Pascal Dangin & Box Studios

[vapour]

Does/has anybody here worked for Box Studios or ever been to Box Studios? I am curious as to what it's like behind the curtain. What exactly is the wizard up to?

I'm pretty sure I've read every article about Dangin/Box (The New Yorker, Times etc) but basically I wanted to start a thread to discuss the process of projects in the high-end world and hopefully discuss/expound upon retouching techniques.

[garibaldi]

well i know hes pretty hairy.

[Godmother]

Originally Posted by garibaldi

well i know hes pretty hairy.

so hot!

x

[vapour]

Yes the man the myth the legend.

[vapour]

Man does Box really have this kind of secrecy that no one can/will talk about them?

[SteveB2005]

Originally Posted by vapour

Man does Box really have this kind of secrecy that no one can/will talk about them?

It's a "black art", magician's code not to be released to the inquisitive public. Unless the curtain is ripped, torn down or whisked away, no one has a clue what's going on behind the scene, other than the studio staff.

[KR1156]

who cares? they're good retouchers, doing the same work every other highend agency who employs good retouchers does. I know a few ppl who worked there, trust me, get over it.

[eraanexact]

They seem to get the lion's share of high-end work here, but it's because they're good.

I work with a woman who trained under Pascal, and she's pretty excellent.

[vapour]

@KR1156 - 'who cares, get over it' - I know I get it, but I'm just saying... if there was ever any light shed as to how they do a lot of their work behind the scenes type stuff then it would be easy to get over. The same goes with any 'high end' retouching studio. There's never much explanation amongst this 'dark art'.

@eraanexact - What does your friend have to say about Pascal and how he does things?

[garibaldi]

DOnt be like the japanese and jsut copy what everyone else does, but do it cheaper. hahah bottom line is this and there are so many comparisons you could make... He is just a guy, liek anyone else, using the same computers as most of us, with the same software. he just does it better. Same reason that Michael Schumacher would dog you in a race even in a yugo, or that Paula Dean would make a better grilled cheese sandwich than you could or that Michael Jackson could moonwalk better than anybody else. You can look under the hood, but thats not all of it.

Another example if this helps, look at it like this, all any of them are doing is altering the luminance of pixels. You have a set number of them, and you can go from the darkest to absolute brightest and anywhere in between....now hop to it. Thing is he just knows which ones to change a little bit better than others do

[KR1156]

yes they know photoshop, they know as well as any highend retoucher should....but the difference in retouchers is their aesthetic and artistic vision and dedication to do something the right way. They work on some excellent campaigns, and it takes more than photoshop skills to please their clients.

like someone said recently, i would rather have a retoucher who was 70% artist, and 30% technical.

an example of dedication.....I get a client who doesn't bring in any profit to our company at the moment, and may be the case for a while....but when i retouch let's say and editorial for elle magazine, i do it as well as i do any of my jobs....and if things are looking off, maybe the color work is gone too far, or something is off, i'm willing to start from scratch to please my client. know why....in the end it's my name on the retouching side of that job, and everyone remembers the bad stuff they see.

and on that note, Box and every other highend shop is willing to do the same.

[eraanexact]

Agreed with KR1156.

Also, one of the things I've noticed is that in great beauty and fashion work, the color and contrast moves are done first in adjustment layers on top, followed by any liquifying/body sculpting, and then the actual technical retouching. Getting the color balanced and overall mood established is what seperates a technical retoucher from a true artist.

[vapour]

When it comes to fundamental "color balancing" or "color correcting" is this typically a global move or usually done selectively or locally.

IE. Mask out every part of the image... skin, hair, sky, grass, jeans, top, purse etc etc?

Or like I asked, a global curves adjustment?

Obviously I would assume maybe both, but what do you start with? How do you know when to take your next move?

[Markzebra]

Use your brain Vapour, and learn the stuff upside down. No technical knowledge or tricks ever made anyone any good. OK folks probably last post from me, nice knowing you

[vapour]

I understand the benefits of breaking rules and doing things upside down, but you have to know the rules before you can break them.

Mark I'm not for sure if your comment was just a lash out because you are maybe from a competitive retouching studio then Box, but the point of my question was not to make this dark art of retouching even more mysterious...

I just want to encourage a 'high end' conversation on here so that there actually can be some creative room to move forward with these fundamental tools.

Use my brain...

- It didn't come naturally when Photoshop loaded that I could make a mid-tone mask by using a gradient map with black on both ends and white in the middle

- Or that I could use a 50% gray layer on Soft Light and paint with white and black to creatively dodge and burn a portrait similar to almost painting to transform a photo

- The Photoshop resource disc didn't come Luminosity Masks so that I could adjust my highlights and my shadows locally

- There wasn't an action for lasso-ing portions of an image and creating a Curves adjustment layer for local contrast and color control

- I didn't automatically think to desaturate my dark dark shadows to eliminate color cast

No... all this was learned by forums like Retouch Pro or Googling for tutorials etc etc. So while my question may have seemed, perhaps, juvenile to some for me I'm just wanting to learn something new or at least get a new perspective on the tools I already have and know.