How to shoot watches like a pro: new AKELstudio LIVE Masterclass announced!

This is the announcement of our next LIVE Masterclass. More details please find at Alex Koloskov’s blog.

LIVE Masterclass will be completely free, but recorded video will cost $49. Video will include bonus; a retouching  for the watch.

Below is the image before and after post-production. Similar photo we will do on our Masterclass.

Join us  Sunday 24 of October 2010, 4PM Eastern time. The link to LIVE broadcast is on AKELstudio main page, top menu: AKELstudio LIVE! You have to have an account to get there, member login is on top of the page.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

AKELstudio product photography, watch lesson masterclass

AKELstudio product photography, watch lesson masterclass

How and where learn High End Photo Retouching. Tips and resources.

If you believe in self-education (like I do), you don’t need to go to a school or college to become a retoucher, you should only know the right places where to find an information and spend many many hours, days and years for practice. I can help you with right resources where you can learn the High End retouching techniques. Hope it will save your time, energy and money (I wish I had these links couple years ago:-)

Most helpful and friendly community for retouchers is RetouchPro.

RetouchPro hosts a  regular  live, interactive masterclasses where you watch a guest retoucher’s desktop as they work in real time. You can also ask questions for the guest retoucher.  These live events usually cost only $10 and for this money you will get a ton of useful information.

Free tutorials:

Continue reading How and where learn High End Photo Retouching. Tips and resources.

Architecture photography post-production for Vieler International.

Half year ago we did a product photo-session for Vieler International.

Now Andre Vieler asked us to shoot exterior photos of the whole plant. We used a fork lifter to raise the photographer to a height where was much less perspective distortion.  This works much better then any tilt/shift lens, I wish we could have such lifter for all of our architectural projects:-)

Here I’ll show you how I did a post-production, some parts of work flow. Here is the image before and after:

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Architecture photography post-production and retouching

Continue reading Architecture photography post-production and retouching for Vieler International.

First AKELstudio LIVE! masterclass went well. We did it!



It was not easy for Alex and me, because we are not a public people. But it was fun and gave us a great feeling that we did something useful:-) We are really enjoy every photo-session with water, because you never know exactly what will come up: every drop is unique:-) This is a very creative process with a lot of experiments.

As always, all technical aspects and full length video from the masterclass you can find on Alex Koloskov blog

Now I have some photos to share, including before and after post-production.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Water splash photography masterclass

Water splash photography masterclass

Continue reading First AKELstudio LIVE! masterclass went well. We did it!

RetouchPRO LIVE webinar with Steve Koshlap

Yesterday I attended RetouchPRO LIVE webinar with Steve Koshlap. Steve is a professional jewelry and beauty retoucher. He demonstrated the diamond and jewelry retouch from start to finish using Photoshop. The information was really useful. Looking forward to see his other webinars.

Exactly in this time Alex was shooting a jewelry:-) And now I can use my new knowledge for this retouching. I’ll show you the result in couple months because now it is a confidential information.

Stay in touch!

Portrait retouching manual

It is not to easy to find lessons or tutorials how Pro prepare images of models for  magazines and advertising. I try to accumulate information what I  learn from different professional retouchers in this tutorial.

I do not pretend to “guru” status, you can correct me. I just want to learn how to do sublime retouching and post-production and share my knowledge with you.

This is an example of fast work-flow for a portrait retouching and post-production for print or web. If you like to learn this process in more details you can find a bonus links below.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Portrait retouching and post-production lesson

Portrait retouching and post-production lesson

1 step. Clean Skin

Continue reading Portrait retouching manual and bonus links

Is the white background really white?

or how to make a white background (RGB:255.255.255) and prepare image for a catalog print

Step 1. Finding not white areas of the background

  • Convert photo from Raw using Raw Converter
  • Duplicate layer
  • Create New fill ore adjusted layer/Curves:
Create new fill or adjustment layer

Create new fill or adjustment layer

Continue reading Is the white background really white?

Lens distortion and perspective correction in architecture photography

This article is for those who do not have  tilt shift adapter or TS lens and still do architecture photography.
I’ll show you how to correct perspective distortion using Photoshop. Camera lens distortions occur frequently when taking pictures of architectural subjects with a wide-angle lens and the need to use an external program. Distortion will always have place when  we shoot tall buildings, tilting the camera upwards.  There is no way (unless you have TS adapter or lens)  to get  vertical lines to be vertical on a picture, as it will fall in the middle.

However, you can easily correct camera lens distortions using Photoshop or other photo software.

Below you can  find list of software for lens distortion and perspective correction and tutorial how to fix it in Adobe Photoshop

How to correct perspective distortions of an image using the Adobe Photoshop Free Transform Tool.

Before lens distortion and perspective correction

Before lens distortion and perspective correction

After lens distortion and perspective correction

After lens distortion and perspective correction

All you have to do is:

Continue reading Lens distortion and perspective correction in architecture photography

How to determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop

note: This lesson will be  useful for photo retouchers, who will be dealing with partially overexposed image, where important to see exactly where overexposed areas is.  For example, if you need to get completely white background, etc.

Couple years ago we found that a histogram on the camera or different software’s don’t show overexposed areas correctly. Here is why: camera histogram will use JPEG to evaluate, even if you shoot RAW. So, it is inaccurate by definition.
When I’ve  tried to find the answer in Internet, I get no luck, there are only tutorials and lessons how to fix this overexposed areas in Photoshop, but nothing about how to  find these areas correctly.

So this tutorial about how to find and determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop.

Look at this image:

image-with-overexposed-areas

Some areas are overexposed here. Let’s check where are these areas:

Continue reading How to determine overexposed and underexposed areas using Photoshop

How I prepare images for web in Photoshop

It is very easy. I know, most of you know how to do it. But may be some of you find something new in this tutorial. Let’s start. Open your photo that you want to re-size and adjust for web.

Step 1Manual Levels adjustments.

In this step we will make the image more bright, contrast and crisp.

Image ->Adjustments -> Levels
Level adjustments in Photoshop

Level adjustments in Photoshop

Continue reading How I prepare images for web in Photoshop