The demystification of dave hill! let's all help!

[Aether]

Richard, let me add my own pestering to those wanting to see your workflow! That would be invaluable. Personally, I still love this kind of work (Greenberg, Dragan, Hill, Fiscus, Joey L, etc.), even if I don't end up using the look when/if I go pro for real, the tricks and techniques behind it seem so important to grasp. Regardless, I love learning all sorts of new techniques, so thanks to everyone whose contributed to this thread!

I gave this look a quick try, trying to use it in a more subtle way, to see if I could give a regular portrait a bit of boost without going full boar with it. Obviously I fell short, but I'd love to hear how I could improve on it.

[TreesOfMyTime]

This is an important point that many of the Post Process haters miss. I see signs of this and other methods used lightly and no one notices! But improvement is there!

The "overdone" is good too. Hey folks, it is all about what a person likes and that is their entitlement! Their ART! Give them that right!

[gamedonechanged]

I'm just getting interested in this technique. Can someone offer any advice as to some good resources? Should I just read through this entire thread?

Also I am not a photographer but it looks like lighting when shooting is important here. Can I still pick up the techniques to form a general workflow in this thread?

[pellepiano]

Well, this thread is one of the best resources.

[bimbo]

Here's my first try with 5-point lighting and sort of the illustrative look on a few photos of myself. I set the light and my friend took the pictures with my camera:
http://www.markusp.se/_X5O1124_medium.jpg
http://www.markusp.se/_X5O1138_medium.jpg

If you like I can write something about the workflow from shooting in the studio to finished retouch. Like I said, this was my first try and I learned that there are a lot of things that are kind of equally important to get good results.

/Markus

[gamedonechanged]

Did anyone try that method Robert Randall laid out on MM? I'm guessing this is the Glee hallway pic but some things I am not too sure of like when he says make a highlight mask of shadow mask ect...
Now, how he does it…

First of all, forget all about any dumb ass High Pass techniques you’ve been thinking of, because from what I can see, he doesn’t use them. Nor does he use a huge amount of Unsharp Mask. He uses local contrast controls through selections and masks.

For instance, look at the back pack on the other guy camera a right.* Normally that item would be blocked up and lacking detail.* Make a lasso selection around the back pack and ask for a layer curve. Brighten to taste. Next go to the same guys pants and do the same thing over for the pants. Now go to the sweater. Now go to the next guy and do the same thing to his little blue bag, then his sweater. Cross the hall to the guy and his leather jacket. Curve that, then his pants and then his hair.* Do this local selection curve technique to anything you feel like, when finished pumping up the local contrast, go get something to drink. Come back and judge whether you’ve gone too far or not far enough, and then fix stuff to taste.

Next, make a Highlight mask like this…

http://www.robert-randall.com/MM/HL%20mask%201.jpg[/img]

Load it to make it active, and then ask for a layer curve. Bring highlight up slightly.

Next, make a Highlight Mask like this…

http://www.robert-randall.com/MM/HL%20mask%202.jpg[/img]

Load it to make it active, and then ask for a layer curve. Bring highlight up slightly more. Notice how the picture starts to take on a sense of depth and life that you’re not familiar with. Fun, huh?

Next, make a Shadow mask like this…

http://www.robert-randall.com/MM/shadow%20mask%201.jpg[/img]

Load it to make it active, and then ask for a layer curve. Bring shadow down just a little bit, don’t get carried away here, it isn’t the right time for it.


Next, make a Shadow mask like this, or darker yet…

http://www.robert-randall.com/MM/shadow%20mask%202.jpg[/img]

Load it to make it active, and then ask for a layer curve. Now play with killing any detail you might have in this local select area of the shadow. This move sets up the down side of the picture just like the HL mask sets up the upside. By now you should be experiencing a sense of depth that will keep you off the porn sites for at least an hour. We’re not done yet!

Next make a difference mask like this…

http://www.robert-randall.com/MM/diff%20mask%201.jpg[/img]

Load it to make it active, and then ask for a layer curve. Now you can play with adding or detracting density from the midtone area to help create the illusion of more density. Usually this is a darkening move, but it can go the other way too.

Now ask for an empty layer and change its mode to softlight. Note that you can also use hard light or overlay if you prefer. Wherever you see a highlight that you want to embellish, start painting white with a brush, wrinkles, teeth, cheeks, lips, what ever you like, paint until you’re eyes bleed.* My way of doing this is to then blur the painted layer and add a Highlight Mask from the selection I gave you above. This is why my pictures don’t look like Jill Greenberg’s or Dave Hill’s. I use control over my painting emotional out bursts. Paint those arm and leg highlights too, don’t miss a thing!

Now do the same think with black paint on another softlight layer. Use a mask, don’t use a mask, it’s completely up to you.

If you still think there is room to screw the pooch a little harder, create a compound layer of all you have done and de-saturate it. Change the mode to soft or hard light and watch your contrast go through the roof. Still not enough? Make another compound copy and de-saturate it. Change the mode and ask for a HP filter. Give it a number of between 2 and 250 and watch that picture go thermo nuclear on you. Go to the closest mirror you can find and say the words “Fuck Dave Hill, you’re the man!”.

Any rational person at this point will note there are a thousand ways to skin a digital cat. What I’ve laid out is the basis for how young Mr. Hill achieves his look. I haven’t given you every nuance, because that could take days, and I may have missed a small point or two. But you should have learned at least one major point; there is no shortcut filter available that will do this. Also, you aren’t Dave Hill and even armed with this info, your pictures won’t look like his. But hopefully they will look like yours.

Okay, I’m ready for every malcontent know nothing wanna be that feels a need to challenge me on my DH dissection. Let me say in advance… fuck you, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

[TreesOfMyTime]

Links do not seem to work!

[gamedonechanged]

Yeah I noticed. I have emailed Robert asking if he still has them. That seems to be it though or at least over on MM the general feeling is he nailed it. I remember seeing that thread when the pictures were active and was sure i saved the page but can't find it now.

[Aether]

Damn, a lot of that explanation seems really useful, but I'm not sure what he means specifically by highlight mask, shadow mask, or difference mask. Anyone more schooled than me know?

[gamedonechanged]

I think he means luminance masks. I know how to do a basic one but not in the manner he is saying. The screenshots probably would have helped. It was quite an old thread there tbh but im surprised that after 72 pages no one saw it.

To me it sounds like he is saying select different parts of the people and make selective contrast boosts using curves adjustment layers. But oddly he never says select the face ect... Not sure if this is just specific to this example or generally. Then it sounds like a luminance mask is made and another similar one after but that's where it get's wierd as I don't have the screenshots.

[Aether]

Okay, figured it out. There's two ways to do this. The first and probably least preferable is to go ctrl-alt-2 to select luminosity, then add a curves layer adjustment using the luminosity as a mask. Do the same think on an inverted image for the Shadow Mask, using the difference blending mode you take the difference of these two masks to make the Difference Mask.

A better way would be to have white as your foreground color, and go to Select Color Range. Now move the fuzziness until your get the desired amount of highlights selected, and use this for your highlight mask (then do the same on an inverted image, and then take the difference for the difference mask). This way you have a lot more control. Although it could be a combination of the two, since he double the masks. Maybe one is more global, and the other more specific.

This is handy stuff, I especially like using the highlights mask after doing the highlight carve layer, at low opacity it really helps to bring your painted highlights back to being more realistic without losing the effect.

I'd still love to see Richard Wood's method!

[gamedonechanged]

Yeah I emailed him earlier this week. No ETA on that tutorial yet mate.

[TreesOfMyTime]

But finally perhaps, we are understanding this process!

[gamedonechanged]

http://goodlight.us/writing/luminosi...tymasks-1.html

Just got passed onto this website which gives a good explanation of the type of masking required. Not going to look at it now as I am dead tired. But if your feeling brave....

[TreesOfMyTime]

Looks VERY interesting. I am tired as well, but I hit the donate button and should have the PDFs and the actions by morning!

[gamedonechanged]

Almost done reading that section. I didn't even know about how you can narrow the selections further to get the light lights and so forth.

Could it be that in Mr Randall's method above when he describes creating 2 consecutive light masks that the in one of them it is a light mask and then the second a more narrower one? Same goes for the darks.

Just a wild guess.

Anyway here is the picture he was doing. This is already obviously done but nothing stopping us doing it again to increase the effect.

http://www.ilovephotoblogs.com/wp-co...-nerd-geek.jpg

[jam1212]

Yep, you're exactly right. I stumbled on that MM thread a while ago (I'm pretty sure someone posted it here pages and pages and pages ago) and learned a lot from it.

The consecutive light masks he refers to are, in fact, narrower and narrower versions of the original "lights" mask. You apply slight curves adjustments to each one as a new layer, and that way they build up in a smooth and coherent manner. You do the same with the "darks" masks, except with an opposite curves adjustment. The end result is quite interesting.

[gamedonechanged]

Thanks for confirming jam121. I am playing around with a pic now, very sloppy stuff but the result is interesting. Will post up shortly.

[gamedonechanged]

Ok so I tried out Mr Randalls technique. Firstly this is one of Calvins pics from his training so I hope he will be ok with me using this for practice.

http://img51.imageshack.us/i/changingskintone.jpg/

http://img442.imageshack.us/i/changingskintone2.jpg/

I don't think a beauty shot is really the best thing to be using for this especially, or any women for that matter. I see what he means by using the luminocity curves. That is something I need to definitely play with more. Does anyone have a decent pic I can use to have a play with?

edit: Looking back on this now it's a little too bright too.

[bimbo]

OK, so here's my contribution to this cause. I'm not gonna be able to explain every single little detail in my workflow, but this might make the layers in the PSD more understandable. Download the original PSD from the link at the end of this post and feel free to comment or ask questions.

First of all let me just say, before anyone thinks I'm a self-appointed expert: This is not the exact DH-look and maybe it's not the perfect and correct way to achieve it, but it might be useful and a step in the right direction. This is just my workflow for this particular image after reading quite a lot of the posts in this thread and other blogs/sites about the DH look. I recently discovered the luminosity masks technique and IMHO I think that we have the "secret" right there. That doesn't mean that your pictures will get that perfect illustrated look by a few mouse clicks. It takes time, practice, time and time to perfect the technique. I still have a long way to go myself before I'm satisfied. I haven't been able to try the Luminosity Masks very much but I can defenitely see the potential and power of this technique.

I REALLY RECOMMEND those of you who want to get the DH look to read ALL of the info and tips at http://goodlight.us/writing/luminosi...tymasks-1.html. It really explains every single little detail on how Luminosity Masks work and why they are so powerful. Thanks gamedonechanged for the link! That being said, here's my workflow:

----- LIGHTING SETUP -----

Let's start from scratch. As you have probably read before, a good lighting setup is crucial. It really helps when it comes to post production. I used 5 flashes for this image. I had my doubts if everyone of these flashes were really necessary. We tried to shut one of them off at the time and it actually made a world of differnce with each one. It's probably easier to let the attached images speak for themselves. I have no photo of the finished lighting setup. The attached photo is from in the middle of setting it up but the lighting diagram shows kind of what the final result looked like (Donwload PSD from kevinkertz.com to try it yourself!).

Basically we just experimented with the power of each flash and moved them back/forth and up/down to get the desired result. It took about 2 hours to get the final result as this was the very first time for me.

I used a Canon EOS 1Ds mk II with a Canon 50 mm f1.8 lens. Camera settings: ISO 100, 1/125, f16.

No light metering, just took several test pictures and made adjustments to get the desired result. The flashes were trigged by radio transmitter. One attached to my camera and another attached to one of the Speedlite 580's. This 580 was set to MASTER, so that it could trigger the other 580 set to SLAVE. This was a requirement in this setup because the Canon Speedlite flashes do not slave on any other flashes than a MASTER unit in the Speedlite series. Don't ask me why, I think it's stupid! Here we also discovered a problem. The ringflash, for some reason, disturbed the signal sent from the MASTER 580 to the SLAVE 580 if we had the ringflash to close to the model (me). This is why we had to use flags to shield the light from the ringflsh so it didn't hit the 580's. Not sure, but I also think that flags are used to prevent lens flare from the flashes behind the model.

Anyways, the 580's triggered the Ringflash, the Octa and the Beautydish by slave. Watch the lighting diagram and hopefully you'll understand what I mean.


----- POST PRODUCTION -----

I have named all the layers in my PSD according to what they do. I hope it's clear enough. Just hide/show the layers and you'll probably figure out what they do. Alt-click the layer masks and you will see what area they effect.

I always start with the skin retouch. First I clean the whole image from sensor dust, large skin spots and unwanted wrinkles on an empty layer named "Healing brush and Clone stamp". Basically I remove everything I don't want in the image. Then it's time for Dodge & Burn. I use two Curve layers, one for highlights and one for shadows, and work in about 300-500% zoom of the original size to get good control. For even better control I make a Curve layer on top of the two D&B layers with an S-curve just to get a better look at the areas that need dodge or burn. Always use a small soft brush on 2-5% Flow. This is the most time consuming part of my workflow, but it's worth it if you do it thorough. A more detailed description of the Dodge & Burn technique, and the place I learned it from, can be found here: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272

IMPORTANT! Use a wacom tablet for D&B retouch (and Photoshop retouch in general). A mouse is totally worthless for doing this. For those of you who don't use a Wacom tablet, consider this: What do you think gives the best control and result if you should write your autograph on a piece of paper - a mouse or a pen?

When this picture was taken I had recently gotten back from a sunny vacation. This is why my skin was pealing on a few different areas in my face. There was also a red tone on the skin in these areas where I had been scrubbing it. I corrected this with the Saturation layer "Face skin color change". This was just an extra thing I had to correct in this particular picture and normally not a part of the retouch workflow. As you can see I also have very dark circles under my eyes that are quite uncharming in this photo. This was corrected in the D&B Curve layers. If you have a model with better skin this of course facilitates the skin retouch.

I sharpen the image on a few different layers with High pass and different Blend modes. Try different values, Blend modes and Opacity values on the High pass layers to suit your needs. There are no magic values here, it's all depending on your image.

Basically it's a lot of small effects at the time, and mixed together they give the images the final result. Like I mentioned before, I think you should take a good look at the Luminosity Mask technique at http://goodlight.us/writing/luminosi...tymasks-1.html. I will not explain the Luminosity Masks in my PSD since they're kind of experimental not very organized. Read the tutorial instead, it's much better. By mastering this technique you can add local contrast/highlight/shadows to give the image that illustrated look. At least that's what I think, and that's the technique I'm gonna work on improving myself since I'm haven't really gotten the hang of it yet.

Well, that's it I think! Comments and tips are welcome of course. I've probably left out some important detail that some of you wonder about. Just ask and I'll try to answer. Please respect my copyright and don't distribute this PSD or use it for anything else than inspiration/education. As all of you, I like useful information and free stuff, so please all, show some of the same generosity I just did I think the Internet will be a better place for all of us! You are more than welcome to use this image to work on and post your results here if you manage to get a good look. Download the original PSD from this link (about 300 MB):

http://www.markusp.se/5-PointLightin...onTutorial.zip


PS. Please check out and comment on another ongoing just-4-fun-project of mine, 2 out of 3 images done:
www.markusp.se/foe/foe24.htm
www.markusp.se/foe/foe25.htm

//Markus, Sweden
www.markusp.se

[gamedonechanged]

Thanks for the info mate. I think the Luminosity link was posted on the previous page too.

[RichardWood]

Just had a look at Dave Hills newer site, as havent been there for quite a while. His post production has changed. (diver adventure girl).... also seems to be using softer lighting for this work too. Much more detailed and gritty rather than plastic. Tis coming from RAW and use of overlaying smart layers I think.
My try on his new look here www.richardwood.co.nz/new.jpg
However have still used the old dynamic light.

[longside1]

Originally Posted by RichardWood

Just had a look at Dave Hills newer site, as havent been there for quite a while. His post production has changed. (diver adventure girl).... also seems to be using softer lighting for this work too. Much more detailed and gritty rather than plastic. Tis coming from RAW and use of overlaying smart layers I think.
My try on his new look here www.richardwood.co.nz/new.jpg
However have still used the old dynamic light.

Hi Richard, I completely agree I think he is trying to distance himself from the look that everybody he is so desperate to acheive...one step behind me thinks.

DH has stated quote openly that he is influenced by movies, and that is realy evident in his new work, especially with the addition of 'grain' to the shots. Looks like old school movie posters.

Richard, your link isn't working...

[RichardWood]

Sorry, tis WORKING NOW! ( :
Gritty style as discussed in post above is at
http://www.richardwood.co.nz/new.jpg

Is a bit rough, and highlights overdone, but looking at the detail really...
Definately adding this to what I'm doing already to my stuff at commercialphotographer.co.nz

[longside1]

Originally Posted by RichardWood

Sorry, tis WORKING NOW! ( :
Gritty style as discussed in post above is at
http://www.richardwood.co.nz/new.jpg

Is a bit rough, and highlights overdone, but looking at the detail really...
Definately adding this to what I'm doing already to my stuff at commercialphotographer.co.nz

That's a great shot. I like the skin tones, was that a blue filter set to luminosity?

[bimbo]

Originally Posted by RichardWood

Just had a look at Dave Hills newer site, as havent been there for quite a while. His post production has changed. (diver adventure girl)....

The "newer" site? In that case it must have been a really long time since you visited the site. The adventure girl photos have been there for at least a year or so... Nice pic btw!

[RichardWood]

Yeah you're probably right!
I've only visited his site a couple of times.
I had developed my style before I found him so have never been one of those totally overwhelmed fans.
There are a lot of top professionals on the net doing similar things as him. I live in New Zealand and many of the top commercial guys here are spitting out that plastic look for ad campaigns. So guessing the likes of Europe and USA there must be a hundred fold as many. Dave Hill has managed to become the topic though I think. Could be wrong! ( :

Good posts here though, enjoying looking at other peoples takes on it all.

[longside1]

Richard, are you able to provide some info on the post processing on your shot?

[gamedonechanged]

Second the above question.

[_jason_]

Ok. I've seen that thread now and I only did read the first and last page.

But loking at his pictures tells me, that guy is dealing heaviely with strange and uncommon lens distortion. It all looks like photographed with extreme wide angle objectives. Most of his pictures are strangely distorted in perspective. (That's also the reason why all the background details are so sharp and present).

If you want to clone that style, you should take a closer look at the perspective distortions. So you can't do that without having right source photographs.

And well, take a look at the lightning in his "Behind the scenes" videos...
He is a master of light, obviously. That's actually one of the secrets.

If you want to copy that style, you need the right technics at least.

.