Here is a shot we did where the client requested to have part of the siding replaced on the house. I kind of have to laugh at myself, because when the client asked if it was possible in Photoshop, I said, “Yeah, I can do that.” I spent the rest of the shoot thinking, “How am I going to do that?” Luckily, the client sent over some samples of the siding that they wanted to replace the old siding with. It wasn’t a big sample. In fact, I had to spend about an hour building up a pattern big enough to use on an entire side of a house. It had to be smooth enough that you couldn’t tell where the seams were, and the shake had to be in scale to the rest of the house.

After I got that done, it was time to map the pattern on to the house. The pattern that I had built so far was a straight on shot. There wasn’t any angle or depth to the pattern. So for each shot I had to give the pattern the same perspective as the walls of the house. Then, the overall contrast had to be matched to fit the lighting scenario. After that, shading had to be done to make the pattern not so obvious. The color even had to be matched to a specific color. I believe some sky was added in for texture, and grass was brought in over the dead grass that was originally there. For something that doesn’t look so complicated, it sure wasn’t easy. 

- Adam

This was a really fun trip out to North Carolina - I love our road shoots. We had a stunning set of houses in a brand new development; the weather was a little tricky, so we had to get lucky on a couple of occasions with some gaps in the clouds. But the much bigger problem was that siding wasn’t exactly what the client wanted…and the grass was completely dead (but that’s an easier fix)…so Adam got to really work through some crazy steps to make the exteriors perfect. And of course this was on a tight deadline for a trade show ad. I’m really happy with the result.

- Alistair

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Creative Director: Dave Swearingen

Art Director: John Stephenson

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Client: Ply Gem

Agency: Blacktop Creative

A Little Photoshop Makeover

Our retoucher, Adam Caselman shares a unique perspective on post production.

Here was a situation where the conditions for making a beauty shot were a little less than awesome, so I gave it a healthy dose of Photoshop. This is a shot from a project we did in Washington DC for Ply Gem. There was quite a bit to do on this photo, and I remember sitting in my chair looking at this thinking, ‘Where do I start?’ I think the best approach is to just pick the most obvious thing, make it look fantastic, then move on to the next thing. Just about everything in the image has been worked on in some way, so put on your gloves kids, we’re about to get messy.

The most obvious things to me were the basketball pole, the 'Case’ pole just to the left of that, the zig zag gutter in the middle of the frame, and the mailbox on the left. Everything must go! While these tasks weren’t like flipping on a kitchen light, I luckily had enough material around the objects. The challenging part of taking these objects out was cloning the siding of the house and keeping the pattern believable. The mailbox and the 'Case’ pole weren’t hard to deal with, but the basketball goal and the gutter were tricky.

Now that the cloning was done, I felt like I could take on the house. The large tree on the left was shading the left side of the house, so I had to lighten the left side and even out the tone. The tone gradually changed from right to left on the house, so I had to do my best to match that, lots of feathering. Then the color of the shutters had to be bumped up. Easy enough.

Next came the grass, which I had to bring in from a shot we had on hand that we use for cloning in grass. Grass can be very tricky to match. Special attention needs to be given to the time of day when putting completely new grass into a scene. Even the contrast of the grass needs to be correct for the time of day, or it won’t be convincing. The driveway needed replacing, and in an amazing coincidence Alistair came back the day I needed a new shot for it with a nice clean shot of a driveway, almost like it was meant to be.

The last piece was more challenging than I originally thought, the sky. I was able to replace the sky without too much painting. I used a series of contrast and color selections. Those techniques saved me what might have been hours in painting. Phew! I’m really pleased with how the image turned out, especially the cloning. I’ll admit to smiling when I flick through the before and after shots. I hope the client did too.

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Author: Adam Caselman

Client: Ply Gem

Client: Blacktop Creative