By Gary Poole
Kelly O’Keefe has graciously allowed us to show you a recent image she had us to create for her. This is a Special Services level retouch at only $10.00. The client had seen an image that really impressed her and came to Kelly to see if it could be duplicated. The client needed a portfolio image and wanted to be on a horse with a snow scene in the background while holding a hawk. By combining the original image of the model on the horse and images of a snow scene and a hawk we created this stunning portfolio image for this model.
It’s hard to conceive of modern photography without the use of Photoshop. It all started in 1988 as brothers Thomas and John Knoll were experimenting with manipulation of digital images by a newly developed Apple Personal Computer. While Thomas was more drawn to his father’s basement darkroom, John was fascinated by the prospects of adjusting digital images on a computer. They soon had written a computer program they called “Display” which was a program to adjust basic elements of a digital image. They continued to refine it and make it more useful and in 1988 the program became known as “ImagePro”. The brothers decided this might have commercial application and after a few brief stutters reached a deal with Adobe. Ten months later Adobe launched PhotoShop 1.0 in February 1990 and released it to the public.
Prior to the development of Photoshop all images in negative form had to be painstakingly retouched on a magnification lightbox using the tiniest of brushes applying various colors and densities of photographic dyes directly to the negative. When the negative was printed onto photographic paper these dyed areas of blemishes, eye bags, bruises, etc. would appear as slightly lighter on the print. A “blending “artist would often spend hours trying to blend the lighter areas with the surrounding tones to look natural. This was very difficult, tedious, time consuming and far from perfect.
PhotoShop has given such creative freedom of design and enhancement that never existed before its development. We virtually have no bounds of creativity or expression not to mention the ability to fix glasses glare, stray hair or typical facial blemishes. In fact PhotoShop led to the creation of our parent company Hollywood FotoFix, Inc. in 1993 by our founder and visionary, Mark Long. Since 1993 we have restored and retouched countless millions of digital images from around the globe.
Imagination, vision and creativity are what drive us as photographic artists. Many of you will attend the WPPI Convention next week in Las Vegas as a way to inspire that creativity and get fresh and exciting ideas. RetouchUp.com will be there in the Grand Ballroom at booth number 930. Please stop by and say hello.
Thank you and be creative today,
The RetouchUp.com Team