Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies | 
| Author: Lee Varis
Publisher: Sybex
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $18.30
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Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 9383
Media: Paperback
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 7.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 047004733X
Dewey Decimal Number: 775
EAN: 9780470047330
ASIN: 047004733X
Publication Date: October 16, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Achieving accurate skin tones is one of the most challenging tasks in digital photography. Master this challenge with professional photographer Lee Varis as he covers a range of skin: women and men, young and old, various tones, in-studio and outdoors, tattoos, and more. His step-by-step tutorials and before-and-after illustrations demonstrate various techniques for topics such as digital-specific lighting challenges and what can and cannot be done in post-process. A free CD-ROM accompanies the book and contains sample image files to use while following the tutorials, plus equipment recommendations and technical reference materials that enhance and reinforce the instruction. Order your copy of this practical guide today and get a complete start-to-finish approach to integrating everything from posing models to shooting and retouching candid scenes.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Provocative December 1, 2006
Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA)
91 out of 94 found this review helpful
It probably says more about me than the book that I found a title which applies to something that surrounds every person provocative. However, it's likely that advanced Photoshop users will find something provocative in this book
The book is aimed at photographers who know the basics of photography, including exposure, and the use of Photoshop including layers and masks. The author's emphasis is on portraits and people photography and how to get the most from photographs of these subjects. Although the author spends a little time looking at hardware like digital cameras and at basic portrait lighting techniques, his main concern is with post processing.
The author's stated aim is to fill the gaps left by other books, like the reproduction of dark skin. And he does this in many ways that I haven't seen before. For example he suggests better skin colors can be achieved by looking at the CMYK readings and applying a rule of thumb. (If you don't know what CMYK is, this book isn't for you.) Varis suggests that for Caucasians magenta and yellow should be of approximately equal value, with cyan a fourth to a third of the value. Images of African Americans should have a higher percentage of cyan and magenta. He then tells you how to make these adjustments. He also shows how to make tone and contrast adjustments for both color and black-and=white images.
The author devotes a chapter to retouching, showing the reader how to ease those wrinkles and even do a little tummy tuck in Photoshop. He also devotes space to special effects, but he emphasizes alteration of the image not to tell lies, so much as to give effect to the photographer's vision. There is also a chapter on preparing output for print.
Most of the techniques that Varis shows are attempts at improvements on simpler Photoshop techniques. For example in the chapter on preparing for printing, he describes a method of improving on the usual unsharp mask sharpening. He does this by adding two additional layers that allow individual control of the prominence of the light halos and the dark halos that are the essence of unsharp mask.
Application of these techniques requires effort above and beyond normal Photoshop processing. How useful they will be depends on the amount of work you are willing to invest in an image, although most of the techniques could certainly be embedded in actions. Equally important is the question of your own ability to envision when to employ a particular technique to improve your work. An alternate consideration might be your willingness to experiment with several techniques to see which will benefit you.
The book includes a CD with the images used as examples in the book. I recommend that you read chapter 9 of the book which discusses these images before any other chapter. Then unzip the folders they come in into a new folder and follow along with the book. Often the changes are subtle and more easily seen on a monitor as they are made than on the printed page.
In summary, this is a book for the experienced Photoshop user, willing to spend the time examining techniques that might enable one to get that slight edge in his or her photographs that would put one ahead of other digital photographers.
One of the four best Photoshop books I know of January 12, 2007
Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
50 out of 58 found this review helpful
Lee Varis has written a superb treatise - and that's what it is - on "digitally lighting, photographing, and retouching faces and bodies". He joins a short list of Katrin Eismann and Steve Caplain as the best teachers of Photoshop I am aware of.
Eismann has written books on retouching and masking that are absolutely essential. Caplain has written the bible on Photoshop montage. Varis has written the last word on on photographing people in the digital age.
One aside: all three of these authors are to be thanked for not attempting to be comedians along the lines of Scott Kelby, Deke McClelland and Russell Brown. Where this business of Photoshop authors trying to be "funny" started is unknown, but it is a ghastly thing when the author truly isn't funny.
Anyway, Varis covers the waterfront here, when it comes to photographing people. Everything. Color. Lighting. Correction. Retouching. Printing. In all, this book is about making the most of the people you photograph.
Profusely illustrated, Varis takes the reader step-by-step through each and every process.
There are a lot of Photoshop books out there, but few truly great ones. This is one of the few.
Jerry
The Best Book of Its Kind October 21, 2006
Leigh Miller (California)
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
How many times have you taken a photograph that was "almost perfect"? You know what I mean. Either there's something in the background you didn't notice, a shadow or blemish on someone's face, or worse yet, it's the best photograph you've ever had taken of yourself, but your stomach was sticking out. As someone who has worked with Photoshop pretty regularly for a few years, I'm happy to say I can remedy most of those situations. Although I've used 'Photoshop for Dummies' and it has been helpful, 'Skin' offers suggestions most photographers never even though about. It was mostly through creativity and tenacity that Photoshop worked fairly well for me. It wasn't until I read 'Skin' that I realized I was working entirely too hard to achieve the effects I was after. Achieving appropriate skin tones is no longer guess work, eliminating or softening facial lines is a snap, and balancing colors throughout the photo has become a mandatory element. Trial and error is no longer a prerequisite in my photography. Author Lee Varis offers more information than I will ever use as an amateur. However, whether or not I ever incorporate all this information into my photography, it was fascinating to read about how easily it's all done. For me, the portrait "tricks" alone make this book worth while. I plan to keep it on my desk and use it every time I work on a photo.
Skin: Highly Recommended May 19, 2007
Kevin H. Stecyk (Canada)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies
I just finished reading Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies, a wonderful book for Adobe Photoshop enthusiasts. Although I would only consider myself an intermediate user of Photoshop, I found Lee Varis' book immensely helpful, and I highly recommend it to all those who photograph people.
Chapter 1: Digital Imaging Basics is a brief introduction to digital imaging basics. It quickly covers chips and pixels as well as dynamic ranges. Furthermore, Varis covers JPEG artifacts, cameras, memory cards, computers and monitor calibration. He finishes the chapter with a discussion on Photoshop preferences.
Chapter 2: Color Management Workflow, and Calibration is as the title suggests. The first few pages provide a high level overview of workflow management. Then Varis discusses color and light calibration. I must admit, he does have a rather funky looking set up of test targets that include the GretagMacBeth 24 patch plus Styrofoam cutouts and black traps. Varis provides a lengthy and detailed discussion on his calibration method. He also mentions that he prefers 8 bit processing as opposed to 16 bit. Moreover, he comments on the popular expose to the right practice.
::::The idea is good theory but bad practice because the histogram cannot tell you where you are placing your tones with any precision, and it can't tell you whether the histogram is appropriate for the subject. (What picture goes with this histogram?) The camera's histogram is only a general indication of the distribution of values in the camera-generated JPEG. It is usually a composite of all three channels. The RAW data has a much wider distribution of tones that will vary in each channel, so you may not know if you are clipping important data in the Red Channel simply by looking at the histogram display on the camera.::::
Chapter 3: Lighting and Photographing People is an overview of lighting. Varis uses different configurations of lights and reflectors to demonstrate various effects. The photographs contained in the book are helpful to understanding the concepts discussed.
Chapter 4: The Color of Skin teaches the reader about proper skin tones. Varis introduces how to use curves effectively as well as how to adjust skin tones by using the CMYK values. He then finishes the chapter with a discussion on cultural and personal preferences. What one group of people might desire, others might oppose. So it is important to understand your audience.
Chapter 5: Tone and Contrast: Color and B+W is an extremely interesting chapter because it discusses how to create B+W conversions and how B+W conversions can create better color photos. The first few pages discuss the channel mixer and split channels to obtain stunning B+W conversions. Next, Varis teaches the reader how B+W image can be used in luminosity blending to darken, lighten, and recover detail. I enjoyed part of the chapter because it opened up new avenues for processing my photos. Last, he discusses hue, saturation and toning effects.
Chapter 6: Retouching is a thoroughly enjoyable chapter. Varis begins with a basic retouching where he uses the healing brushes to smooth away wrinkles. But then he kicks it up a notch by subtly using the dodge and burn tools to make the image just that much better. He then goes on to show how to use Hue/Saturation Repair to address red blotchy skin. I found the before and after pictures were amazing. Varis then walks his readers through an example of an attractive woman in her fifties. The before and after pictures are remarkable. He then shows a similar set of before and after pictures for a beautiful young model likely in her twenties. He wraps the chapter up by discussing some thinning techniques as well as some further skin processing.
Chapter 7: Special Effects provides some useful tricks to generate interesting images. The four main themes of this chapter are soft focus, film grain and mezzotint, cross-processing, and tattoos. A substantial portion of the chapter is devoted to soft focus, which includes depth of field effects. Because photographers often want to create a softer, less harsh image or part of an image, I found this discussion helpful. I am not one for film grain and mezzotint. Similarly, I am not wild about cross-processing where you get unexpected colors in unexpected places. The last section on tattoos was interesting, even though I am not a tattoo fan. I liked the last part of the tattoo section where he described how to use Photoshop to create a fake tattoo.
Chapter 8: Preparing for Print focuses the following key themes: sharpening, color management for print, soft proofing, desktop printing, and creative print finishing. I am going to comment on the first and last items. Varis' sharpening discussion is very helpful. Prior to reading this book, I simply used unsharp mask and was done. Now, when I want to get a sharper picture, I use multiple sharpening layers in luminosity blending modes as well as darkening and lighting blending modes. This technique has the advantage of offering better control of the halos. Creative print finishing provides some options for designing captivating borders or edges to the photographs. In his examples, Varis shows how the edges provide added pizzazz to the already great photo.
Chapter 9: Parting Shots is a short chapter that provides some further high level commentary on workflow. Varis then walks the reader through the companion CD. I suspect most readers have already opened the CD and have been using the files all along, so this information is superfluous at this point. And last, he reminds readers that digital photography is still in its infancy. Much of what we have just learned is likely to become outdated soon. I believe, however, that if we understand and have developed a sense of adventure to experiment, our newly gained knowledge will help us as newer technologies and techniques emerge.
Being an intermediate, at best, Photoshop user, I found Skin to be a valuable resource. I enjoyed learning by working through the examples. I also enjoyed seeing how just some subtle steps make a significant difference. I highly recommend this book.
Book of the Year for people shooters December 18, 2006
Gary Jean (Alexandria, Virginia)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
Photo techniques books have a tendency to rehash things we've seen before. Not this book. It is chock full of stuff that I have never seen in print.
The "focus" of the book (in case you didn't guess) is human skin, and the difficulties of digital capture, development, retouching and preparing for output.
Varis provides an explanation for the tendency of digital sensors to over-emphasize the red component of skin color. Better yet, he provides several techniques to effectively deal with the problem.
One way is a new camera calibration technique that uses a Macbeth color checker and Adobe Camera Raw. What's new about that? His method uses hue and saturation adjustments, which coincide with the adjustment sliders in the calibration tab of ACR. This is quite different, and potentially much easier, than Bruce Fraser's method (Real World Adobe Camera Raw), which requires a series of trial and error RGB adjustments.
Varis points out that "correct" RGB calibration may still have the "skin" block of the Macbeth color checker too red. He offers an alternative calibration that gives "correct" skin color, but may move the red block toward yellow. No free lunches. However, both calibrations can be saved in ACR and selectively used depending on subject matter.
Varis also presents skin correction techniques using Photoshop CS2 Hue-Saturation-Lightness layers. This is another straightforward and effective tool that I have never seen in print.
Varis writes for the professional and assumes some proficiency in Photoshop. However, there is much for the advanced amateur in his book.
Highly recommended!
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