First Attempt At Pin-Up - PG Rated

Bryce Wilson · March 13, 2012

I have been wanting to try this ever since Alex posted the hot pin up style shots of his wife. I finally found a young lady that was willing to play model for free for me for this type of shoot.

The shoot took about two hours and we did about four wardrobe changes and various poses. This is the first image of the shoot that I processed. I have several other processing techniques that I'm going to try on other images in an attempt to mimic some of the better know pin up artists of the past and find the process that works best. As I complete each I will post them and hopefully you will chime in with your thoughts.

Again, please remember, this is my first go at this style with lighting, posing and post processing. Input, good, bad and ugly most appreciated.

divamum · March 14, 2012

DUDE!!

Concept, styling, model, pose = fabulous.

However.

It's really REALLY soft. I don't mind the slight softness that some of your older lenses give you because they're not "digital sharp" (I like the film emulation you get), but this just looks out off focus even at full size. If it's resolution or processing, then tweakable; otherwise, not sure what to suggest

zoomer · March 14, 2012

Fun shot....what Diva said.

Is that a yellow happy face on her??

Bilsen · March 14, 2012

Terrific first attempt.

I agree with everything Diva said. If this weren't so "mushy" it would be darn near perfect.

Please keep posting these as you go.

Bryce Wilson · March 14, 2012

I'm thinking you folks are taking issue with the processing I chose to do. If looking at this as a photograph, I agree with you.

What I was trying to emulate with this pose and the processing is the pin up drawings that were done back in the 40's. They were drawn and press printed on card stock. I may have missed the mark on that too, but my purpose was to not have it look like a sharp photograph but somewhat like a drawing.

This is the image I started with...

Hackbone · March 14, 2012

Move over Alvarado......great job!!

divamum · March 14, 2012

I'm thinking you folks are taking issue with the processing I chose to do. If looking at this as a photograph, I agree with you.

What I was trying to emulate with this pose and the processing is the pin up drawings that were done back in the 40's.

In that case, take the processing a little further so that it's more obvious

Bilsen · March 14, 2012

Bryce,

Try the pinup method at this site. I like it a lot.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/pin-up-effect.html

Bryce Wilson · March 14, 2012

Hackbone wrote: »

Move over Alvarado......great job!!

Thanks Mr.!!

divamum wrote: »

In that case, take the processing a little further so that it's more obvious

I'm gonna play with that look some more. You're right, it's not quite there, but the experimenting is fun.

JohnGalt_ny wrote: »

Bryce,

Try the pinup method at this site. I like it a lot.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/pin-up-effect.html

I have looked at that...and am going to pick out an image and give it a try. Thanks!

In the mean time, here is one I tried to give a late 50's early 60's look.

MDalby · March 14, 2012

I don't know if this is any better. Just another attempt.

Bryce Wilson · March 15, 2012

Ok....

I tried the process in the tutorial linked by JohnNY...

Couple of things that I learned. That process, used exactly as explained looks really good on an image that is exposed correctly. Not so well on one that is shot high key and a bit overexposed to hide flaws. I think the process will work well if a couple of steps are skipped as those steps are used to create the high key look which is already there in that type of image.

Also, I didn't care for the skin tones that I was left with at the end of the tutorial, so I did a layer mask and added a color layer to get a tone I was happy with. To show the difference, I left the legs in this shot as they appear at the end of the tute, and changed the face, arm and chest area. Big difference.

Fire away....

Bilsen · March 15, 2012

That looks good as a photo Bryce but I'm still not seeing the flat, almost hand drawn look of a Vargas or an Elvegren. Maybe my idea of pinup is too narrow but to me, that look is the hardest part of pinup PP. I know I've never gotten it quite right either.

Bryce Wilson · March 15, 2012

JohnGalt_ny wrote: »

That looks good as a photo Bryce but I'm still not seeing the flat, almost hand drawn look of a Vargas or an Elvegren. Maybe my idea of pinup is too narrow but to me, that look is the hardest part of pinup PP. I know I've never gotten it quite right either.

I'm thinking that to really achieve the Vargas look one would have to use a paint program like Corel Paint. That would open a whole new can of worms, at least for me. At this point, I'm going to be satisfied if I get to the point of easily replicating a press printed photograph look. With what I have in mind for this, I wouldn't be able to spend an hour on each image.

Bilsen · March 15, 2012

Fair enough.

You KNOW I'm a big proponent of "what does the photographer and the model like" first among all.
I seem to recall I've taken that position once or twice.:D

divamum · March 15, 2012

Actually, Bryce, on my monitor the legs that you don't like look more like the actual drawings I've seen on pu cards.

Have you tried printing it out (either at home, or a quickie print somewhere) to see how it looks offscreen?

I should add, of course, that we are talking QUIBBLES. You seriously nailed the styling, look and "feel" of 40s pinupture

Bryce Wilson · March 15, 2012

JohnGalt_ny wrote: »

Fair enough.

You KNOW I'm a big proponent of "what does the photographer and the model like" first among all.
I seem to recall I've taken that position once or twice.:D

And if we really break it down...to heck with the model!:D

divamum wrote: »

Actually, Bryce, on my monitor the legs that you don't like look more like the actual drawings I've seen on pu cards. Have you tried printing it out (either at home, or a quickie print somewhere) to see how it looks offscreen?

I should add, of course, that we are talking QUIBBLES. You seriously nailed the styling, look and "feel" of 40s pinupture

Wow, I didn't know "Pinupture" was a word....:D

I am going to get a couple printed later today. Will let you know how they look.

And..

You know I value and LOVE your QUIBBLES!

D

divamum · March 15, 2012

Bryce Wilson wrote: »

Wow, I didn't know "Pinupture" was a word....:D

It wasn't... until I invented it for the purposes of your thread

Bryce Wilson · March 15, 2012

Well, got back from the "quickie print" I use to test images. They know to turn off the corrections for the stuff I bring in.

Diva, you were right! Although the image printed a touch darker than I would like (easy to fix) the legs look like a drawing and the face/chest looks like a cheap off set press printed photograph. Both looks have their place.

The one I was VERY happy with looks MUCH better printed than it does on my monitor. Although I tend to over think things, I am quite happy whit the printed results and think I achieved the 50's era magazine print ad look with this one. It might be a bit too sexy for this forum, so I will provide a link to it here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60399337@N06/6984673715/in/photostream/

Bryce Wilson · March 17, 2012

Thought I'd try one without the "vintage pin-up" post processing, letting the props, pose and expression do the talking.

For all the J. Geils fans...

Hot For Teacher by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

anonymouscuban · March 18, 2012

Brcye,

Dude. I think you got the lighting, model and poses nailed. Wonderful model too. Her hair and clothing is perfect. Where you're missing is the processing. At least IMO. You mind if I take a swing at it? I can post a quick tut of what I did if you're cool with it. Would need a clean copy of the photo though. Up to you.

Bryce Wilson · March 18, 2012

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Brcye,

Dude. I think you got the lighting, model and poses nailed. Wonderful model too. Her hair and clothing is perfect. Where you're missing is the processing. At least IMO. You mind if I take a swing at it? I can post a quick tut of what I did if you're cool with it. Would need a clean copy of the photo though. Up to you.

Thanks on the hair and clothing...I picked the clothes and helped with the hair.

Re: Processing

I'd LOVE that!!!

Pick the pose you'd like to play with, or, I can pick one that isn't posted and send it to ya. Your choice.

anonymouscuban · March 18, 2012

Bryce Wilson wrote: »

Thanks on the hair and clothing...I picked the clothes and helped with the hair.

Re: Processing

I'd LOVE that!!!

Pick the pose you'd like to play with, or, I can pick one that isn't posted and send it to ya. Your choice.

You pick one.

zoomer · March 19, 2012

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Brcye,

Dude. I think you got the lighting, model and poses nailed. Wonderful model too. Her hair and clothing is perfect. Where you're missing is the processing. At least IMO. You mind if I take a swing at it? I can post a quick tut of what I did if you're cool with it. Would need a clean copy of the photo though. Up to you.

Agree...looking forward to seeing this one.

anonymouscuban · March 19, 2012

OK... Bryce emailed two shots to me so I can take a crack at processing them. I worked on one today after I got home from work. I'm hoping I can walk you guys through my processing steps without being too confusing. I'm not great at this tutorial thing so bear with me please.

OK... so before I jump into the the steps, I thought I'd post the before and after shots:

1 - Before

2 - After (I always try these texture things and like them at first but then I'm always unsure it looks good)

WHAT I DID...

Step 1 - First thing I did was duplicate the BG into a new layer. I then applied the Surface Blur filter to it. Radius of 5; Level at 10. I then added a layer mask to it. This layer starts to give a surreal look to the skin, which is typical of the pin up look. Sometimes I play around with the opacity of this layer. For this shot though, I left at 100%.

Step 2 - Next, I removed the effect of the surface blur from the hair, eyes, and dress using a soft brush set to about 33% opacity. Kind of want to keep some texture and sharpness to these areas so I just painted the areas until I got the way I wanted. You can see the areas I removed in the mask.

Step 3 - I created a new merged layer and ran it through Imagenomic Portrait plugin. You can see my setting below, which I think is just the Medium default. I don't think I tweaked it. This evened out the skin tone.

Here is the what the layer palette looks like after I imported the Portraiture changes:

And here is the image after Portraiture:

Step 4 - Now in this step I run an action that I created. Basically, this adds pop using Unsharp mask filter. The action runs the Unsharp mask filter on two separate layers and then it merges the result into one resulting layer. The setting on the first Unsharp is: Amount = 50%; Radius = 25 px; Threshold = 0. Second Unsharp settings are: Amount = 150%; Radius = 0.9 px; Threshold = 6. In then completes by added a layer mask.

Step 6 - I then removed the effect in certain areas of the image where the sharpening left funky artifacts. Sometimes this happens near the edges, especially near shadows.

Image is pretty much done at this point but I added a few more finishing touches.

Step 7 - I created a new layer from all the visible layers and added a saturation adjustment layer. I dropped the saturation down to -12.

Step 8 - I then added another layer of a picture of old textured paper with the blending mode set to overlay. I then masked her out of it. I applied Gaussian Blur to the mask (175 I think) to soften the edges of the mask.

Step 9 - I finished it off by converting the image to B&W using Silver Efex pro. I moved the resulting layer down one level and then changed the blending mode on the top layer to "color". This picks up the tonal value and contrast of the b&W but makes the image color. Its trial and error because it works with some images and not with others. I like the effect on this one so I kept it.

Shot from Silver Efex Pro. Neutral preset with the contrast bumped to 13 and the structure to 5:

Palette immediately after import from Silver Efex:

Palette after I move B&W layer down and changed blending mode to color on top layer:

THAT'S IT! Here is the finished image again:

I guess reading this, it seems pretty involved but it takes me about 15 minutes to complete. Hope you guys can follow the tut and it's helpful. Again, my take on the whole Pin Up genre.

Bryce Wilson · March 19, 2012

Tutorial looks good mi Amigo...

but...

I don't see any images.

anonymouscuban · March 19, 2012

Bryce Wilson wrote: »

Tutorial looks good mi Amigo...

but...

I don't see any images.

Sorry... Gallery was set not to allow external links. Should show up now. Hope you like what I did.

Bryce Wilson · March 19, 2012

I like it a lot. Thank you for taking the time you did to not only do the image, but write and post your workflow. Only thing that bugs me about the finished image is that her face is considerably lighter/whiter than her chest.

I'm going to try and follow your steps on a different images, but will have to omit those that use the programs and plug ins that I don't have and see what I come up with.

In your opinion, is the other image I sent too "hot" for this forum?

zoomer · March 20, 2012

Love love it....without the texture.
You definitely have this processing down perfectly....as mentioned there are a few bright areas on the face and the feet started out a bit bright. Other than that looks great.

anonymouscuban · March 20, 2012

Thanks. Yeah... the face is a bit brighter than the rest of the body. I think it's because her chest and neck are somewhat in shadow. I will work on the other shot today and post.

Bryce Wilson · March 20, 2012

Ta-Da....

Using Mr. Cuban's tutorial as a guide I have come up with an image that is very pleasing to me. Even after leaving it and coming back in a half an hour, I still like it.

Being as I don't have some of the software or plug in's that Alex has, I had to omit those steps, but I did add a few of my own to get this final result.

I used a layer of Shadows and Highlights to really bring out highlights in the hair.

I also used a fill layer of soft light 50% grey to burn the dark areas a tad and then dodge to lighten the light areas a tad to create more shape.

Instead of doing the black and white thing I did a color fill with a shade of yellow.

Very interested in opinions. Most likely should view this at full size to really see the effect on the skin.

With MANY Thanks to Alex..........

Vintage Swimsuit Pin-Up Girl by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

Cowboydoug · March 20, 2012

Bryce... I actually liked #1... maybe just a smidge less yellow in the face...but i think it works... in this view the legs & arms are great... the chest & face jut went past center a bit... (i think)... More importantly... what do your customers think?
As you know I do some weird stuff... but as long as I get to keep using my Square & the money goes to my account I will keep doing weird, wild stuff;)
So I say to you.. More Please... love it...

First Attempt At Pin-Up - PG Rated

Comments