the beginning (color profile)

[erikerxon]

hello.

how ru doin?
as uc im new here, im amateur retoucher and came here to become a pro

all questions in time, but now out of curiosity i wanna ask a question about the beginning.


1. which raw converters do u guys (pros) use?
2. in what profile do u do your retouching?
after a long searching a was stuck to prophoto, but a friend of mine (photographer/retoucher) convinced me to switch to adobergb. i still believe that prophoto's wider gamut affect your picture and you can go further with curves (for example).
3. when u open your picture in photoshop, what technique do u use to set correct WB?
if i remember correctly chris orwig in his tutorials was teaching how to do it using a threshold layer. im using this technique but i was always not sure about correct wb.
4. how do u correct skintone? chris orwig (i still believe) in the same tutorial was explaining what CMYK numbers to use for white and black skin. how a healthy skintone should look like?

i'm very curious what do u do guys in the beginning, how do u prepare your picture for your main work - retouching.
or maybe u correct wb and skintone at the end of all your work?

5. now, i should be ready to retouch.


thanks for opinion and sharing experience of all of u.

[Lightmonkey]

Hi,

Bit OT but as it says you are from London, why not clean up the english and making it easier to read? Moving on...

1 - I do my RAW conversion in Camera RAW where I try to max out my file giving me as much as possible to work with when in photoshop.

2 - ProPhoto is a larger colorspace, but as no screen I know of can show the whole thing I still like working with Adobe RGB. You can see the difference reviewing them with ColorThink. ProPhoto contains some color the eye cant even see.

Thought I'd add this, comparing the size of Adobe RGB vs ProPhoto RGB.

http://i47.tinypic.com/14xcuj5.png

3 - I set my WB in RAW

4 - Skintone is to me no set value, it depends on what I'm after. There are some RGB values to use as a guide. I think it's meant to be a 30 - 20 difference or something like that. So 170 - 140 - 120 but this I'm not sure of.

[pixelzombie]

2.the extra gamut doesn't help with any sort of curve moves, you're confusing gamut with bit depth i.e. 8bpc versus 16bpc

[flexmanta]

Also, for fashion and beauty, and more or less any photo that contains skin, the best RAW converter is Capture One BY FAR. It's oranges and yellows are the best I have seen and I have tried profiling in Camera Raw to obtain the same results with no success. Not only is it superior regarding color, but it also has several tools dedicated to skin color, and since I've gotten used to merge different conversions into one layer before starting the retouch, with capture one i spend some time just to get the skin right. For example, it has a skin color uniformity tool. Say you have a photo in which the body is more magenta than the face (very common), you can use this tool to bring the hues closer together.

Godmother recommended Capture One to me some time ago and i haven't switched back to ACR for anything with skin. She said Camera Raw has better greens and blues but i haven't tried yet.

[Lightmonkey]

Sounds like Capture One is something I should try out, thank you!

[erikerxon]

first of all, sorry for my english, facebook and sms habbit to write everything in shorter way. i'll try to be polite here, ok?

about capture one i agree. before i was always using ACR but accidently i tried capture one, it looked interesting to me, but it was too difficult to understand, so i quit, later i get back again and said - i have to understand how it works and now i really love it. it produce the best skintones i have ever seen just only by importing raw file (automatically) and when you do corrections, you just get an amazing results. capture one is the one and its true, just it has not user friendly interface, you have to get used to it, after that - it's a gold! Lightmonkey, try it, it's a jewel, trust me. i don't like only one thing - it doesn't have negative clarity new version 5.1 have it already (i was a beta tester), but it works wrong, comparing to adobe, i like how adobe negative clarity is doing. i always like to drop clarity to -5 / -10 for portraits. (i hope i'm not doing a crime in your eyes, dear retouchers).

ok, a couple of people answered here so far, but as i understand i'm using right tools and i need to stick to adobeRGB.

thanks for you answers guys. i'm still interested in a couple of different opinions, lets say why lightroom is better, etc. is anybody using lightroom over here?

[erikerxon]

ps. it is retouching time!!!

[flexmanta]

Lightroom = bridge + acr + library database. I don't need lightroom at all as it's biggest downside is that, in order to keep that library, it relies on databases and things i don't need. And it's converter is camera raw, so don't expect different results from it.

I prefer using the bridge over lightroom anytime, as i am a guy with very organized folders.

[gene_spark]

For quick and dirty conversations i use ACR, for more advanced i use RPP...in ACR my preferred Profile is Adobe RGB and in RPP i use Lab or beta-RGB.
WB most on a graycard ander then refining with Curves in PS, when needed.
Chris Orwig is a good Startingpoint...

lg.
Gene

[erikerxon]

what is it RPP?

ok, now about retouching...

-clone stamp... i was always curious about clone stamp. when you are copying a patch (holding ALT key) sometimes that cross becomes white (normally its black). what does it mean? i never could understand.

-calculations... does anybody can paste me here some useful links about how calculation works? i tried to do a search here, but it gave me so many results that in an hours i didnd find anything and still had a lot of threads to look through.
there is a guy GUY GOWAN (i love him!) i saw him teaching people how to make proper BW and SEPIA conversion using calculations. does anybody knows about it anything? it happens quite often when after retouching im converting pictures to BW but when you print them out you dont see that BW you was expenting to see (especially sepia) and guy gowan was teaching how to get exactly the real bw/sepia using calculations.

-healing brush... who can explain me how this tool works? why sometimes it blur and sometimes it get texture? it looks like it takes a sample (somewhere) and paste it for you, but quite often it paste wrong samples and quite often even a rubish. how to control this tool? what are you using for healing?

thanks.

[ezprod]

WATCH this video. An amazing explanation of channels and using calculations and apply image to create an easy perfect amazing mask!

http://www.deke.com/content/channels...ions-photoshop

[ApWizard]

Originally Posted by flexmanta

Also, for fashion and beauty, and more or less any photo that contains skin, the best RAW converter is Capture One BY FAR. It's oranges and yellows are the best I have seen and I have tried profiling in Camera Raw to obtain the same results with no success. Not only is it superior regarding color, but it also has several tools dedicated to skin color, and since I've gotten used to merge different conversions into one layer before starting the retouch, with capture one i spend some time just to get the skin right. For example, it has a skin color uniformity tool. Say you have a photo in which the body is more magenta than the face (very common), you can use this tool to bring the hues closer together.

Godmother recommended Capture One to me some time ago and i haven't switched back to ACR for anything with skin. She said Camera Raw has better greens and blues but i haven't tried yet.

I've to quote that, CaptureOne is the best for skin tones.
The first time I've tried I was like O_o, shocked, the difference is quite impressive.

@flexmanta: can you tell me something more about your workflow? Do you merge multiple conversions from CaptureOne, CameraRaw or both? Thank you in advance.

[Freya]

Originally Posted by flexmanta

Also, for fashion and beauty, and more or less any photo that contains skin, the best RAW converter is Capture One BY FAR. It's oranges and yellows are the best I have seen and I have tried profiling in Camera Raw to obtain the same results with no success. Not only is it superior regarding color, but it also has several tools dedicated to skin color, and since I've gotten used to merge different conversions into one layer before starting the retouch, with capture one i spend some time just to get the skin right. For example, it has a skin color uniformity tool. Say you have a photo in which the body is more magenta than the face (very common), you can use this tool to bring the hues closer together.

Godmother recommended Capture One to me some time ago and i haven't switched back to ACR for anything with skin. She said Camera Raw has better greens and blues but i haven't tried yet.

I was also advised by Godmother to use Capture One, and after watching her demonstrate the difference working with skintones between C1 and ACR yesterday, I was totally sold. I downloaded a demo today and have been playing around with the basic settings and it really is amazing.... Although Im not sure how the specific skin color tools work. Flex, do you use those? If you do, would you mind explaining a bit your workflow?

[crazyfly1]

erikerxon,
Lot's of good info here so far.
I am pretty much "all Adobe, all the time". I open everything from the new beta of Lightroom and Lightroom's color space is Prophoto with no option to change it. I import into Photoshop with my working space being Prophoto as I always shoot RAW. If I'm going to print or web I view gamut warnings first and usually have to rachet down the color a bit. As some folks have said, with technology being what it is now, I don't think your working space matters much between RGB and Prophoto, however I would not save an image for archival purposes in anything less than the widest possible space (Prophoto) because Epson may come out with a printer that will print it or Apple may come out with a monitor that can show it tomorrow, you never know.

[KR1156]

i use capture one as much as i can, unless the shoot was captured with another capture program, i prefer capone over anything. I also make sure to get the photog's settings from the shoot.

my RGB workspace is adobe rgb 1998. It has a wide color gamut that handles all of cmyk's gamut. some friends use colormatch bc they feel adobe rgb 1998 is too warm and don't like to deal with cmyk conversion problems that may occur with adobe rgb 1998, but colormatch only uses about 80% of cyan in cmyk which can be a drawback. Colormatch can save some headache, but if you're experienced, adobe rgb 1998 is fine with cmyk conversions.

prophoto has too wide of a gamut to me...i mean you're never gonna get most of it in print, so why work in it...can do some damage when you convert that may be hard to fix in the end.

[flexmanta]

Apwizard:
Yes, i use various conversions for mainly 2 reasons.
1. RAW's exposure latitude is wider than psd's or tiff's. The exposure slider is linear (as in not gamma), and it will clip. So, say you have a high key photo that you don't want to be so high key, you make a darker conversion, right? But what if the hair is black? It might clip. So, the best thing to do is to process one conversion exposed for for the skin, and then make a second conversion with the shadows opened up with the fill light slider (dynamic range in CaptureOne), and then merge them in photoshop. If you want the hair darker but you don't want it to clip, you can curve it down with gamma in photoshop. Remember Gamma will not clip anything.

2: The color temperature sliders are actual LAB like controls for the A and B chanels of a photo. Again, there is still more latitude here per channel than there is in 16bpc rgb. So, i will not rely 100% on the temp and tint sliders in my raw converter, but i use it to get myself in the ball park. Warm skin and unbelievable blue eyes? Make 2 conversions, one for the skin, one for the eyes, merge, done.

FREYA
Hola. Yeah, about the skin tone sliders... they are tricky. Think of them as a tool for when the photographer hasn't used a grey card. When there's a grey card in one of the photos in the series, you will just click it with the white balance gun, and tell the program "look, this should be neutral". So, when there's no grey card and there's skin in the photo, you have a way to tell the software "look, this is skin", and it gives you a couple built in skin colors. The ones that come with the program suck. Maybe the light pink one is ok, and you have to use it on fairy light areas of the skin. Maybe the top of the cheeks. The problem is it doesn't cover all the skins, so, what you can do is start with one of the presets and then tweak it. What this tool will do is set the white balance of the photo to make that skin look how you want it, and the rest of the tonality of the image will be modified accordingly.

You don't have to use it only on skin, as you can define a skin tone preset for say, an apple. You click on the apple in that photo and tell the program "this is apple red" and the rest of the colors will also be corrected. You can also use that preset across a full series.

There's more you can do with this approach to color correction, as there are ways to selectively correct skin by the use of somewhat of a mask. I don't use these too much, but there's one slider that does wonders which is the uniformity slider. It's simple. Click on a part of the skin which color you like, increase the uniformity slider, and the rest of the skin will come closer to the clicked tone. It works great for cooler hands than bodies...

blah

[erikerxon]

please, leave comments in my another post: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/har...aphers-pc.html - i'm buying a new pc and your opinion is important.