How to master the digital darkroom
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Today I had to opportunity to photography Melissa who’s a real estate agent in Toronto. She has had a really tough week, tearing a ligament in her knee and having her car stolen. Needless to say, she has had a couple of bad nights of sleep. However, the magazine was on a tight deadline and asked us to proceed with the photo shoot today.
The cover we selected together is very striking. To further improve the resulting image, we did some retouching of the image in PhotoShop. You can see the evolution in the following 4 images.
The original photograph has only colour correction done

Next we clean up stray hairs and remov minor details like power switches.

Now we proceed to reduce minor facial blemishes, whiten eyes and reduce the size of one of the eyes slightly.

Finally, the skin has a porcelain effect applied and the colour is given a “pop”. We soften the background and sharpen selectively around the eyes and mouth.

Valois! A gorgeous cover photo ready for publication.
UPDATE : We received the printed magazine today in the mail and are very proud of the result.



Great result Dave! Looks really good in the end result.
Wow, the photo is beautiful!!! I can feel the sunshine…LOL!
I hope she has a better week ahead!
Great Job (as always)