Lee Varis' "Skin" and Eismann "Retouching"

[The View]

Have you worked your way through Lee Varis' "Skin" and Katrin Eismann's "Restoration and Retouching"?

What are your impressions?

Those are both books written for CS2. How up-to-date are they?

Thanks!

[ChasP505]

Have you worked your way through Lee Varis' "Skin" and Katrin Eismann's "Restoration and Retouching"?

What are your impressions?

Those are both books written for CS2. How up-to-date are they?

Thanks!
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I'm about a third of the way through the Eismann book and while it's helping me a lot, I can only handle a small section at a time before falling asleep. I'm working on scanning and digitizing a couple old family photo albums and the book has encouraged me to go back and start over on certain photos, getting far better results.  I highly recommend it, along with some strong coffee.

I also use some of her techniques on the job, trying to salvage poorly exposed real estate photos.

Just about everything in the book carries over to CS3.

[Abdulrahman Aljabri]

Lee Varis book "Skin" is good, but its not amazing. You will be able to find many of his techniques available online in the form of tutorials and threads. In fact, he posted his color correction method online.

As for Eismann's book, I just ordered a copy, so I won't be able to asnwer your question. However, based on the reiews I read, it seems to cover many important professional techniques such as soft mode D&B for example.


Hope that helps

[Alaska]

Lee Varis book "Skin" is good, but its not amazing.
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Have both and you are most correct.  Skin is just OK, and not great.  

Eismann's books on the other hand are most useful.  The idea is to just thumb through and pick up on the techniques of interest.  

Jim

[francois]

I also have both and while Skin is a good book it's not indispensable…

[mistybreeze]

"Skin" is dreadful. I glanced through it and quickly decided I feel sorry for anyone who buys it. Katrin Eismann is a competent instructor but I think her beauty work is heavy handed and the images she uses as samples don't inspire.

Photoshop is an artist's tool and no two artists view art the same way, especially in the realm of cosmetic beauty. The genius book on skin has not been written yet and I sincerely doubt a good one can come from the inner circle of the current "in" crowd of gurus because you need to be an expert at beauty/cosmetic imaging. I wouldn't trust any skin book if it doesn't offer several supermodels and high-end cosmetic or dermatology ads.

Art is often about taste and high-end advertising demands the best from pro retouchers. Whether the look required is "no pore" or "open pore," skin retouching has to be perfect, and the truly great retouching work is costly and time consuming. It also helps if your skin retouchers are make-up artists. Studying the art of make-up can help beauty photographers achieve better results.

I like Martin Evening. Among the "in" crowd of Photoshop gurus, he understands cosmetic beauty but his scope lacks breadth. His strength is the "no pore" look, even though he insists he's left visible pores, but I've yet to see what he can do with a make-up-less face shot at F8 with a large format camera. Retouching natural, clean skin, without blurring its pores, requires much patience and attention to detail, and it requires a tool-set formula. Unless you're a professional make-up artist, most photographers give-up after the first five minutes and fall prey to the mush-producing Healing Brush.

[geotzo]

"Skin" is really IMO not worth the money. All techniques are usual and not the best for retouching skin etc but on the other hand that depends on your knowledge of Photoshop. Try a more general book like Adobe Photoshop CS3 for photographers by M. Evening (which I always found very good if not perfect), and then seek advice on places like www.photoshopuser.com for more specific tasks.

[Ralph Eisenberg]

I feel that the "Skin" does offer some very useful and serviceable techniques for retouching portraits when necessary. Whatever putative shortcomings there may be with respect to organization and content, the value of certain of the techniques suggested in an open-minded spirit should not be underestimated. It has been a considerable help to me on a recent project, and for that I'm grateful. In this sense, my opinion differs from the "compact majority" above.

[Andy M]

Would anybody like to comment on Imagenomic's Portraiture plug-in?

Offered by the same people who offer Noiseware.

[digitaldog]

Would anybody like to comment on Imagenomic's Portraiture plug-in?

Offered by the same people who offer Noiseware.
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Used on a layer, with discretion its pretty darn good.

Sorry to hear the negatives on Lee's book, guess I'll pass. But I know he uses that very old (and I feel unnecessary) work by the CMYK numbers trick so that should have been a clue.

[eronald]

I agree with everything Misty says. On the other hand, by the time you can say such things about Varis or Eisman you are probably in the top 1% of Photoshop users, can do anything in those books without hesitation,  and can give your own course ...

What is interesting is the speed at which the technical quality of retouchers is improving. I learnt a lot from Stephen Eastwood three or four years ago; at that point skin retouching was still an esoteric artform, now it's gone mainstream.

My own favorite fun was always digital makeup. I knew I was getting somewhere when the Moulin Rouge girls asked me to give them shots where I'd added the face makeup on screen

Edmund

PS. As per Ralph Eisenberg's remark above, both books are doubtless very useful to the generalist photographer. It's only when the standards of the fashion or beauty photographer are used to evaluate them that they run out of added value.

"Skin" is dreadful. I glanced through it and quickly decided I feel sorry for anyone who buys it. Katrin Eismann is a competent instructor but I think her beauty work is heavy handed and the images she uses as samples don't inspire.

Photoshop is an artist's tool and no two artists view art the same way, especially in the realm of cosmetic beauty. The genius book on skin has not been written yet and I sincerely doubt a good one can come from the inner circle of the current "in" crowd of gurus because you need to be an expert at beauty/cosmetic imaging. I wouldn't trust any skin book if it doesn't offer several supermodels and high-end cosmetic or dermatology ads.

Art is often about taste and high-end advertising demands the best from pro retouchers. Whether the look required is "no pore" or "open pore," skin retouching has to be perfect, and the truly great retouching work is costly and time consuming. It also helps if your skin retouchers are make-up artists. Studying the art of make-up can help beauty photographers achieve better results.

I like Martin Evening. Among the "in" crowd of Photoshop gurus, he understands cosmetic beauty but his scope lacks breadth. His strength is the "no pore" look, even though he insists he's left visible pores, but I've yet to see what he can do with a make-up-less face shot at F8 with a large format camera. Retouching natural, clean skin, without blurring its pores, requires much patience and attention to detail, and it requires a tool-set formula. Unless you're a professional make-up artist, most photographers give-up after the first five minutes and fall prey to the mush-producing Healing Brush.
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[Chris_T]

I feel that the "Skin" does offer some very useful and serviceable techniques for retouching portraits when necessary. Whatever putative shortcomings there may be with respect to organization and content, the value of certain of the techniques suggested in an open-minded spirit should not be underestimated. It has been a considerable help to me on a recent project, and for that I'm grateful. In this sense, my opinion differs from the "compact majority" above.
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I have used all three books, and tend to agree with your comments about Skin. Eismann and Evening's books are better organized and more suitable for those needing click by click instructions and general image topics. Skin, shortcomings notwithstanding, is the only book that focuses on skin.

For those who are critical, skin tones are the most difficult to get "right", and the easiest for viewers to notice the problems. (While your mother-in-law may love your image of a green plant with a magenta cast, I doubt she will feel the same about your portrait of her with a green cast.) I intentionally postoned editing images with important skin tones for a couple of years until I had acquired the basic skills from editing landscapes, etc. I'm glad I did.

Evening is a fashion photog, and his book's examples show. Many of the book"s (older rev I used) tutorial images are not included in the CD. His lame excuse was that those are copy righted and not his own. Makes one wonder why a pro can't come up with his own images for use in his own book.

If I were to have only one PS book, it would be the Artistry book by Barry Haynes.

[E Slagle]

Varis' camera calibration I've found more useful and accurate than For's script and easier and more adaptable than Fraser/Schewe's Real World Camera Raw--although I used Real World's tone ramping technique before adjusting color via Varis' method.

Using H/S numbers rather RGB (as does Fraser/Schewe) made for a predictable and easy calibration. Once I had my Red, Green and Blue color checker targets normalized (according to my S5) I saved this calibration as "Nature"; within minutes I could then create a "Skin" calibration.

I now feel that my workflow is "super-charged" with calibrations for both skin and non-skin. It also brought to light how the S5 (natively) leans heavily towards the skin calibration vs. then nature calibration.

Any thoughts Jeff...?

At best I'm a Padawan Learner--not a Jedi.

[Hendrik]

I bought 'SKIN' unseen from Amazon, based on some great comments, but only a few pages were worth the purchase. Unless you're a complete beginner, it has not much information.

The only part (only one chapter) interesting was the one how to correct skin-tone, but even this part was very basic.

The book I learned the most (retouching) is 'The Art of Photographing Woman' by Kevin Ames, first edition.

[Samotano]

Haven't read Skin.  But I have read Eismann's book (the first edition and recently purchased the third).  While rich in (good) techniques I agree with one of the posters and would say it is uninspiring.  I like Evening's book, although at times I find it a bit vague.  


Among other books, here is my take in no particular order:

1. Real World Camera Raw CS3:  I'm sorry Jeff, good work, but you can tell Bruce is no longer with us.
2. Real World camera Raw CS2: Simply excellent

3. Dan Margulis book on LAB:  what a pain to read! Unfortunately, there aren't many books at this level on this topic.  Good overall but could have been written in 50 pages...


4. Photoshop Artistry:  is my bible.  Probably because it is my area (landscape/nature)

5. Scott Kelby's Photoshop Channel:  I'm not a big fan of Kelby's style, but there are some neat techniques I wasn't aware of.

6. Bruce Fraser's Sharpening book: fairly specific but excellent if u want to know about image sharpening (if u don't want to know then just buy PhotoKit Sharpener)

7. Bruce Fraser's Real World Photoshop 5: Yes 5! Can u believe it?! I still use it from time to time!