We are working on our upcoming ebook (another ebook and video from latest masterclass will be available next week), and here I would like to show you the progress. It is not a regular “before and after” image, as before is not a one image, but a picture that showing what you can get from a set of the images using Photoshop and creativity. Now we (Alex and I) have a good grounding in techniques, so this is time for us become more creative. We will experiment with new devices, techniques, objects. Hope it will be very interesting time. Mouse Over to see Before and After  jewelry photography, post-production and retouching New ebook about how we made this photo will be ready very soon. Thank you for looking. Any feedback and suggestions are very welcome!
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Our Last weekend was awesome! There were lake, forest, live music, camp fire, and great company. Thank you Sasha and Rasa for inviting us. Below are some photos of my family. Post production have took only a couple minutes to drag sliders in Adobe camera RAW converter. This is a such creative and easy process:-) At the bottom of the photos you can find screen shots from RAW converter which show how to achieve this film look effect (split toning and vignetting) with Adobe Camera Raw, part of Photoshop CS5. Mouse Over to see Before and After  Photoshop film look effect Continue reading How to make film look photos in 1 minute: Our weekend camping
I noticed a big interest to the focus stacking topic. I will explain a post production part in Photoshop CS5 more detailed. You can read and see the video of a shooting part on Alex’s blog Focus stacking technique using Adobe Photoshop CS5 So, we have a sequence of images: 5, 8, 12. I mean, as many as we need. I have 11 images. Step 1. Select the sequence of the photos in Bridge CS5:  Images selection for focus stacking Step 2. Continue reading How to do Focus Stacking in Photoshop CS5. Jewelry photography post production.
Based on the responses from Alex’s last post about jewelry photo session I”ve decided to post images before and after post production and 100% crop to see amount of work. Some times I had to almost completely re-create a part of the item: it appears to be faster that to trying to restore lost finish and colors. We made about 50 images for a talented jewelry designer Elizabeth Dupree Lynch for her Fine Jewelry collection. All jewelry was hand crafted by Italian jewelry master; therefore, retouching was not easy. It took us many hours (big thanks to my helper Anna Yenina:-) to do it. All “before” objects showed as-is (Camera RAW default settings) photo without focus stacking applied. First image from a sequence is what you’ll see. Images ‘after” have a focus stacking applied.
I am going to do “focus staking in Photoshop cs5″ post next time, but for now you can check out this video how we do a focus stacking. Some images may look overdone, (especially at 100% crop), but this is what we were able to do considering items’ condition (not new) and an extreme tight schedule for a post production. Mouse Over to see Before and After  Diamond ring retouching. Continue reading Jewelry photography retouching: Before and After.
Some time ago I was impressed with stunning water splash photos some photographers did. I saw flowers, birds, bulls, horses. I was curious how they actually did it? Now I know the answer:-)
First, you need a huge set of water splash images and second, many hours of assiduous work. And here is my water splash butterfly:  Water splash butterfly As you can see at my Layer palette, I did many trials, errors, experimentation. See how many layers turned off:-) But for me it’s only one way to learn – error and trial, and trial again. This what we call experience:-) Continue reading How to do a water splash butterfly. Post production.
Recently Alex had a new post on Pixiq.com: Using light painting (lighting brush) technique in product photography. It’s not a new technique, we play with it almost 10 years ago, but I think this method is pretty spectacular and expressive. At the same time working with a light brush is so very creative process that it’s hard to stop:-) You fill yourself like a painter:-) Look at the video below and you will see how the final image was created, stroke by stroke. To create the image, in addition to the knowledge of light and the camera, you should know how to work with masks in Photoshop. I will not teach you the basics of how to work with masks, Google it and you’ll find many great tutorials. Knowing masking in Photoshop is a must for up-to-day photographer or digital artist, IMO. Continue reading Light brush painting. Post-production.
In this post I want to show the difference in visual perception of retouched and not retouched images. There is nothing special in post-production: levels, curves, healing, cloning, transforming. Just routine work and images become more clean, crisp and finished. For some cases we should spend more time for retouching to make photos perfect. However you have to know your final goals and ability to say yourself “Stop! It is good enough now.”:-) Mouse Over to see Before* and After *When I say "Before" this means Camera RAW Default settings.  Alcohol drink photoshop retouching. Continue reading Still life retouching. Glass on black, white and grey. Before and After.
I love retouching! I can spend hours and days working on a single photo. Retouching for me is relaxation, inspiration, meditation, excitement, satisfaction and more:-) I can only wish I could have done it earlier in my life.
I still have to learn a lot and learn fast and deep. If you love Photoshop like I do, join me on this blog and I will share everything I learn here. A couple days ago, I decided to practice in Hi-End portrait retouching. Our studio does not shoot people these days , so I found our friend’s Anna portrait from the last Halloween celebration:-)
Below, at the end of this post, you will find the links with tutorials and tips I used for this retouching session. Mouse Over to see Before and After  Glamour portrait high end retouching in Photoshop Continue reading Glamour portrait retouching. Before and after. Useful links.
Update: This script is for edit psd layers in Adobe Camera RAW ONLY, because you can open any TIFF and JPEG through Bridge. Right click on the image and choose Open in Camera RAW… I did not know it. Thank you guys from LinkedIn  ——- Some days, working on customer’s images (not RAW), I had a dream:-) I wish it would be possible to edit TIFF or even JPEG files in Adobe Camera RAW converter. ACR has a very convenient interface and controls, and I’ve got used to work with it. And what a surprise: Calvin Hollywood asked Russell Brown to write this amazing script. You can download the script here. With this script, you are able to open any layer of your psd file in a camera raw converter. It does not matter what image it is: TIFF or a crappy JPEG because you can still use RAW converter interface to adjust it as if it were a RAW (obviously, it won’t make file RAW-like). You can see the video how it works. For a quick test, I tried to edit a JPEG file (made by point-and-shoot camera) of my daughter working in class. The result was truly impressive! Love it! I do not have much TIFFs or JPEGs (we shoot only RAW), but if you have to edit such files this script is able to save a lot of time as ACR converter is very intuitive and convenient. Mouse Over to see Before and After
 Edit layers in ACR script. Photoshop. Thank you for looking. Any feedback and suggestions are very welcome!
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There are many tutorials how to sharp images for web, and I tested majority of them. Finally I found the one which works best for me. I did not invent the algorithm, big thanks to smart Russian guy, photographer Pavel Kosenko for his research, summarizing the knowledge and finally action he created. I use this action couple years already and very happy with result. I am not a theorist I only filter and use the best on the marker:-). So if you are interested in theory, please read books and another blogs for the explanation on how and why every step works this way. Here I give you only a practical part. This action works best for web size images from 300 х 200 px to 1200 x 800 px. Below one of the examples of how this actions works. Mouse Over to see Before and After  Advanced sharpening in Photoshop for web. Now, the sharpening process, step by step (or you can download Action at the bottom of this article): Continue reading Advanced sharpening for web in one click and full control.
| Welcome to AKELstudio post production blog.
Photography after shooting.
Before and After Images.
| | | *If you are interested in technical secrets of a studio photography, please visit also the blog of our photographer Alex Koloskov |
E-videobook| MasterClass + Post Production |  | | DOWNLOAD NOW | | “I’m only one third through the Masterclass videobook, but so far it is great. I have never seen this information presented in any other publication, on or off the internet. If you are interested in splash photography, this is the preeminent reference.” –Danny Brown |
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