Photoshop Retouching in Thailand

[ian in lancs]

I'll probably give them a try but has anybody used these people http://www.clipping-path-asia.com/ or know whwther these services are any good? I was on a lighting course yesterday and the tutor uses them for ease. Editing for 4 Euro / file seems good vfm.

[The_Jackal]

The new Refine Edges in CS5 makes a lot of those examples easy fixes now.

[ian in lancs]

I know but as I have a main job where I can earn considerably more than I can earn from portraits I'd rather do that, take the original pics and leave others to do the tidying up - boring healing and cloning and I'll finish off with the treatment and printing.

[andy-xr]

Looked more like cutouts than retouching there, but as usual I only skim read.

If you want a retoucher for portrait work, I have a mate who's particularly good with skin and works at pixel level

[ian in lancs]

andy-xr said:

Looked more like cutouts than retouching there, but as usual I only skim read.

If you want a retoucher for portrait work, I have a mate who's particularly good with skin and works at pixel level

how much-ish?

[andy-xr]

The old favourite of answering a question with a question will no doubt occur. He'll want to know how many...

If you want his details let me know

[ian in lancs]

andy-xr said:

The old favourite of answering a question with a question will no doubt occur. He'll want to know how many...

If you want his details let me know

hence the ish!

indicative average will do; £1, £10, £100 etc a picture

or

for £10 he'll do x; for £20 he'll do y etc

In other words we're both in business and I get bored with pantomime pricing. If he knows his job he'll be able to give a rough idea.

[stigmundfreud]

alternate work on the light first. Digital has taken the entire edge from photography as now everything has to be just spot on, pin sharp and noise free

Its not about perfection, its about the imperfection. Lose that, lose photography

just a thought

eta wtf is your tutor teaching you if you are to rely on someone in thailand to fix things? Is it the sloppy method of photography?

Edited by stigmundfreud on Tuesday 10th August 03:50

[ian in lancs]

stigmundfreud said:

alternate work on the light first. Digital has taken the entire edge from photography as now everything has to be just spot on, pin sharp and noise free

Its not about perfection, its about the imperfection. Lose that, lose photography

just a thought

eta wtf is your tutor teaching you if you are to rely on someone in thailand to fix things? Is it the sloppy method of photography?

Edited by stigmundfreud on Tuesday 10th August 03:50

lol - healing skin imperfections isn't sloppy photography. I'm not 'relying' on Thailand I can do it - just choose not to! Even top 'togs use someone else to edit and choose to just set the shot up and shoot it. Oh, I'm well aware the lighting (or shadows actually) make or break a picture. Just 'cash rich - time poor'. Photography isn't my income FT job. Doesn't pay enough!

[stigmundfreud]

if you want a quick and relatively good tool at doing skin touching, face reshaping that side of the shizzle save yourself a shed load of money and just get portrait professional, it really does work quite well. It has some OTT skin plasterisation but can all be toned back.

Have a look at that

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

I use a now out of date version, the latest ones are much more realistic but even my older version delivers results - I just hate using the bloody thing as I like imperfections

[ian in lancs]

stigmundfreud said:

if you want a quick and relatively good tool at doing skin touching, face reshaping that side of the shizzle save yourself a shed load of money and just get portrait professional, it really does work quite well. It has some OTT skin plasterisation but can all be toned back.

Have a look at that

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

I use a now out of date version, the latest ones are much more realistic but even my older version delivers results - I just hate using the bloody thing as I like imperfections

I have it and you're right it works well but prefer using Imagenomic Portraiture a league better - far more natural results and shed loads better than portraitprofessional which in my view is plasticy and doesn't easily have the full body capability or subtle tonality of Portraiture. I do use it occasionally for close-in head shots but not often.

Most of the stuff I do demands the models looking their best often with stylized treatment and non-model public prefer that approach but then I'm more measured in both healing and style treatment. That means I end up using Portraiture quite a lot.

I do refuse to do venture style stuff although it can hide a multitude of sins....

[andy-xr]

ian in lancs said:

andy-xr said:

The old favourite of answering a question with a question will no doubt occur. He'll want to know how many...

If you want his details let me know

hence the ish!

indicative average will do; £1, £10, £100 etc a picture

or

for £10 he'll do x; for £20 he'll do y etc

In other words we're both in business and I get bored with pantomime pricing. If he knows his job he'll be able to give a rough idea.

It's more in hours spent doing what you want done.

This, albeit more of an extreme example - £10/£15

[stigmundfreud]

did he just up the white curve?

[ian in lancs]

andy-xr said:

ian in lancs said:

andy-xr said:

The old favourite of answering a question with a question will no doubt occur. He'll want to know how many...

If you want his details let me know

hence the ish!

indicative average will do; £1, £10, £100 etc a picture

or

for £10 he'll do x; for £20 he'll do y etc

In other words we're both in business and I get bored with pantomime pricing. If he knows his job he'll be able to give a rough idea.

It's more in hours spent doing what you want done.

This, albeit more of an extreme example - £10/£15

That's great, cheers. Any chance of seeing the before picture?!

[andy-xr]

ian in lancs said:

That's great, cheers. Any chance of seeing the before picture?!

I'm not a huge fan of letting out unedited images, but for the sake of discussion I'm kind of in a corner over it

So...(and you have to look at this photographically and based on the PP)

before




after

Edited by andy-xr on Wednesday 11th August 22:27

[ian in lancs]

Thanks Andy, that's really useful seeing what a professional can do and how much it can cost. I guess there are two elements to it - healing and cloning defects out and the second selecting treatment; B&W,selective colouring, high/low key etc. The former healing bit is tedious and time consuming to do properly and that's what I'm thinking about contracting out. The latter with compositional cropping is more the creative process and I'd be happy to do that.