Retouching using Photoshop + Lightroom + Wacom intuos4 experience

Mouse Over (Before & After)

If you want a short answer:

YEEES go buy one what are you waiting for?

is it better than retouching with a mouse?

Hell yes, it feels so natural, and pressing the pen to retouch instead of clicking is very smooth technique. Specially if you have a 1000 blemish to remove individually.

Ok just before you continue reading this is not a tutorial for retouching, this is only me saying why using Wacom and how does it feel.

You probably heard about the nib wearing off very fast, well it does. one photo to retouch and I am already noticing the shape of the pin nib already changed.

However, I ordered replacing nibs accessory kit $20 with my Intuos4 just to prepare for the worse. Or you have another option to buy just the nibs for around $10 for 5 nibs



I dont live in Europe or Usa, I live in Bahrain and the shipping by Aramex shop and Ship cost around BD4 for a kilo and the minimum is a KILO.. so thats why I ordered my replacement nibs immediately with the Wacom.

For those who is living in my country and thinking how much everything cost me to ship, it was BD20 after 5% discount by paying through Aramex shop and ship website using Master Card.

So the entire thing cost me BD170 with the shipping from USA (B&H photography) .. if you dont have Aramex shop and ship (I totally recommend to get one) however B&H photography still deliver internationally, I dont do it directly from them because I love Aramex and trust them.

Mouse Over (Before & After)

Ok enough about the shipping and buying stuff lets talk more about the Retouching it self with the wacom, lightroom, photoshop.


1- everything start in Lightroom where you select and rate the photos.

2- I dont do any developing with Lightroom in the beginning I just right click on the photo and choose edit with adobe photoshop

3- I clean all the blemishes in the photo by using spot healing brush tool

4- for the Wacom I choose to control the size by the pen pressure sensitivity, so the more I press the large is the healing brush, this will save you allot of time because you dont have to resize the brush every time you retouch a different size blemish.

5- another use of the pen pressure sensitivity is to let it control the opacity of the Clone Stamp brush, this is useful when you want to even the skin tone or lighten a dark areas such as under the eye. because it enables you to gradually light up or darken the targeted area.

Mouse Over (Before & After)

Where does the Wacom intuos4 sucks?

1- In navigation, dont use the pen to navigate you computer or the software it sucks and will get you nervs. Jumping to the mouse again is much better in my opinion.

2- The zoom wheel, seriously??? it is so jumpy and not even close to zooming with the zoom tool or even scrolling with your mouse. I attached the zooming with the the larger button on the pen.

4- shortcut buttons? I still use my keyboard because so many reasons,

A) first of all you cant fit all the shortcuts in the Wacom which means you will still use both the keyboard and the Wacom shortcuts.

B) If you are retouching for long time now you will be so attached to your keyboard short cuts and wont shift for the new Wacom keys which feels very hard to press comparing to a keyboard

C) the space bar is the soul of moving in adobe software and the Wacom hand tool shortcut cant feel like pressing the spacebar to navigate around the document, my hand keeps going back to the keyboard to press the spacebar. However, I attached the hand tool to the middle button on the pen, it feels good when you press it and move around with the pen.

Conclusion:

Wacom Intuos4 will save you allot of time in retouching and it will make you happy, specially when it arrives in its black well designed box :) it will draw the smile on your face.

About the photo:

Using photoshop + Wacom Intuos4 + Lightroom 3

No fast smudging, no clay editing, the edit was pixel by pixel to be sure of maintaing the actual skin and hair texture.

The color tone was manipulated with Lightroom Vibrance and saturation

Photographer: Bader Alwazeer

Fashion: Lune couture (Khatoon and Kameela Nasralla)

Makeup: Amina Ghareeb

Hair: Hair Angel

Location: Juffair - Bahrain

Equipments:

Camera right 45 degree: Profoto beauty dish on D1 1000 air

Camera left: big profoto 5" octa on D1 1000 air

Trigger: profoto air remote

Camera: 5D Mark II + 24-105mm f/4.0L