photos after PP ps4 CC welcome

blaser321 · May 26, 2009

I was just playing around with PS4 only and this is what I came up with CC is welcome
and should I show the girls these pitchers I don't if I should ?
These are friends of my daughter they are both 19 years old

#1 original

#2 photoshoped just skin smoothing and ear removal

#3 more ps4

#4 next original

#5 after ps4

Swartzy · May 26, 2009

They are improved, no doubt. What each is lacking is POP. Notice the eyes. The second image displays subdued catchlights. The eyes need brightening, including the whites and overall color balance is off. The trick to portrait editing is finding that blend of skin smoothing without that overyly "blurred" look. The texture of the skin should be present but without the harsh "treatment".

Keep going...headshots are not easy. Much improved images from the originals.

blaser321 · May 26, 2009

Swartzy wrote:

They are improved, no doubt. What each is lacking is POP. Notice the eyes. The second image displays subdued catchlights. The eyes need brightening, including the whites and overall color balance is off. The trick to portrait editing is finding that blend of skin smoothing without that overyly "blurred" look. The texture of the skin should be present but without the harsh "treatment".

Keep going...headshots are not easy. Much improved images from the originals.

I agree that the first one is over blurred but there was not much good skin to work with
not sure about the color balance in what way is it off I'm not disagreeing just asking
I check the color no a calibrated monitor and on the chin of #3 y17 m56 y64

codiac2600 · May 26, 2009

Hmmmmm...

Well, you worked hard and accomplished a lot with your post work.

The first image seems to be shot with the lights a bit too far away for a headshot IMO. I'm taking a stab at maybe 5+ feet away? If you moved the light even closer maybe within 2 feet you could increase the apparent size of the light source softening the subjects face and hiding some of the pores. This will save some post work on your end and make clearing the skin much less bothersome.

When fixing skin type in the first image know that removing each and every blemish before softening the image is crucial. You're mixing a lot of not typical skin colours together with the blurring causing it to look very artificial in post. Also your softening went over her natural lines on her face which again makes it look fake. When you're smoothening out the areas under the eyes and around the cheeks where smile lines and age lines form try not to soften them, either remove them or leave them alone.

If you have larger samples of the originals I'd be willing to work on them and show some techniques on repairing the skin with some fun post techniques.

PremiumMalt · May 26, 2009

codiac2600 wrote:

Hmmmmm...

Well, you worked hard and accomplished a lot with your post work.

The first image seems to be shot with the lights a bit too far away for a headshot IMO. I'm taking a stab at maybe 5+ feet away? If you moved the light even closer maybe within 2 feet you could increase the apparent size of the light source softening the subjects face and hiding some of the pores. This will save some post work on your end and make clearing the skin much less bothersome.

When fixing skin type in the first image know that removing each and every blemish before softening the image is crucial. You're mixing a lot of not typical skin colours together with the blurring causing it to look very artificial in post. Also your softening went over her natural lines on her face which again makes it look fake. When you're smoothening out the areas under the eyes and around the cheeks where smile lines and age lines form try not to soften them, either remove them or leave them alone.

If you have larger samples of the originals I'd be willing to work on them and show some techniques on repairing the skin with some fun post techniques.[/quote]

How about you share that info with everyone

blaser321 · May 26, 2009

codiac2600 wrote:

Hmmmmm...

Well, you worked hard and accomplished a lot with your post work.

The first image seems to be shot with the lights a bit too far away for a headshot IMO. I'm taking a stab at maybe 5+ feet away? If you moved the light even closer maybe within 2 feet you could increase the apparent size of the light source softening the subjects face and hiding some of the pores. This will save some post work on your end and make clearing the skin much less bothersome.

When fixing skin type in the first image know that removing each and every blemish before softening the image is crucial. You're mixing a lot of not typical skin colours together with the blurring causing it to look very artificial in post. Also your softening went over her natural lines on her face which again makes it look fake. When you're smoothening out the areas under the eyes and around the cheeks where smile lines and age lines form try not to soften them, either remove them or leave them alone.

If you have larger samples of the originals I'd be willing to work on them and show some techniques on repairing the skin with some fun post techniques.

I have a tiff file 35.5 mb or a jpeg 2.62 mb how can I get it to you?

codiac2600 · May 26, 2009

blaser321 wrote:

I have a tiff file 35.5 mb or a jpeg 2.62 mb how can I get it to you?

Just email the jpeg to chris"@p2foto.com just remove the quotes.

blaser321 · May 26, 2009

codiac2600 wrote:

Just email the jpeg to chris"@p2foto.com just remove the quotes.

you have mail

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

blaser321 wrote:

you have mail

Received and started.

My typical first step is to use nothing but the spot healing tool and fix simple blemishes like spot, zits and pimples. In this instance where I cannot rely as much on the auto feature of the spot healing tool I have to use my number one fix all tool the patch healing brush. You must carefully choose the right spots to remove and replace with the closest matching skin as the clone patch tool takes texture from the place you're taking from and blends it into the your trouble area.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

The reason for this madness, which mind you on this type of derma will take nearly 30 minutes when you're fast and precise, is that when we soften the skin we need to have as little change in skin color as possible or it'll look like a blotchy fix. So we'll use this to even the tonality a bit as well as removing most of the trouble areas while replacing them with a better skin texture.

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

After we've fixed most of the trouble areas on the skin we need to begin to remove other distracting parts of the image which to me is the stray hairs on the face and fixing up the eyebrows. I used the healing brush to remove the stray hairs on her face knowing that her new skin would be able to cover it up nicely with an auto brush at this point. Now her eyebrow was more difficult as I had very little sample skin to play with since she covers it with her bangs. I may try another stab at trimming the brows but it may look patchy if I clone off more than it can digest. I was basically using the patch tool to remove sections of stray brow hair, but again it can be over kill so in this instance I'd back off making it perfect until later on in the process.

BTW, I'm only working on the the right side of her face to speed up this process so if you see some problems on the left side of the image it's cause I'm not messing with it for this tutorial.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

After you've fixed the skin and removed anything you don't want in the photo it's time to make a texture layer. To select the skin without the lips, teeth, eyes and hair I typically use the Color Range tool under the Selection menu to capture the skin and nothing else. It's not perfect but I use the selection mask and paint in the areas I want and remove what I don't want.

EXAMPLE:

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

Now that we have that last skin layer saved and hidden right now I'm going to patch up the eyes and teeth. I used the simple dodge and burn to fix the white of the eyes and brighten the iris then removed the second catchlight as I personally found it distracting but everyone has their tastes.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

Now this is the critical step and the the step everyone is looking for. This is my old skin retouching technique that I've now simplified with the ON ONE software suite but it works great if you want a more NATURAL approach to fixing the skin.

We now go back to skin texture layer and hide all the other layers so we are only concentrating on one thing, the skin. Make a copy of this layer directly above it and hide that. I use Apple + J or on PC CTRL + J for this step then hide the layer. Use a gaussian blur to make the skin ultra smooth and yes you can go as crazy as you like in this step.

Blurred skin:

Now we have to put the TEXTURE back on. The simple way is to just unhide the layer we copied above the blurred skin and use the opacity of that layer to make us feel happy.

Slightly transparent texture layer over blurred soft skin layer:

CLOSE-UP:

Now we will bring back the fixed image from underneath our fixed skin section and we'll see that it looks good but it suck in some areas, specifically the areas of hard lines like under the eyes and the smile lines on the cheek and on the eyebrows as it blended into the hair strands. So we will have to mask out those areas. What I do is combine the fixed skin layers into one using merge down Apple + E or CTRL + E on a PC. With them combined I can mask out the problem areas.

The finished product looks very realistic and the tonality is much better than what we started with. I worked quickly on it but I think you can see the finished difference right here.

ORIGINAL:

After initial fix:

FINISHED:

codiac2600 · May 27, 2009

100% comparison after a quick sharpening vs the Original.

ORIGINAL:

FINISHED:

Larger comparison to show tonality differences from the before and after as to demonstrate how realistic the skin will look after that much manipulation.

ORIGINAL:

FINISHED:

The problems associated with this much manipulation is that the tonality isn't exactly perfect but from where we started it's a vast improvement. You can fix the red color on some spots on the face with a 5% opacity brush set to 25% flow and the color being that of the most predominant skin color. You'll paint this on BEFORE you sharpen the final image just to paint away a few shades of red. In my final version I needed to work the teeth a little better, but this was more for the skin so I'm sorry I was a tad sloppy.

Another fix would be to deepen her lip color with the same technique mentioned above but with a nice crimson red color painted over the lips. You can crazy and liquify certain parts, but it's up to you and the client to figure out how far this needs to go. Remember that subtlety may be key when retouching someone, especially a client.

Now with this type of skin fix it'll look the most natural compared to others as you'll have texture and we aren't removing ALL of the issues at hand as the ratio of people we'll meet in life with perfect skin is pretty darn low so why push the envelope. I've always been a photographer who believes in naturalism, but I know my clients want to look gorgeous and I'll give them that to a point. In all honestly this was a HUGE project and the difference is so drastic it may offend the client as they will see such a difference compared to what they see when they wake up everyday that they will smile and say thank you but inside they may hurt a little. The upside is this image is great practice and reminded me of my days with photoshop 5.0 and how much life as a retoucher has improved in ten or so years.

If you have questions or my directions seem to miss anything while trying this technique let me know and I'll amend the problem as quickly as I can. Enjoy and thanks for letting me play with your image. I definitely needed the photoshop workout as I've gotten lazy with actions and packages like Nik and On One.

EDIT: Worked on the other half which was silly to do one half than the next as they didn't match perfect but jut an example of a complete tonality from left to right.

blaser321 · May 27, 2009

Thanks a lot I am going to get started on it and finish tomorrow and post my a temped at it. and here is a link to this picture if anyone wants to give it a try http://blaser.smugmug.com/photos/545280256_ihMkf-XL.jpg]

Richard · May 27, 2009

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the great tutorial.

I'm going to add it to the sticky at the top of the forum, so please don't delete the pics next time you do housekeeping.

Regards,

blaser321 · May 27, 2009

ok here it is

thoth · May 27, 2009

That's a pretty good attempt at retouching. I must say that it's a tough process to get down and codiac's tutorial is great.

If you'd like a step-by-step video that uses technique's similar to codiac's, check out Christy Schuler's retouching tutorials. She covers the most common fixes (eyes, skin, hair, etc.) in fairly simple process but with great results.

Tim Kamppinen · May 27, 2009

Chris, that was awesome. I'm going to have to go through this step by step and figure it out... looking forward to it. Thanks a lot.

One thing technique I've just learned for evening out the skin tones is to use the eyedropper (something like 11x11 works well) and sample an area of skin that looks good (of course depending on the image you may have to do some color correction just to get an area of good skin tone in the first place). Create a new layer and fill it with that color. Now change the blend mode to "Hue" and reduce the opacity until you like the way the skin looks. Now just create a black layer mask to hide it, grab a white brush, and paint it back in where you want it. Once you have it masked properly you can of course change the opacity or even fill the layer with a different color that might work better.

I saw this in a video at Kelby Training (the instructor actually has a bunch of color swatches that he's created over the years for this, so he doesn't have to sample from the image itself) and I was quite surprised at how well it worked when I tried it myself. I used it to get rid of some strange color casts caused by some fluorescent lights that were only appearing on parts of a person's face as well as making the skin tones of two people in the same photo match each other more closely. I've only used it a couple times so I can't say whether it works in every situation but it's really simple and worth a try if you're running into skintone variation.

marikris · May 28, 2009

Awesome information in this thread! I have the hardest time retouching as well, though 90% of it is figuring out when to stop - if that makes any sense.I have an old version of Photo Professional, but (and I know there's a slider for this, but again I can't help myself from bumping it up a bit more and more) I've been having to layer the original healed skin on top.

codiac2600 · May 28, 2009

blaser321 wrote:

Great job, it looks much more realistic than your previous go and it's not overdone.

blaser321 · May 29, 2009

It is hard to put a photo that you are proud of and ask for constructive criticism knowing
that someone is going to find fault with it But with each photo I post I learn just that much more.
This forum has been the best thing for my photography I and the most expensive. I think I got the bug. lol But I was able to buy but right stuff the first time.
And good people like Chris and many other to take the time to help me and other beginners

Thank you

lisarhinehart · May 31, 2009

amazing work, time consuming too

codiac2600 wrote:

Great job, it looks much more realistic than your previous go and it's not overdone.

Codiac-- WOW, I can't believe you can do all of that in PS-- I have elements and have just started playing with the clone stamp and was impressed by that, but this is amazing. I need to look into these steps and if they are possible in elements.

It's funny, a lot of this could be done with tweasers, lipgloss, etc by the girl in a minute, and takes so much longer for you to adjust, and to adjust in this level to multiple pictures, oh boy-- very time consuming! I guess it's better than a heavy make-up (foundation) job that looks caked on(?) or maybe that is fixable, too?

I imagine when someone sees this as their picture, they love it and feel glamourous, but have you had anyone say it doesn't look like them? I think that this young lady looks very different, but still like the same girl.

D'Buggs · May 31, 2009

lisarhinehart wrote:

...... I have elements and have just started playing with the clone stamp and was impressed by that, but this is amazing. I need to look into these steps and if they are possible in elements.

Elements has the tools to do some pretty cool stuff but I found that with just playing with it, I never began to even scratch the surface. I'd strongly suggest heading off to Chapters and look for a book that's loaded with tutorials on it (if not done so already).

lisarhinehart · May 31, 2009

wow

thoth wrote:

That's a pretty good attempt at retouching. I must say that it's a tough process to get down and codiac's tutorial is great.

If you'd like a step-by-step video that uses technique's similar to codiac's, check out Christy Schuler's retouching tutorials. She covers the most common fixes (eyes, skin, hair, etc.) in fairly simple process but with great results.

great resource!

tijoseph · May 31, 2009

Some great Instructions here. Here is my attempt. I think i need a little more work though. I'm not happy with the left eye.

PremiumMalt · June 1, 2009

lol

marikris · June 3, 2009

I hope the subject doesn't stumble onto that picture

D'Buggs · June 3, 2009

marikris wrote:

I hope the subject doesn't stumble onto that picture

x2
The shooter should ask for that post to be nuked...

D'Buggs · June 3, 2009

lisarhinehart wrote:

great resource!

And you can do that treatment in PSE7....

photos after PP ps4 CC welcome

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