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DM Retouching Site relaunch

November 29, 2010 by

Welcome to the new and updated version of my retouching portfolio and blogging site. I hope you’ll forgive the mess as I work to bring the new site into 2011 with a new look and a new mission for quality new content for photographers and new retouchers. My thanks go to Ian Cylkowski for the rebranding and further help with design elements.

It’s been an interesting year since I focused D Meadows Design into a dedicated freelance retouching service and the response from everyone has been extraordinary. I’ve cleared a lot of dead wood from the blog pages and I’m ready to focus on providing more tips and advice for anyone pursuing photo perfection. It’s been a long year with 16-20 hour days not uncommon to establish the freshly rebranded Daniel Meadows – High End Photo Retouching but it’s been worth it, and my thanks go to my clients and friends on this site and the others I frequent and write for.

Please feel free to follow me on twitter, give your feedback on articles or contact me directly via the contact page.

Daniel Meadows

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‘Life’ by Rebecca Litchfield

May 4, 2010 by

I have just finished the story set by the photographer mentioned recently on my twitter, Rebecca Litchfield, and it looks amazing (oweing in full to Ms. Litchfield’s talents I must admit).

The Life set is part of a five piece fashion story entitled Edenias, inspired by views on Life, Death, Hell, Purgatory and Heaven as held by the conventional Abrahamic religions. Rebecca draws on powerful Catholic imagery and the representation of Mary as Mother of God and the branches of the tree of life, with red makeup detail to represent life in her lips and cheeks. That the subject holds a token symbolic of the death of God made flesh is notable in its subtlety and relevance to the Death story and the transience and fragility of living things. Rebecca references the works of Emily Dickinson and Salvador Dali as starting points in planning the Life images.

“My biggest aim… is to create more energy and emotion in my images, to create a true journey for the viewer”


Rebecca has been a photographer for four years, and is already established as one of the most impressive emerging talents from the UK in recent years, with an impressive body of published work. She was voted ‘Professional Photographer of the Year‘ in 2009 and recently founded her own company, working as a fashion photographer in London.

I highly recommend viewing Rebecca’s website at http://www.rebeccalitchfield.com.

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Photoshop CS5 – Release Date Rumours and New Features

February 1, 2010 by

I can’t get no… hair extraction

So imagine you land a job doing an album cover composite.

‘Great’ you think, as you look over the brief.

‘This’ll make a great credit and portfolio piece!’

You read on and your elation turns to panic as you reach the line ‘Mr. Jagger riding a camel…’

‘But… but Mick’s hair is so bouncy and luscious, and a camel so wiry!’ you might well think. I know I did.

‘It’s a selection nightmare!’

Well not any more apparently, Photoshop CS5‘s ‘Refine Edge‘ dialog has been vastly improved as this video demonstrates. [Read more…]

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20 Years of Photoshop Welcome Screens

January 22, 2010 by

While we wait for CS5 (rumoured to be scheduled for the second quarter of 2010), here’s a look back over 20 years of Adobe Photoshop welcome screens. Every release of Adobe’s industry standard photo editing software prior to 6.0 is alien to me, but perhaps those horrendous 90’s splash screens will bring back memories for some of you. [Read more…]

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Photoshop – Why so serious?

January 21, 2010 by

Having spent eight years using Photoshop for good and mischief, in recent years I’ve stepped firmly away from compositing The Ultimate Warrior piledriving Buzz at the moon landing and into the world of serious photo editing and digital art. It’s a trend I’ve seen developing a lot recently, a considerable number of today’s digital artists and retouchers I’ve spoken to started out as I did. Some of the most beautiful work from the most modern of art forms has its roots in the early 2000’s, Photoshop 6, and putting Chuck Norris in space, just because suddenly, we could.

Photoshop turns a digital image into Lego bricks and the new user into a child. By the time that child grows up, he/she has an intimate knowledge of a set of tools that surpass the old dark room tricks a thousand times over. It’s easy to look down on the teenager holed up in his/her bedroom custom building glitter text for their myspace, or selectively colouring an object from a snapshot, but to do so, even from those generic online tutorials, instills an understanding of animation, paths, masks and curves. [Read more…]

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Retouching In Photoshop 1 – The Basics Page 2

January 2, 2010 by

Once you’ve completed Retouching in Photoshop Page 1, you may have started to notice the next problem to tackle. We’ve softened and removed the main blemishes, but the skin tone is still blotchy and uneven. In this next step we’ll solve this problem using the dodge and burn tools.

Look at our image below (you will need flash player installed to view it) and roll your mouse cursor over the image. Highlighted in green are areas that are a little too dark, and highlighted in red are areas that are too light. Roll your cursor over a few times, allowing your eyes time to adjust to each image. Remember that too dark or light is hugely subjective, and the example given is one artist’s very rough 60-second appraisal of the skin tone variations at a macro level. It’s just a guide, but it should be enough to train your eye towards these variations. There are others I’ve missed out, and no doubt a few errors, so don’t follow it exact. It’s ultimately up to you how you interpret your image. [Read more…]

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Retouching In Photoshop 1 – The Basics

January 2, 2010 by

Welcome to Part 1 in a series of retouching tutorials aimed at the beginner. I’ve always loved the art of retouching and have been more than happy to tutor and teach people new to the software and the art. Having been asked to produce these Photoshop retouching tutorials it is with great pleasure I bring you this first introduction to retouching for beginners.

Before reading this first Photoshop retouching tutorial I would suggest reading my article on Retouching Mistakes and How To Avoid Them. Having a solid idea of why you’re editing something will make the difference between being an artist or a computer operator in your new hobby or profession as a retoucher. The retouching techniques you will learn through this series of articles will give you the tools you need, and advice on how those tools should be applied on a case by case basis, rather than treating them as catch-all techniques.

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