How was this achieved?

[creative-destruction]

Obviously retouching-wise. I understand certain lighting and what not was involved. Also, aside from typical beauty retouching, their photos always have the same effect. I have seen it done elsewhere, but unsure of how they did it. Any ideas?

(Photos by Radiant Inc)

 

[ibclare]

You will doubtless get more suggestions as to how to achieve this as there are always multiple ways to achieve most any effect in Photoshop or with plugins. One method to look at is the porcelain effect. You can take a look at this link or google this.

Remember, much of what you see in these shots is achieved by the photographer and not the post processing alone. The first one in particular has high contrast elements which might be spared or enhanced by masking out other softening effects. HDR is also a way to increase the range and brightness of the image.

This type of editing is not my strong suit, but it may give you something to research while you wait patiently for other members to chime in.

 

[Tom Mann]

"I understand certain lighting and what not was involved."

Your question, as well as this comment suggests that you think lighting is much less important than post processing. Subsumed under your "what-not" characterization, is the major aspect of pro photography called makeup. Both lighting and makeup are, in fact, almost essential to achieving the overall look. Without these, and only relying on PP, you will have a much more difficult time achieving this look. In other words, exactly what Clare said in the 2nd paragraph of her post.

With respect to lighting, I suspect that the photographer used an on-axis beauty dish + a softbox (dialed down ~ 2 stops) to the photographer's left. The beauty dish is giving the overall shadowless look that it is so famous for (look at the lack of shadows in the orbits of the eyes), while the softbox restores just a hint of a shadow on the backdrop.

The porcelain PP effect will whiten the skin, however the texture it leaves will not look like the very fine makeup texture of theexamples you provided. This has to come from either makeup or synthesizing a suitable texture or stealing an appropriate skin texture from another face. Makeup is vastly simpler and more reproducible from shoot to shoot.

T