Any advice for retouching athletes?

[gamedonechanged]

I have a nice picture of an example before that I will upload later but generally when retouching athletes and sportpeople im assuming we need to accentuate the persons sweat and musle tone. Also the skin colour always seems to be darkened a bit too.

Are there any tips for this type of retouching? It will probably be easier to see what I am talking about once I post that pic later.

Thanks

[DJSoulglo]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Depends what type of athlete. I've been doing almost nothing but retouching athletes for the last year, so if you show me your pic, I'll give you some pointers.

a good starting point is to look at carlos serrao's pics. I like his style of shooting athletes.

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Oh excellent maybe you can advise me in the general process involved. I'm on my way home now do will postcyhr 2 styles of pics a bit later. I have purchased stick pics in almost the dame pose and lighting senario to so hopeuflly I can replicate the look with some guidance.

Watch this space.....

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Ok here are the 2 images that I am looking at. So basically to me it looks like the overall colour of the persons have been changed quite a bit (darkened) and something has been done to emphasis the sweat and muscles. Any ideas?

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1725/cyclist.jpg

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3263/sprinterl.jpg

[skydog]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

so are you going to retouch athletes posed in a studio with lights or in real action. The pics you show use lights and any retouch appears to be darkening the darks and lightening the lights...like with dodge and burn.

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

The stock pics I have look like they are studio shot pics. So you think a basic dodge and burn job would be suffice to emphasise the sweat? The thing is sweat looks more shimmery and wet.

DJSG any thoughts?

[skydog]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

are you saying you want to fake sweat? who is you customer? Personally I'd only deal with the sweat if it were real, but if your customer is a magazine or for advertising you may need to fake it.

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Not sure if fake is the right word. Did you see the pic above? I guess from that one is kind does look like artificial sweat. There is definatley a glossy/shimmery look to it which resembles sweat.

For this example lets assume the customer is a magazine. In the example pic it looks as if the sweat had been done on places where lighting was already present so maybe that is a starting point?

Edit: I just noticed there is actually a tutorial on here that deals specifically with getting a wet skin look so I think I will have a play and see if that can be implemented. Link is below. Hopefully Djsoulglo can weigh in on what he normally does.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=212

[jbarahona]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

I was looking at the photograph of the cyclist and that is not sweat but rather water from his water bottle. If you want to do an effect like that one, you can use a "water" brush in photoshop. For example Ron's clearwater brushe set. Here is the link to a site where you can purchase them and see a couple of examples.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/i...wProduct=65550

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Yeah that might come in handy at some point but im going to attempt the sprinter style one first.

Ok so I have used this stock image.

http://thumb9.shutterstock.com.edges...n-16416268.jpg

And this is what I got. To me the it doesn't look that shimmery/wet/oily or whatever you want to call it. Any ideas where I am going wrong?

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5958/sprintertry.jpg

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Ok I have added a few extra bits in an attempt to recreate that shimmer wet look. I think on the biceps they maybe need to be bigger but on the shoulders what do you think?

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/1...ertry2copy.jpg

[DJSoulglo]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

haha, I actually worked on that dude on the cycle.

The problem is with your stock image. The lighting is not in any way accentuating the muscles, there's no sweat to enhance, and it's only 1 shot.

THat dude on the cycle? That's a comp of over 30 shots. Arms, legs, hair, water, water bottle, cycle, background, details in the clothing (it is an adidas ad, so loads of time on that) are all different shots.

It's really hard to capture movement, strength and detail in one photo.

Now about your shot:

It's not a good shot to start with. When you look at that picture the first reaction is "It's a dude on flat backgroun" there's nothing dynamic about it. THere's no muscle tension. He's not actually gonna run in a second. If you don't have that tension and you only have 1 shot to work with, it's really hard to create that tension.

Have a look at this to see what I mean:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c9...L_shot_404.jpg

Now about what you've done to the picture. I'm afraid you've just made him look blown out. If you want to enhance the muscles, go in and dodge and burn (using 2 curves) the muscles. Not the whole picture. If you're serious about using this pic, start over.

I'll post a detailed retouch brief for you later today.

[gamedonechanged]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Thanks that would be really helpful. Looking forward to it....

Assuming there was some sweat to start with how would go about making it more prominent? I thought maybe get a hard brush with scattering switched on then just make it it more concentrated in the centre parts where it's really glistening then just apply a slight blur.

Im just guessing here.

[DJSoulglo]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Well, the reason sweat glistens is because of the highlights in the actual water drops.

What you do is very simply take a curve, make it a lot brighter (bring the white point in on a straight curve gets the whitest result) and then just brush that in whereever you think it's needed.

[Andrew Lawrence]

Re: Any advice for retouching athletes?

Ok I have added a few extra bits in an attempt to recreate that shimmer wet look. I think on the biceps they maybe need to be bigger but on the shoulders what do you think?

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/1...ertry2copy.jpg

A lot of the look comes down to the lighting. The shiny look comes from two lights behind the subject that back light the skin giving it a shine.... Take a look at Jill Greenburg.... all of her shots are done with two backlights that skim the skins surface. This helps give the athlete definition in this muscles. If the lighting is there you can emphasize it, if it isn't, then it would be hard to just make it up.