tutorial is sponsored by the generously donated pinup images of Kelly @ Bay Area Pinups

This is some of the fun vintage effects achieved with the Vintage packages, video guide after the jump:

Would you like to bring a truely vintage and artistic look to your boudoir photos?

Well start out with a great photographer like Liesl Cowley, Kelly Hsiao and use the finishing tools linked below in these video tutorials:

Leave a comment if you would like to hire Neil to retouch your images for a vintage effect!  The client initiation fee is $40, and that covers the first two images – after that it is $5-20 per image depending on the style and complexity you are after.

The Make Light Real Create cart has these products available to help your boudoir retouching and vintage photoshop retouching:

	Vintage Master Kit Vintage Master Kit – 18 Postcards + 30 Textures + Multiple Choice Action Set You want to master the vintage look – bring that soft, worn lovability…	$89.00 … more info
	ONE ACTION: workflow and training Available for Immediate Download The complete ONE ACTION Photoshop workflow action with training video. Set includes: ONE: lightroom preset/camera…	$79 … more info
	Vintage Multiple Choice Action Set Vintage Multiple Choice Action Set The Vintage Multiple Choice action produces 11 layers for you to blend into your vintage style. The action does…	$39.00 … more info
	Vintage Soft Color Faded color, bleached negative antique vintage styling The vintage soft color action will gently desaturate your image with a soft chocolate antique…	$4.00 … more info Max: 1
	Golden Touch Monochrome Sunny Golden B+W Toning Photoshop Action free download Part of the Golden Touch Series Golden Touch Video Tutorial = training + inspiration Golden…	$9.00 … more info
	Skin Smoothing Photoshop Actions Skin smoothing for perfect portraits description	$9.00 … more info
	Draw a soft vignette action Draw a soft vignette action This quick photoshop action helps you draw attention and focus to an area of the image you select with one of three…	$4.00 … more info

The classic illustrated pinup styles are commemorated in the work of these artist if you’re looking for tone and style clues:

• Edward Runci – Google Search
• Alberto Vargas – Google Search
• Gil Elvgren – Google Search
• George Petty – Google Search

I mean Deke

Really – don’t fear the LAB Colorspace – it’s Zen beauty!!

• Understanding the suggestive power of darkness
• Eye of the muse : photoshop retouching deconstructed

I know these are written to a more abstract level and so today I’d like to provide a more hands-on experience and so I have posted this L*A*B* colorspace photoshop file for you to download.  There are eleven layers in this file, from the starting image, on up through the finished look.

Let’s dig in

The original image was posted in a retouch thread I was participating in and was not shot by me. Sometimes I find using an image in which I am not invested so heavily in it’s creation, frees me to respond more clearly to the image elements for retouching.  Consider a stock image, if you are doing the assignment:

Self Assignment:

Take a high key image, and manipulate it to a low-key image.  Then revel in your new understanding, and sense of accomplishment for such a dramatic change.  Reflect on your feelings about the image in it’s differing stages…. your resistance to some changes, and your acceptance of others – this is the path of your creativity.

The Retouch Tutorial in LAB colorspace

So to begin we have a high-key image.

I start my image retouching workflow with the ONE ACTION, that gives me a ’shaping step’ allowing me to manipulate the overall contrast and the contour of any of the various sized shapes in the image.  The action also loads up a basic set of adjustment layers because specific dodging and burning with image specific curves are how I get at the heart of my retouching goals.

The shadow side of the subject’s back seems blotchy and too dark so I duplicate my layer, apply spot specific retouch with the healing/clone lasso and adjust the layer with a lightening curve.  I mask the layer out using +F6 (for those using the ONE ACTION set) and paint in the area I need softened.

Meditating further on the overall tone, the lips seem too light.  I would like them to balance closer with the cheeks so I create a curves adjustment layer and darken the dark point and light point.  That looks too flat so I put two points between the endpoints giving it an S curve.  The pink was added by inserting a midpoint in the A* Channel and raising it a couple points.

As I started out my retouch without any big assumptions, I wasn’t intending to completely reverse the tonality of this image.  But in the moment I was in, I didn’t appreciate the coldness next to the pink of the cheeks, it seemed to add coldness to the image.  So I went about giving the image a warm tint by editing the B* Channel. I added a midpoint to the curve and raised it a few points,  I changed the endpoints of the curve to lower overall contrast in the B* Channel so that the yellow created was by no means a saturated hue.

To accentuate and smooth the highlights for the glamourous look I used a basic Gaussian Overlay layer. To get the effect, start a new layer – Photoshop Menu item “Image –> Apply Image” with the settings:

• Layer: Merged
• Channel: Lab
• Target (double check that it’s your new layer)
• Blending: Normal
• This will have created a layer that looks like everything you’ve done
  • Photoshop Menu “Filter –> Blur –> Gaussian Blur”
  • Select a size of 10-20 pixels

Change the layer mode to soft light and pull back the opacity 80% or to taste for your image.  The F1 command in the ONE ACTION workflow, will set this up for you – you should run it after you’ve retouched the majority of the elements of your image, as the final smoothing kiss.

The warm, golden touched image above is nice, but the bright highlight on the side of the subject’s face and shoulder seem to be distracting me. The ‘presence’ of the image flows from the subject’s penetrating eyes.  SO, I go to my collection of textures looking for answers….

Grabbing a quick Beautiful Blur, I drop it in and change the layer blending mode to COLOR, allowing for the luminosity (lightness or darkness) to flow from the underlying image – but all color to emanate from the COLOR layer.  Above is a close up of the resulting look.  One layer is not regularly enough when it comes to achieving sophisticated color, so I dove back into my collections and grabbed a darker image from the Organic Vignette set (still being developed) and applied it with a layer mode of multiply.

The result of the blurry and colorful image set to multiply is seen here.  To help you visualize what kind of images work well as texture overlays, shown here is the image used in Multiply mode.

While interestingly flat in contrast, I feel the urge to give it a slight boost, and so I follow that creative urge with another adjustment layer.  As I paint I paint with the intent to make light real.

Notice the S curve adjusting the highlights – painted in with my pressure sensitive Wacom tablet I achieve a touch of contrast across the subject’s near cheek, forehead, eyes, near shoulder, and nape of the neck.  

The light becomes real as I have understood the suggestive power of darkness – my creative urge feels calmed and satisfied.

Here’s a good look at it in a screen filling size:

Thanks for reading, I hope this tutorial enlightens your understanding and creative path.

These Elements were used in the making of this image:

Ever wonder why blue is such a wonderful color?

Blue is the hardest color for camera sensors to capture, and the hardest color for CMYK printers to print.

So how we deal with it in Photoshop is of utmost importance.

We’re sitting here on this beautiful blue jewel hanging in the galaxy, wouldn’t it be great if you captured some of that uniqueness in your images?

If you’d like to continue learning about the possibilities to accentuate and control the blue channel, purchase the Beautiful Blues Screen cast Training video.