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Fashion lighting and Photoshop tutorial

I use Photoshop as little as I can. I much prefer to get an image right in camera so I am not spending hours in post. Most of my images take an average 30 minutes.

The shot bellow was taken at mid-day, in harsh and high sunlight.

To compensate for this I placed my model in the shadows created by the branches of a large palm tree. I set up a large California Sunbounce Gold and Silver Zebra reflector out in the direct sun, reflecting soft warm light onto the front of my model.

With a light reading from my model’s face, I shot at a shutter speed of 1250s, an aperture of f2.8, and at 400 ISO. White balance was set to daylight.

This image was shot on my D2H with a 24mm to 70mm f2.8 Nikon lens, focal length set at 42mm. I stood 1.4 meters away from my model to emphasize her limbs, and also so we had a good connection for creating good energy and directing.

Notice my lens/eye level is in the middle of her torso. This is important when shooting wide angle and close to your subject to avoid distortion. If you shoot to high up, your model’s head will be big and her legs will look as short as a chicken’s and vice versa. So it’s important to get your eye/camera lens level at the right just the height to avoid distortion.

I often shoot from a lower angle, especially if I am trying to emphasize the length of a model’s legs for hosiery images.

To keep the sky as blue as possible I shot with a polarizing filter on my lens, looking to the west of the midday sun. This is how you keep the sea and the sky blue, as well as make the model’s skin/tan look nice and silky by removing some of the specular reflections on her skin.

If I had been facing more to the east, the sky and the sea would have been much more burned out.

When I first started shooting digital I had a lot of problems because I tried to shoot digital the same way that I shot film. Now I always under expose from the meter reading. This is for a couple of reasons, to saturate color, and to make sure I am not losing my highlights. Obviously my images are going to be a little on the dark side, but I can easily correct for this by using a little s curve in Photoshop to start the retouching process.

I always shoot raw files and a small jpg. I will explain why in another article.

I process my raw file as shot in camera raw from Bridge and open them in Photoshop. (Raw files have a great deal more latitude as far as image data, and result in much better quality images).

Step 1: Creating copies of the image to work on

First I made 2 duplicates of the image by selecting image, duplicate. I did this twice. On the first dupe I darkened the sky and sea using curves, selecting image, adjust, then curves. I pulled down the center of the curve a little to increase the density of the sky, which would have been burned out if I had brightened up the image over all to make my model’s skin lighter.

I now had an image with the sky and the sea darker and more how I want it in my finished image.

Step 2: Lightening my model’s skin

On the second dupe I brightened the image by selecting image, adjust, curves, lifting the center of the curve a small amount and pulling the bottom of the curve down just a little, making a soft s curve to increase the contrast. See image below.

This action lightened up my model’s skin just enough, but I lost my sky density, which is why I created a dupe image and adjusted its density so the sky was just right.

My model’s face was still a little dark, and using curves this way has increased the saturation, but I’m not worried about this right now.

Step 3: Lighten up just my model’s face

With the round select tool I selected the area of my model’s face, selecting more than I actually wished to lighten. In the select drop down menu you will find “modify.” In modify, select “feather.” You can alter the amount of feathering in the option box. For this action I typed in 240. If your selected area is smaller than half of the amount of feathering it will not let you continue, so pick a smaller feather amount. In this case, because the image file is 49mb, 240 pixels is OK. This softens the edge of your selected area. In curves, I brightened my model’s face by lifting the center of the curve just a little.

See result on the image to the left.

Step 4: Creating 2 layers to work on

Click on the “move tool,” top right tool in the tool box (usually on left on your PS interface.) Click on the light image and drag it over onto the window of the darker image, this creates a double layered image with the lighter image on top. See image below. The images need to be lined up, registered together exactly.

Step 5: Creating a mask to protect the areas of the images I want to keep as they are

With the magnetic select tool I traced around my model, across the top of the rocks and around the upper edges of the image to select the sky and the sea. See the black line around selected area on the screen grab image above. The sky showing between her arms and head and body also needed to be masked off. I do this in the next step.

Step 6: Adding to the selected areas

The area of sky between my model’s arms and head and shoulder also needed to be selected, this can be done by clicking the caps key as you select these areas without losing the areas already selected. The magnetic select tool can be a little unpredictable and may leave some areas unprotected and vice versa. These can be edited more accurately in the next step. Click select, inverse to change/inverse the selected area to the areas that I want to mask off– the model, rocks and the sandy beach.

When the image was first opened I assessed what was needed to be done to the image apart from the initial exposure and contrast changes, see the basic image 3rd down from the top of this article. This is with an image which is the un-retouched processed raw file. As you can see, the image lacks contrast as well as being not quite as saturated as I would like. Below are the various steps in Photoshop to make the image as I envisaged when I shot it.

Step 7: Cleaning up the edges of the selected areas

To make adjustments to the edges of the masked areas, click the little box with a circle in at the bottom of the tools bar. This changes the selected area into a red mask showing the areas that are protected (as in the screen grab above), that I don’t want to be altered in the next stage.

With the eraser tool I erased the red mask where it overlapped the areas I didn’t want protected. I add more red mask to areas I did want to protect with the paint brush. All the tools can be increased in size, as well as made to give softener or harder edges. Some areas around the edge of the mask needed to be feathered and some didn’t. For the edges that I did want feathered, I changed the softness of either the eraser or the paint brush to soften or harden as required. Practice is the way to become proficient at selecting areas to mask off.

Now happy that I had accurately selected masked off areas, I switched off the red mask so I could begin to erase the areas of the lighter layer. To do this I clicked the little box with the circle inside.

Step 8: Erasing the areas of the lighter layer

Click the erase tool, set the size quite large and the opacity to 100 percent, and click and move the eraser tool over the areas to be deleted. You will see the image layer underneath being revealed as you go. It’s a good idea to enlarge your image before you go too far, so you can check that the edges of the protected areas are not being damaged.

Step 9: Cropping and stretching the image

The industry standard size of a photographer’s portfolio is 11 inches x 14 inches, as are Stylists’ and Hair and Make-Up Artists’ portfolios. I wanted this image for my portfolio but the proportions wouldn’t crop to this size without losing either the top or the bottom of the image, cutting off either the top of her head or her knees. To get over this I stretched the sides of the image.

This is how.

First set the crop tool to 11×14 inches at 300 dpi, then drag the crop tool on the image as in the image above. Don’t crop it yet. Drag the bottom left corner so the cropped area goes outside the original image, so the bottom of the cropped area is in line with the bottom edge of the image. Then re-position the cropped area centrally over the image, click OK and crop the image. It will look like the screen grab image bellow.

Step 10: Stretching the image to fit the print size

We need to stretch the sides of the image out to cover the over cropped image edges. To do this, select the rectangular select tool, select the image from the top left hand corner and drag your selection down to the bottom and across to just before the model’s knee. Do not select over the model’s leg. See screen grab above. Now click apple T (or left click, select free transform on PC). There will be little squares on the corners and center of the selected area. Click on the center square on the left side of your selected area and drag it until the image area has stretched to the edge of the image. Repeat these steps for the right hand side of the image. Now select layers, then merge visible layers, then save as a TIFF file. If you’re on a Mac, check the IBM PC box. If you save for Macintosh, people not using Mac will not be able to open the image. There are more options regarding saving, but these are for a more advanced user than this article covers.

The result is the finished image bellow.


Photographer: Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith is a world-class fashion and beauty photographer whose work has appeared around the globe for more than thirty years. He's the author of "Fashion Photography: A Complete Guide to the Tools and Techniques of the Trade" and teaches workshops internationally. His website is www.brucesmithphotographer.com.

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14 Responses to “Fashion lighting and Photoshop tutorial”

  1. December 10, 2012 at 6:48 am, Bruce Smith said:

    Hey guys:

    Re every ones very helpful suggestions.

    Why not do a shoot of your own with your techniques re your suggestions etc and post them either on here or on a thread in the mm forum and post the address on here.

    Maybe we could do a comparison and decide which is the best both technically and aesthetically.

    Its meant to be an example of a mixture of lighting in difficult sunlight conditions and photoshop techniques.. Please take it for what it is.

    Thank you.

    🙂

    Regards

    Bruce

    Reply

  2. December 10, 2012 at 3:51 am, Bruce Smith said:

    Thanks for all of your comments:

    A couple of things in response:

    I much prefer to use available light rather than flash, irrespective of it being better or not.

    I travel a lot and at times do not have a budget for heavy kit.

    I am very often shooting a lot of outfits in a day and can not afford the luxury of only shooting best light.

    I also like to shoot fast, flash recycle times mean I miss my shot.

    Regards to all.

    Bruce

    Reply

  3. December 03, 2012 at 11:56 pm, Fozzybear said:

    Face is brighter than the rest of her body and the bright whites in the background distract me and ruins what is good pose by the model. I have to agree with Kent in using the right camera tools like ND filter and Large softbox (over power daylight) to get the shot right without having to all that photoshop.

    Reply

  4. December 03, 2012 at 6:54 pm, Stan Schurman said:

    In my opinion she’s too orange, the blues are unnatural and the washed out highlights behind her are distracting.

    Reply

  5. December 02, 2012 at 6:04 pm, bg driftwoodfoto.com said:

    I thought the first sentence of your article said you use photoshop as little as possible?? Your final image certainly is good, but this is a very heavily photoshop dependent process…

    Reply

  6. December 01, 2012 at 9:17 pm, Jose V Ruiz said:

    When I was taking photography classes, seeing a picture like this will make me dig more and more for a well balanced properly expose photograph outdoors. If you had shot it at 1/320 or 1/400 shutter speed using a strobelight of 500ws the outcome will have reflected much better. Any shutter speed higher than 1/250 will not affect if shot outdoors. It will affect only using it indoors. Hope you can take this as a positive critique and not as a personal critique. We are here to learn from each other and wish success in your endeavors.

    Reply

  7. December 01, 2012 at 5:06 am, denis said:

    Blue sky and loads of light? ISO 400? Why?

    Reply

    • December 03, 2012 at 8:15 am, Mike said:

      I was wondering the same thing. Surely it should be ISO 100

      Reply

  8. November 30, 2012 at 11:10 pm, FADM_Nimitz said:

    You could always output to film, and flash a print in the darkroom. 🙂

    But I’m missing the point on the final product here. Where I went to school this would be considered a bad photograph. I would find an alternative scene where everything won’t be so blown out, or perhaps fill with hypersync as suggested.

    Reply

    • December 02, 2012 at 6:01 pm, Trent Smassh said:

      i concur since when is blowing out highlights like that a good thing? The background is blown out, the beach is blown out…

      Reply

  9. November 30, 2012 at 9:10 pm, Tiffany Katz said:

    I always appreciate learning from other photographers, so thank you for sharing! I do agree with Mr. Shelton though. I’m actually just getting ready to graduate from my photography program and I’ve learned how simply dragging the shutter using a strobe compensates pretty well for these and similar lighting situations. Ironically, all of my current swimwear shots are done with ambient light only, but this is because I shoot closer to sunset when the Florida sun isn’t roasting everyone and blinding myself and the model. However, I’m still looking forward to shooting at sunrise when it warms back up to beach weather again. And yes, I first learned about exposure with film so it was a bit of a learning curve having to expose for the highlights, but after many mistakes with exposure I think I’ve finally got the hang of it 😉 P.S. Nice shot. Those beads look heavy!

    Reply

  10. November 30, 2012 at 1:11 pm, Kent Shelton said:

    I absolutely agree with you that slightly underexposing when shooting digital is important.
    However, I feel there are better ways (outside of Photoshop and a polarizing filter) to preserve the sky when shooting like this. One way that doesn’t involve Photoshop at all is to use the maximum sync speed of your D2h, which I believe is 1/250. Set the camera to expose properly for the sunny beach and sky being sure to keep the shutter at 1/250. If you want to preserve a narrow depth of field, reduce your ISO to 100 and use the Polarizing filter and or a Neutral density filter which will force you to open up the aperture. Then using a powerful strobe, probably one around 1000 WS, and peferably having a big soft box attached, light the model and balance to taste with the sunlight. That image will need very little work in photoshop.

    BTW, I miss the days of using my old Hasselblad for this very reason. It’s maximum sync speed is 1/500.

    Reply

    • December 04, 2012 at 12:56 pm, Kent Douglas said:

      I miss shooting with my Hasselblad too! A lot of the newer hot shoe flashes have a high speed sync; however the faster the shutter speed the less effective the range is. I think that with this image, a diffused flash (soft box, umbrella, cheese cloth) set on high speed sync could be set close enough to the model to balance out the ambient light of the background, and light the model enough to get a great image. If the over all scene was so over powered by the sun I would also add the polerizing and neutral density filers to get the shutter speed and f-stop within the range that I want it to be. I always loved the technical side of photography!

      Reply

    • December 10, 2012 at 3:39 am, Bruce Smith said:

      Hi Kent

      Thanks for your comment.

      I hate shooting with flash especially if there is available light to play with.. I have used the exact technique when required to achieve the look that it gives:

      https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152204072855167&set=a.10152204065920167.906682.590360166&type=3&theater

      Yes me to re the old days, I used to shoot RZ67 and loved it.

      Regards

      Bruce

      Reply

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