retouching

30

Dec
2009

How to Make Skin Beautiful using Photoshop

On 30, Dec 2009 | 15 Comments | In Blog, Photography | By grapikom

Let me start this tutorial by stating the obvious, not everyone has beautiful skin. To compound this problem we have skin eruptions, uneven tan, freckles, unwanted highlights, large pores, etc. In addition, today’s cameras and lenses magnify every imperfection and freeze it for all to see. This tutorial will help the photographer put their models in the best light so to speak. I will start at the point where you have completed your basic processing and have an image with the correct exposure value and white balance.

Overview

This subject will be covered in steps as follows:

Removing or softening major flaws in the skin
Touching up undesired reflections and highlights
Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it.
Spot sharpening

Note for MAC users: Substitute the Option key for the Alt key when specified in the tutorial.

Removing or softening flaws

There are many ways to remove flaws from the skin; however, I like to use the clone tool. I do not use the clone tool to remove and replace the skin but rather in a special way that will allow me to work slowly to hide the flaw or blemish on the skin. The beautiful young lady pictured here is typical of teenagers in that hormones may cause zits or other eruptions on their skin that are unsightly. As a photographer it is our job to lessen that and make the model look their best. You will note on the neck of this young lady a rather large skin eruption. This is not a normal mark and one that I am sure she wishes were not there.

On the tool bar on the left hand side of the workspace is the clone tool. Click on this tool. Now go to the mode setting at the top and select a soft brush that is near to or smaller than the blemish. Move to the right and click on mode, setting it to lighten. Move to the right and set the opacity to around 12% and the flow rate to 100% or less. You are now ready to begin hiding the blemish. Find a good patch of skin near the blemish, position your brush on it, hold down the ALT key and click your mouse once. Now begin to soften the blemish by doing a click and hold while going over and over the blemish. You will note that it begins to lighten. Continue until the blemish is gone. In the center of the blemish it is lighter than the surrounding skin. Set mode to darken, ALT click on the good skin and repeat the process above to darken this lighter area. The blemish is now gone as shown in the image. You might also note that I have lightened some of her permanent moles and fixed other light or dark areas using the same technique described above. I generally do not totally remove permanent moles on a models face.

Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections

The end of nose is a particularly onerous place for reflections and burned out highlights as you will note on the model above. Removing them is just as simple as removing a blemish. The difference is that you set the clone tool mode to darken. Select a patch of skin with the appropriate color and do an ALT click. Now go over the highlight until it looks good to you. Be careful not to go too far a field from the highlight itself as you can make the nose look flat in that area instead of rounded as it normally is. If you make a mistake, it is simple to go back a step in the history palette and redo that step. Don’t hesitate to switch between darken and lighten if need be. At this stage do not worry if everything is not perfect as the Gaussian blur will take care of minor imperfections in your work.

Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it

Much of the information in this part of the tutorial was gleaned from Scott Kelby’s great book entitled The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, which I recommend highly to everyone new to Photoshop.

I will attempt to keep the “how to” part of this tutorial as detailed as possible so that those new to Photoshop will be able to follow along. This is an advanced technique so stay with me. First thing to do is to open the picture that you want to apply the Gaussian blur to. Create 2 additional layers of this image in the Layer’s pallet. An easy way to do this is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the J key twice. You should now see three layers of the image. Hide layer 1 copy by clicking on the Eye icon next to it in the layers pallet. Highlight the middle layer by clicking on it and your layers pallet should now look like this:

In the drop down box on the Layer’s pallet change the blend mode from Normal to Darken. Next go to the menu at the top of the screen and click filter/blur/Gaussian blur and then apply a 35 pixel blur to the image. Don’t worry that your image looks bad at this stage.

On the Layers pallet, click on the little Eye icon beside the middle layer to hide this layer and then click on the top layer to make it active. Now change the blend mode from Darken to Lighten by clicking on Lighten in the drop down box. Next run a 50 pixel blur on this top layer (Filter/blur/Gaussian Blur).

After you have applied the blur, click on the middle layer to make it the active layer and then lower the opacity to 30%. Hide the background layer from view by clicking on the Eye icon beside it and then create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer Icon at the bottom of the Layers pallet. This icon is on the bottom right just next to the little garbage can. When the new layer is created click and drag this layer to the top of the stack as shown.

Next, hold down the Alt Key and with your mouse go to the top and click (hold) on Layers and while holding the mouse button down go to the bottom and release the mouse button over Merge Visible as shown here.

This creates a flattened version of your document in the new layer. In the layers pallet, make the background layer visible with the Eye icon and hide the two middle layers by removing the Eye icon from them. Make sure the top layer is the active layer and then lower the opacity to 37%. This is a subjective adjustment and you should set it at the point that your image has the right amount of blur to suit your taste. All that is left now is the removal of the Gaussian blur from the hair, eyes, eyebrows, lips, jewelry, clothing and anything else that you don’t want blurred.

Click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer pallet (third from the left). Insure that your foreground color is set to black. You can change the background/foreground easily by clicking on the small x while watching it change on the leftmost tool pallet. Select a soft edged brush from the tool pallet and paint over everything that you do not want blur on (eyes, mouth, hair, etc.). Generally this is everything except the skin. Change the size of the brush so that it is easy for you to do that without getting over into the skin. Your layers pallet will now look like this.

At this point you may flatten the layers and discard the unused layers (Layers/Flatten Image). If you feel a little touch up for the brightness of the image is needed, do that with levels or Brightness/Contrast.

Spot Sharpening

Select the spot sharpener from the tool pallet on the left hand side of your screen and quickly go over the eyes, mouth, and anything else that you want sharpened.

Applying a final sharpening is up to you but in any event do not over sharpen. Watch the eyelashes and hair especially so as not to create artifacts or halo’s. Here is the final product:

Don’t be intimidated by this tutorial, once you run through it a few times it is quite easy. One last caution, it is better to error on the side of too little blur than too much. It is easy to make the skin look plastic and unnatural. The goal is to accomplish the softening but yet not have it noticed. If you remove all traces of texture to the skin you will have failed for most types of portraits.

Tags | beautiful skin, Photoshop, retouching, skin

30

Dec
2009

219 Comments

In Blog
Photography

By grapikom

70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials

On 30, Dec 2009 | 219 Comments | In Blog, Photography | By grapikom

Beauty retouching is probably one of the most popular application areas in which Adobe Photoshop is used extensively. There are two simple reasons for that. First, Photoshop offers a variety of advanced tools to smooth out skin and hair, optimize body proportions and emphasize some beautiful details. And second, if you have some experience with Photoshop it is easy to learn the basics and quickly produce very impressive and beautiful results.
Of course, beauty-retouching is a quite deceptive art. The masters of Photoshop create illusions which are hard to tell apart — unless you have both a genuine photo and the final result in Photoshop and can directly compare them. In fact, every day we consume perfectly retouched stars and models online and offline which just look different in the real life.
Still, it is not the reason to avoid learning advanced Photoshop techniques for beauty-retouching and study examples of how it is done in practice. The list below presents both image-tutorials as well as video-tutorials. Most examples have a before-vs.-after-comparison and you can follow the modifications with Photoshop step-by-step.
You may want to take a look at the further Photoshop tutorials selections we’ve presented earlier:
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: Best Of Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials: Best Of Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: Rainbows, Glows and Light Effects

Skin

Beautiful Skin
Not everyone has beautiful skin but you can make it better – at least in your photographs.

Smooth skin
How to make a skin like the ones you see in magazines like Playboy.

Beauty Retouching
Beauty retouching is one of the most demanding parts of photo manipulation. The main trick for your results to be astonishing is patience.

Remove Freckles
Reduce slight freckles naturally without using the Healing Brush. In this Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to subtract freckles using a layer.

Perfect Skin
How you can get rid of all the acne and pimples and blemishes and scars on your face.

Skin looking smooth
During the course of this Photoshop Lunacore shows you how to make skin look smooth.

Makeup makeover
How to remove hair in front of someone’s face, retouch skin and apply makeup using Photoshop.

Dark skin – bright skin
This tutorial shows you how to make a dark skin bright(er).

A chapter of Beauty Retouching
A free sample chapter of “Skin”, a Photoshop Retouching Book by Lee Varis about Beauty Retouching.

Hair

Changing Hair Color
How to change hair color.

Shining hair
Creating shining hair like shown in shampoo ads.

Removing Hair Roots
A fairly straight-forward method for removing hair roots that takes mere seconds to accomplish.

Color hair locks
Changing hair color in just few minutes.

Body (breasts, bum, figure, etc.)

Trimming weight
Trimming weight off with the Liquify tool.

Digital Nip Tuck
Photoshop is probably the cheapest alternative to plastic surgery possible.

Digital Nose Job
Simple and easy photo editing technique to give someone a digital nose job.

Spare Tires
In this tutorial we will see how to remove love handles (or the extra fat around the waist).

Smaller Nose
This tutorial will walk you through the steps for reducing the size of a nose in a photograph using Photoshop.

Bigger Bustline
Learn to make a bustline look huge and comically big.

Eyes, mouth and teeth

Enhancing Iris Color
It is said that the eyes are windows into the soul. This tutorial details a simple yet powerful technique for altering eye color using basic Photoshop tools.

Red Eye Tool
This photoshop tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop CS2’s Red Eye tool in a non-destructive way.

Whitening Teeth & Eyes
Some methods to make natural elements white or whiter.

Make eyelashes thicker
Learn how to make eyelashes thicker.

Apply Eye Make-up
This photoshop tutorial will show you how you can add eyeshadow, eyeliner and mascara to any model easily.

Eyebrow Piercing
This tutorial shows you how to add an eyebrow piercing to a photo.

Photoshop dentist
Everybody can be a good dentist – with Photoshop.

Whitening Teeth
Another way to make whiter teeth with Adjustment Layer.

Galleries

Celebrities Before and After
Shows some photos of celebrities before and after beauty retouching.

Greg Apodaca
Rolling the mouse over most of the images of this digital portfolio will display the original scan before it was retouched.

Touch of Glamour
Photo Retouching and Enhancement for Pageant, Model and Glamour Photography – Rollover effect also here.

Amy Dresser
Portfolio of a full-time retoucher and illustrator.

Retouche
Norm Nason is a senior graphic designer and fine artist.

The art of retouching
Glenn Feron was born, then found art and was born again.

Digitalpablo
Portfolio of Pablo J. Castillo.

Digital Retouche
A German professional retoucher.

Artist 2 Design
Experience retouching thousands of actors headshots over the years has taught Shawn the art of what to retouch and what not to.

Digital Retouching Services
From very basic blemish clean ups to full out magazine quality beauty skin retouching.

Retouchme
Creative high-end beauty, fashion and product retouching.

Retouche Demo
Nice flash demonstration how to retouche a photo.

Video-Tutorials

A Perfect Lie In Photoshop
Cameron Rad turn a beautiful woman into a perfect one. “I went through about 40 different makeover techniques, until i found what i thought was the best balance for this photo.” A good “flawless” skin method.

Hilary Duff
Hilary Duff makeover.

Breast Enlarge
This tutorial shows you how to enlarge a breast.

Smart Filters
Using smart filters to soften the skin of your subject gives you the ability to retouch your image while maintaining flexibility.

Basic Beauty
Learn the absolute basics of beauty retouching in Photoshop.

Beauty Saloon
Skin retouching with Photoshop.

Model Beauty
Speed revision of a model beauty.

Natural to Synthetic
Extremly makeover of a photo of Amy Lee from Evanescence.

Gossip Girl
Leighton Meester super glam.

Body makeover
Makeover to illustrate what photoshop can do.

Magic
The fast way to loosing weight.

Pretty
A little time and effort can do a lot.

Extreme
A really nice Photoshop Makeover.

Pretty face
Another Makeover.

Evolution
An evolution of a model.

Proof
Proof that you can in fact create top beauty images with a point and shoot camera.

Model Job
Great digital makeup in photoshop.

The Perfect Lie
High-speed Photoshop transformation.

Complete Workflow

Pure perfection
Spin raw beauty into pure perfection. Very detailed tutorial.

Pure-perfection in 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
Beautify a Face
This extensive Photoshop tutorial will show you how to beautify a face.

Ultimate Makeup
A series of steps to improve skin tones, modify shadow and light patterns to increase the impact, and enhance the eyes and hair to create a striking portrait.

Artistic Retouch

Phoenix Hair Effect
With some simple brushing techniques, and a bit of color tweaking, you can spice up your photos with this flaming hair tutorial.

More beauty

Longer Nails
You would like a woman’s nails to be longer? Here we go…
Longer-nails in 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
Eliminate Cellulite
In this tutorial you can learn how to eliminate a person’s cellulite.

Nail manipulation
Manipulating nails by increasing length and changing shade.

Airbrush retouching
See what`s possible with Photoshop`s airbrush tool.

Retouching for Beginners
This tutorial shows a couple of simple techniques you can use to enhance your portraits.

Photoshop Beauty
Some ways to improve your photos with the help of using Photoshop.

Tone Down Highlights
Sometimes the only thing that keeps a good portrait from being a great portrait is a little too much shine on the skin.

Looking good
Great Techniques for Photoshop Beauty Retouching.

New look
Whatever a model looks like, we can give her a totaly new, beautiful look.

Glamour Style
Suzette Troche-Stapp is one of the most sought-after photographer/digital artists today.

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Tags | alter, beauty, fix, Photoshop, retouching

30

Dec
2009

3 Comments

In Blog
Photography

By grapikom

105 People Photo Manipulation Works You Will Really Marvel

On 30, Dec 2009 | 3 Comments | In Blog, Photography | By grapikom

Oh, I am really marveling those photo manipulation works with people and countless amazing, colorful effects! Somehow I don’t think I have seen many tutorials out there teaching really how to come up with something so beautiful like that. Right, but that’s understandable, you will find many separate effect tutorials, but you really should learn to put it all together – but don’t worry effect and photo manipulation tutorial roundup will be featured in next article!

You must be thinking – man..105 artworks, is this guy completely crazy? Well, I must admit I went crazy, but I couldn’t not feature those works here, you must see how amazing this art is if you haven’t seen something like that before! At least I have crazy inspiration now to put something like this together myself – how about you?