before & after

 Mark’s retouching work covers a spectrum, from delicate retouching of small details right up to the apparently impossible. Below are just a few examples of how his skills have manipulated images to make a bland surface sparkle, or turn a mundane view into an attention seeking one.

McLaren P1 

McLaren were keen that the P1’s curves and textures were totally revealed hence the abundance of light falling upon every panel. As this was an early prototype some details needed to change too, so these elements were grafted on using CGI renders.

Aston Martin Fashion Shoot

The usual beautifying techniques were put to work here including a few subtle tweaks to the nose, ear and collar bones. A couple of sharp earrings were placed before dropping in a new background and painting in a few extra lights.

Finnies Chopard rings

We deploy a very rudimentary portable set at Finnies to crash through a huge workload. Several shots are used to ensure we get sufficient light on the diamonds before these rings go through an intense painting session in Photoshop to remove any blemishes and add some shine.

Rolls-Royce Wraith Music

There are many elements to consider in this shot and tying them all together is the challenge. The main light wall needed extending and the stage lights were multiplied and adjusted, and the floor reflections tweaked to suit. The car’s paint, reflections, colour and depth were treated before final blending.

Champneys Uma Thurman

Straight forward this one. Just beautify (though this is not shown) then swap the background and extend the image at the top and widen by adding curtain material – that just leaves a lot of hair to paint in.

Finnies watches

Working with so many items each with their own reflective and texture properties requires individual lighting at the shoot stage before masses of retouch in the studio. Even then a number of the surfaces would not give their best until they were masked up and painted, particularly the smooth metal cases and bands.

Triumph Thunderbird

To get a nice perspective on the scene distorted the bike too much so a fresh shot was stripped in complete with a new bespoke shadow. A replacement background to the left plus a new sky completes the composition before applying the colour treatment.

Rolls-Royce Phantom Limelight

On first glance this appears a simple task but just about every item and surface needed work. These images are based on hard working prototypes so they are not the finished article and require a lot of detail and subtle finishing from the stitching to lighting.

Chopard Watch

Considering the portable rig set-up this shot was quite successful just requiring brightening and sharpening. A few of the metal surfaces needed refinement plus the digits and markings were difficult to light in the time frame so were treated to some post production paint techniques.

Rolls-Royce Wraith Music Interior

The same comments to the earlier Wraith Music and Phantom Limelight interior shots apply. Once again Joe lights each individual item right down to the clock and speaker grilles and it is left to me to strip in and blend the surfaces to complete the image.

Aston Martin Bond Shoot

When you flick through images on the lightbox sometimes it becomes clear that the ideal pose is ‘not quite there’. Hence the transfer of the head from one frame, and a more prominent earring from another onto a base frame, before adding some hair and some appropriate beautifying.

Rolls-Royce Phantom DHC Waterspeed

It’s the surface finish and texture that cause a problem on a shot such as this. Time demands that each component is lit individually then spliced, cleaned, painted and blended in post before adding some mood treatment and colour balancing with a little artistic license to limit the colour pallette.