Is there such a thing as FAST HIGH END RETOUCHING?

[Lamouzinga]

Heya all,

I hope you're having a lovely Monday (or Sunday) depending on where you are located in the world.

I've been reviewing my ever growing retouching processes and often feel 'weighed' down by the complexity of what I like to do (pixel by pixel d&b, lighting effects, colour adjustments, hair retouching, just to name a few) - is there such a thing as a fast turnaround for mass edits while still maintaining a good quality body of work? (for example when working on a model's portfolio and you're required to do 10-20 edits, or a wedding etc). Each retouch for me can take anywhere from 2 hours to 8 hours. That's just waaaaaay too time consuming... & more often than not - I end up working more than the set rate

How much time do you spend per photo and if so (if comfortable discussing) what process do you normally do to achieve faster looks?

Thanks

[chinchillakilla]

a faster way you can do things for retouching in photoshop is add a surface blur and gaussian blur and work though with quite a small pixel radius to keep the texture etc and put a black mask on then paint in white this is non destructive and will give you great accuracy in bringing detail back in play with the opacity till you get the look you like and this should save you some time but realistically great work takes time if i was a client i would rather have an image that had quality time spent on it than that of an image that gets to me rather quick.
hope this helps some.

[kav]

I don't think you need to burn and dodge every pore for what you want. If you're starting from raw you should process them in a way that is good for the subject of your photo primarily. Make a "quick" cloning (or healing brush) pass over the image still working with a small brush and cleaning up prime offending details in the form of stray hairs, zits, etc. I'd then make any local color adjustments and do a small amount of burn/dodge work so that the transitions look good, and make sure the eyes and lips look strong.

For a model portfolio you don't want it overdone as they are booked by their look. Whether you think they look even better with more photoshop isn't really relevant as clients who book them will have retouching done to their own tastes. Natural is better here. For weddings these shots are zoomed to varying degrees and printed 8x10 or less and posted to facebook. You don't want them retouched as a magazine cover would be because it takes away some of the candid quality of it. So what is your time budget/image like anyway?

Oh and ignore all advice saying to use surface blur. If you're setting the bar for quality there you can easily be replaced by an automated action sequence and someone's secretary. This isn't what you want.

[Chain]

If you don't get too detailed on the dodge/burning and lighting you should be able to save a lot of time i believe. One example of workflow could be: Heal away bad areas (cleaning up skin), perhaps some minor scupting with liquify, fix up eyes and lips, dodge/burn on larger areas - not getting into pores etc. Curves adjustments with masks to adjust the general lighting.

You get a lot of improvement just spending a small amount of time on each step, the more time you spend, the smaller the improvement "per minute".
Try to set yourself a time goal, perhaps one hour, and see how much you can get done in that time. I believe it should be more than sufficient for most images (and put in the extra hours on the special/important ones).

[DJSoulglo]

FAST - CHEAP - GOOD

You can only pick 2. Good retouching can be fast, but it wont be cheap. Cheap retouching can be good, but it'll be slow.

[ashphotoart]

yes,
if you are technically good with photoshop and if u setup and save all of your tools (Presets) (different settings - mostly used by you), and make actions for all of your favourite time consuming layer settings, I think it can be gonna fast,

I've setup many tools myself and I do all of the work as u do. very fast and clean. actions does many processes much faster.

[Mike Needham]

Set up actions for commonly used functions, that's a no brainer, save pre-sets that you know can be used on a set of 20 wedding images of the groom in a dark church etc. It does seem that you may be getting bogged down in the detail and for what you seem to actually need to do, you'll only find the devil there

[eraanexact]

If someone wanted really high quality work done with a quick turnaround for 20+ images, I'd say the way to do it is take the job to a retouching studio with multiple retouchers who can all work simultaneously on the job. In the "fast-cheap-good" model, this scenerio would eliminate "cheap".

[CoreyByas]

there is Dave C....? did something with NAPP, he had actions, brushes, even a texture that was from skin and applied it through "Texturizer", swatches etc... He has a DVD (Kelbytraining). It was offered at one time as a free course on NAPP. He was doing this for speeding things up. Action would set up all the layers, catch light brushes etc..

[Lamouzinga]

Thank you all for your comments - definitely some food for thought

Totally going to have to look into setting up presets/actions for myself. Although doing what I do by memory does seem to make sense at the time (maybe so don't forget) will definitely need to enforce setting out some kind of plan for what needs to be achieved & time limits on each process. (do kind of become a perfectionist on each stage of retouching so culling that down does make a lot of sense!)

Really appreciate the different suggestions. Many varied ways we can achieve similiar results! Great to think (or at least attempt to) think outside the box.

[ray12]

Hi Lamouzinga,

Im a bit late to this thread... but Id love to re-emphasize how important actions might be to doing High-end work quickly. Learning how to create your own retouch actions is a fairly simple task that you can begin to use after only about 20 minutes of reading the instructions.

In our case...over time we have been able to set up a single keystroke action to perform over 75 repetitive steps that we might do on any high-end image. Our entire retouch workflow has been automated and reduced to a 1 keystroke action (F2). It does all the setups, copies, layers, adjustments, and keystrokes for us...and we just pick out which steps we choose to use on an individual image. We might not use every step pre-created for us on an image...but if we needed to do a paint with light adjustment on an image...3 paint with light layers have already been made up for us up ahead of time by the action and are pre-labeled and ready to be used at will...sometimes we just use one as needed...sometimes we need to use all 3.

We also make up actions for the most used steps like make new layer, put a curve on it, pull up the curve to create light, and then put an inverted black mask on the layer and give us a small soft white brush. That action is F5 for us. An action like that takes twenty repetitive key strokes and the action does all the steps automatically for us in less than 2 seconds. This is where we see the time savings. What if I had to do that action 5 times per image...times 20 images. Thats 2000 keystrokes we saved.

We put a strip of thin cardboard on our keyboard... with wording on it... as a reminder of what that special action does...so you can just look up and see that F8 is make "New Layer"

Wish you the best of luck.

Most retouchers are those that appreciate beauty but are highly detailed and have the patience to work hours on an image...but when the clock is ticking...things change. For us...actions made the speed difference we needed...and allowed us to do complicated or repetitive steps as quick as ever... while retaining high-quality and creativity.

Ray12

[djbunty]

after a long time i'm uploading my work just see total time 1hr for finish.

[Wolfman]

Originally Posted by djbunty

after a long time i'm uploading my work just see total time 1hr for finish.

Can you tell us what your speedy method is?

[djbunty]

sure my friend i'm uploading PSD soon

[shizam1]

Portraiture is my friend for when I want speed and good results. When I'm doing beauty, I still like to use portraiture dialed way back, and then do the D&B and frequency separation after that.

[Pari Retouch]

Originally Posted by Wolfman

Can you tell us what your speedy method is?

I didn't wanted to offense anyone by my words but

Guess what, I won't call this skin retouch a speedy method as I see nothing so great that cannot be done in 1 hour in this. If we have regular practice of d&b doing this image is 1 hour is not a great deal, I think it took the retoucher long to do this :P

Just my two cents.

[sweetsurndr]

I know I'm super late on all of this....but I've watched a lot of different professional dvd's and read books and studied the work of high profile retouchers...and the bottom line is that if you want work that looks like it's going to go in the magazines, it's going to take TIME. There's no shortcuts or ways around it.

I'm just a student so I'm no "expert" yet by any means, but I've learned enough to know that the less time you cut down on an image, the lower the quality of the retouching will be. Sure, if you're doing weddings and model portfolios it doesn't have to be photoshopped to Beauty image standards, however to create a beautiful next to perfect retouched image, you have to make it look natural...and that's where the time comes in. To make something look "perfected" or "retouched" yet still remain "natural" takes time and finesse, as well of course of having the natural eye for it.

Just my two cents I suppose.

[Boneappetit]

That's right... Fast retouch, Yes... Fast Hi End, No...

[Pari Retouch]

Originally Posted by Boneappetit

That's right... Fast retouch, Yes... Fast Hi End, No...

lol that's true.

[fraiseap]

I do a lot of model portfolio work and editing 10 shots from one shoot is my norm. I spend about 40-50 mins per image.

Now, before people start saying that there is no way a high end retouch can be achieved in that time, I have to say that the retouch is not high end and would not be suitable for a magazine campaign (for some reason Louis Vuitton hasn't come knocking on my door yet!), however I get very positive comments from professional models who need images suitable for printing at 10x12.

Here is what I tend to do;

I always use a good makeup artist and ensure that the lighting is good - this saves a lot of time in post.

Clean up skin using healing brush and patch tool.
Clone on low opacity and lighten mode to lift shadows under eyes and to clean up blood vessels in eyes.
Curves adjustment to whites of eyes
Separate curves adjustment to iris to increase contrast
Dodge and burn for macro sculpting of face, and to enhance highlights on face and hair. Also D&B to reduce any distracting shadows.

Thats it

I rarely use IHP.

Adam

[sweetsurndr]

Originally Posted by fraiseap

I do a lot of model portfolio work and editing 10 shots from one shoot is my norm. I spend about 40-50 mins per image.

Originally Posted by fraiseap

However I get very positive comments from professional models who need images suitable for printing at 10x12.

Oh yeah, for a model portfolio that isn't going into a magazine or isn't a beauty/makeup/high fashion thing that seems more than totally reasonable!

[kav]

Originally Posted by fraiseap

Clone on low opacity and lighten mode to lift shadows under eyes and to clean up blood vessels in eyes.


Adam

That's the only part I'd change. The rest sounds like an excellent workflow for such jobs. I know it's not printing that large and your way is probably faster, but if the eye bags aren't complex I can dodge them out just a bit and shape the lower eyelid shadows shadows nicely without overdoing it within a couple minutes (literally) and it will look much better than people might expect for such a low time investment. The key is accuracy and being able to read the brush settings you'll need. It saves a lot of time if you can kind of plan out your strokes to what will yield the desired effect rather than fiddling with it endlessly. Low opacity cloning is an area where you really need to be careful or it can start to look fake.

[fraiseap]

Originally Posted by kav

That's the only part I'd change. The rest sounds like an excellent workflow for such jobs. I know it's not printing that large and your way is probably faster, but if the eye bags aren't complex I can dodge them out just a bit and shape the lower eyelid shadows shadows nicely without overdoing it within a couple minutes (literally) and it will look much better than people might expect for such a low time investment. The key is accuracy and being able to read the brush settings you'll need. It saves a lot of time if you can kind of plan out your strokes to what will yield the desired effect rather than fiddling with it endlessly. Low opacity cloning is an area where you really need to be careful or it can start to look fake.

Interesting comment, I must compare dodging with low opacity cloning on lighten mode as two methods of lifting dark shadows under the eyes. These dark shadows seem to be the one thing models hate to have in their images. Of course the skin texture is maintained if lighten mode is used but, as the models tend to have good skin and the makeup is well applied I guess dodging would work fine and may give a superior effect.