002 Three become one
“This is one of my all time favorite projects because
we got to pickle Carrie Brownstein and Fred
Armisen,” continues Hilmers. “It was a dream come
true. This one needed a lot of TLC because it was
basically three original shots – each actor behind
Plexi and an image of a pickle jar with green liquid.
They really needed work when it came to depth of
field, colour shift, shading and then warping to
emulate the feel of being submerged in liquid. Smart
Objects had a heavy part to play in this shot. A fun
little side note – those are my homemade pickles in
the jar with them.”GRETCHEN HILMERS WORKED ON THIS IMAGE, FEATURING THE DANCERS OF THE MIAMI CITY BALLET, AND DESCRIBES HER GENERAL APPROACH TO COMPOSITING WORK- QUESTIONS OF COMPOSITION
- PERFECT, BUT NOT TOO PERFECT
© Photographer: Michael Clinard© Photographer: Gregg Segal© Photographer: Alberto Oviedo© Photographer: Jason Maris
Getting down to business:stuff first...nose hair, food in teeth, boogers, acne... “I start on any gross
I just want to get that out of the way so I can move onto the fun, creative stuff.”Zoom in: less than 200%. I can’t tell you “Don’t work at anything
how many times I’ve received redos and when I zoom in past
100% it’s a disaster. Sure...maybe you can get away with
something when it’s only printed at 9 x 12, but that doesn’t mean
you should deliver it that way.”Fabric fusses:is to match up the colour and then either create a pattern stamp “Every fabric is different but the general method
or use small patches of a high pass layer to re-create the texture. It can take a lot of time, and I know the general rule is to just try
to re-create it and throw a bunch of noise on top, but when you work on an image at 200% or more you notice that inconsistency.
It’s really important to me that things line up, even such a small detail. Sure, 99% of people won’t notice, but I’ll know.”Hair hassles: “Usually hair needs some work. While
I personally like natural, more crazy stray hairs a lot of other people don’t. There’s a delicate balance
between sculpting hair shape to avoid the dreaded helmet head, removing flyaways and then drawing
them back in where they look natural.”Don’t go too far: are times when so much “There
has been changed that reality just feels off.
There’s the phenomena of the uncanny valley,
which is when you just know something is off. It
generally applies to people, but I strongly
feel we can sense it with everything. There’s just a
moment when something changes and an image
can go downhill, and when it does, it usually
goes downhill quickly.”Work together:course, there’s only so “Of
much a retoucher can do, and starting off with
a beautiful photo and a great relationship with a
client can really help. Every client has a
particular style, and it’s up to the retoucher to be
able to assist with making that extra step
while maintaining the integrity of the original
work. That’s why I always look at what I do
as teamwork.”001 Never work with children or animals
“One of the big tricks here was capturing the feel of the little feathers on the edges,”
explains Gretchen Hilmers (www.g-tou.com). “One of the most important aspects of the
composites is to clean up the seams. When you’re compositing, the joining edges need a
little TLC and that usually starts with blending, adding textures and ensuring the depth of
field is correct. Sometimes there are faint lines that occur around the edges of figures, and
while I use several methods of fixing, I like to use a layer on Darken or Lighten and clone
the background elements up to the edge. But I think the real secret to any composite is
how you shape with light and shadow because that will really bring the elements together.”
004 Balancing the real
“Working with Gregg Segal is always a blast because his images
usually have a large amount of humour in them. He’s also one of
those shooters that are really good at getting things in one take, but
when it comes to animals it usually doesn’t matter how good you are
because they don’t seem to like taking direction. This was a little tricky
in that there’s the combined lighting of the figures and the
environment, so trying to find a balance between natural and artificial
was a bit of a trick.”003 Portrait polishing
“It’s extremely common for a portrait to need a new
background colour, or in the case of advertising, for
the subject to be able to be placed on any number of
backgrounds. That’s where silo’ing comes into play,
and you need to be able to either mask hair out
perfectly, or be able to hand draw it in convincingly.
The four subjects for this campaign all needed
backgrounds that had more impact, and so they all
had to be removed.”001002003004© Photographer: Maarten de Boer