ADOBE'S NEW MOBILE PHOTOSHOP

Photo manipulation and Photoshop are synonymous. The word Photoshop has even transformed into a verb in our modern, daily vernacular, sort of like Google. We say things like, "Photoshop that..." or "It's been photoshopped...". Interestingly enough, as common as the word has become, those that use it are confined to mostly technologically, artistically, and photographically inclined individuals. Makes sense though. It's pricy, it takes a ton of man hours to learn and use it well, and generally speaking, you're tied to a desk when you use it.

For the common user that's always on the go, that just doesn't work. In order to keep an audience, one has to find a way to keep it mobile, or at least offer something that's actually usable while on the go with less fuss. There are so many options out there for mobile image editing and Adobe is trying to be the top choice. In October, during the Adobe MAX conference, Adobe will be announcing it's latest version of Adobe Photoshop for mobile. If you've used the current version, you've probably come to the same conclusion that I have. It's crap. There's nothing special about it, and it sure doesn't appeal to the professional. But before you go getting too excited, it seems that the latest version will be set to bridge the gab between the amateur/casual user and the pro.

A preview video was released not too long ago and it looks pretty nifty-neat. Things like spot healing, cloning, smoothing, painting, and even liquify have been added to the lineup. No word on layers, yet, that I'm aware, but it would makes sense that there was some kind layer functionality. We'll see.

Personally, I'm excited to see what Adobe brings about. I've discovered that more and more that I want and need some kind of workflow option for "on-the-go". If I can get something that keeps my travel load light and easy to lug around, then I'm a happy camper. The idea of having something powerful on a tablet is so very appealing. Let's hope that's on the way.

FIX WHITE BALANCE IN PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop is an interesting beast. There's more than one way to do anything. That's the beauty of the software. Of course, which technique you use is based on the situation and personal preference. The same goes for white balance. You could use a grey card, adjust in camera, or just fix it in post. It's up to you and what functions best for your workflow.

Personally, when I shoot, I'm mostly shooting based on the relative area of my light source. Meaning, if it's tungsten, I'm shooting based on that. It typically gets me in the right area and I can adjust in post because I'm shooting RAW. Some times I do a custom white balance with an ExpoDisc, but I've been doing that much less. My white balance now is usually being corrected in post.

Here's a neat trick to add to your bag of tricks for correcting white balance in Photoshop. Create a new layer, fill with 50% grey, and set the blend mode to difference. Next, create a threshold adjustment layer and drag your right slider nearly all the way to the left. Basically until you there are just a few areas in black. These are your midtones and closest to 50% grey. Use your handy color selector tool and select a point in one of those areas. Now, hide the grey and threshold layers and create a curves adjustment layer. Grab the grey point sample too, which is the one in the middle, and select the very same point you created before, the one in the midtones, and feast your eyes on corrected white balance beautifulness.

This trick seems a little long, but hey, it works. And it's another tool to add to your bag of tricks. Check out the video above for a very nice walk through.

Framed

Framed

The composition was slightly off in this one. Not a big deal though. I still like the image. I don't know why I didn't see it from the outset. Live and learn, right?

No Means No! That's What She Said...

I set out yesterday to do something creative. It was an off day. As a matter of fact, I had two big mishaps. I accidentally deleted some images from my card. I had started a new series on Sunday and had yet to upload them to my drive. Why I formatted my card, I'll never know. That was the first mishap.

I decided I wanted to do something that was comic book-like for this shoot. I was mainly looking to work on some post processing. So, this idea popped up. We set out to knock it out. Everything went smoothly. I came home, uploaded and began to work. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to save and somehow managed to close the PSD without saving...Hmmm...twice in one day.

Fortunately, I didn't lose too much. It was only about an hour of work. I didn't have to start completely over, which was good, but nevertheless, I decided to call it a night. I tackled it this morning and finished without much of a problem. Check it out!

Cheers!

No Means NO!

CHECK OUT THIS KILLER SPEED RETOUCH BY MARINA DEAN-FRANCIS

Retouching is an art and I always enjoy watching time-lapse retouching videos. We get the ability to see something come together in just a matter of moments. Better yet, there's always something to learn from them too.

Check out the time-lapse retouching video below by photographer and retoucher Marina Dean-Francis. You can check out more of Marina's retouching work here and her photography here.

Beauty United?

While working this morning I took a small break to wander around the internets and stumbled upon an article which seemed to potentially be very cool. Then I started reading...and, well, I was confused and somewhat amazed. You can read the article here.

"How Euro-Centric

Beauty Ideals

Are Around  The World"

Turns out a woman, Esther Honig, decided to send of an untouched headshot of herself to retouchers and designers around the world with the instructions of retouching it to "make me look beautiful". The base image is below. Turns out most people were confused by this. So she clarified by stating that she wanted them to make her look like one of the women in their country's fashion magazines and then sat back and waited for the stunning results. I'm just not sure the results were stunning.

What I saw, at least what was released, was a lot of bad retouching. My guess is that this kind of thing was probably hard to convince some really top retouchers in the field to jump on the band wagon. So there were a lot of aspects of the retouching that were mediocre at best. Applied makeup that just pulled the eye away from viewing the picture. I guess I'm saying the quality of the retouch distracted from the point of the experiment. One thing did stick out though and it is pointed out. It becomes clear how "euro-centric beauty ideals are around the world", and that's pretty interesting.

Italy

Vietnam

Now this is not to say that there weren't some very good retouching in some of the images. There were a couple that I thought were nice, but they were very similar...and there really were only a two or three. That just goes to prove the above quote. Which brings me to an interesting point, and perhaps this really was the point of the experiment, are our worldwide views of beauty coming unified?

Ukraine

I suppose because we will live in a world that is continually "plugged in", that this possibility isn't so far fetched. We share vast amounts information, points of view, creations, and cat videos with the world every day. Just about anything you'd want to know, whether it's 100% true or not, is just a simple web search away. So naturally it would seem that we would begin to mingle our visions of beauty and it only makes sense that the lines that once clearly defined what we see as "beautiful" in the USA  and "beautiful" in India slowly become blurred. That's an interesting thought.

Most of the retouched images from Esther Honig's experiment were not that great. As a friend of mine put it, "The only thing I got from this was that people around the world suck ass at Photoshop". This is true. Well put. The two images from the USA are particularly bad, but the ideal there is clear, I think.

USA

But it's interesting how the basic view is pretty much the same. I do think that it would have been interesting to see what the results would have been if the image was a full body shot as opposed to just a headshot.

That's just my two cents.