My first TFP work – and the first image from a wonderful set provided by Andrei Roman of Flux Media YEG.

I’ll preface this post with: this was such a fun image to work on! It was challenging too – but I really enjoyed working on the skin with all it’s different colours produced by the different gels.

Many thanks to Andrei Roman – who so graciously provided a heap of raw files from his recent shoot entitled Creative Euphoria. I’d only just joined the TFP High End Retouching group on Facebook earlier this week, and when I saw these images – I knew I just had to try my hand at them. I will be doing more from this set as the weeks pass – there was a bunch of different coloured lighting ones, and I want to see where I can go with them. So stay tuned.

The model for this shoot had absolutely gorgeous skin – and because of that, I didn’t do any frequency separation whatsoever. Just a lot of dodging and burning to even out a few spots. I will say, I wasn’t a fan of the overlined lips, but really, each to their own. So I fixed them to how I like them – and to me it seems a lot neater now.

In this edit, I tried to bring forth more of the colour contrast between the red and the blue lights on either side of her face. I did oversaturate the red a touch originally – my friend CJ suggested knocking it back – especially around her nose. I was really inspired by the work of Jake Hicks – his work to me appears very saturated with his use of coloured gels, and so much gorgeous grain (which I also tried to emulate).

© Jake Hicks Photography – jakehicksphotography.com – holy heck, I really loved this shoot of his!

This time I didn’t do any sharpening – I just relied solely on the grain. I do think I need to focus more on colour theory and get that down pat, and figure out an effective way to neaten up the hair. I watched a tutorial by Pratik Naik where he retouched a model’s hair, but it took him something like 20 hours – and I was all like nope! I don’t have the patience for that today! Next time though, I think I will pay more attention on how far I push saturation – I will have to go way less heavy handed on it – especially red which is really overpowering!

What are your thoughts? What would you change or do differently? Please comment below and let me know!

Many thanks, and hope you have a great day!