In this video, I'm going to show you some of the important changes that I've made
to other photographers work that makes their images more effective. I'm also
going to explain why I made those changes.
Our members on Karl Taylor Education really enjoy the photo critique shows of
their work, it gives them an opportunity to show off their photography and gain
valuable feedback. We hold weekly photography challenges as well as other
themed photography critiques and I've just introduced a popular new episode
called working to a brief and that's where I set the photographers a very
specific art directors brief and they have to execute it. You can check out all
of that on our platform on Karl Taylor education but today let's show you some
of the valuable comments and changes that I've made to other photographers
work. So what I'm looking at is obviously we want the attention drawn to this
bottle, which it is, it's working really really well. I love these little patches
of light here and here, I'd maybe subdue that one a little bit darker and it's
the hessian sack around the bottle for me, it's a little bit too sharp so it's been
sharpened overall, the picture to bring attention to the bottle, but at the same
time the hessian sack's been sharpened and the contrast on the hessian sack is a
little bit bright so what I want to do is draw a little bit more attention to
the to the bottle rather than to the hessian sack so I'm just gonna bring the
highlights down a little bit on that and just going to maybe dark and a fraction
there as well just a tiny bit and then i'm going to invert that mask to hide
what i just did and then I'm just going to airbrush the edges of that back a
little bit less tonal range there so you can see I'm darkening that down, just
take it a little bit off the edge. I might want to leave a couple of patches
so that we can still draw in to the bottle but I want to make the bottle the
absolute hero of the shot. Now if I flick that on and off, you see we've got a
large really bright rim around the bottle but if I turn that on now the bottle has
got more focus on it so the bottle becomes the strongest part of the focus
and that is the imperative part of product
photography. The dress needs, because the dress is the big thing here, the dress
needs to win a lot more, so you know I would have ramped up, just watch this a
second, I would have ramped up the contrast on this dress. I'm just gonna do
this here a second, just playing around with the contrast on that dress now I'm
gonna invert that mask and I'm gonna hide what I did there and then I'm going
to take a brush but I'm gonna lock that flow rate down a little bit and then I'm
going to take some key parts of this dress on the highlights and I'm just
gonna introduce what makes this look like more contrast lighting on
patches of this dress. Notice how it's also increasing the saturation on
elements of that dress as well because the contrast always increases saturation
and now what happened, now what's happening, is that it looks like we've
got some sort of more magical light dancing in around on this dress, and if
we flick that on and off we've gone from a flat dress to a lively dress, okay and
as a sort of fashion shot that's what it is. Now as soon as I've looked at that
I've noticed all that bit there is a bit bright for me but that's easy because I
can just go back to black paint and I can paint that back away again with the
mask. If you're not familiar with using masks in Photoshop then that's covered
in our tutorials but now you know very simply in just 30 seconds, I've made that
dress pop out of there. I can then take a hue/saturation adjustment layer I can
steal that mask, and move that mask, and drop it into this hue saturation and
then I can go into the hue/saturation settings and I can start to mess around
even with the hues there so that I've now can be richen up the greens on that
dress and in a matter of minutes we've gone from a sort of flat,
bland dress and punching that up to really bring some additional drama to it.
So there's little things like that, that for those sort of fashion shots we can
really make it punch out. Right so I think this is really good, very good job
on this, really well done but again you know the bottle and the actual
powder are almost the same, let's just take a look here. If I ramp the
saturation up on this we can get this powder looking a lot more lively
and then what we can choose to do, is we can choose to airbrush back maybe the
bottle, so that we basically, let me just put that into the white brush mode, so
that we basically tone the bottle down maybe, so that we keep a separation
between the powder and the bottle. Because now what we've got is that we can see
the two separated a little bit more - and here we are you know, without it it's all
almost the same tone and with it we get one thing the product standing out a
little bit more than the other so that's what I would have done on that one but I
think a spectacular shot nonetheless. So we've got this dappled light hitting
here hitting here, it feels really really nice. I think they've used a grad filter
because interestingly the sky is darker than the reflection, so the reflection is
almost the more distracting part, so I would have considered if you've got the
detail, I won't over here but if you've got it in the RAW file, is let's get that
reflection in the water toned down a bit. Now if I'm just going to... just gonna hide
that and what I'm going to do here is I'm going to add a little bit more drama
to this shot via burn and dodge. So I'm saying, right I don't want that
bright reflection, I want to tone that down. Now immediately, just that one
little fix has improved that shot quite dramatically.
It's a very symmetrical image so we've got the bottle right in the middle, we've
got the rays of light pouring out here, the refraction from here and here.
And also the glow behind the image behind the product but the rays of light
glowing out this side are not the same as the ones glowing out this side so I
would have liked to see more symmetry. Get the polygon lasso tool, find the
middle of the photo, that it sat on. So if for example, we did; layer > new > copy, just
of that base layer and then we; edit > transform > flip, that on the horizontal
and we end up with that and then we move that over there then we've got perfect
symmetry. So the first thing as you're looking at this image you think "Mmmm, yeah
I could drink that beer. Beer looks good however, what is happening in this shot?
Okay, any guesses? Let me tell you. Right first of all let me just put a layer on
there so we can see what's happening is that the the manufacturer of this beer
is going to want you to look at that because they want to sell it but
unfortunately we're looking at that and that more because that is the highest
point of contrast, it's much brighter than the rest of the shot and in fact
it's too bright. That area there is overexposing
so we don't see the bubbles anymore. Now let me just show you briefly if I'll a
sue this area, let me just take this, I'm just gonna do this kind of roughly, I'm
gonna take this whole glass actually at the moment. I'm going to bring a curves
in on here, just a curves level and I'm going to pull this whole area down from
the white end. There, see now in doing that as soon as I do that your focus goes to
the label, okay and that is what the client is going to want. Now I may have
pulled that down a little bit too much, I can play around with but we
should have got it right kind of in the lighting or a little bit in the post
work but let's say I even just pull it down to there, let me flick that on and
off okay; Now where is your eye going when it's on
and when it's off? Okay, so when it's on you're going straight to
the beer, when it's off you going a little bit more to the label. Now I'm not
saying that you shouldn't actually reveal maybe some of the the lager a
little bit more in there, I'm also going to take the the lager in in this area
here as well... I'm just gonna bring
another curves adjustment in here and I'm going to pull the curves up on that
bit okay now that's not feathered enough. You just rub out what I did on the glass
for a moment, let's just look at what we've done on the bottle. So we're
bringing more focus to the bottle now than we had before. If we flick these two
layers, watch the focus goes through the glass if we flick these two layers the
focus goes to the bottle and the product and in saying that we could have even
dodged up the product a little bit more as well. So let me just... I mean this
is the wrong way of doing it with this tool but I'm going to do it because this
is the quickest way for me to do it. We could have brought a little bit more
focus onto the bottle label, everything there by bringing in, just
changing the balance of the lighting okay. Maybe even darkening in the
little hops there. Why is it floating in space because on my calibrated monitor
here I can only and I say only just see a very very faint line of an edge there
and I would have done something with this, I would have got; let's
do it very quickly and roughly here... Let's make a selection of where that
edge that I can just about perceive let's take that there, because this
product is not grounded, okay, this product is floating in space and
yet it is a beautiful, beautiful product shot and it neat and ignore the fact
that the red liquid bits got lighter while I'm doing this.
It needs that ledge, it needs that base, it needs to sit on something visible and
unfortunately it's not, it's almost floating in black.
The contrast in this area here is not quite as strong as I would like. Now
let's just show you what we could do about that. If I bring a marquee now and
I'm gonna feather that (select > modify > feather). I don't know how big this
picture is but I'm gonna say feather it by 25, I'm gonna say okay, now what I
would want to bring in here is a curves adjustment, or actually all now bring a
levels in for this one because I'm just want to change the contrast.
Look at this, watch what I've done there. Popping that name up there with
brightness but also need some strength in the shadows there and we'll just mess
around with the mid-tones a little bit, pop that in a little bit more. I'm making
that more pop right. Now flip this on and off look... boom boom boom boom. What is the
manufacturer gonna want to see? That is what sells the product that that's what
the manufacturers gonna see. I just wanna get a little bit more bite in this. We've
lost the symmetry because of that background.
So it was bent like that, distorted... now it's corrected straight.
My interpretation of the colors has certainly helped - there's the original,
there's the punchier face and then there's the shifting colors. This part of
the face has got to be the brightest bit. Well I hope that you've found those
critiques useful if you'd like to get your own work shown and critiqued, head
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