Landscape photography. My post production.

I have been asked many times about the post production I do for a landscape photography. This post should answer some of the questions, as I’ll show you how and what I did on the images from our trip to Key West, FL.
Funny thing that there is no Photoshop (by it’s common meaning): I’ve used RAW converter to do all (except sharping) the job.
This is why Alex shoot always RAW, and I like to work with RAW files. It is much faster and cleaner to use a RAW converter and a batch processing to get a perfectly adjusted large stack of the photos.

Below I show you several screen shots, so you can see what adjustments I did in RAW Converter for the particular image. You can’t simply apply these settings for your picture, as they may not work in your case, but you can see the idea and experiment with your own image by moving  sliders and see the difference.

Continue reading Landscape photography. My post production.

Product photography behind the scene video: Post production part.

A recorded LIVE broadcast from the product photography masterclass you can find at Alex's blog. Here is a post production part with some explanations what I did. Hope you will find it interesting:-)

Mouse Over to see Before and After retouching

Product photography retouching, video.

Product photography retouching, video.

Thank you for looking. Any feedback and suggestions are very welcome! If you like our work, you can subscribe to our RSS feed and "Like" our AKELstudio page on Facebook:-)

All the best,
Genia

Retouching water splash in photoshop. Video.

This video shows my post production process in photoshop.
This is my first video, I think water and product retouching is hard to find, and I am sure my video will be very interesting for those who do products.

Some time ago I start to record retouching process of almost every image I work on.  So more interesting post production videos to come! stay tuned:-)

To see before and after retouching photo, please open the entire post.
Continue reading Retouching water splash in photoshop. Video.

How and where learn High End Photo Retouching. Tips and resources.

If you believe in self-education (like I do), you don’t need to go to a school or college to become a retoucher, you should only know the right places where to find an information and spend many many hours, days and years for practice. I can help you with right resources where you can learn the High End retouching techniques. Hope it will save your time, energy and money (I wish I had these links couple years ago:-)

Most helpful and friendly community for retouchers is RetouchPro.

RetouchPro hosts a  regular  live, interactive masterclasses where you watch a guest retoucher’s desktop as they work in real time. You can also ask questions for the guest retoucher.  These live events usually cost only $10 and for this money you will get a ton of useful information.

Free tutorials:

Continue reading How and where learn High End Photo Retouching. Tips and resources.

Architecture photography post-production for Vieler International.

Half year ago we did a product photo-session for Vieler International.

Now Andre Vieler asked us to shoot exterior photos of the whole plant. We used a fork lifter to raise the photographer to a height where was much less perspective distortion.  This works much better then any tilt/shift lens, I wish we could have such lifter for all of our architectural projects:-)

Here I’ll show you how I did a post-production, some parts of work flow. Here is the image before and after:

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Architecture photography post-production and retouching

Continue reading Architecture photography post-production and retouching for Vieler International.

Portrait retouching manual

It is not to easy to find lessons or tutorials how Pro prepare images of models for  magazines and advertising. I try to accumulate information what I  learn from different professional retouchers in this tutorial.

I do not pretend to “guru” status, you can correct me. I just want to learn how to do sublime retouching and post-production and share my knowledge with you.

This is an example of fast work-flow for a portrait retouching and post-production for print or web. If you like to learn this process in more details you can find a bonus links below.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Portrait retouching and post-production lesson

Portrait retouching and post-production lesson

1 step. Clean Skin

Continue reading Portrait retouching manual and bonus links

Is the white background really white?

or how to make a white background (RGB:255.255.255) and prepare image for a catalog print

Step 1. Finding not white areas of the background

  • Convert photo from Raw using Raw Converter
  • Duplicate layer
  • Create New fill ore adjusted layer/Curves:
Create new fill or adjustment layer

Create new fill or adjustment layer

Continue reading Is the white background really white?

Our first studio workshop and master class

Studio lighting for fashion and beauty photography workshop.

  • Location:               AKELstudio – Atlanta  based photography studio.
  • Photographer:     Alex Koloskov

We had a great first workshop and master class experience and got beautiful photos of our students:-) More technical information about studio workshop and lighting set up please read at Studio lighting for fashion photography

In this post I will show the pictures we took during the workshop. Enjoy! All comments are welcome!

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Studio portrait lighting setup

Atlanta Photographer Alex Koloskov, workshop (Ira)

Continue reading Our first studio workshop and master class in Atlanta

Lens distortion and perspective correction in architecture photography

This article is for those who do not have  tilt shift adapter or TS lens and still do architecture photography.
I’ll show you how to correct perspective distortion using Photoshop. Camera lens distortions occur frequently when taking pictures of architectural subjects with a wide-angle lens and the need to use an external program. Distortion will always have place when  we shoot tall buildings, tilting the camera upwards.  There is no way (unless you have TS adapter or lens)  to get  vertical lines to be vertical on a picture, as it will fall in the middle.

However, you can easily correct camera lens distortions using Photoshop or other photo software.

Below you can  find list of software for lens distortion and perspective correction and tutorial how to fix it in Adobe Photoshop

How to correct perspective distortions of an image using the Adobe Photoshop Free Transform Tool.

Before lens distortion and perspective correction

Before lens distortion and perspective correction

After lens distortion and perspective correction

After lens distortion and perspective correction

All you have to do is:

Continue reading Lens distortion and perspective correction in architecture photography

How to determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop

note: This lesson will be  useful for photo retouchers, who will be dealing with partially overexposed image, where important to see exactly where overexposed areas is.  For example, if you need to get completely white background, etc.

Couple years ago we found that a histogram on the camera or different software’s don’t show overexposed areas correctly. Here is why: camera histogram will use JPEG to evaluate, even if you shoot RAW. So, it is inaccurate by definition.
When I’ve  tried to find the answer in Internet, I get no luck, there are only tutorials and lessons how to fix this overexposed areas in Photoshop, but nothing about how to  find these areas correctly.

So this tutorial about how to find and determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop.

Look at this image:

image-with-overexposed-areas

Some areas are overexposed here. Let’s check where are these areas:

Continue reading How to determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop