ENGLISH VERSION
This was one of my first images, as soon as I purchased my first semi-professional digital Camera i decided I wanted to play with lights. About a week before this session, leaving from a job we went to a bar close to a friend´s house. There, as soon as we walked in we saw Kirstyn waiting on tables, she was just the style of girls I liked to photograph, but back then I didn´t have much work to show and to convince a model to work without having a portfolio to show is not easy. But we called for her and after a few drinks and some conversation we had a date set. She was the sweetest girl and proved to be a great person to work with. At that time she had never worked with a photographer, amateur or professional, today you can see her portfolio here: Kirstyn I Including some pics we did in other sessions after this one. The image below was taken the second time we worked together:
The day we met to shoot I was carrying two strobes and a video light, aside from a few lenses and a camera a bit better than mine that I had loaned from my former boss. We looked around for a good place to shoot (something I have learned to not lave till the last minute)> But we were in luck and found an awesome barn close to my friend´s house, so we drove back, grabbed the base, the TV and headed back to the barn. I had an image in mind but wanted to see what everything would look like in the spot.
By the time we got there it was pretty dark, the barn was part of an abandoned house so there was neither electricity nor anyone around. I decided to leave the flashes aside and use only the video light, in my mind creating alook of some strange light inside the barn, something that would look less like studio lights and more realistic.
From this shoot I got one of the first images I later edited and posted in my site which wasback then far from what you see today (the website www.jcmartins.com ). After that, several people asked me how I lit the shot, how I edited it and Etc. So I decided to start my weekly tutorials with this one even though, today, I would do several things different, both in lighting and post production, but since this is how I started learning, this is how I’ll start here.
The image below is the same style of video light I used, I couldn´t find the exact same one to post here, but this should give you an idea.
Before I start with this and the next tutorials I wanted totalk about what most helped me to learn in Photoshop up to this day. Not many people know that Adobe has inside the software and their website, a world of information about their software. Every week I will be using terms that comes naturally to me, healing tool, brushes, layers, adjustment layers, lasso tool etc. So if you are not familiar with these terms please visit Adobe first, or click in help inside photoshop, familiarize yourself with Photoshop´s layout and it´s tools , what they are used for and the rest you will learn as I have, playing around.
Another thing I would like to reiterate with absolute certainty is that there are no absolutes in Photoshop. For each effect there are thousands of ways of getting there so because of that nothing I show here has the smallest aspiration of being correct for one of the first things I learned about this software is that being correct is extremely relative. Every day I learn a new way of doing things, everyday I find new things that save me time, so here what I am offering is my way of doing things, and as I mentioned in my first post of this category the space is open to hear yours as well, please feel free to help me make this section a great source of information.
Ninety percent of my work is made with layers and layer masks. To me the great strength in Photoshop exists because of its viability in using layers, to control separate pieces of an image without affecting the original file, and this is the greatest secret in the explosion that rocketed Photoshop in front of all their competitors a few years back. To be able to use layers gives us the power of control in an image absolutely fantastic. It is arduous and takes time to achieve the desired results but when you do they are amazing. So the reason I mention it is if you are not familiar with this please refer back to Adobe, learn it well, play around with layers and layer masks first then come back here and you will understand easier everything I am trying to say.
In the image below I am showing where the group of tools (pallets) are of the everything I will be using the most in my posts. The tools, the layers, and the adjustment layers, please look in the Adobe site where each tool is inside these pallets.
Image I – straight out of the camera.
Exif: 1/20 s f4 ISO 500 – Camera and light on Tripod
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Imagem I
Image II -
Here I wanted to start by altering the color and contrast of the floor and a few other elements of the photo.
So I went to adjustment layers (right below the layers pallet) and chose color balance, inside I tweaked everything to my taste.
At this moment the entire image has changed, and what you see below is the result of an extra step I will explain now. Once you´ve created the adjustment layer you will notice it comes with a white square right beside it, in the layers palette ( Example )
Before painting on the mask I also created an adjustment layer for brightness and contrast, raising the contrast to the entire photo. Now, making sure you have the mask selected we go to the tools pallet and choose the brush.
It is very important that you have chosen the black color for the brush, for what it does is eliminate the white once you paint on the layer mask. Remember one thing, white reveals, black conceals.
Once the brush, the black color and the mask is selected we paint with black over the places on the picture where we don’t want the color to show (in this case, orange) doing that you will notice how the orange starts to disappear and the underlying image start to appear only where you are painting.
Doing that on the model’s body, on the TV, and on the chair, and again the same thing in the brightness and contrast layer this is the result:
Imagem II
Image III -
Here I decided to lift the model´s jeans, to make it pop.
So I did the same as in the last step, however this time I chose a blue color.
I created a new color balance adjustment layer that appears in the layer palett in the same way as in the last step. This time however since what I want to show is a much smaller part in the picture it will be easier for me to reveal my change instead of concealing it. So what I did here was go to the tool pallet, choose the paint bucket, select the black color and click it over the picture (making sure the mask of the new layer is selected) what happens is the adjustment you just made disappears. So now, instead of painting with black we will select the tool brush, select white and paint only in the areas where we want the blue to show, in this case the jeans, doing that we will be revealing the adjustment we just made.
Here, however the blue wasn´t looking too real, so what I did was set the layer to overlay (please refer again to adobe´s info page or help and look up blending modes). That blended the blue better and added contrast, so I dialed the opacity down to my liking and this is the result:
Image IV -
Again here I created an adjustment layer, this time a black and white layer, excluded the model´s body and dialed down the opacity making the entire scene less colorful.
I then repeated the step, this time not excluding the model, dialed down the opacity to my liking and set the layer to overlay, increasing the contrast of the entire image.
Result:
Image V -
Here I used another image I took that day and added it to the TV. It is hard to see in such a small size but it is quite clear with a bigger version of the image. I first pasted it into the image I was working on, then I transformed it, first with free transform and then with the distort tool to fit it well into the TV screen. These tools are in EDIT – TRANSFORM. Once I had it at the right size and position I overlapped it with the screen and set the layer to overlay. At first it didn’t look too god so I dialed down the opacity a lot, added new layers by duplicating that one and changed the opacities until it looked as I wanted it to..
Image VI -
Now I wanted to add something extra to the picture, something I hadn´t thought about beforehand. Blood. This is a complicated subject and it is up to anyone who attempts it to find what best works for them. There are in the internet a thousand tutorials to do this; here I was quite conservative and not very perfectionist.
First I created a new empty layer (layer – new layer) or if you go to the pallet below the layers, right before the trashcan there is a new layer icon that will create a layer upon clicking it.
Then I chose a brush that looked like some kind of liquid, chose the red color I thought worked best and painted where I wanted the blood, it doesn’t look very realistic by itself, so again several layers were created and set to different blending modes until I reached a result I liked.
Image VII -
Here I added a bit more blood to places that were bothering me such as her chest and arm, as they looked a bit blown out, I could either go back and fix it or add blood, chose the latter.
I then found something else that bothered me, marks in her stomach formed by the way she was sitting and the harsh light.
So I created another empty layer went to the tools pallet and chose the healing brush.
Here being thorough and careful is very important to achieving a realistic look. I zoomed in very close, made the brush tip very small and used several layers at different opacities to achieve a realistic look, to understand you will have to try it yourself and play around a bit until you find what you are looking for.
The additions of layers at various opacities makes the cloned parts blend better, the best way of doing this is cloning a bit in one layer dialing down the opacity, then cloning a bit more in the next and again and again…
Result:
Final:
Observation:
In case this tutorial helps you please leave comments in how I can improve the tutorials in the future as my process of working in Photoshop nowadays is very intuitive, it is hard to know to which level I am writing this for and I don’t want to waste time by being over simplistic and explaining the basics. Therefore I hope the Adobe website and the help inside Photoshop will help you better understand what each tool is used for and consequently better understand what I am doing with my images. So please leave a note, give opinions and show me results - share the knowledge 
Next week I will post a beauty tutorial the process I go through with beauty images such as these:
