P
ost-production represents a huge chunk of
the Photoshop industry. For every illustrator
or digital painter working in the field, there
are many more Photoshop experts whose
job is to use their skills to enhance photos, make 3D
artwork look realistic and bring their professional
techniques to advertising and other commercial
projects. For many Photoshop artists, post-
production is their day job, and its rigorous discipline
fuels the technical skills that allow them to create
such high-quality images in both their professional
and personal work.
You can learn a lot from a post-production
workflow, whether it’s for photos, 3D graphics, or a
mix of the two. After the basic skeleton of the artwork
is produced – the studio photo, or 3D render – it’s the
post-production artist’s job to add the icing to the cake,
performing the edits and enhancements that will really
make the image shine. Most post-production artists
have a clear process that they follow for doing this. It
may seem that post-production is strict, and indeed it
is sometimes, with its adherence to particular tools
and techniques, like dodging and burning, adjustment
layers, or working with render passes. But within
those defined parameters – which post-production
artists have created in order to streamline their
workflow and improve their images – you can also
find a lot of creative freedom. Master the post-
production workflow, and you’ll discover the tools and
techniques you need to take your Photoshop work to
the next level.- SPOT HEALING BRUSH
Remove blemishes while matching the colour, lighting,
shading and transparency of the surrounding pixels –
perfect for detailed areas of the face and hair. - ADJUSTMENT LAYERS
Enhance and change colour, tone and the overall
feel of the image, from simple Hue/Saturation
adjustments to Color Lookup, which replicates the
look of particular kinds of lighting or camera film.
7. F I LT E R S
Process the entire image, to sharpen, blur or add
noise that replicates the look of a photograph. More
creative filters are available, but are seldom used in
post-production.
8. BLEND MODES
Change the appearance of layers, introduce colour
shifts and transparency, and add light and shadow.
Blend modes are particularly useful when used in
tandem with render passes and adjustment layers.
9. LAYER MASKS
Add and erase image elements non-destructively. Pixels
on a layer mask can be painted (or selected) in and out of
your composition, but unlike erasing, the data is not lost.
10. SELECTIONS
Select an area of the image to make changes and
adjustments to. There are lots of different ways to select
image areas in Photoshop; in post-production Color
Range and the Pen tool are powerful, popular tools.
6. CLONE STAMP TOOL
Clone out blemishes by sampling and overlaying nearby
pixels. Good for retouching large areas of similarly
coloured skin, like the cheeks. - PATCH TOOL
Repair an area with pixels sampled from another area of
the image, or a pattern. In Photoshop CC it has
Content-Aware functionality for added accuracy. - DODGE AND BURN
Enhance shadows and highlights. Use on a 50%
Gray layer set to Overlay for a more subtle result,
as Dodge and Burn can introduce odd colour
artefacts sometimes. - RENDER PASSES
Created when rendering in 3D, these different ways
that the render engine represents your image can be
used to make masks and selections, or duplicated to
use as adjustments.
KEY POSTPRODUCTION TOOLS
THE ESSENTIAL PHOTOSHOP TOOLS YOU NEED TO MASTER
MEET THE EXPERTS
RICARDO THOMAZ
WWW.BEHANCE.NET/RTHOMAZZ
Ricardo Thomaz
is a retouching
artist from
Brazil. He
specializes in
portrait work
and advertising
images, and
works as a finaliser, finishing
images to a high degree using his
specialised post-production
techniques in Photoshop.
AHMAD TURKI
AHMADTURKI182.WIX.COM/AHMADTURKI
A self-taught 3D
artist with six
years’ experience
in the industry,
Ahmad Turki has
won five
excellence
awards from 3D
Total and has been featured in 3D
World magazine, 3D Artist magazine,
3D Creative magazine and INCG
Showcase magazine.KHALED ALKAYED
777+(!,%$˶!,+!9%$#/-Khaled Alkayed is a Jordanian
artist working as a 3D artist at
Team Y&R, where he’s
developed his 3D skills in the
advertising industry.FAHRAN YOUNAS
WWW.ARQUI9.COMFahran Younas is lead artist
at Arqui9, a high-end studio
specialising in
architectural visualisation