Andriy Zolotoiy Photography Blog

In this tutorial I’ll explain my workflow how to create shimmering skin on example from my recent bikini photoshoot.

Here is the image how it came out of camera. In my workflow I bring raw files into Lightroom first to do picks/rejects selections and adjust exposure and white balance as needed.

If you would carefully reverse engineer this image you might notice 3 light sources. I used standard three point lighting setup as outlined in following diagram:

I tried to work by the numbers before with light meter but it’s not my thing so I adjust levels by the eye.
When I bring image into Photoshop I analyze how much work skin needs. In this case I needed to smooth it out for which I used Nik Efex Dynamic Skin Softener plug-in with detail values not exceeding 5-5-5 to keep texture intact while smoothing overall appearance.

Next step is to add brown gradient map in Color mode at about 30% to give skin nice olive tone and remove redness.

Next, I add skin shimmer by using Select Color Range and selecting brightest skin area with fuzziness around 30-40. I copy selected areas to a new layer, switch it to Screen mode and Gaussian blur it slightly (20-40px) to create even highlights. At this point I might use eraser if some blurring went into unwanted areas like eyes or lips, or leaked onto background.

Next couple of layers would be additional dodging and burning in Soft Light mode, maybe additional clong that I didn’t do (though I should have) in the beginning.
At the end I would do final toning; here I applied some Cross-Processing , as well as Lighten/Darken Center from Nik Efex.

This is where I stopped. I might come back at a later date and try some other things with this photo; that’s why I keep layered TIFFs just in that case.

If you are looking for complete digital workflow for your photography business that will cost you something close to $0 and you’re using Lightroom to manage photos then you’re in luck. Complete image turnaround consists of sending a set of images from LR to website where client can pick the best ones, then client’s selection is emailed to you. This selection is then marked in LR so you can work on selected images.

This is two part process.
First part is to generate web gallery where client can rate photos, and TTG Client Response Gallery does exactly that. You export images straight from LR to the website and then receive email with the list of selects.
Second part is to bring that selection back into LR. For this purpose you can use my Client Selects plug-in which will load that list you received in email and mark images by star rating and/or color label.
Simple, cheap and will save you lots of time.

Update: ClientSelects v. 1.4.1.0 is now available.

Recently I received a request from an interior designer to shoot few rooms in a fairly large house. The only quirk was that owners didn’t want to have any lighting equipment on the premises (go figure why?), and I had about one hour shoot everything. In situation like this the only possible solution is to use bracketing feature in the camera since most of the interior shots would exceed dynamic range of digital SLR. So I pack my D700 along with 16-35 f/4, tripod and shutter release cable. Cannot get any stealthier than this.

I set camera to Aperture priority f/14, ISO 200 and fire 5 bracket shots at 1-stop intervals. Here is one mid-frame as it came out of the camera:

Frame is not good enough on its own, definitively needs some work. After loading all 5 bracketed frames into Photoshop HDR Pro things start looking better. After fixing some geometry photo becomes more useable.

This particular room was the most challenging as most of the light was streaking through a small opening in the window and walls projected quite bright orange color onto everything

The master bedroom was the easiest one due to its size and color palette.

ClientSelects v 1.1 is available now, it addresses multiple search fixes and adds support for searching in collections and collection sets.
Download latest version of plug-in here.

I just finished first version of LR plug-in that closes the hole between virtual order and Lightroom cataloging. When client sends you list of selected photos you have an option now to automatically mark them in LR for processing. Manual process of matching names is quite slow and prone for errors, so you might want to give it a try. Download and instructions here.

About 45000 images went yesterday into LR3 catalog. The automated process was fast and seamless, but a lot of time went into deleting junk that accumulated there for the last few years. Good thing is that application didn’t become sluggish with all those pics in a single catalog.

LR3 import performance is nothing short of amazing. One year worth of photos took less than 5 minutes to import into a catalog. I haven’t been using LR much in the past but I think it’s time now to revisit my photography workflow habits.

Cross-processing is very simple in Capture NX. The general idea is to play with separate RGB color curves to get the look. Press Ctrl+L to open curves dialog and then adjust each color curve. Here is starting point for your experiments:

Nik Color Efex has quite a few presets for different cross-processing looks as well.

Why in the age of digital super sharp and perfectly color reproduced images we look 30 years back for the look and feel of that era? We create eye popping photo inside the camera, then we blur it, desaturate it, wash out colors and coffee stain it so it looks like it’s been made in 70s with plastic pocket camera. Is it just nostalgia or true artistic expression?
No matter what, I like the look and feel of 60s-80s photographs. So let’s make your average snapshot look like it was taken with Polaroid camera. I will use Nikon Capture NX for this task since Photoshop is covered by too many writers already and I consider NX to be ultimate RAW processor for Nikon cameras. If you shoot RAW, Capture NX will allow you to do a lot of post-production done directly on RAW (.NEF) file. RAW file editing is non destructive so you can go later and modify your editing steps.
There are several elements that are essential for recreating specific photography type. Polaroid has square shape, washed out colors, possibly discoloration spots and quite heavy vignette. That’s quite a few items to take care of but it’s very easy process and you can even automate it.

First, let’s crop photo to square format. Select Crop tool by pressing C, choose Fixed Aspect Ratio and Custom in the tool dropdowns, then enter 1 x 1 in the ratio boxes. Now, drag cropping boundaries over the image and you’ll get perfectly square crop.

Next is vignette. Expand Camera & Lens Corrections panel and drag Vignette Control slider to the left until corners of the photo become darker but not too dark so it doesn’t look artificial but just like bad lens vignette.

Next is toning. I like to have reddish low contrast tint to my photos. Open Curves adjustment panel via Adjust/Light/Levels&Curves or by pressing Ctrl+L. Select Red channel by pressing Ctrl+1, grab bottom of red line and drag it up until photo gets that bleak red tone.

And that’s pretty much all. There is one more optional step. You might want to add some discoloration spot to the image to give it more of that beaten up look. Select Color Control Point tool (Ctrl+Shift+A)

Now, place the point on your photo where you want discoloration to appear. Top slider controls affected area, the rest control color. Play with them to get the look you want. I find that Hue (H) or Warmth (W) work are usually good for this task.

That’s all folks. Here is small gallery of pseudo Polaroids. One last thing, do not sharpen them as Polaroids should have very soft look.