Commercial Photoshop Retouching: In the Studio

Contents of This Book

This book is divided into nine chapters, each covering a general category of client requests. If you have a client who wants you to fix the color of an image, create something that doesn't currently exist in an image, or prepare an image for use in a special medium, you should be able to find a chapter that helps you do the job. After a brief orientation to the studio of a professional retoucher in the first chapter, the next five chapters cover general types of image manipulation. The last three chapters give special advice on how to prepare images for "unusual" mediums such as billboards, newspapers, and product packaging. Here's a basic run-down of what the chapters are about:

Note

If you need to get up to speed with Photoshop, try Deke McClelland's Adobe Photoshop CS2: One on One (O'Reilly). You really only need a general familiarity with Photoshop to get started with this book, but if you don't even have that, Deke's book is a great place to start.

Chapter 1, The Professional Retoucher's Studio

Tries to give you a sense of what a day in the retoucher's professional life might entail. In this chapter, I've sketched out the basic physical environment in which I work, the workflow of a typical retouching job, and some thoughts about becoming a professional retoucher. If you want to go straight to retouching images, start with Chapter 2.

Chapter 2, Shadows and Light

Discusses the basic category of projects that require manipulation of light. I'll give you ...