Jun 4, 2011 Posted on Jun 4, 2011 | 1 comment

Motorcycle Man – Retouch Comparison

After:

Side by side comparison:

Before:

Studio set up:

Fred’s not actually a Motorcycle Man. He’s a Bicycle Man. As owner of our bike shop Zion Cycles, he eats, breaths sleeps & dreams bikes. As much, probably more, than I do Photoshop. In fact, definitely more. He logs 12 hour days for 300 days straight. NO DAYS OFF… for 300 days in a row. I love when a person tells us how exhausted they are, having just worked 6 or 7 days in a row. Especially when Fred’s heading into the tail end of the season, say around day 271.
He’s really something. I’m sure there are others out there that share a similar work ethic, but I have not met many. Farming and fishing proved to be very good primers for running his own business.

I love him so much.
Even after a long day, and he’s really tired and grumpy and doesn’t want to open his eyes for the camera…
He always come through.
Thanks Fred!

4 light set up:
AB800 with 7″ reflector & 20° grid on each side and several feet behind, pointed at subject
AB800 with 7″ reflector and 30° grid pointed at Thunder Gray seamless background
AB800 in 22″ white beauty dish (no sock) on camera axis and 3′ above subject
Lastolite white reflector on stand, chest high for fill
Triggered with Paul C. Bluff Cybersyncs

Processing steps:
- Triple Raw conversion for face, jacket & neck, learned from Calvin Hollywood
- Cropped
- Hue/Sat Adj. & Selective Color Adj. layer for face & hands separately
- Reduced magentas overall with Hue/Sat
- Darkened hands with Brightness/Contrast
- ‘Calvinize’ technique by Calvin Hollywood on jacket & hands separately
- Natalia Taffarel skin retouching technique on face
- Topaz Detail on hands
- Color correction on skin with Color Balance Adj. layer
- De-saturated glasses with Hue/Sat
- Lightened eyes with merged layer in Screen mode, masked
- Removed original catch lights and replaced with my own catch light brush (too big?)
- Nik ‘Tonal Contrast’ filter from Color Efex Pro
- Liquified right eye to enlarge
- Dodged & burned eyebrows & lids with soft light neutral gray layer
- B&W Adj. layer in Luminosity mode to adjust color on face & background
- Changed jacket color with Hue/Sat
- Topaz Clean on beard, hair, eyebrows & glasses
- Used Mystical Ambiance & Lighting Plugin for subtle fog effect on background
- added vignette
- added some texture with assorted ‘crack’ brushes on jacket only in Overlay mode

May have forgotten a few steps

Processing Time: Many hours…lost track!

Photos by Regina Pagles

One Response to “Motorcycle Man – Retouch Comparison”

1. Gary Phillips says:

   September 23, 2011 at 7:30 pm

   amazing. i my wife hates to model for me. i am color blind and she rarely has time to check my colors. YOU’RE LUCKY!!! and i get in trouble if she catches me spending more than a few minutes in post- she just doesn’t get it. so that is why i stay up late and get up at 4:20AM each morning.