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How Do Regions of the World Produce their Looks?
This thread is just a general observation of mine on how some country's Retouchers seem to be producing some very attractive retouching work. This thread is NOT designed to spawn any nationalistic, racist, or disparaging comments between countries or peoples or races. I am just wondering if others notice this nice quality of work too... and to hear what it takes to learn and to produce such nice visual artistry. Im looking for positive, informative, practical, and helpful comments. Question #1: Have you ever noticed that the "General Quality of Retouching" from retouchers in the regions of the Baltics, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech and Slovak countries... for example... seems to be very nice and well done? Some of the retouching work coming out of these countries is of a very attractive quality. Here are some generic examples of what I mean:  Here are some of the qualities I especially notice and enjoy from many of these regional retouchers: - The beautiful hair flows and strand textures, - The time consuming and perfect skin pore textures, - The mastery of dodge and burn... and great contouring, - The smooth shadow transitions in the face and hair, - The color fidelity, - An overall commercial looking quality of workmanship and lush visual artistry. Not that these qualities dont also come from almost every other quarter and country too... but many Russian, Ukraine and Romania retouchers for example seem to have a very special quality of touch. Questions #2: Where do these regional retouchers learn to dodge and burn so well and deeply? Where did they learn skin pores and facial contouring so well? Where did they master hair strand textures and flows so well?? I dont regularly notice these crafts being taught deeply on YouTube or several other well known tutorial sites. Do these regions of the world have access to a different strain of teaching and learning? Where do they pick up their attractive flair and the necessary skills to do this great skin, or hair, or contouring so well? How do you come by "Your Unique Quality of Look" ? What does it take to produce this level of quality? Again: to those retouchers in the regions mentioned: . "How Could a Newer Retoucher Pick-Up On Some of These Regional Qualities?" What are some of the things that you Do to make your retouch work look so great? What are some of the things you have to Learn? Where do you get your training from? How long did it take you to pick up these skills and arts? Thanks for sharing... many of us are admirers of your quality and your artistic efforts. Dec 09 16 08:18 am Link It's very common practice in that region that retouchers (not only) travel around the country and teach. Almost every major retoucher in Russia after couple years of retouching stop doing it and start teaching. Much more tutorials also in Russian. Plus piracy. Kids of any age have access to any tutorial or graphic software for free. Dec 09 16 08:30 pm Link Looks can be deceiving. Many of the people whose work looks beautiful in web size have expressed their interest in working with/for me and applied with full size samples (that includes also people from MM). Only less than 1% really know what they are doing. The rest is just generic image destruction, blurring, visible cloning, filtering etc. - the result of all the tutorials and teachers. BTW after multiple never ending hateful threads about "we hate East European retouchers, they probably steal our files and put them on some mysterious never seen ultra hidden stock site" asking "tell us now how you do this beautiful work" is unlikely to give many replies. So make America great again and don't worry about it.  Dec 14 16 08:23 am Link I kinda agree with you... but some of the images I see are the very large size and high res... and the quality I see from this region of the world is "Very Nice". Excellent craftsmanship and excellent visual artistry! Every individual retoucher, and every region of the world even, is at some "different level of growth" in their quest toward quality retouching. Some of us are only at the beginning... and use the easiest tools at first... and get smudggy results. Others of us who have more time, and more commitment to this craft... we look for ways to improve above that first "YouTube" level. Other people are just artistically gifted it seems... and end up being craftspeople and excellent artists almost naturally. Im not meaning to criticize or judge on any persons ability to make personal art... I try to be accepting that everyone is doing the best they can at their own stage of development. Regardless of our world politics...or of being born into different countries in the world ... I really appreciate some of the very fine visual quality coming from these countries. I applaud you. As a community of people from all around the world who engage in this art form... yes... I am curious to hear how you have acquired your skills and art. It seems to me that some of you may be in some very trying circumstances at many times very unfortunately... but your art is coming across in a very noteworthy way. I have little idea myself sometimes how art like this flourishes, and where it comes from, and how you acquire such skills, craft and art. Dec 14 16 09:33 am Link Well, I can tell you about me shortly: I learned a lot during my years as a stock photographer (and learning is never ending). People who have been iStock contributors in years previous to 2013 know that their inspectors were the most demanding in the world perhaps. Pixel peeping is really nothing. It was impossible a photo with artifacts, visible cloning or filtering to be accepted. So technically this was a rough playground for me. In the beginning I had an approval rate of about 75% and although the average for the site was 50-70% I wasn't satisfied with my own results. So I learned to look and see things which normally almost nobody would notice. This helped me reach approval of 93%. I learned to light my shots better, to pay much more attention to styling before and during the shoot. Practically that is when I became a retoucher of my own content and of that of others too. For good and bad this learning path is no longer available. As I have been told the images on Getty's sites are not inspected for quality any more - just for legal stuff (e.g. was the logo removed, is there copyrighted design etc). Getty simply wanted to make more money and today the collection is flooded with all kinds of images, even from phones. This whole thing made the whole site a nightmare for many and luckily I was out of there on time. As a whole you will not find a tutorial, a book or an article talking about the deep intricacies of post processing. All these lessons/classes are focused on the method, the technique. The mentions of quality are not based on the ability of the teacher to see but are merely quotations from books about other forms of art, from previous superficial but nice sounding verbalizations etc. It becomes a marketing, not a learning. I have been thinking of publishing some materials of mine which talk about more advanced and in depth practical qualities, not about methods and Photoshop but perhaps nobody would care. Most people are interested in making a lot of money quickly, so it is not a passion for them, not something they would really dive into. Re. the mentions of art etc. I always like to remind people that the word art means skill acquired through practice. So it is not something abstract but very practical. Creativity is something different, it is not based on knowledge, so you cannot learn to be creative. It is a flash which comes out of nothing if you are lucky. So the phrase "creative retouching" is utterly meaningless because you don't create anything, you just get something and modify it. Of course it is better to modify it properly, integrally, not just according to a recipe. Dec 14 16 09:56 am Link -- incoming message from Romania ... 3 2 1: we have beautiful women and Dracula here. In this part of the world, I see many photos over retouched, looking more like digital paintings and less like photos (including some of the samples you attached). I don't know why there are so many because there is no market for this stuff, except for a few fine art projects. 95% of the clients need natural looking photos, they don't like the "retouched look". I've always been interested about art. I've worked 10 years in a big print production company, many clients were national and international brands like P&G. It was a graphic design job, mostly technical stuff and less creative. Half of the time I did quality control. During this time I've learned what overall good quality means, what gets published and what doesn't. At first, to learn retouching I've used books and online tutorials. Real learning about retouching started a few years ago when I've started talking to photographers and later picking up projects on online freelancing websites. Retouching for photographers helped me to learn new things and unlearn some of the bad stuff I've got from books and tutorials. I think the most difficult for me was to understand that each photographer has a very very very unique style. So there is no one best way of retouching that works for everyone, it needs to be customized. Most of the clients are from US and UK, so not sure how this relates to Romania. Dec 18 16 05:42 am Link Pall Kris Design wrote: This makes sense to me. I agree with your observations/opinions. Dec 18 16 06:06 am Link I actually agree with you. I have seen some amazing stuff come out of Eastern Europe/Russia and I wonder the same thing. TMA Photo and Training wrote: Dec 20 16 09:08 am Link I think this thread begs a couple of questions. "What is meant by Retouching?" "Is the digital manipulation of a photograph to the level of unnatural, idealised perfection to be called Retouching or Digital Artwork?" I think the answer to these questions is to be found in the purpose of the activity rather than in the range of skills and techniques required to carry it out. I'm sure most working retouchers could easily produce over-polished, pretty, idealised images if they had time on their hands. And if there was decent money in it, they might even suspend their better judgement and do so. But maybe that's another discussion for another thread...... Dec 20 16 10:03 am Link Pall Kris Design wrote: Well said. Jan 25 17 05:46 am Link |
