Ryan Phillips Blog

OK, this is my last post until after New Years! I swear! I was up in Terrebonne, Oregon scouting the location for several shoots for the ranch this year. The area got hit with “Freezing Fog” the night before. I had never heard of it before but it’s really really cool! It turns everything in site white. All the trees looked like Jonathan Adler made them. Here are a few of the images I made that day…

Grab a Sunday paper and check out our featured couples and images this week! We have 2 or 3 more articles coming so keep checking. You can also find it online here

It’s really cool to see some of our couples be featured in the LA Times. They interviewed 5 or 6 of our past brides for this series with questions/images ranging from first dances to engagement sessions…..

Carrie and I just wanted to take the time to thank all of our wonderful clients this past year. It has been a great year with some fantastic weddings and portraits. We have thoroughly enjoyed the honor of being there to capture those special moments in your life and are grateful to see such moments in a very tough time in our country’s history. We wish the best for you and your families in the future and are very excited for the year ahead! We have a lot of new and exciting things to share with you in the next few months so be sure to check back regularly. I have been trying to post more photography related tips and tricks. Please e-mail me with anything you want to learn about and I will try and do an easy tutorial on the subject. We will be taking a short blogging hiatus until after New Years to spend some time with our families…..Stay Tuned!

Ryan and Carrie

Seriously, that’s his last name ;-) She’ll be Mrs. Romance. Anyway, I have known Mike for a few years but hadn’t heard from him in a while. He was really excited when his soon-to-be wife handed him a list of names of wedding photographers she had researched. Lucky me I was on the list ;-) We headed down to the Santa Monica Pier and despite being accosted by a few of the pier locals we had a great shoot! The light was perfect and the police didn’t kick me off the pier… for once! Technically it’s private property and they don’t let commercial shooters on with out some serious $$$ and a permit. Score one for Ryan…

This is a continuation of the Photoshop retouching tutorial I began last week. This one will be much harder to see on my blog so try it out on your own photos to see how well it works. *Note: I rarely retouch a portrait subject unless asked. I almost always retouch if it’s commercial work. I use a very light hand so the subject remains as natural as possible.

Last week we removed the dark circles under the eyes. To finish off the eyes I did a few different adjustments. As always, start with a new layer so you can see the effects. If the effects are too much you can lower the opacity to make it look more natural:

Define Iris: As you get older the dark line around your iris tends to get more dull. To enhance this set your brush to a size that matches the thin iris line. (about 3) Set the brush’s blend mode to multiply. I like to start around 15% opacity and layer it on from there. Zoom in past 100% so you can really concentrate on the line. You need to be really steady with your hand so you don’t drift out towards the whites of the eyes. Slowly drag your brush around the entire iris to darken the outside line. You may need 2 passes.

Brighten/Whiten Eyes: I use this to pop the catch light and whiten the eyes a bit. Set your brush to a size that matches the colored part of the eye. Set your blend mode to screen. Again, start with 15% and build from there. Lightly brush over the catch light (light source that is reflected in the eye.) Some people like to hit a spot right across from the catch light since the eye naturally refracts light. Others like to hit the entire rim all the way around since it really makes the eyes pop. I prefer the second option. Next (with caution) hit the whites of the eyes but don’t hit everything the same. Vary the opacity or the passes so you create some shading.

Enhance Eye Color: Set your brush to a size that matches the colored part of the eye. Set your brush’s blend mode to color and pick a color in the color picker. (you can double click the foreground color box to bring that up) Set the opacity to 10%. Slowly paint to taste.

Darken Lashes: Many retouchers have fake lash brushes that they can paint on. I find it a bit much for me and I don’t really shoot Beauty or Fashion any more so I stay away from that. I prefer to just darken and the lashes and eye rim a bit. Set your brush to 3 or smaller. Set your brush’s blend mode to multiply and your opacity to 30%. Now, slowly paint out each lash individually (at 100% zoom) Then hit the rim all the way around the eyelids. Lower or raise the brush opacity as you need to keep it natural.

Need to swap an eye or lighten a dark eye? I learned this tip from Scott Kelby. Drag a loose selection around the eye with the lasso tool. Right click the selection and choose – New layer via copy. Press Command T (Cntrl T on a PC) to bring up the free transform box. Right click and choose – Flip horizontal – lower the opacity about 20% and drag the layer to the other side – slide it into place and then raise the opacity. Lastly add a layer mask and paint out the areas that you don’t need. The best reason to do this is if one eye is smaller than the other. You can also use this if you have an eye that is much darker than the other one but make sure you clean up the face to match.

Some additional steps if you need them would be too remove any veins from the eyes and remove the second catch light. There are multiple ways to get these results, I use these because I find them to be the most natural. They take a little more time but the results are worth it.

Hey Los Angeles Photographers – I wanted to share one of my best kept secrets…

I use a company called Higher Tech for all my computer support and they are now taking on new customers. It is owned by Reza Rad who is one of the most proficient computer guys I have ever seen. While they are primarily Mac they do PC as well. Reza installs and maintains the systems for ton of high pressure clients. His clients range from major record labels, celebrities and entertainment big wigs to some of the top wedding photographers in the US.

Reza Rad
Reza@HigherTechInc.com
Phone (818) 961-8100

We had a few magazines publish some new work this month. Here is the one from the knot, more to follow…

Here is a quick tip to clean up the area underneath the subject’s eyes in a portrait.

Create a new layer by pressing Command + J (mac) Control + J (pc)

Choose the stamp tool:
Brush = 70% (soft brush)
Set mode to Lighten
Opacity = 40%
Flow = 100%

Press the option key to choose a sample point that you will use to brush over the dark circles. Make sure you choose a clean bright un-blemished skin patch to take your sample from. Now lightly paint over the dark circles underneath the eye and watch them dis-appear.

If the effect is too much, lower the opacity on the duplicate layer to taste. Always use a duplicate layer when retouching so that you can change the intensity of the effect as well as turn the layer on and off to see how your retouch is going.

You can also use this same brush to lighten blemishes, wrinkles or scars. Just make sure you sample a good area next to the bad area you plan on cleaning up.

I will be using this same image over the course of the next few weeks to show you how to professionally retouch an image. This first round takes the image from Raw through a basic eye clean up.

Here is the Raw image straight out of camera:

I opened it in Photoshop and adjusted the color and contrast with NIK Color Efex 3.0 – Pro Contrast Filter. However, you can easily do it with a curves adjustment and a brightness/contrast adjustment as well.

Using the technique above I quickly cleaned up around the eyes. You can go deeper if you like, I just wanted something more natural. The shoot was for The Farmers Daughter Hotel in Los Angeles and we wanted to keep a very natural approachable look. The “I just woke up, come hither look” ;-)

Here is a close up at 100% : Before and After

Note* This is just the eye clean up portion. In future lessons I will show you how to make the eyes pop, clean up skin, bring dimensionality to the body and a few other little tricks. Each time, I will show you the before and after.