or against matte effect ? 2. From your experience , If I want to put a mood inside a picture (like emphasizing a season ... giving it specific season feeling like media been doing in commercials) how do you recommend doing it ?

Thank you (worked later yesterday). I have graded both pictures , Because the light changed , there is slight difference between them and the colors on the bottom one looks more vivid or bright (not sure I'm using the correct word to describe). If I want to match them "perfectly" (as possible) , Do I need to play with Hue / Brightness on bottom or its basically not doable or not correct to do because light condition changed between 2 photos ?

Yes , Very similiar , I just need to fix the skin tone before the adjustment so it will look better. How do you get to the same result , like.. how do you analyse and image and copy the color attributes ? (I believe photographers are using presets in LR to get these grading (

Photographer Rotem Barak; This is her website : http://rotembarak.co.il/portfolio/ The photo isn't there (model sent it). I now backtracked photo through google to where it was post : https://www.vogue.it/en/photovogue/portfolio/?id=118117&md_photographer_id=118117&md_pageIndex=0&md_page=0&md_pid=260335 https://www.vogue.it/en/photovogue/portfolio/?id=118117&md_photographer_id=118117&md_pageIndex=0&md_page=0&md_pid=377748 And if the above color grading doesn't fit , I just saw another photo with similar colors (green and orange) and different editing style that might fit my image https://www.vogue.it/en/photovogue/portfolio/?id=118117&md_photographer_id=118117&md_pageIndex=0&md_page=0&md_pid=305767 What are your thoughts ? which edit will be easier / better to apply on my photo ?

Hi D , I don't have link to photos , the model in the photos (Which is the same girl I shot in my post of "Winter Balcony" ) sent them to me via whatsapp for reference , its hers. What do I need to do now ? look for other photos on the web with same grading or ask her for URL to photos ?

Hi , I'm working on 2 vivid colors with green and orange colors. I want to take the end result to more autumn color grading (like these 2 examples) which is more brass & gold. Is it possible ? how ?

I tried it on one more image which is same style image but different light and model , the result was very bad. I tried playing the the arrow in blending mode , couldn't bring the image to have similar look.

Yes , I had no idea how to do the Pattern layer so I copied it from your PSD... Only later I saw in Fill I can choose pattern (instead of content aware)

I will probably take it later , I first want to get to the skin level and need also to go over the mixer couple of times to really understand it. You're thoughts on removal ?

Holy moly... I didn't know that !

Ok , I managed to make wall color match and masked the outlet well... Tried now doing the yellow (and later red) gradient , may I ask how did you select the cupboard so well ? When I try using color range , it also select the small gap between them , making it look bad (even when I try to play with fuzzines and range)