Color has never been more important to the story of an image. Famed UK photographer, Jake Hicks walks you through his signature style using color gels to create vibrant and life-filled images that grab a hold of every viewer. Jake takes you from understanding the basics of bringing color to your subjects to creating complex color schematics with a dynamic impact.
Move into a whole new look, the Gelled Beauty. Go back to the the studio and listen as photographer, Jake Hicks, breaks down the elements of what goes into making the Gelled Beauty look. In this composition, hear about the importance of makeup, monochromatic color, creating skin texture, the usag...
In the Gelled Beauty setup, change from a black to white background. Begin the layered, step by step build up process for lighting the set. Begin setup with the key light, focusing on position, angle, distance from the model, paying attention to the subject's eyes and jaw line. Evaluate the dista...
In the second step of lighting a Gelled Beauty portrait, add a silver umbrella to create specular highlights and contrast. Leverage the ease of use on an umbrella with a gel, compared to a softbox, creating soft light. Understand the position of lighting in relationship to the model and other lig...
With exposure from the Key and Fill light dialed in, apply additional control in shaping the lighting setup by using black and white v-flats. Shape the lighting around the model and observe as photographer, Jake Hicks, explains his methodology for controlling light within your shooting environment.
Add one final light to the setup, with additional modifiers to create soft, diffused lighting. Hear photographer, Jake Hicks, approach to shooting a flatter image in camera, retaining as much information at capture for manipulation in post. With practical lighting methods, avoid unwanted color ba...
With lighting, gels, and modifiers locked in, capture a series of poses to create stunning gelled beauty images. Create a tight composition with an emphasis on hand and shoulder placement, refining focus and dimension. Work with extremely shallow depth of field, creating vividly sharp focus on th...
Enter the retouching phase for gelled beauty with photographer, Jake Hicks. Using Lightroom, cull through a series of gelled beauty images to select the top favorites. Listen as Jake, describes his approach in selecting the kind of images that will ultimately go through his rigorous editing proce...
After culling the top images, leverage the power of RAW image processing using Lightroom's toolset. Hear photographer Jake Hicks, philosophy on processing RAW with Lightroom, prior to editing your images in Photoshop. Using highlights, tone curves, clarity along with other adjustments, create a b...
Begin the retouching process for gelled beauty using Photoshop. Follow photographer, Jake Hicks, through a layered, multi-pass retouching process to create a beautiful, stand out image. Listen as Jake discusses his philosophy on how to improve your portfolio, where to invest your finances to impr...
In contrast to dodging and burning, focus on balancing skin tone using a method of black and white toning. Using this step in the multilayered approach towards skin retouching, follow photographer, Jake Hicks, in creating a commercial look by eliminating splotches and patchiness. Using soft light...
Leverage the power of skin smoothing to create an incredibly soft, natural skin texture. Follow photographer Jake Hicks, as he uses a methodical, mathematic and balanced approach in another pass of skin retouching. With the goal of creating a high end commercial look for the gelled beauty image, ...
With each pass for retouching, tone and smoothing skin complete - focus on a more global approach for the gelled beauty image. Switch to creating depth and dimension using dodge and burn. Use curves adjustment layers and the paint brush tool to accentuate facial features, lightening and darkening...
Move the edit forward into the final stages of the retouching process - focusing on sharpening the exposure. With each pass in the process expand from a targeted to more global, all encompassing approach. Push the detail of RAW combined with production lighting and Lightroom processing, to provid...
With global sharpening applied, focus on the final pieces of the retouching process. Feather the highlights for a subtle roll off in specularity, reducing the often oily appearance of skin tone, without losing the dimension. Take a multi channeled approach to color toning. Learn when to process c...
Follow photographer, Jake Hicks, through an uninterrupted retouching session, on another image from the gelled beauty series. Learn how to expedite your workflow in a series image, by re-using some of your work from the first image across subsequent images.
