Help Recreate This Look

[drisley]

I have been shooting boyduilding/fitness/figure shows for quite a few years now, and I've really been loving the look of the pictures froma certain website out there. I've been trying to emulate their look for about a year now. I emailed the photographers and asked for tips, and they said they use proprietary photoshop actions. Very nice chaps, but they don't want to share their technique (I don't blame them)...

Anyway, here are some examples of their images. You can spot them from a mile away. Lots of contrast, but without blocking shadows or losing highlight detail. The colours are VIBRANT, but the skin is never oversaturated (and seems to have a glow to it). Blacks are BLACK, whites are WHITE, but not over contrasted.



sample 1
sample 2
sample 3
sample 4
sample 5
sample 6
sample 7
sample 8
sample 9

More from their site

I hope you can see the similarities in the tone of all these. I LOVE it. Their B&W images have the exact same tone too. I can't get my images to look like this by spending time processing each image individually, let alone using a BATCH action!

Below is a link to a raw file of one of my fitness pictures. Feel free to experiment and write down your technique. If somebody can reverse engineer this for me, I would be SO grateful!

My 1D2 RAW File

Thanks

[LESider]

The images you are comparing to yours are completely different, I understand that you are looking for skintone and contrast but your photos are in a competition setting and the other photos are in a more controlled portrait setting with better control of light and quality of light. Do you have some samples of what you like in the same sort of setting?

[miguel]

here is a very quick go at it - dodge and burn with level, curve, and hue/sat adjustments - with more time, a more detailed job could be done.

[drisley]

Thanks LESider.
They also have fitness shows shot on stage that also have the exact same process/look to them.

I've updated the above link to my RAW file so now it's an outdoor portrait.

Thanks Migel, good attempt, but not quite there. Also, keep in mind they use a photoshop action on all their images. They don't do any custom tweaking on a per-image basis.

[Godmother]

How do you know they use a photoshop action on all their images???

I don't think there's an action that can give you those perfect skin and those nice highlights.

[miguel]

i'd have to agree with godmother - just cause they say they do doesn't mean they do -- seems unlikely.

[drisley]

Because, I contacted the photographers that run the site.
They said they use proprietary photoshop actions to batch process their images.
The webmaster has one set, and the photographer has his slightly tweaked set.

Also, in their members area, they have hundreds of photos from the different fitness/bb shows, and they often have them posted within 1 day of the show (in addition to all the private shoots they do the weekend of the show). There is no way they could process them all individually in such a short time, with such consistent results (it usually takes me 1-2 weeks to process all my images from a show, and I still can't get that consistency).

[Ziaphra]

Lovely photo...

[skydog]

Not sure if this is what you had in mind or not?

[solitear]

This was the only picture I had handy to try this on (my baby girl)...... are you talking about something like this....... the tone color is easy to tweak.... it's a particular method of using a dupe image..... change to grayscale.... change to duotone..... blur...... paste over original .....set blend to overlay.....?????

Beth

[solitear]

Thought maybe it'd be better to show the before and after for a better comparison...... these are so smashed because of size limit but maybe you can get an idea.....

Beth

[NancyJ]

Not time to say much (late for work) a lot of the colour seems to have been lost in saving to jpeg so the second less saturated version seems unecessary now.

Not sure exactly what you're looking for, it may be becaue its early and my eyes arent fully awake but I dont see anything special in those images other than, good lighting, sharpen and correct white balance - I'm not seeing any 'glow' to the skin - but like I said - its early

These attempts are more based on your description than on the sample images, if its close to what you want I'll write up what I did but I have to get dressed for work now

[drisley]

Originally Posted by solitear

Thought maybe it'd be better to show the before and after for a better comparison...... these are so smashed because of size limit but maybe you can get an idea.....

Beth

OMG!!! Solitear! I think you have almost got it! Great work!!!! Thanks SO much!!!! Can you give me the detals of your method (ie, what duotone to use etc).. You guys are the best! (Ps. awesome picture)

NancyJ, although I dont think yours is exactly what I was looking for, very good attempt! Thanks guys so much for trying! Also, great attempts Ziaphra and Skydog, thanks for taking the time to help. I love this forum.

[Cassidy]

Keeping in mind that you are looking to automate the process, my solution was to;

firstly change the background colour of the palette colour to white,
Filter ->Distort ->Diffuse Glow (Graininess = 0, Glow amount = 4, Clear Amount = 17,
Image adjust - > Levels, 20, 0, 255
Copy Merged to New Layer
Filter->Highpass = 20
Set Blending mode to Soft Light

You could record these steps as an action, but naturally, in order to get the best results across a number of images, you would have to compared the results across a number of images and adjust accordingly. Other adjustments for levels or curves should also be able to be incorporated.

[drisley]

Cassidy,

Thanks alot! I have considered the diffuse glow filter as being a possible part of the process. I think I will give your process a try and let you know what I think. It looks pretty good at first glance.

After all is said and done, maybe I should offer those guys money for their action I'm sure they would say NO, or demad LOTS! hehe.

[NancyJ]

They didnt come out here as they did in PS - I will have to have a fiddle with them when I get home

[drisley]

Originally Posted by NancyJ

They didnt come out here as they did in PS - I will have to have a fiddle with them when I get home

NancyJ, I had another look at your pics, and I really like the process, especially the slightly undersaturated version.
Would you mind explaining what you did?

[drisley]

Btw, One of my favourite photographers was kind enough to share his post techniques for his fitness images which look quite similar to the above images. However, he says he has to do each image individually depending on lighting.
Basically he applies shadow/highlight in CS2 at it's default setting, uses curves to get richness, adjust saturation levels to normalize colour, then play with levels to get whites white and blacks black.

I've tried the above technique, and my images still look nothing like his. I actually find the shad/highlight tool at default tends to ruin my images, especially when shot at a high ISO (as most stage shots are).

[solitear]

Hi drisley....... of course I'll tell you ....... it's something I learned from someone else anyway...... it's so easy you could turn it into an action ..... here's what I did:

Open photo and duplicate it then close your original.

With just this copy open go to Layers > Duplicate > click OK

On this copy go to Image > Mode > Lab then click on Lightness channel

Go to Image > Mode > Grayscale..... now

Go to Image > Mode > Duotones....... pick any one of the brown duotones from the Pantone offerings

Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaus. Blur and blur a tiny bit..... I think I used .5

Finally, click back on your colored photo because we're going to pull the Duotone on top of it

Holding the shift key down, click and drag the Duotone on top of the colored one ....... which now looks duotoned, too .... until you ...

Change the blend mode to Overlay.......

That's it....... play around when choosing your duotone browns because, while it makes little difference, it does change the undertones.

I feel terrible that I don't remember where I got this tutorial ... I'd scribbled it down instead of printing it out and have had it for awhile ....... hope it helps you!

Beth

Thank you drisley for finding the tut........ it's posted by Mig in the tutorial section (I hate not giving credit where credit's due) and thank you, Mig!

[drisley]

Thanks Beth!
It wouldn't happen to be this tutorial would it?
http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/...d_duotone.html

[solitear]

YESsssssssss............... That's it !!!!! And, of course, it was here all the time........ good job!

Beth

[drisley]

After seeing your post, I just googled "duotone" and "overlay" and came up with that tutorial in this exact forum. Funny eh.

[solitear]

You must be living right........

I will never get over finding RetouchPro..... there are so many ways I've been encouraged here..... whether it be in a meticulous, clearly written tutorial posted for all to glean from.... or, after a years absence, returning to find Doug, Matt, Craig, byRo, Flora, Danny, chris, Gary, Richard, TPaul, etc... faithfully helping, instructing, keeping the peace and maintaining the integrity of this site...... I use their work, as well as others' here, as my 'plumb bob' ....

What made me laugh wasn't that the tutorial was here but that I didn't automatically assume it was here......

OK...... where's Flora ....... guess I'll be making a donation now that I've reminded myself about all this good stuff !!

oxoxox
Beth

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Solitear,

Thanks for the kind words, nice to know that RP is so much use to you.

If you do wish to contribute, there's a link in my signature below.

[solitear]

It's true, Gary...... and I mean it ........

Also, I beat you to it and made a donation thru the Amazon.com thing when I clicked RetouchPRO up on this menu bar, scrolled down to Donations and I was off and running..... Wow...... it was so simple.........

oxoxo
Beth

[dave-ek]

hi Drisley

how does this look? its a mixer layer then a bit of glow finished off with smart sharpen.

[drisley]

That's an interesing look Dave, but not quite what i'm looking for. Thanks for trying though!
Btw, does anybody know how to turn off email notifications when replies are made to this thread? In my Control Panel I have "Default Thread Subscription Mode" set to "No email notifications", but I'm still getting emails to every reply.

Thanks again guys.

[NancyJ]

Hi, sorry I took so long to reply - not been well today.

The method is quite simple:

1. levels adjustment:
I selected the hair under the arm as the black point and the light part of the pattern on her bra as the white point.

2. Dupe layer
Set the blend mode to overlay

3. High Pass
For this image I would choose a radius between 20 and 40 depending on the strength of the effect

4. Desaturate
You may want to desaturate the high pass layer as it can affect the colour - this is optional as you might like the effect, though in this picture you can see an increased saturation in the reds in her face, fingers and knees. There are various ways to remove this if you want to keep the other tonal changes but remove the redness - selective colour on the high pass layer should help fix any undesirable colouration, whilst retaining anything you want to keep.

[skydog]

I've tried to follow Beth's instructions but I am having difficulty with "durotone". Regardless of what I do, it is not accessable. What am I failing to do?

[KR1156]

convert to grayscale, then covert to duotone. Choose your 2 colors.