Digital Imaging Fundamentals

Introduction To Digital Imaging

In the era of digital photography, it is absolutely necessary for everyone involved in the creation of digital images to understand the basics. Whether you are an aspiring retoucher, a makeup artist or an Art Director working with photographers and retouchers: these articles are for you.

A wider list of articles on retouching and digital imaging fundamentals can be found here: Retouching Fundamentals

QUALITIES OF DIGITAL IMAGES

15 Jun

Fundamentals, Software

Image File Formats, Resolution & Size

Image File Formats One of the main criteria that distinguish different file formats is image compression. Compressed files' size is significantly smaller and allows us to send or upload them on the web, or simply have a higher number of...

18 Jun

Fundamentals, Working With Colors

Bit Depth: 8-bit Vs. 16-bit

Bit Depth is a metric of how many unique colors are in the color palette of an image that are used to represent each of the colors. This is not to say that the image will make use of...

24 Jul

Fundamentals

Dynamic Range in Digital Photography

In photography, dynamic range is the ratio between the least and the highest measurable intensity of light. Simply put, it is the range of light and tonal detail from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights. A good understanding...

23 Jun

Fundamentals

Sharpness Vs. Focus in Digital Photography

Sharpness: Acutance + Resolution Sharpness is the level of the clarity of detail in a photo and is a valuable tool for emphasizing textures of subjects and subjects' details in an image. The sharpness of an image is described by two main...

10 Jan

Fundamentals, Software

The On-Screen Image Resolution Myth Busted

We recently had a lengthy discussion in our Retouching Academy Community group regarding the importance and definition of image resolution. Even though it is pretty straight forward there is still a lot of confusion. With this quick post I...

31 Jul

Fundamentals

Understanding Image Noise

What is Image Noise In digital photography, image noise can be compared to film grain for analogue cameras. Image noise usually manifests itself as random speckles on a smooth surface and it can seriously affect the quality of the image....

03 May

Fundamentals, Software

Creating Banding-Free Gradients In Photoshop

Seattle-based guest writer Josh Fredman is with us today to share how he avoids banding when creating gradient-based background in his images. --------------- In this tutorial, we’re going to look at how to create banding-free gradients in Adobe Photoshop. Although often misunderstood, when used properly, gradients...

05 Aug

Fundamentals

What is ISO?

WHAT IS ISO? ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, and in terms of photography, designates an exposure index system devised by that organization. In essence, ISO is an exposure rating index that is used to tell you how sensitive...

30 Oct

Fundamentals, Working With Colors

Fundamentals Of Color Theory

These are the things every visual artist must know and understand. LIGHT & COLOR If you want to learn to manage color, it helps to first understand just what it is: Color is a property of both an object and light, and...

30 Oct

Fundamentals, Working With Colors

Introduction To Color Management

COLOR SPACES Color Management is the process of coordinating colors from nature to camera, then to monitor, then to print, so that the color that will be produced in your final images correctly represents the colors that you intended, and match those...

17 Jul

Fundamentals, High-End Beauty & Fashion, Working With Colors

Color and Luminosity: Real-World Color Correction Techniques

Introduction Every now and then, an image comes along with complex color schemes that can be daunting to retouch. For such cases, isolating luminosity and color components of the image and tackling each one individually can be helpful. First, we must...

16 Feb

Fundamentals, Hardware & Tools

Camera Sensors, Megapixels and How They Affect Post-Production Results

LESSON 3:BEFORE THE CAPTURE Camera Sensors, Megapixels and How They Affect Post-Production Results What Is ISO Camera Settings For Better Source Images Light & Shadow Basics <<< RETURN TO THE COURSE PAGE We are excited to share a guest article from Ontario-based...

27 Aug

Fundamentals

Light & Shadow Basics

It is important to understand the basics of the studio and ambient lighting for retouchers just as it is for painters, photographers and any visual artists for that matter. The following is a quick review of some basics that...

23 Aug

Fundamentals

Camera Settings For Better Images

Beginner photographers will often jump to studying retouching before they have their photography and lighting skills fine-tuned. However, it is smarter to start with a solid photographic foundation before refining one's post-production techniques. Starting off with a strong and technically...

BEAUTY RETOUCH PANEL

The Beauty Retouch Panel is a Photoshop extension panel designed to help photographers and retouchers speed up their Beauty, Fashion & Portrait retouching workflow and ultimately increase the quality of their retouching results.

Beauty Retouch panel combines basic Beauty retouching scripts, tool and adjustment layer shortcuts, which will add simplicity to and speed up your workflow by performing the tedious and repetitive parts of your routine. Utilizing a few advanced and extremely helpful scripts, as well as the ability to add custom User Actions, this extension panel will also save you hours of work in the short and long term as well as help you achieve accurate, repeatable top-quality results, and impress your clients!