Guest Post : Markus Petterson

Hi guys

Today i have a guestpost for you.

Markus Petterson bought my Photoshop Training "Calvinize"

Today he will tell you some words about the techniques and post some final results

Have fun…

Calvinized in action

First of all I must send a BIG thanks to Calvin for releasing his Calvinized online tutorials!

I bought it a few weeks ago and I haven't even watched all of the tutorials yet. That's because I have already found so many great techinques that I had to stop watching the tutorials and try them out on my own pictures. I'll be sure to watch the rest as well though, because this training material is absolutely FULL of great and useful stuff. And the best part is, it's really easy too!

Calvin stumbled upon a few of my retouched pictures in a retouching forum. He thought the result looked good and wanted me to write a huest blog post, so here we go.

I do some freelance photography/retouch jobs on occation, and I actually used the techniques from Calvinized on a recent job as a suggestion on how to improve the look on a bunch of kinda boring pictures of industrial workers in a workshop to be used in their advertising. The lighting and the quality of the pictures was good, but the advertising agency thought the pictures looked kind of dull. I did a test retouch on a few pictures and they really liked it. I used the "Amazing details with blurring" tutorial, among other things, to change the feel and look of the pictures into a bit rougher style.
 

I have used sort of the same workflow in all three of these pictures. I will take picture number three and explain what I did step by step. Remember, this can all be learned from the Calvinized tutorials, along with some previous Photoshop knowledge, but there is not much needed at all.

This is all the layers I used for this picture:

The main thing is the "Amazing details with blurring" tutorial, that's what gives the picture that special look. I copied the background layer, set it to Vivid light, inverted it and used a Surface blur filter.

I used slightgly different settings than in the Calvinized tutorial. I think Calvin uses about 40 on both Radius and Threshold in the tutorial. I think I used less on both sliders, about Radius 25 and Threshold 18 because it simply looked better on this particular image. The effect is less noticable when you use lower values, but I knew I could enhance the details later with local contrast.

Then I merged the filtered layer and the background layer and set that new layer's blend mode to Overlay (erased the Surface blur-filtered layer). I enhanched the details effect with Image -> Adjustments -> Local contrast 100% to get even more details. I had some problems with annoying halos. I haven't really perfected this technique yet, so I also added a layer mask and painted with a black brush in different sizes depending on where I wanted to get rid of these halos.
The thing I added after that, which is very simple, was a curve layer where I painted the highlights in the t-shirt. It's very easy to see where you should paint when you have done all of the above, because the highlights really stand out, but I wanted them even lighter.
Then I added another Curve layer called "Lighten with Curve" to lighten some parts of the picture with a pretty big and soft brush.

Next thing was two Vibrance adjustmentlayers to desature the colours all over the picture, except for the drilling machine in the guy's hand. I kept that detail fully saturated as a "colour-click". The final touch was a curve layer which I used to create a Vignette (darker corners). I also Dodged & Burned on a Soft light-layer on a few spots in the face to even some details out just a little bit.

That's how I used some of the techniques from the Clvinized online training. There's a lot more to try and I'm excited to try some of the compositing tricks that are shown in the turoials!

Finally, here are some other before and after-pictures from previous photoshoots of mine.

From a session I shot in 2006 and recently made a "re-retouch" on. I played around with the idea of making the model into a "Terminatress". A lot of testing with compositing and blend modes. Photo & retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Angelica Jansson
From the same session shot in 2006. In this picture I experimented with blood brushes and different blend modes. Photo & retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Angelica Jansson
Quick and dirty 10 minute skin retouch on portrait a friend of mine shot for his portfolio. I used Healing brush and surface blur for the smoothing and High pass to bring back the texture. This is just a cutout of the original picture. Photo: Richard Ström, Retouch: Markus Pettersson
From a glamour session in 2009. Skin retouch with Clone stamp and Healing brush. Fake lighs with Lens flare. A lot of painted highlights on a Curve adjustmentslayer. Photo & Retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Sofie Lindberg, Make up artist: Evelina Lundqvist
Beauty picture from 2009. Skin retouch with Healing brush, Liquify filter on parts of the face. Photo & Retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Sofie Lindberg, Make up artist: Evelina Lundqvist
Portrait/fashion shoot with two sisters who run a very succesful blog. Healing brush and surface blur for skin smoothing, High pass for texture. Fake lights with Lens flare. Photo & retouch: Markus Pettersson, Models: Beatrice and Veronica Örtenberg, Make up artist: Madelene Hrvacanin
From a beauty and fashion shoot in 2008. Skin retouch with healing brush. Black and white conversion with Black & white adjustment layer. Curves adjustmentlayer for highlights. Photo & Retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Malin Lenhult, Make up artist: Madelene Hrvacanin
Test shoot with a home-made aluminium ring light of about 100 cm diameter with 16 separate 100W light bulbs that can be lit one at the time. For this image we used 8 of them. Skin retouch with Healing brush, adjustment layers for eyes and lips, Liquify for some parts of the picture. Photo & retouch: Markus Pettersson, Model: Caroline Lundqvist, Make up artist: Evelina Lundqvist

Best regards,
Photographer Markus P, Sweden
www.markusp.se
www.facebook.com/markus.pettersson
 

3 Responses to “Guest Post : Markus Petterson”

1. Lee says:

   March 17, 2010 at 2:15 pm

   Great work! It’s inspirational to see what others are doing with the knowledge imparted by Calvin in the ‘Calvinize’ tutorials.

   I’ve worked through the training and loved every minute, alas have yet to find a free moment to get stuck in with the techniques on my own images, but this post is certainly good reason to find the time.

   Would love to see a portion of your blog dedicated to the successes of others using the training materials!
2. Erik b says:

   March 17, 2010 at 10:22 pm

   Great work! nice pictures and amazing retuch!
3. Brodie says:

   March 20, 2010 at 11:30 am

   Some really nice retouches there! I use very similar techniques but you really opened my eyes to a couple of things especially with those examples.

   Keep it up boys!

   B.