Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies

It’s actually fairly rare that we go over Photoshop techniques on this website. I like it that way because I believe that as much of the work should be done in camera as possible. That alone will eliminate post processing time and get you back out in the field and behind your lens.

Before the emails start coming in about how digital photography has allowed a new genre of photography that incorporates image editing software and digital illustration and blah, blah, blah…

I don’t care. This website is called Your Photo Tips not Your Photoshop Tips.

So, now you ask, why choose Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies as a book to review for the Your Photo Tips Photography Book Club? Really, it just popped out of the list of photography books that I’ve been meaning to read and it was on sale. That’s gonna change so don’t worry.

On to the review.

Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies was quite surprising to me on many levels. I found the book informative, well written, and rather helpful. Certainly the book is a little dated, but I still feel there was much value to be had.

In truth, I didn’t learn anything that really wowed me. I worked as the “Digital Artist” and photographer for a high traffic photography studio before I opened up my own studio, so I know my way around photoshop (especially when we’re talking portraits). But I was able to sit and consider how many years it took for me to get to that comfortable level of photoshop mastery (mastery is a loosely used term here, so again, no emails).

As I read this book and went through the CD I tried to look at it from a beginner’s perspective.

My conclusion?

I think this book would have been very helpful for me were I just starting out. While, obviously, this book isn’t for everyone, I do think it has immense value if you fall into this specific criteria;

1. Your a photographer.
2. You use or plan on using photoshop as your image editing software of choice.
3. You are a portrait photographer, fashion photographer, commercial photographer, or a stock photographer that uses people in your photography.

Using the techniques in this book will certainly give you a better understanding of how and why skin looks the way it does in digital photography. If you fall into those criteria listed above, and can’t afford to have someone else do the retouching and color correcting for you, then I do recommend this book.

For everyone else… probably not.

Don’t forget we’re reading The Camera by Ansel Adams for our next book as part of the Your Photo Tips Photography Book Club thanks to the recommendation made by poppaJ as part of our ongoing series 16 Quick Tips For New Photographers which gets back under way tomorrow (Yes, that was a run on sentence, but this isn’t called Your Writing Tips either).

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