Complete Portrait Retouch Workflow

Not long ago, NPR aired a story about a checklist for surgery success. Atul Gawande—a surgeon who also teaches at Harvard—offers compelling evidence that surgeons will get better results if they follow a simple checklist. The biggest challenge is convincing surgeons that they need it.

Of course, when we retouch a portrait we're not exactly saving lives. Egos, maybe, but not lives. Nevertheless, following a checklist (better known as "workflow") can streamline your retouching and help you get the best results possible. This post will tie together some of my tutorials to create a start-to-finish portrait retouch workflow. I will give a brief description of each step, but you will have to click on each step for the full tutorial. [I will come back and add photos to this post, but you don't really need them since each of the links has ample photos]

Step 1. Correct your white balance.
If you work in RAW, you will want to correct not only white balance, but as many other settings as possible. If not, you can open a curves adjustment layer and use the eye dropper from the curves dialog box to sample a white, a black, and a gray (or at least one of those). Correcting your white balance can have a dramatic effect on the overall color and brightness of a photo.

Step 2. Use curves to fine tune skin tone and color.
Even though you created a curves layer to fix white balance in step one, I find it more helpful to create a new curves layer devoted to improving the skin tone.

Step 3. Whiten teeth.
I usually warm up the skin in step 2, which has the side effect of warming up (i.e. yellowing) the teeth. If you were to whiten teeth before warming the skin, you would just have to repeat your work later.

Step 4. Clear up blemishes
Take care of the big problems with the skin first. I prefer the patch tool for most large blemishes, and the clone stamp tool occasionally. Remember to do each step on its own layer. Most people save a version of all the layers in case they need to come back and adjust something later. I have to confess, however, that I usually merge down when I am satisfied with a given step. If a client wants me to change the retouch (and, this sounds vain, but they never do), I can just go from where I left off.

Step 5. Reduce wrinkles (especially around the eyes) as needed.
This step also uses the patch tool, but I do it on a separate layer because my method (as you can see in the tutorial) uses adjustments in opacity. The main point in this step is to reduce larger wrinkles. Save the smaller ones for dodge and burn.

Step 6. Overall skin improvement using either a high-pass technique or dodge and burn.
Your choice of hi-pass softening or dodge and burn retouch will depend on how important visible pores are to you, how much time you have, and the look that you want. If you want a very soft look, a hi-pass softening or even the "foundation method" may fit the bill. It all depends on the style you want.

Step 7. Add sparkle to the eyes.
A little dodge and burn can create better catch lights and help give more interest to the eyes. If you used dodge and burn in Step 6, you can still work on the same D&B layer.

Step 8. Optional contouring with dodge and burn.
If you want to contour the nose, the lips, the cheeks, and so on, you can use dodge and burn to do so. This step is not always necessary.

Finally, don't forget to sharpen!
Maybe one day I'll do my own sharpening tutorial, but until then...
High-pass sharpening is one of the most popular quick techniques.
Adobe has some great recommendations for sharpening and they'll even point you to a long tutorial that covers several methods of sharpening. I use the sharpening programs created by NIK, which I love.

Spring Cleaning for the Digital Photographer

Don't try this at home!

I'm no expert on the history of spring cleaning, but I know that a good post-winter clean-up is a satisfying practice. Personally, I love to declutter and for the most part, would rather get rid of things that I haven't used in the past year.

My recent computer disaster made me revisit my approach to digital photo storage. And as I pay more attention to storing photos, I find myself wanting to do some decluttering on my hard drive.

Hard drive clutter
Removing photos from a computer is not unlike weeding out a crowded closet. I remember assessing the contents of my closet one year and realizing that all of my clothes were brown or blue. Ugh! My reassessment helped enrich my local thrift store's supply of brown and blue clothes and it inspired me to vary the colors in my wardrobe.

Apply that same editorial eye to your photos as you will see that

1. you don't need 25 versions of the same photo (see below), and
2. you will get a better idea of your own style (varied? monotonous? need more color? etc.)
3. you suddenly have a lot more space in your digital closet just waiting to be filled with wonderful things
   

Many gigs of storage space are lost to things you will never use.

Organizing can be addictive—just ask a Fly Lady zealot. Mocking aside, some of those Fly Lady principles can be quite easily applied to your virtual world. The "27-fling boogie"— a Fly Lady ritual in which you clear your house of 27 things—could easily extend to your computer. If you sort through one folder a day on your computer (not to mention that cluttered desktop), you will feel liberated and more in control. And since you have the cleaning bug...


Cleaning your camera and computer
Make your computer and camera feel more like new with a little cleaning.

For the computer, I suggest you check out this very thorough guide cleaning every part from the inside to the keyboard. You may have to invest in a few tools (compressed air, for example), but maybe they will help you create your own little computer/camera cleaning bucket.

And now for the camera.
The good/bad news for point-and-shoot cameras is that you can't do sensor cleaning. That's good news, because sensor cleaning is not fun, but it's bad because if something does somehow get into your sealed camera and onto the sensor, you may as well buy a new camera.

Lens cleaning for a point-and-shoot cameras is problematic only because of the small size of the lens. Camera hacker has a post with some good principles (don't use solutions on those small lenses; use your breath) and some frightening suggestions (Q-tips and toilet paper? Dubious choices, in my opinion. You can do the same thing with lens cleaning paper or inexpensive cloths found at any camera store).

For the DSLR crowd, lens cleaning options abound. And if you ask me, all the standards work pretty well (microfiber, various kits, disposable lens cleaners, etc.). When it comes to sensor cleaning, however, the myriad options are downright intimidating. A good article on one man's first attempt at sensor cleaning only reinforces my own fear of ruining my expensive new camera. But another article from a trustworthy source is a bit more reassuring.

With my previous camera, I used the Green Clean system for stubborn spots with satisfactory results. However, I found it difficult to ensure that all the residue from the wet swabs got absorbed by the dry ones. With my newer camera, I will probably cross my fingers that the automatic sensor cleaning + a blower like the Giottos Rocket Air Blower will suffice. But I know that I will need some kind of brush or swab one day, and I also know that the control freak in me would hand it over to a dealer only as a last resort.

For a more thorough look into the self-cleaning vs. pro-cleaning dilemma, read the photo.net post and comments.

Spring cleaning resolutions
Hopefully, this post has given you some good ideas for spring cleaning your camera and computer. If it's inspiration you lack, here's one last suggestion:

Cleaning out computer files (probably more than the physical cleaning) is the perfect task for moments of procrastination. I've done a lot of file cleaning when I have more pressing matters that I want to ignore. OK, that's probably not the best advice, but hey—at least you will have accomplished something.

How do you store your photos?

The Problem

This isn't exactly a part of this month's theme, but since my computer disaster I have been thinking about archiving and storage. Luckily, I had redundant backups of my Aperture database, but that doesn't mean I didn't lose any of my photos. For one thing, I was bad about putting retouched photos back into the database. Another problem: I was not as systematic as I should have been about backing up photos that were for me (I learned the hard way a long time ago to be good about backing up client photos).

When I interviewed Brad Slade about his process, he expressed concern about the longevity of digital media:

"I worry about losing digital files, whereas I still have negatives that I took in my first photo class in ’77. I wonder about migrating digital images from format to format as technology changes."

I am not trying to be alarmist, but if my own cautionary tale of computer loss is to serve any purpose it may as well inspire someone to think about archiving and storage solutions.

I think that Brad's positive experience with negatives and his concerns about digital can (in part) be explained by good habits in his early training. Brad began his systematic archiving of negatives as a student because photography was his passion and his field of study. I'm guessing that most people would have a hard time digging up old negatives. I know that when I was working on cleaning out the garage I found envelopes of photos from the 80s—often with warped, bent old negatives at best.

As Brad points out, digital photography poses two main problems:

• digital storage
• migration of formats
  

Solutions?

At some point, we need to figure out a digital photography workflow or method for taking, processing, and storing photos. Here is a brief sample of a workflow:

1. Take photos (preferably in RAW format)
2. Load photos into a library such as Aperture, Lightroom, iPhoto, etc.
3. Delete photos that you know you will never use.
4. If your program allows it, add meta-data such as keywords, ratings, etc.
5. Do any necessary or desired retouching (for some, this will be done first in RAW and then in Photoshop).
6. Make sure your retouched photos find their way back into your main library.
7. Backup your main library on at least one external hard drive every time you make changes to it.
   
8. Get prints as desired. Some would argue that if you don't print your favorites at this point you may never look at them again.

That's OK for an overview, but you need to refine a system that makes sense to you. For clients, I create projects with the name of the client and the date of the shoot—a simple enough process. Sub-folders (or "Albums" as they are called in Aperture) separate the overall project into more manageable chunks according to theme (say, bridal pictures, group shots, etc.). Some people are very good about renaming all of their photos rather than keeping the meaningless numbers. I am not one of those people.

Ultimately, if the system makes sense to you and if it includes backups then it's good. But here are a few words of advice:

• Not all CD backups are created equal. Mitsui Gold rates among the very best in cd-r storage. Those super cheap packs of CDs you get at most stores are great for everyday use, but they use a very unstable dye that breaks down within about 5 years (depending in part on exposure to light). Mitsui Gold lasts at least 100 years.
• DVDs have more storage but less longevity. In my experience, Mitsui DVDs are just plain horrible. DVDs have the same stability problems as the bad CDs. Taiyo Yuden media is supposed to be excellent for both CDs and DVDs, but I haven't tried their product. I remain very wary of DVDs for long-term storage.
• Online storage options abound, but don't put all your eggs in one basket. I love Dropbox (they should upgrade my storage for free based on my promo). You can get 2 gigs for free and 50 gigs for 100/yr. My wife uses Smugmug, and I know there are many other options out there.
  
• I admire how Tara Whitney manages to whittle down client images (unless I am misunderstanding her site) to a manageable 30-35 best-of. I would love to start doing that with all of my photography. Imagine keeping only the best. It's the digital equivalent of only keeping your favorite clothes and having a perfectly organized closet. Fewer photos (but all ones that you love)=easier storage.
  
• Reassess your workflow at least every other year. Search online in photography forums and see what people are doing. It never hurts to find more efficient ways to do things.

But what about the migration of formats?
I am not very worried about that. As new formats come along there will always be people ready to help you migrate your old media (think of all those tape-to-dvd services).

How do you store photos? Do you have a workflow? Any ideas to share?