Hi all !

Been a while since last, but you know - "better late than never" ...

Okay, this is classed as superflous and overdoing ( as in not really needed at all ), but - well, you know.
Got this image that's planned for a makeup commercial ( website and print ) and it's perfectly okay and approved as is right now. But still, I got this "vision" I'd like to realise just to see what difference it would make and if it would improve the feel of the image.
I'd like to add an effect similar to a shot taken with a "soft focus" in such a way that it will make her kind of glow. Hard one to get right since she's allready shot against a white background, and what I want is not just a simple over-exposure radiance, but a very subtle glow from behind her in her own skintone(s). Know what I mean ?
I've tried some various blur filters on an underlaying and slightly sized up layer and different blend modes, but I can't seem to get the right feel coming through.
As said, it's not really a needed effect, but if someone know a working techinique it would be nice to learn about it if you'd care to try your hand at it.
Of course, if you would come up with another idea/solution that could do the trick, then by all means - please go ahead.

Can't give a hi-res out due to copyright, but there's a slightly larger and less compressed image on my website in the Photo Retouch section at:

http://www.jiger.org

Thanks in advance !

-- Jiger --

Hi Jiger,

Don't know what you are looking for but here are two things to play with:

1.

Dup base image. Median - used 9 on your image.
Dup base again. Place above Median layer. Set mode to overlay. Filter->Other->High pass. Used 7.3. Brings back texture.
This will pop highlights without changing mid and shadow. Group into set, play with opacity.

2.

Dup base image. Gaussian blur. Used 9.5 on your image.
Set mode to overlay or softlight. Try both.

On dup layer bring up Layer styles. Blend if - This Layer. Split shadow sliders (hold down Alt key and move right shadow slider to the right). Move to about 130. This removes the shadows and some midtones from the effect. Look at this layer by itselt and you will see what I mean - the holes for the shadows and mids that let the base layer show through. No need to mask eyes, lips, hair, etc.

Now the saturation is too high and the colors look distorted - you won't like it at this point. Use a Hue/Sat adjustment on the blured layer and reduce the saturation until it is back to where you want it.

Play with opacity if the effect seems a little too much. Try different amounts of blur, median, and High pass to see their effect.

Larry

Hi Larry !

>
>On dup layer bring up Layer styles. Blend if - This Layer. Split shadow...
>
Of course - the "Blend if". Da--, I always forget that one....

>
>Don't know what you are looking for ...
>
Well, that's really part of the problem, cause I'm not really sure either .. :lol:
And as said - it's allready approved so no real need to "improve" on it.
Just kind of a fling to throw this one in on The Forum and see what comes up of suggestions if/when others approach it.
And - your suggestion no 2 looks real interesting.
Will try that.

Thanks a lot, Larry !
I really do appreciate your effort.

-- Jiger --

I'd like to add an effect similar to a shot taken with a "soft focus" in such a way that it will make her kind of glow. Hard one to get right since she's allready shot against a white background, and what I want is not just a simple over-exposure radiance, but a very subtle glow from behind her in her own skintone(s). Know what I mean ? nope. dont know what you mean. since her skin tone is not white, i'm not sure why the white background would be a problem. also, what kind of glow are you after. there's all sorts of glows one could effect, so a little more clarification here would be helpful. also, do you want her to glow or just from the background. there's a difference. do you want the glow emanting FROM her or from BEHIND her? how subtle do you want? how large shld the glow extend? you said a soft focus sort of glow, so i'm assuming you dont want a radiant beam type. so, do you want it regular and symmetrical or asymmetrical. do you want it around the hair or just the face?

like i said, there's lots of ways to make a glow. you could use patterns or textures or illuminations/lights or blank raster layers with paint brush and blending or gradient fills and so on. do you want the skin tone a constant hue or varying?

so, cough it up. explain this a bit more :)

Craig

Not quite sure what you are looking for either, however is this along the lines of what you are looking for?

This was achieved by gaussian blurring at a level of 10 on a duplicate layer then applying in screen blending mode.

Hi !

Craellin:
>
>...so a little more clarification here would be helpful...
>
I perfectly understand your pov, Craig. And you're right - my description is fuzzy, to say the least.
Generally, the idea was, as you're correctly assuming, not to be the radiant beam type. I was thinking more in the ways of "aura", just about noticeable, not extending so far as to take dominance and from behind her.

But Larry came up with a nice idea I'm going to try and yesterday evening a collegue came up with another, after two - or was it the third ..? - screw drivers.
Anyways, I'm very happy you involved in this, but it's not all that important. It's more my curiosity for experimenting taking voice.

Cassidy:

Thank you very much for your contribution! I appreciate it.
This is one of the things I initially tried out myself and though useful as such, and as modified variants, it's not really what I was going for.
You see, although you've got a very nice effect there it's blurring out the skin texture too much and preserving the texture left after my initial "correction" is important. It may be hard to see any of it in the small, screen res image, but it's there in the print res image.

Still, thanks a lot all for getting involved in this "fuzzy" thing here.

-- Jiger --

Ok Jiger, how about this then, a little less etherial using the last pic as a luminosity layer of 30%

Thinking about the 'aura' bit. Hmm selected the white and inverted copy to new layer, heavy gaussian blur (27), set blending to luminosity and drop the opacity to 22%, erase all areas from the blur layer other than the outer edges. Conversly the same could be done with the white background, but I found it made it look feathered

Had a couple fo goes at this, but as you say - a pure white background is a problem for the effect you're looking for.
The first is the original gaussian blurred at 10px, overlayed, the original 20% luminosity and the original again at 100% color.
The second is the original blurred at 5px and set to lighten, with a bit of masking in detail areas

Like the 2nd one there Nancy

jiger,

ok, 'aura' i sort of understand, oddly enough. when i get home i may give this a shot. and as for not taking it too seriously, that's fine; i'm not. just seemed like an interesting idea and effect and just wanted to clarify what you were thinking about. i love playing with this stuff and your idea intrigued me a bit, so just wanted to duplicate what it was you were after.

Craig

Jiger, is this somethign like what you are invisioning? lol I guess you have stirred a curiossity in a few of us. I hope after you realize your vision you will share it with us. :D

Dawn

Jes--.... !

Some have been busy here while I've been busy elswhere ...

1STLITE:
That's something in the way I was thinking, yes, and you've got it pretty close. Think you see my point there with the white background making things more difficult.
>
>I hope after you realize your vision you will share it with us
>
Sure will - if I ever come to that...

Kraellin:
>
>...i love playing with this stuff and your idea intrigued me a bit...
>
I'm most happy to provide something to inspire your imagination.
And, I forgot to mention, it has been OK'd by the project manager that I put this image up for you all to play with, so go right ahead good people and go wild with it :).

NancyJ:
Agree with Cassidy, there. The second one is a goodie.
I like what it does to the hi-lights and that it preserves the skin texture in midtones and lo-shadow areas. Keeping the skin texture is an important parameter in the project description which rules out "simple" retouching tech's as airbrushing and/or painting and definitly no blurring of image parts holding such information...

However, all in all you people have done some terrific work and shown great creativity here. I've sure got some pointers and fresh approaches to concider for future projects. Unfortunately I probably won't have time enough to try them all out - or what they do in various combinations - but valuable they are, indeed.

Thanks for all your efforts !

-- Jiger --

I assume you are referring the hair? Since I was not sure exactly if its what you were looking for I didnt really take my time on it. BUt I went back and tried something different that made it easier. See if it hits the mark for your vision.

I totally know what it is liek to be able to see it in your head and not be able to describe it exactly. You know what you want, even if noone else knows what the heck you are talking about. lol That is SO like me. Although I guess that is all of us, huh?

Dawn

1STLITE:

Well, primarely I wasn't reffering the hair, but rather the whole girl - kind of...

>
>I totally know what it is liek to be able to see it in your head and not be >able to describe it exactly. You know what you want, even if noone else >knows what the heck you are talking about.
>
Are we related in some way .. ?
If not, this is the closest I've come to a twin soul in a very long time ! :knockedou
Oh yes, it's very frustrating not being able to express what you see with your "inner eye", but have to get your hands on a comp with Photoshop to give people at least a clue of what you're trying your heart out to describe.
But on the other hand, there are not two people who apprehend the colour red the same ...

Another positive effect from posting this thread is my website stats have rocketed the last two days. Lots of visitors from USA but also UK, Poland, Australia and Argentina, and very many with this thread as referring link. Hope you all have found something you liked and got inspired by.
And thank you very much for taking time to check it out !! :)

I was thinking, perhaps I can inspire your creativity even more with posting a sample of what the original project has come to up to this point. I can't use the real brand name (for obvious reasons) so I'll put in a proxy.

Thank you very much all of you for your time and contrubutions.

-- Jiger --

ok, home again and thought i'd give this one a try also. i did up several renditions and may post some more of them later, but wanted to see how this matched up with your vision first, jiger

I see you're thinking is going in the right direction, Kraellin, tho this effect is a bit "too much"... Still - it gave me another idea for a movie-poster... ( quickly grabbing Wacom and pen.. ).

I hope you're having fun with this since it has now turned to a personal interest subject for me. If you look at the "ad" ( work copy ) above your last post you see what is being displayed of the lady. Not much room for a "glow" there and this is - with some key alterations - what is going to the printers.

The image here displayed is about half of original size, which shows her down to the waist, and it is that image I was planning to put the glow-effect on...
Sorry, but I can't put the original image up due to copyright.

-- Jiger --

jiger,

ok, i'll work on the subtle part :)

but, on the other side of things, i found myself having way too much fun with this image. here are some of the results of that fun...

Craig

Hey, Kraellin !

Ok - you are having fun there :)
And, please, by all means - do !

Number 4 in the row got me on track for another thing on my agenda, so it does have effect.

Have fun !

-- Jiger --

yup, definitely having fun :)

ok, going back to your original request/quest... how bout this one? now, steer me a bit here. tell me what's missing or wrong and what's right or ok.

craig

Craig !

Glad you're enjoying yourself while doing this !

Sorry for not responding earlier, but I've been in client meeting the whole day (wednsday) making my colours fly, and you know what ?
Congratulate me - I got their fliers/brochures/product catalogue account ( = $$$ !! ) YEAAAHH - I LOVE THIS BUSINESS !!! :bigthmb:

Ok, ok - I'll get myself silly drunk later.
Back to our business.

>
>steer me a bit here. tell me what's missing or wrong and what's right or ok.
>
Well, to be quite honest I've begun to think we're trying the "impossible" here, simply since we're dealing with this all white background making life hard for us.

Now, 1stLite had something going in the right direction in one of her attempts (attached), but had the effect concentrated on the hair - which was not what I was intending.
Problem is (white background and all) that I "saw" the glow emitting from behind her (yes - I know ... ), and it includes no blurring of her outlines. This got me thinking it had to be on a separate layer which probably includes making a clipping path around the girl - hair and all - copy that into two new layers and play around with layerstyles on the first layer copy until desired effect is achieved. The effect itself should be subtle, not emitting too far out and basically using the colour tone that can be sampled from the light skintones of her shoulder.
( Oh Lord - does this make any sense .. ? )

I got something similar going on in the flier/poster "Lumina" on my website:
http://www.jiger.org/Graphdes/Lumina.htm
Here I used it to make the text glow - kind of - tho it may be hard to distinguish on this small size image.
And - the bg is black ...

But Craig - you have my full understanding if you think it's time to back out. I myself will be very occupied for some time (for reasons above), so I don't know when I can have a go at it myself ...

Tho - very thankful indeed for the things you've already done !

-- Jiger --

jiger,

that's fine. dont worry about it if you're busy. i'll probably play around with it some more just because i enjoy the model and the challenge.

one thing i thought would be interesting to do on these forums is almost exactly what we're doing in this thread. someone posts an image or even just a text description and others attempt to achieve what the person doing the original posting is trying to convey in words. this would be similar to working with a client who knows what he wants in an image and is trying to communicate that in words to the retoucher. the challenge is to convert the intention into the image as closely as possible. this is a skill and it shld be practiced by artists just as any other skill is practiced. the ability to duplicate what the client needs and wants can be quite frustrating at times and quite difficult. it's actually more of a communications skill than an editing skill. and so, this is somewhat why i pursued this with you. i wanted to practice this skill.

and, one thought on the image here. perhaps if the white background were darkened a shade or two overall, that a glow could more easily be achieved around the model.

craig

You can try a very simple luminosity selection (apple option ~ on a mac). You can further tweak your selection by going into quick mask mode and working with levels. Make a new layer with the selection, lighten with levels or curves and blur slighlty. You can then vary the opacity until you get what you like.

goose443:
That is a very interesting thing you've got going on there and something I will experiment with in a retouch assignment that doesn't require skintexture to be preserved. I'd say you'we got a very striking Perfect Skin technique worked out with this method.
Thank you very much for sharing. Goes directly to my File of Neat Tricks.

Craig:
I most perfectly understand and it's a great idea !
Tho - it requires some level of skill from the "client" to communicate their vision(-s), and I've done very poorly on that :nod: ...
This in spite of the worse thing I know is when a client goes :
" ...ahhh - we would like something nice here .... could you do that ... ? ...you know how to do these things ... do something nice... you know ... nice..."
Yeah - sure I know what I consider "nice", but what does the client consider nice .. ? !! You know - being given such slack you just haven't got a clue what to do.

I also generally set the deal with a client such that they will have to accept at lest one "check meeting" - preferrably two - before deadline. Also (Very Important!!) what is to be considered within contract and what to be added to the billing if requested at a later time.
Saves you a lot of late hours and regrets having ever taken on the job.

So, to be a better "client" for you I say:
"Ok, Craig, I/we can accept a compromise here and go with your idea of darkening the background a shade or so - if this improves on the image and helps getting our intentions through. Show me/us what you have in mind."

>
>the challenge is to convert the intention into the image as closely as possible. this is a skill and it shld be >practiced by artists just as any other skill is practiced.
>
Hear - hear !
I most certainly second that any time.

Now - have more fun !

-- Jiger --

Jiger

I hope I have followed what you are trying to achieve.

I have achieved this effect by duplicating the layer and applying a radial blur set to zoom at 25 amount 'to give the intended effect a direction, instead of just gaussian blur, which makes the image look fuzzy'. The layer was then set to screen. This is then masked to affect mainly the hair but also selected face areas to give the idea of light shining from behind.

I then made the green channel of this layer a selection and filled it with a mid skin tone on a new layer. I masked it similarly to the previous layer and set it to multiply.

Finally i reordered the layers so that the initial screen layer was on top.

This is only my second post but i enjoy reading everyones comments and ideas and hope to participate more when work allows....

Carlos

carlos_0575:
This is only my second post but i enjoy reading everyones comments and ideas and hope to participate more when work allows....
For being your second post here on RetouchPRO it is impressing indeed, Carlos !
I absolutely like the effect you have achieved there, because:
1 - the radial blur, as you say, gives the effect a direction (good thinking!) and
2 - you have taken care to preserve the skin texture, which was in the original job description.

This thread have generated a lot of posts so far and a number of suggested solutions have been presented. Tho your suggestion is not quite on target it is definitely going to my File of Neat Tricks due to the two reasons given above.
Good work, Carlos, and I'm looking forward to see more posts from you here at RetouchPRO.

-- Jiger --

Thank you Jiger

I only came across this site a few weeks ago. I am a senior creative artworker/retoucher with 10 years experience and a lot of my work involves photo manipulation and colour correction. More recently for packaging, but generally whatever comes thru the door.

I wish I had found this site years ago. It's definitely a great source for ideas.

I'm teaching myself flash and have nearly got a retouching site sorted, so hopefully you guys can have a look and tell me what u think.

I look forward to seeing what new challenges u can come up with Jiger.

Carlos

carlos_0575

In light of this:
I am a senior creative artworker/retoucher with 10 years experience ... it should really be me saying Thank You to you.

I wish I had found this site years ago. It's definitely a great source for ideas. So do I. It would have shortened the time for learning retouch techniques radically. Just have a browse through the Tutorials section and you'll see what I mean.

... and I'll be most happy to have a look at your site, Carlos.
Just provide the link, either here or to my mailbox and you've got it.
My mailadress is no secret so here goes:

webmaster@jiger.org

I see from your profile you're located in GB.
I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance, Carlos.

-- Jiger --