How do they do this?

rallyxe · Jul 19, 2005

Not sure if this is allowed or in right place, sorry if it isn't but can you tell me what they use to do these retouching and how they do it? http://www.sunflowerphoto.com/retouch.html

thebeginning · Jul 19, 2005

well, each photo has different retouching, so it isnt one single method. Most of what this company does is fairly simple and quick, aside from maybe the one horse picture they edited so much out of (although i like some things about their originals better

).

i'm guessing they used photoshop, which is the most common photo editor around. I'm going to try to say what they did in these photos and a light idea of how they did it.

1st photo: blur (or gaussian blur). they basically just used the blur tool (a little water droplet in PS) to make the background look out of focus. either that or they selected the area they wanted blurred then went to filter>blur>gaussian blur and used that. it's probably the easiest one to do out of the set.

2nd, 4th, and 6th photo: selective color. there are many methods of doing this, but my favorite is through the brush tool. what you have to do is go to layer>duplicate layer then go to image>adjustments>desaturate to take the color out of that layer. then go to the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen (usually) and find the icon that is a picture of a paintbrush. click on that to enable it then go to the top of the screen and there is a little menu you can open up (it should say normal) and choose what method of 'painting' you want to use. select clear. then when you paint on the image, it will basically paint the color back onto the image wherever you want it. that way you can selectively only color parts of the image and leave the rest black and white.

photos 3, 5, and 7: basically just a bunch of selecting, copying, pasting, and cloning. there are many methods of cloning, from copying surrounding areas and pasting them and moving them aruond to get them how you want them to actually using the clone tool. i do alot of this, but my methods are kind of strange and i think i do it the wrong way, as it sounds a little odd when i tell people how i do it, so i'm probably not the one to know. i 'clone' my images alot sometimes, but probably not to the extent of the horse pictures. for the dog picture, they basically moved some stuff around, changed the scale (and probably some perspective) on what they pasted in, added a new background (with cloning, most likely) and changed the lighting levels on the things they pasted in as well. to really get this stuff down there isnt a special secret (although if there is, someone point it out!), you just have to do it alot i think. i havent quite reached that point yet

rallyxe · Jul 19, 2005

thank you soo much. I'm trying it out now

. Ill post the result if it's any good.

rallyxe · Jul 19, 2005

taaaaaaaadaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

my first go

thebeginning · Jul 19, 2005

great job!

glad i could help!

Artemis · Jul 19, 2005

rallyxe said:
taaaaaaaadaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

my first go

Good job for your first go!

Try a method called feathering, look it up, it kinda...well...feathers the pixels, so the lines between what is colour and black and white arent so defenete.
Try using the lasso tool, or magnetic lasso tool, go over the two butterflies, and go feather by 30 pixels...
this will only work if after you go that, you delete that layer which will show the bottom layer, if you keep the bottom layer in colour that is.

Im sure there was an easier way to type this...