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Touchup Video in real time

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National Modeling Directory

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This is a repost of a video I made to show a 4 minute retouch in real time. It's not accelerated like the "you tube" videos and such. You can see all the settings and watch the work as it is actually done. Of course results can be a bit better if you take more time but this is to teach some basic techniques and show that retouching does not take hours, it takes minutes. The photo being retouched is not my own, it is someone's from this group that published it back when I made this movie. So many asked me how the retouch was done that I used the same photo and I kept the video. (In part because some knucklehead emailed me and called me a fibber about the time I took to retouch stating that this retouch would take hours).

To view this, you download the pieces and click on the .EXE file and it will combine them all into the movie as an AVI file.

The techniques are not advanced, I stuck to the basics as a teaching tool. A lot of people are new here and so I thought I would repost it and hope that it might help someone.

http://michianatalent.com/touchupvid

--
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
 
First, thanks Glenn for providing us with this video. Looks great, and it shows how these things can be done in just minutes as you said.

For Peano and others, here's what I did. First, I created a new folder in My Docs (just to keep it all organized) and downloaded all those files to that folder. There's almost 120 MB worth of files so it pays to have a fast connection.

Then, just double click on the executable file and follow the prompts to join all the files into a playable AVI file. Save this file in the same folder. Once done, double click the AVI file and it should open in Windows Media Player.
Hope this helps.
--
Regards,
Bill
 
Any chance the OP could host the video for viewing? I can only speak for myself in stating that I surely am not anxious to jump through all of those hoops to view something I'm not sure I have a "need" to see. However, if presented in a "push here dummy" format, I'd probably take a look.:)

Just a thought.

-Laurie
 
Wilkev said:
For Peano and others, here's what I did. First, I created a new
folder in My Docs (just to keep it all organized) and downloaded all
those files to that folder. There's almost 120 MB worth of files so
it pays to have a fast connection.
Click to expand...
On behalf of all the feeble, Bill, I thank you. Now. Let's see. To create a new folder I ... hmmmm ... right-click somewhere ... and then ... something ... ahhh, there a menu ... do I click something on that menu or do I just order in Chinese? I'll work at this awhile and see what develops.
--
~ Peano
 
Thanks for the video on retouching, I enjoyed it. Maybe one day I will be able to use photoshop like that. I have been trying to figure it out for years!
 
What you did was not a highly technical repair. It is hard to see how the image turned out after compression for the movie. The image seemed to look ok when you finished.

One note that will/would have gotten you flamed is you used the Bane of all PShoppers---the use of the Brightness/Contrast tool---. Ohh Nooo. Didn't see the histogram so it is hard to tell if you lost any pixels.

I also couldn't tell how many layers you used to work the image, but I assume at least one layer set to color.
pdriverr
National Modeling Directory said:
The techniques are not advanced, I stuck to the basics as a teaching
tool. A lot of people are new here and so I thought I would repost it
and hope that it might help someone.

http://michianatalent.com/touchupvid
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
Click to expand...
 
Thanks,

Yeah that was the idea... I wanted to use simple tools with visible settings. When this post was made, about 25 people posted retouches and a few replied that they liked mine the best which spawned the emails I got asking how it was done. I retouch all the time and I try to tell people that superior results can be achieved with simle techniques. It's not about using all the tools, it's about choosing appropriate tools for the image. That comes with experience but as you stated, what I did here was not all that technical/advanced.

Thanks much for the reply.

--
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
 
pDriver said:
One note that will/would have gotten you flamed is you used the Bane
of all PShoppers---the use of the Brightness/Contrast tool---. Ohh
Nooo. Didn't see the histogram so it is hard to tell if you lost any
pixels.
Click to expand...
So, as a newbie, can you tell me what's so horrible about the brightness/contrast adjustment? I thought you could "lose pixels" with levels and curves too?

Thanks.

--
Tina

http://www.captured-photo.com
It's a sad little gallery, but everyone has to start somewhere. :-)
 
tbnj said:
pDriver said:
One note that will/would have gotten you flamed is you used the Bane
of all PShoppers---the use of the Brightness/Contrast tool---. Ohh
Nooo. Didn't see the histogram so it is hard to tell if you lost any
pixels.
Click to expand...
So, as a newbie, can you tell me what's so horrible about the
brightness/contrast adjustment? I thought you could "lose pixels"
with levels and curves too?
Click to expand...
Tina,

The 'critic' was referring to stuff like this:

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/photoshop-brightness-contrast.html

However, things change :-) ... and that is no longer the case with CS3.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=698128&seqNum=2&rl=1

--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com
historical retouch dpr:
http://www.pbase.com/mikew714/dpr_retouch_challenges
 
Also, a noteworthy point to be made is, what will you do with the end result? If it is a picture for the web then a little quality loss might be perfectly acceptable to you. Also, compressed images, like JPEG in this case already have data losses. It's not noticable generally (in my opinion)
--
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
 
Thank you, Kent.

I think that first article showed a pretty extreme example. I use brightness/contrast a lot for slight tweaks and have never noticed any problem, even though I'm using CS2 and not CS3 yet. I mean, you obviously wouldn't want to use it for extreme adjustments, but I don't understand why it's a huge "no no". I've gotten (what I consider to be) some good results from it.

--
Tina

http://www.captured-photo.com
It's a sad little gallery, but everyone has to start somewhere. :-)
 
Hi, I would prefer a single AVI file as I am nervous about downloading and executing an EXE file.

Cheers
National Modeling Directory said:
Laurie,

I did it this way because, unlike the small movies that you can't
see, this is full screen. It's a big file to download all at once.

I can upload the whole AVI file in one big file if you prefer.

--
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
Click to expand...
--
http: www.jamiebekkers.com
 
tbnj said:
Thank you, Kent.

I think that first article showed a pretty extreme example. I use
brightness/contrast a lot for slight tweaks and have never noticed
any problem, even though I'm using CS2 and not CS3 yet. I mean, you
obviously wouldn't want to use it for extreme adjustments, but I
don't understand why it's a huge "no no". I've gotten (what I
consider to be) some good results from it.
Click to expand...
Curves is the better adjustment, imo, even now but you have to know what's what in curves.

Curves

http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorial/curves/
http://www.naturephotographers.net/mh0702-1.html
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/command_primer.shtml
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/photoshop-curves.html

--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com
historical retouch dpr:
http://www.pbase.com/mikew714/dpr_retouch_challenges
 
Tina
tbnj said:
So, as a newbie, can you tell me what's so horrible about the > brightness/contrast adjustment? I thought you could "lose pixels" with levels > and curves too?
Click to expand...
tbnj said:
I don't understand why it's a huge "no no". I've gotten (what I
consider to be) some good results from it.
--
Tina
Click to expand...
The Brightness/Contrast tool is easy to use and it can also easily pull light pixels into the bright whites or dark pixels into the black shadows and obscure details. Sometimes that is exactly what you want to do, but you can see what is happening if you use the histogram.

It actually is one of the best tools to pull pixels back from the brink of obscurity. There is a person named ByRo over at the RetouchPro forum that is a master in the use of the Brightness/Contrast tool. He has several tutorials and actions that use the Brightness/Contrast tool to great advantage.
pdriverr
 
I have downloaded all but disk1.gsd. Everytime I try to download it, it opens windows media player with no option to save and will not play. Any suggestions on why #'s 2-12 will download but not #1?

Thanks.
National Modeling Directory said:
This is a repost of a video I made to show a 4 minute retouch in real
time. It's not accelerated like the "you tube" videos and such. You
can see all the settings and watch the work as it is actually done.
Of course results can be a bit better if you take more time but this
is to teach some basic techniques and show that retouching does not
take hours, it takes minutes. The photo being retouched is not my
own, it is someone's from this group that published it back when I
made this movie. So many asked me how the retouch was done that I
used the same photo and I kept the video. (In part because some
knucklehead emailed me and called me a fibber about the time I took
to retouch stating that this retouch would take hours).

To view this, you download the pieces and click on the .EXE file and
it will combine them all into the movie as an AVI file.

The techniques are not advanced, I stuck to the basics as a teaching
tool. A lot of people are new here and so I thought I would repost it
and hope that it might help someone.

http://michianatalent.com/touchupvid

--
Regards,

Glenn Lyvers
National Modeling Directory
http://nationalmodelingdirectory.com
[email protected]
Click to expand...
 
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