Digital photography requires a solid workflow, allowing for professional preparing of digital photo files for the web and print. For the Digital Photography Workflow series, we consulted with a number of experienced professional photographers who are also stellar photo.net members and frequent contributors to the Photo.net Digital Darkroom forum, to walk us through their specific photography techniques and tips on post-processing images.

In this article, Patrick Lavoie offers advice on how to quickly “clean” a studio floor during the retouching phase. The article is enhanced with illustrative figures and screen shots, and includes example images from Patrick’s retouching portfolio. Whether you are just entering the world of digital photography and need some tips and advice on how best to post-process your images, or are a seasoned pro, the insights shared here should be helpful with your own digital post-processing techniques.

Level: Intermediate

Tools: Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Mac] or Adobe Photoshop CS3 [PC] or higher. Note: in Photoshop CS3, this works only on 8-bit images.

How to Clean a Studio Floor

Many of you shoot in a studio. It may have already happened to you, or could happen in the near future, that you have to stop a shoot if you want you or your assistant (you’re lucky to have one) to clean the floor, either by sweeping, or by repainting it quickly to make it new for every shoot. But what if there’s no time for this?

before

after

Here’s a quick solution for you when you are left with a bad floor for your retouching session. Of course, it’s much faster and way better if the floor is clean in the session. Since I’m not at each photoshoot with a whip, sometimes I have to clean things up digitally during retouching.

This trick works well for solid colored backdrops and on a cyclorama floor—on hard wood it will not work as well.

Follow along, and try your hand at this with one of your own “dirty studio floor” images.

Step 1

Duplicate the Background Layer. Name the duplicate layer Dust Removal and zoom to 100% while viewing the floor area.

Step 2

Go to Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches.

Step 3

Set both boxes to zero to start with, and for the Radius use a number that cleans the floor, making it really blurry (I used 35). Click OK.

Step 4

Create a new empty layer. Set the mode to Soft Light and tick the box to Fill with Soft-Light-neutral color (50% gray). Name this layer Texture.

Step 5

Go to Filter > Texture > Texturizer and select the Sandstone option from the pull down menu. Try numbers until you find a pair that best gives you the texture you desire. Click OK.

Step 6

Now you should have 2 layers on top of your Background:

a. A Background copy called Dust Removal: Select this layer and click on Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select the layer mask, then fill it with black by using the Edit > Fill menu command.

b. A layer called Texture with no mask: Select this layer. Create a layer mask and fill it with black just as you did for the layer above. Press and hold the Alt/Option key and with your mouse, place the cursor between the two layers so that the cursor turns from an arrow to a cufflink. Click your mouse, and you will now have linked this layer to the one below.

Step 7

Go back to the Dust Removal layer. Select the mask and using a brush of the desired size, with white set as the foreground color, start painting away your floor. If you make a mistake, change the foreground color to black and paint over the mistake. Switch back to white to continue removing the problem area.

Step 8

When all of the floor is done, go back to the Texture layer and select its mask. Use the Gradient tool, and from the bottom to the middle of your image create a gradient that will expose the texture.

Since you have linked it to the Dust Removal layer, the texture will only appear through the other mask, so you will add texture back only to the places where you painted earlier. You can also adjust the opacity of the Texture layer until it appears exactly the way you want it to.

Conclusion

I visit the forums on photo.net because I like what I do, and I like helping others. My opinion is if you want to become better you have to share your secrets that way, you have to work harder to be better.. and I like competition. I hope this quick tip on how I clean studio floors digitally was helpful!

More

• Patrick’s member page
• Patrick’s gallery page
• www.espacephotos.com
• Photo.net Digital Darkroom Forum

Example Photos

espacephotos.com for Vantrile ©

espacephotos.com for Leda & St Jacques ©

espacephotos.com for Vantrile ©

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