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- My name is Pratik Naik.
I am based out of Houston, Texas.
My clients are people like Dixie Dixon,
Joey Lawrence, Jeremy Cowart,
and a few other commercial companies as well.
I think Sandro's work
is elusive and very versatile.
He is able to capture emotion
like no one's done before.
The stories you hear about him
and the work that you see speaks for itself,
and there's a reason why he's so iconic.
I think the defining moment for me, as a retoucher,
was a few years ago, I finally won an award
for Retoucher of the Year by Framed Network,
and what happened was they had nominated
a bunch of retouchers that I considered my idols
and at the end, I found out that I was nominated
as the winner, and I think that moment,
in my head, solidified the fact
that I was probably meant for this industry.
So in this tutorial, we're going to be covering
a lot of techniques that involve color grading,
compositing, bringing a concept to life,
and essentially that's the end goal,
is having an image that you shoot,
being able to take that and put it somewhere else,
regardless of subject,
and then piece it all together step by step,
from raw processing to the end result.
I think my favorite part about this tutorial
is the fact that we get to see an image
that was taken in a foreign country,
in Papua New Guinea,
brought back in the studio,
and executed to match the photographer's vision
from start to finish,
including compositing and color grading.
When you talk about topics like how to extract hair,
there's multiple ways of going about it,
there's the pen tool, there's channels,
and ultimately, we want to find the best techniques
to be able to isolate the two.
So we're gonna talk about not only the techniques
used in extracting hair,
but also how to shoot it in a way that helps
you extract it easier.
The cool thing about this tutorial is the fact that
you're not only watching me work,
you're gonna get to work as well.
You're gonna get the files so you can follow along
and do everything I'm doing.
I think the relationship between a photographer
and a good retoucher is almost like dating.
You have to be compatible on many levels,
in terms of communication, your vision, and the end goal,
and if you don't have those elements together,
and you're not in line,
then the relationship really can't go forward.
If I had a tutorial like this when I started out,
I would have made a lot more progress with my workflow
and stopped wasting time
trying to figure out what's happening
and get down to business.
(gentle music)