A_P_I133_2015_

Itendtoretouchtheover

theedgesofmasksonce

we have finalised layout and

colour.Thisallowsmetoblend

alloftheseparatepartsofmy

compositeintoafinallayerthat

feelslikeoneimage

Fred Muram,www.paradigmcolorstudio.com

important to let it take time, leave it for a while and

try to look at it with new eyes. Flipping the image

horizontally also helps looking at it with new eyes,

but if you do it too much you get used to seeing it

both ways.”

For Cawood, there just aren’t any shortcuts. “I

have found that often using shortcuts can lead to

lower quality work,” he says, “I still do most of my

masking manually. I think it’s important to take

your time. Though I don’t use shortcuts, I do have a

solid workflow. I’ve spent many hours developing

what I need to do as I work through an image. This

has allowed me to speed up my process by

knowing what I need to do next.” He adds that

spotting mistakes in other people’s work should

inspire you to do better: “The biggest turn off for

me is an image that looks like it was thrown

together. When people don’t take the time to make

sure they ‘cross all their t’s and dot their i’s’ it can

really hurt the image. Bad masking and bad

colouring are two things that bother me the most.

Take your time and double check your work. Make

sure you don’t leave anything out or skip any steps.

Once it’s printed you can’t change it.”

surprised when he sees amateur errors – like “bad mattes orILUMINATA Floating Island:Renato Nascimento is always

bodyproportionerrors”–onprofessionalwork

Dragon Landscape:“I also want

my images to be unique,” saysBrandon Cawood

60572:as well know our tricks of the trade,”“Ifweaimtocheat,wemight

says Jarek Kubicki

© Renato Nascimento

© Renato Nascimento

© Brandon Cawood

© Jarek Zubicki

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/ILUMINATAPRODUTORADEIMAGEM

Now you see it: When Nascimento sees

amateur work, the first thing he spots “Is when the lights and shades are not

coherent, it leaves that impression of something wrong but you don’t know

what it is at first, but then when you look carefully you see the shadow and

light mistakes.” He makes sure his work doesn’t have these problems!

Now you don’t:jobs,” says Nascimento, “is to make the “What delights me in our

impossible possible, but after you create the photomontages or simply retouch a

model photo, the goal is to make a pretty image, for our taste and the client’s”

Crashingly obvious: Renato Nascimento

works hard to create believable images, but it does take practice. He says: “In

amateur photomanipulation they are not worried with quality nor realism. What

surprises me is to see amateur mistakes on professional images”

Up and down:photos, Nascimento says he “uses the When he is compositing

Curves a lot, because it gives me the option to adjust colour, brightness and

contrast with a single adjustment”