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Join Our New Retouching Course on Domestika!

What is Domestika?

We are thrilled to announce that we’ve joined Domestika, a leading provider of online courses and training programs in the creative field.

At Domestika, you can choose from a vast range of courses, from illustration, craft, marketing & business, photography & video, design, 3D & animation, architecture & spaces, writing, web & app design, fashion, calligraphy & typography, music, and audio. By joining Domestika, you will have access to a wide range of courses and resources to stay ahead of the curve.

Whether you’re seeking to enhance your skills or learn something new, Domestika has the right course for you. At Domestika, they care about continuous learning and developing your creative side.

This corresponds to our principles of constant further training to continue to grow and master new challenges.

We were very proud when they approached us with a request for cooperation. At Domestika, they work with top experts who share their knowledge in professionally produced online coursed. We believe our retouching expertise will be a valuable asset to their pool of content.

Why you should consider a/our Domestika course.

We give you five powerful reasons why you should consider a Domestika course:

Domestika offers Ai-based translations throughout the whole platform. This means the translations will be accurate and error-free, making them perfect for learning in any of their eight languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, & Dutch). Not only the platform itself, but the subtitles are also available in these eight languages. This makes it easy for you to learn and understand the material, no matter what language you speak.
Lifelong access to your purchased courses, enabling you to learn at your pace and refresh your knowledge when needed.
A global creative community to connect with, including the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas with other students and the teacher. You will also receive feedback on your final project.
Additional resources to support your learning process including additional presentations, articles, videos, discount codes, plugins, actions and more!
The rare opportunity to find mentorship and guidance in the creative industry, which can be incredibly helpful when starting in the creative industry (which we experienced on our own). Having a mentor who can guide you through the process can be incredibly helpful and save you a lot of time and trouble.

Why we joined Domestika!

We hope our new partnership will help us provide even more valuable content for our community. We truly believe that giving insights into our ways of working will build trust, and new possibilities for cooperations will grow from it.

The course content – What is included in our course?

The course is called “Professional Retouching for Product Photography in Photoshop” (GER: “Professionelle Produktfoto-Retusche in Photoshop“). It’s about creating a structured Photoshop file while digitally optimizing each element of a commercial product composition. It was produced in the German language, and Subtitles are available in eight additional languages.

The different lessons include topics like:

Positioning
Brand and image used as a guide for retouching
The choice of color profiles
Image preparation
A non-destructive workflow
Background and shadow creation
Optimizing set items
Optimizing products
Help layers
Preparing client data in an intelligent way
Smart export for web

The additional resources include:

Source of lighting effects
A special Retouching Toolkit discount
Practicing files and many more

This course content is unique! It’s not similar to anything else on the market at the moment—most of the workflow and strategies are developed by experience and experiments.

What are the benefits of taking the course?

Besides enriching your skill set with new hidden gems, tricks, and industry standards, you can also showcase what you’ve learned.

Exceptionally talented students have the chance to work together with MK Retouching.

Who is this course for?

The course is perfect for product photography professionals, design professionals, and anyone curious about professional retouching for product photography.

What level of knowledge is required for taking the course?

Previous photo-editing experience is recommended, and you need to be familiar with the Photoshop interface, terms, and workspaces, as well as have a working knowledge of layers, paths, channels, and basic shortcuts.

The only materials needed are a computer with Adobe Photoshop installed. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, it would be helpful, but by no means essential, to install Adobe Bridge. The same applies to a graphics tablet (using a mouse is fine, but might take you a little longer). Before starting, ensure your computer or laptop has enough RAM, disk space, and a good graphics card.

Where can I find the course?

To access our course, click here, or you can find the link on Mareike’s Instagram profile in her Domestika Course highlight. Here you can find the teacher’s profile. We can’t wait to see you there!

How long do the sessions last?

It very much depends on the depth of learning. You can either rush through it, pausing when the most exciting parts for you happen (~2.5hrs), or trying to understand every single step, being active in the forum, practicing, and thinking about how to implement it in your workflow (~12hrs+).

How much does the retouching course cost?

The price of the course depends on the time when you buy it. Take advantage of the important periods of the year with special discounts for specific courses, for example, during Summer Sale or on Black Friday. This way, you can get the most out of your learning experience!

If you’re interested in taking a new course but don’t want to pay the full price, Domestika has a special pre-sale offer and an early-bird discount. This means you can get discounts on courses before they are released to the public or very early on.

You can also profit from being a Domestika Plus member based on a subscription. You will receive one Token per month to choose a course based on your interests. Furthermore, you have access to 100+ open courses every year, 20% extra savings on courses and bundles, exclusive content and resources, and a certificate when you complete a course.

You can see the current price for our course at any time on the course page.

Can I get a refund?

You can request a refund for your order as long as it is done within 14 days of the time of purchase or the course’s release. This period also applies to purchasing Domestika subscriptions and memberships from the date of their commencement. For their current conditions, please recheck their website here.

Should you have issues entering the course, with payment for the course, or any other technical problems with the Domestika platform, please review this page or contact Domestika directly at hola@domestika.org.

All in all, I had a great experience working with Domestika. Their support was quick and helpful, and I never had to wait too long for someone to respond to my questions.

Additional Insights: What was the experience like on set?

We were guided in a very structured manner from start to finish.

Of course, the success of each course is highly dependent on the teacher’s motivation and way of working. The majority must be implemented on one’s own responsibility when it comes to pre-production. We received a lot of creative freedom to create the course we wanted to create.

The course production itself was split into two parts. One was based on the screencast content. We had very professional equipment in hardware to guarantee clear audio results. A dedicated team regularly checked these video results to avoid audio and visual errors.

The other part was based on actual experience on set: recording the course trailer and intro, as well as being part of a photoshoot. It was very exciting to work with the Domestika team. They are very interested in feedback, optimizing processes, and producing good results. They are always on hand with problems and uncertainties and provide support wherever possible.

Do you have any suggestions or additions, is this post out of date, or have you found any mistakes? Then we look forward to your comment.
You are welcome to share this post. We are very grateful for every recommendation.

The Power of Images in Advertising: How Our Brains Process People Images

“Our language culture is in a rapid transition to a visual culture”
(Franke, 1997, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 17).

Given the quote’s age, we already live in visual culture. How do our brains process images of the ideal body, and what tools and biologically programmed patterns does advertising use to make their images more effective? We will discuss these questions in the following sections.

Credibility of images

In addition to the impressive effect of images, there is another dimension – credibility. From the start, photography has created an impression of being objective and authentic; in other words, of capturing the real world (Schied, 2003, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 18). This objectivity is associated with credibility. Similarly, images, particularly striking photographs, are more credible than linguistic information (Weinbub, 2012, p. 47). However, the effect of images is not only due to the promise of being authentic but also to the human perception system (Gläßel, 2010, p. 18), which we will further discuss in the following section.

Perceptual processes

Visual perception is most important to humans because it communicates about 90% of all sensory information (Mayer, Däumer & Rühle, 1982, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 20). Visual perception is defined as a process that begins with the absorption and automatic selection of visual stimuli from the outside world of an individual. It also involves further processing and stimuli storage (Gläßel, 2010, p. 20). Why pictures are particularly suitable for commercial use and how the perception process can justify this is shown in the following section.

Def. Stimuli
The word stimuli refers to physical or sensory input that can elicit a reaction or response from an organism or a system. Stimuli can be anything from light, sound, touch, or temperature changes to more complex inputs such as thoughts, emotions, or social cues. The response to a stimulus can be automatic or learned, and it can vary in intensity depending on the nature and strength of the stimulus. In psychology and neuroscience, stimuli are often used to study the behavior and brain activity of humans and other animals in response to different types of inputs.

Low-Involvement-Situation

Today’s society has an ever-increasing amount of information that is mediated through the media. This has already led to a kind of efficiency increase when it comes to recording visual stimuli: the information offered is more superficially and selectively absorbed. In this context, one also speaks of low-involvement situations. These are situations where recipients are not interested in advertising, they ignore it, or they only perceive it incidentally (Brosius & Fahr, 1998, RöU, 1995, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 14).

This increases the competitive pressure and the pressure to use more and more intrusive forms for advertising purposes – those that stand out and that can be picked up and processed as quickly as possible (KroeberRiel, 1996, quoted in Weinbub, 2012, p. 35) or forced advertising which you can only escape by making payments. Due to the short contact time between advertising and the recipients of 1.7 seconds (Dorer & Marschik, 2002, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 14), a form of communication of the content must be used that works quickly.

Pictures can be processed with little cognitive involvement (Weinbub, 2012, p. 45). The process of viewing images is comparable to the usual visual consumption of communication content in our daily lives (Hunziker, 1996, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 7). It only takes a few moments to understand the theme of an image. An average time of 1.5 to 2.5 seconds is needed to capture a picture of medium complexity so that it can be recognized later (KroeberRiel, 1990, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 19). That’s why it is not surprising that images are called “quick shots into the brain” (KroeberRiel, 1990, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 19).

Hemisphere theory

The hemisphere theory describes how the two halves of the brain process different types of information. The left half processes text in a logical and analytical way, while the right half processes images and emotions unconsciously (KroeberRiel, 1996, cited from Weinbub, 2012, pp. 46-47). When people view an advertisement that contains both text and images, the images tend to hold their attention for longer, as they require less processing time than text (KroeberRiel, 1993, cited from Gläßel, 2010, p. 20). This means that people unconsciously perceive and process images, which can influence their response to advertisements, particularly those that contain images of attractive women.

Image processing and evoked emotions

The processing of images and emotions is related because they are both processed in the right half of the brain (KroeberRiel, 1990, cited by Weinbub, 2012, pp. 46-47). Advertising images often aim to evoke emotions in the viewer, especially through the use of faces, which are particularly effective at eliciting emotional responses (Doelker, 2002, quoted in Weinbub, 2012, p. 46).

Emotional trigger

Attractive images of women are particularly well-suited for emotional conditioning, and erotic or family-oriented images can also trigger emotional reactions (Weinbub, 2012, p. 41).

Schemes

Schemes are the basis for the rapid perception of images. If an image is similar to a stored idea, it is quickly recognized and classified.

Scheme of eyes

The scheme of eyes is particularly important because it triggers emotions automatically and is one of the strongest biological schemes (Weinbub, 2012, p. 47). The eyes of the depicted model are the first focal point that attracts the attention of the viewer (Schweiger & Schrattenecker, 2005, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 31).

Scheme of secondary sexual characteristics

Similarly, the scheme of secondary sexual characteristics, such as a slim waist, red cheeks and lips, breasts, and buttocks, is relevant and is triggered involuntarily and automatically through the biologically innate sexual motives of humans (see Brosius & Fahr, 1998; Schweiger & Schrattenecker, 2005, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p.32).
Not only male recipients are not opposed to female sexiness on advertising images, but they also affect women. However, these prefer more subtle images (Gläßel, 2010, p. 32).

In advertising, it is a commonly used image scheme, while women are displayed much more often in this way. For example, Reichert & Carpenter (2004) assume that about half of all ads (Gläßel, 2010, p. 32) use this scheme, while Jäckel et al. (2009) already imply more than 70% of the cases in which female bodies are presented naked and uncovered (Jäckel et al., 2009, p. 38).

In addition to the emotional use of the scheme, such an advertising image should show how attractive, beautiful, and popular a woman can be if she carries/ uses/ owns the product (Moser, 1997, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 32).

Image perception: People

People are the most important emotional key stimuli, as human communication is vital for survival (Weinbub, 2012, p. 50). When advertisements combine people and products, the “friend” scheme becomes active (Gläßel, 2010, p. 31), where the friend in the image is given more positive traits and abilities than others. The observer imitates the friend and builds a sense of group affiliation (KroeberRiel, 1998, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 31). To be effective, the advertiser must take into account the social interactions and behavior between people, which is defined by social techniques (KroeberRiel, 1993, cited by Gläßel, 2010, p. 30).

Halo effect

Another effect from the attractiveness research is used subliminally in advertisements: The halo effect. This occurs as soon as above-average beautiful representations of women are seen (Klaus, 2005, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 36).
The halo effect has the consequence that a depicted beautiful person is assessed in all respects more positively than comparatively unattractive people (Ebner, Gathmann & Wiedermann, 2002, quoted after Gläßel, 2010, p. 30; Davids 2007, cited after Weinbub, 2012, p. 23; Schemer, 2003, p. 525). They seem more sympathetic, intelligent, morally correct, and seem to be better acquainted with the advertised product (see Hanko, 2002, p. 145, quoted in Gläßel, 2010, p. 30). Their observers, with sufficient similarity, are more willing to imitate the behavior and to buy the product (Bergler, Pörzgen & Harich, 1992).

Since the model on the advertising image and the advertised product are side by side, the characteristics and emotions attributed to the model transfers to the product (Gläßel, 2010, p. 28) and is taken into consideration for the product evaluation. Even though both elements seem to have nothing to do with each other, the pattern of the spatial linkage gives rise to a transfer of objective or emotional qualities (Weinbub, 2012, pp. 49-50).

Advertising principle: Young age

A cult of youthfulness characterizes the aesthetic ideal of our time and culture (Weinbub, 2012, p. 14). People who are young, sporty, and attractive are portrayed and recruited, regardless of the media.
The aging human being, despite the demographic change, medially excluded. This confirms the advertising principle that advertising protagonists should, as a rule, be 15 years younger than the target audience mentioned since this corresponds to the approximate desired age (Kaupp, 1997, cited by Jäckel et al., 2009, p. 75).

Sources:

Books:

Gläßel, M.-L. (2010). Werbeopfer Frau? Beeinflussung weiblicher Körperwahrnehmung durch die Schönheitsideale der Werbung. Darmstadt: Büchner-Verlag.
Jäckel, M., Derra, J. & Eck, C. (2009). SchönheitsAnsichten. Geschlechterbilder in Werbeanzeigen und ihre Bewertung (1. Aufl.). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Theses:

Weinbub, A. (2012). Die Macht der Schönheit. Psychologische Auswirkungen von weiblicher Attraktivität in der Anzeigenwerbung auf jugendliche Rezipientinnen (Magisterarbeit). Universität Wien, Wien.

Are you interested in more scientific content? Check out our blog section Deep Dive.
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