I love the book Skin, by Lee Varis

Baldy

I've seen some great comments from Dogwood and others about Lee Varis's book, Skin. It has a technique for fixing red, blotchy skin—which is way too common in digital photography—that has revolutionized the way we correct photos at SmugMug when we have to do it by hand.




We wrote a tutorial about it for our customers. Lee Varis for president. :bow:bow:bow

BinaryFx

Baldy, Lee is a member of the Dan Margulis list and also has a couple of good tutorials on his website (among others).

http://www.varis.com/ColorTheorySuccess/index.htm
http://www.varis.com/ColorTheorySuccess2/index.htm


Regards,

Stephen Marsh
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Skippy

Baldy wrote:

I've seen some great comments from Dogwood and others about Lee Varis's book, Skin. It has a technique for fixing red, blotchy skin—which is way too common in digital photography—that has revolutionized the way we correct photos at SmugMug when we have to do it by hand.

We wrote a tutorial about it for our customers. Lee Varis for president. bow

Excellent Mr Baldy thank you for taking the time to get the post together ...... man I love this forum and people's willingness to share their knowledge .... Skippy
.

Baldy

BinaryFx wrote:

Baldy, Lee is a member of the Dan Margulis list and also has a couple of good tutorials on his website (among others).

http://www.varis.com/ColorTheorySuccess/index.htm
http://www.varis.com/ColorTheorySuccess2/index.htm


Regards,

Stephen Marsh
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

Yeah, I linked to his site and a tutorial on the red blotch issue from our help section on SmugMug. He just sent me a new expanded tutorial in PDF form that I'll make available.

dogwood

Yeah, it's a fantastic book. I created an action for his skin smoothing method on page 204 and it's become my #1 skin smoothing method. The extra touch of "emboss" for texture is the icing on the cake.

The great thing is the book is about so much more than skin-- there is loads of good stuff on lighting too.

That book inspired me to try out a water type photo like Varis does on page 102-- but my results-- well-- they kind of suck. Probably would help if I had a pool deeper than a kiddie pool! See for yourself:

mwgrice

Does he cover what to do with reptilian green skin? I get that with so many of my subjects.:D

Ahem. This looks very interesting--my skin does that (nuclear, not reptilian green) on those rare occasions when I do a self-portrait.

Martyn

Although the book is very good, and I now use Lee's techniques, I do wish I bought it before the Margulis ones (and the Light Science & Magic one). After the hard work I put in to understanding (and remembering) Dan's techniques I felt a little disappointed with the Skin book, it seemed a little too tame. When I first picked it up I thought I was in for another marathon task of reading and re-reading which I perversly got excited about. This turned out not to be the case. The book was easy to read, easy to understand and worth every penny.

Martyn