The demystification of Jill Greenberg!!!

[pellepiano]

Then half the job is done =) I suggest you look at another thread here with similar images and sharp highlights, regarding Dave Hill. There are also many threads about PWL ( Painting with Light ).

[skydog]

Help me here...what is the difference between "dodge and burn" and "paint with light"?

[pellepiano]

Dodge and Burn usually refers to the tools with the same name, while PWL is when you have a layer filled with 50% grey , set to Overlay, and paint with black or white. Both methods do the same thing but the Dodge and Burn tools have some extra choices like , only burn midtones and so on.

[saby]

Originally Posted by pellepiano

Heres my try ... or version ...

Is's so cool

saby

[skydog]

I asked this once before but never recieved an answer..hopefully this time. Like Pelle said above one can dodge and burn highlights, midtones and shadows. What does CS3 consider a highlight, midtone, and shadow? What am I doing when I burn lets say a highlight vs dodging a highlight vs a midtone?

[pellepiano]

Dodging means you brighten the highlights,midtone or shadow, and burn is the other way around, as I understand it. I use only PWL ( unless cleaning layer masks ).

[Alfred]

How's this?

[knottyy]

Thank you pellepiano. I appreciate it.

[plasticjack]

unfortunately. the lighting for this image is very flat. it does indeed help to have a very good lighting setup. lighting IS everything. but anyway here is my submission. it's a greenberg/hill mix. kind of a combination of the two.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1...etshillse1.jpg

one thing that helps tremendously when it comes to this style is if you have a background in illustration/painting. because in order to make this effect work good you have understand how not to overdo it and at the same time not underdo it. there really isn't a magic button or action. all i simply did here was duplicate the layer and dodge and burn the hell out of it. i generally use very low exposure settings for dodging and burning and just continuously put on layer after layer. having a good understanding of light goes a long way. because especially with this image. i added shadows that were not really there or just very faint. when dodgin and burning i generally keep most of the strokes set on midtones. i rarely every use highlights and occasionally burn with shadows. hope this helps some.

[superkoax]

plasticjakc: I think your version is very good! abit darke ares on the skin, but really nice overall feel! good on ya! maybe I'm wrong, but maybe a dash of yellow would help? or less magenta? hmm....that color correction is what I struggle with the most

[superkoax]

alfred: Nice eyes!

[Alfred]

Originally Posted by superkoax

alfred: Nice eyes!

Thanks, much appreciated!

[learza]

Nice thread had fun with the try ...

Greets

learza

[superkoax]

So, guys...when coming back to the main workflow here...How does a retoucher get balanced results? Since she has a vast collection of pictures I feel that her pictures offer almost the same retouching when it comes highlights...Has she any retouching career in her past?

As a sidequestion:
When do we know, that your own style is unique?

[EternalTomorrow]

Well its Amy Dresser that does her retouching, so that could be something. That's why the majority of her work 'looks' the same in Post. Look at all of Dresser's other stuff, very similar as well.

[pellepiano]

Jill Greenberg has been retouching since the early 90s. Thats where she got the nickname Manipulator as I understand it.

[Sistere]

I'm not sure if you guys have seen this, but here are some excerpts from an Amy Dresser Interview discussing her techniques:

********************************

"Before i do any retouching... I adjust the overall color of a photo (no point in retouching anything that will be blown out or hidden in shadows in the end).
Most of my color adjustments are through curves (i adjust the individual channels) and an occasional hue/sat layer--- just personal taste. typically desaturate the reds a bit... as most peoples' flaws are reddish in nature, this diminishes some the areas vs. actual bumps. Also, i'm a bigger fan of desaturated images vs. saturated ones... i think i can control the shape of things better when i don't have to worry about weird saturation drop-offs.

I usually work an image up in an all over and gradual manner... kind of general to specific. I refine color as i go along, carve features and remove blemishes sort of all at the same time. This way, if don't spend as much time as i'd like, the image should be fairly presentable if the deadline is sooner rather than later.

Here are the general things i do:

Rubber stamp out major stuff (on a copy of the original layer of course) at 100% on normal mode. I make sure that all the cloning i do is completely unnoticeable. No big blur blobs all over the place or step-marks. Not a fan of the healing brush either.

Dodge and burn small light and dark spots and areas... anything that distracts and jumps out at me-- always set on midtones at about 3-4% with the fuzziest brush you got with "other dynamics" selected so the pen pressure is in effect. This is where i spend the bulk of my time. To speed this up, i have programmed the 2 buttons on my pen to be the short cuts for decrease brush size and increase brush size.

Even out the skin tones to be basically the same hue, saturation through out a figure/face/image. i'll use the lasso with a fat amount feathering on it and circle/trace areas that i want to adjust. Again, i favor curves. These typically will be very subtle in nature... with the middle of a channel's curve just pulled up or down a notch or 2

"I refer to already existing highlights and exaggerate and/or simplify them. This is one of those things that will come naturally if you've done a lot of figure drawing, otherwise, it just takes practice. I have a few methods of doing this and sometimes i use one... sometimes more.

1--more dodging and burning! I almost always do some amount of carving directly on the retouched image by dodging and burning– pure and simple. 0% hardness brush, still at about 3-4%. It's a good idea to do this on a second copy of the retouched layer just in case i get carried away and something starts to look weird. In case the client
says "woah, too much!"-- it's easy to lightly mask out what's overkill."

"make 2 curves layers... one curve pulled down, the other pulled up. I fill both masks black and then paint in areas on the individual layers that i want to carve down or up (0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow). This is method make a low-impact on your file size, but i dislike it because i have to switch back and forth between layers. ."

"make a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set that layer to "overlay" and paint black or white (again, 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow) to carve down or up. This method sometimes adds more saturation to the carved shadows than i would prefer

"plain old painting white on an empty layer set to "normal"-- 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow, "other dynamics" selected. I do this to every image i work on

" this may possibly be my only "trick." This has to be done as a final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select > Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too
much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit

********************************

[superkoax]

Originally Posted by EternalTomorrow

Well its Amy Dresser that does her retouching, so that could be something. That's why the majority of her work 'looks' the same in Post. Look at all of Dresser's other stuff, very similar as well.

Originally Posted by pellepiano

Jill Greenberg has been retouching since the early 90s. Thats where she got the nickname Manipulator as I understand it.

I have heard that as well, that she has doen all her retouching her self! But then again I feel that some of the picture look very similar to amy dressers retouching....

[superkoax]

SISTERE: NICE!!! Where did you read this?? thanks!

[enigmaphotos]

I did a tutorial ages ago based on that post Sistere.

Can be found here;

Here it is.

It's been getting on average about 200 hits per day for the last 4-5 months.

[DJSoulglo]

SuperKoax: That Amy Dresser thing was posted on this forum ages ago, it even had one of her layered PSD files attached to it.

You can find it here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/j3h635

It's quite good to see, however most of the skin work isn't on that PSD, so there's no cloning/healing to be viewed.

[edgework]

Decided to have another go at the initial image from this thread. Or, rather, add some additional steps that I neglected first time around.

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/fauxGreenberg2.jpg

[Sistere]

Originally Posted by enigmaphotos

I did a tutorial ages ago based on that post Sistere.

Can be found here;

Here it is.

It's been getting on average about 200 hits per day for the last 4-5 months.

Nice! Really nice tutorial! I found the quotes using 'Wayback Machine' on some defunct site; but I am thrilled to have found yours where I can actually see some of the techniques compared side by side. Excellent!

Damien

[MatthewMarshall]

so she took lolypops away to make them cry, heck she should just come to my studio for one day. she would have enuff crying babies. lol. thats a first, make a baby cry instead of make them stop. lol

[xfx]

Carving layer is done here:

"make a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set that layer to "overlay" and paint black or white (again, 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow) to carve down or up. This method sometimes adds more saturation to the carved shadows than i would prefer

[superkoax]

Originally Posted by MatthewMarshall

so she took lolypops away to make them cry, heck she should just come to my studio for one day. she would have enuff crying babies. lol. thats a first, make a baby cry instead of make them stop. lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I26UhE1njFc

just see the interview there...some blogs on the net has come a looooong way to eat their way in to her patience...lawsuits against bloggers and her husband has even joined in to the fight against them...

I was really astonished by the pictures when I first saw them, back then I was wondering how she made them cry. And then people started to react and she told openly about it....NOT A GOOD IDEA! In USA, there are some very angry parents with small children

blogs from people:

http://thomashawk.com/2006/04/jill-g...woman-who.html

http://www.kantor.com/blog/2006/06/j...-child-abuser/

[pixelzombie]

we tend to over react in the USA and this is another example of that, i think forcing your kid into beauty pageants is much worse than what Jill was doing...

[superkoax]

Pixel: I probably diverted the thread towards this matter with my last post. I agree to a point where the reactions that people are stating regarding her pictures. MAKING children cry is no way to do it! maybe wait until the child is dead tired without nap time...then you have some very nice potential picture just waiting to be snapped! I think that using tricks like Jill did with the lollipop is to exploit defenseless human beings! It's not right! But to react so strong about it isn't something I would do...I think that Jill should maybe change her thoughts regarding these types of picture so she doesn't make the same mistake twice! In the interview it doesn't see that she regrets or understand her actions. Has she doen the right thing when so many people reacts so bad? Or are all other people wrong and she is right?

MANY THOUGHTS HERE

[mr.aj]

if i was jill i woulnt regret anything. you are being way too sensitive, man...that is what is wrong with the army today...too many mothers. Toughen up a little bit, so what the kids are crying, kids cry, who cares. What matters is she got a shot you will never be good enough to get, and she did it by taking candy from a baby. Maybe you can learn something from her...maybe not.

[enigmaphotos]

Originally Posted by Sistere

Nice! Really nice tutorial! I found the quotes using 'Wayback Machine' on some defunct site; but I am thrilled to have found yours where I can actually see some of the techniques compared side by side. Excellent!

Damien

No problems my good man. Hope it helps you out. It certainly did with me when I wrote it.

As a side note I only maybe really use two or three of those techniques... especially the 50% grey overlay/soft light method (called 'carving' earlier)