I'm just getting started in this restoration/retouching, but someone was kind enough to link to a website they had a portfolio posted on and I was captivated by the effect they were able to achieve in some of thier images:

http://www.ffureel.co.uk/p7.htm
http://www.ffureel.co.uk/p4.htm
http://www.ffureel.co.uk/p11.htm

I originally thought it might just be an extreme shadow/hilight adjustment but that didn't seem to get the job done.

I tried duplicating the base layer set the blending to soft light then play with a levels adj. layer as well, but that also, seemed to fall short.

Does anyone have any suggestions on obtaining this look posted in the above examples (also seems to be used in magazines a lot as well).

Thanks,
T

I don’t think that it’s very hard to get this effect, you should try to duplicate layer then blur it a bit and set to soft light, then make curves adjustment, desaturate it. I suggest you to work in LAB mode, I found it very useful, there’s bunch of information about it in this forum, try to search it.

For the image of the lovely lady, I brought the image over to LAB and got to the same place by apply a heavy contrast in the L and shifting the A channel toward green. At that point, using a brush in Saturate mode, the eyes became thew exact same bright blue by increasing the saturation, as did the lips. The rest of it appears to have been airbrushed. If you examine the two images side by side you will see that a large hair strand on the neck has been removed along with all of the skin imperfections.
Regards, Murray

I took a quick hack at this one
http://www.ffureel.co.uk/p7.htm

Very easy to duplicate..
1. Add a strong curves adj layer to the lightness channel (in lab mode)
I put points at 50/50, 25/9, and 71/88 (input/Output)
2. select original layer and select the luminosity as selection. ctrl-alt-~
3. Create new layer and Fill with white, set opacity to 80%
4. Select all and Add hue/sat adj layer. Pus sat to +62. Create mask to show the effects on her pants and lips.

That's it.. THe result is nearly identical

All this talk of lab mode, shifting this here and there, etc. will only mislead the poster and make it seem too difficult for him/her. He's new to retouching, so the explanations are over his head. Even I had trouble understanding it. Furthermore, while interesting reading, it's not even how the effect was done.

It's done with a series of simple selections of lights and darks, and then blend modes, with some colour corrections and some minor touch ups.

Twitch, here's the super-easy way. Go into the channels palette and find the most contrasty channel. Click it. Now hold down the Ctrl key and click the channel again. You'll see the marching ants and have just made a selection of the 'lights' in the image.

Return to you backgournd layer of person or thing or whatever you have going and copy/paste whatever's in this selection to a new layer.
Make the same selection - the easy way is to just go to Select>Reselect, but this time invert the selection, Select>Inverse. (This will be the same selection, only inverted, and will be used to select the darks.)
Return to the background layer and copy/paste the contents of this to a new layer.
If you've done that you'll have three layers. One of lights and one of darks, with everything in between.

1) change the blend mode of the layer with the lights to 'screen' and play with the opacity of the layer (and consider some blur of this layer as well)
- do colour corrections on this layer to get it looking like you want, any type will do, colour balance, hue/saturation, whatever you're comfortable with. You may like to reduce the saturation here if you want that milky-looking skin; the skin is practically blown out to white, but has some colour in it.

2) change the blend mode of the darks layer to multiply and play with the opacity
- do colour corrections on this layer to get it looking like you want

Finally, look around the image and find places you want to change with painting, gradients, or whatever, and play with their blend modes.

This is how that guy did not, not by those other methods. You'll still need to experiment with it to see what you can get working, but it's not too difficult. Attached is a near exact copy using the above recipe.
Try it, and if it doesn't work, pm me.

M.

no offense mig but your post is the longest by far.. How do you know your way is the way this guy did the PP?? Are those links yours?? Screen/Multiply is the same as a high contrast curve..

Secondly, you learn by doing things ways that you are not familar. Im not bashing you, really, if your way works also all the power to you but converting to LAB, adding curves and hue/sat adj layers are not exactly a difficult thing.

These techniques (for me) can be done in any colorspace. I would not do it in cmyk, though. But you can wing it. I do it in L*A*B at times. RGB for others. I like L*A*B because it does keep color and contrast seperate. And you can blur the color channels a lot more than in RGB. The blending of colors are calculated differently in L*A*B than RGB. Mr. Margulis has this in his "Photoshop L*A*B Color". Where if your doing this kind of work(skin smoothing, basic retouching) it can be done in any color space you want. Their might be times though, where focusing on the color channels is the main issue or the luminosity channel, you might want to use L*A*B, but for more complex retouching, than for bluring, toning skin. You have to know what these colorspaces have/don't have to offer. For some, doing it in RGB is eaiser, because since....what, I think 99', when P.S.5 came out, all these techniques were in RGB. Where L*A*B, not many were working with it.

John Opitz

...by creating a highkey (my favorite method using GIMP is to duplicate layer, run a Script-fu called Invert Colours (inverts just the colors leaving the values intact; it actually does this on a duplicate layer so you now have three layers), move the top layer down (the Invert Colours layer) and set the top layer to Overlay. Set the middle layer to screen and flatten. Now download (if you do not have it already) Xero's Porcelain filter (http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/set1/porcelain.htm) (which is free by the way) and run it. Done. :)

no offense mig but your post is the longest by far..

it's long, but only long enough so that the original poster can follow and understand it. I tried to answer twitch's question, not send him into photoshop LaLaLand.

How do you know your way is the way this guy did the PP??

There's a link to contact the guy on his page. I don't need to ask him how he did it because I already know. If you're advanced user then you should be able to look at something like the pics on those links and identify the method used in a matter of seconds.

Secondly, you learn by doing things ways that you are not familar.

This is true. I enjoy trying different things, and you're right, this is one of the great ways to learn, by experimenting. As you know, there's often several ways to get to the same end by taking different routes in photoshop. The sample I posted speaks for itself and you can measure this by opening it in Photoshop and checking the math against the original. You won't get the same measurements with the method you used. I tried.
Now, I'm not saying your method isn't any good or not worth trying. It's cool to bring up different methods and suggestions for exploration. Your solution is a good 'suggestion', but produces no way near an identical result.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply, I'll take a stab at all the methods suggested, I'm sure they'll give me a good starting point for trying to get this method down :)

T

Nice to see a heated debate over my work. I have contact details, you are completely free to have asked me directly :-)

To the people who said its an "easy" case of blurring,airbrushing or a heavy contrast adjustment in Lab mode are way off.

Mig is the closest.

http://www.ffureel.co.uk/p7.htm

Ill use that as the example.

I didnt use lab mode, or heavy curves adjustments or blurring. Basically I used cloning, masked burning in, curves for colour tone, a slight desaturation. For the skin I used a empty curves layer set to screen and liked the effect of the blown out face details so left it, a few other bits and pieces and thats it, there were 12 layers in all.

My best advice is to learn masking, most powerful tool in my opinion.

Just a 2 minute job I did, very simple.
I had 3 copies of the original layer (although 2 would suffice), going top to bottom, the blending modes were multiply, overlay and screen.
The multiply was really only used for the lips.
The overlay was applied all over, except for the ladies left (our right) eye, where the overlay made it too dark so it was masked out.
The screen layer was applied to the background and skin.
Beyond the quick 2 minute job, Lee's version has a little more desaturation (which can be achieved a few ways - one is to soft light a desat version over the top and adjest opacity and masking to desired taste) and obviiously some hand colour work has gone into those eyes (gorgous btw Lee)

hi - i'm just learning the ropes, and thought i would attempt this technique (insofar as i could figure it out).

MOM

<< Now download (if you do not have it already) Xero's Porcelain filter (which is free by the way) and run it. Done>>

Always looking for the easy way out. Afraid to get your hands dirty, Mr. Ikroll? No, I'm just mess’ in with you. I know where you’re coming from. While plug-ins are great to have and they can do what one can do in P.S. One would have to see if these plug-ins are worth the price and can they be faster at a production level, even the free ones for that matter. It reminds me of a time when one had to create drop shadows, by hand (as I was told) in the early days of P.S. Now you can do that in no time with blending options(layer styles).
Not a big fan of plug-ins. But there is a program called Mystical Lighting... probably you know about it. It's a stand-alone and plug-in. Can run on Mac and/or Bill Gates equipment. It's not free though. Its has a lot of nice effects. Real and surreal look. All kinds of artistic effects. A pretty powerful program. Has a whole lot of options. You can even make your own presets. You can go beyond what their screen captures have on their site. Check it out. There is a demo available. BTW. I have no vested interest in said company and/or its products. I'm just a user.


Mystical Lighting

http://www.autofx.com/


http://www.autofx.com/mystical_lighting/mystical_lighting.html




Here is a free plug-in from said company called Dreamy Photo.


http://www.autofx.com/freeplugins/dreamyphoto.asp?id=12

Nice work makeovermagic, really like the result you got there.

thanks creeduk! that's a tremendous confidence booster for me.

MOM

Thanks again for the great advice all, here's my attempt:

Original:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/twitch1977/Start.jpg

Attempt:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/twitch1977/forweb.jpg

Critiques always welcome!
T

Fureal could you please explain what you mean by this?

@makeovermagic : I think you did a very good job on the skin, which was probably your first goal (which I deduce from the thread you posted in !)

However, a lot of white/colored noise has appeared in the darkest areas, notably the hair. Maybe you didn't want this and should mask out some of the effects you applied on the hair area...

... and @twitch : seems excellent to me ! Rather natural looking too...

Here is another way to achieve the look you are looking for. This method is fairly simple and gets really close to the examples you posted in your original post. (See examples) Im using CS2.

1.) Duplicate the original. (Cntl-J)

2.) Select the Duplicate image in the Layers Panel.

3.) Go to Main Menu> Filter> Distort> Diffuse Glow.

The glow color will be whatever color you have set as the background color swatch in the main tools bar.

Adjust the sliders for the washed out look - or for the glow effect that you want. Experiment. Later on in this process you will be able to modify the intensity of the glow again - and you will be able to control the bleed through to the original image in the last step - so - dont worry too much about the effect being too strong right now. Hit OK.

4.) You can then use the burn tool (set to Shadows and 10%) to make the models hair and eyes darker, more contrasty, and much more dramatic looking. You can use the dodge tool to lighten up some areas selectively (set to highlight and 10%).

5.) For additional creative control - You can blend the "original image" back into the "glowing image" using a mask so it happens in just the right places and with just the right strength. Just add a white mask onto the duplicated layer (Main Menu> Layer> Layer Mask> Reveal All).

Then select the mask (by highlighting its thumbnail in the layers pallette) and paint on it with a soft black pen. This will selectively reveal parts of the original image - and let it show through where ever you want to - and however strong you like it (like the lips on girl #1). Be sure to use a 20% or less opacity, very soft, black, brush on the mask so your painting will blend in well and be soft and smooth.

The effect takes 5 or 6 minutes.

* For extra effects try a gradient on the mask or even think of painting on the mask with a very large soft gray pen to selectively control the intensity of the glow on only certain areas - and not on other areas!

The sample Images below are the original images you linked to - along with example images using this technique. This should at least get you into the ballpark. You can adjust anywhere from there.

Ray12

I want to second John's post,

The Dreamy Photo Plugin that is mentioned in Post#14 by john_opitz is one of the greatest tools I have found yet to get that marvelous dreamy look to your romance pictures. I use it all the time and HIGHLY recommend the Free download!

I usually apply the plugin to the duplicated layer - and then add a white mask - and paint on the mask with a black soft pen, so that the eyes and the mouth and hair are unblurred and really sharp - BUT - the "flesh tones" are really soft and smooth and glowy (with no blemishes). Its beautiful. It makes models look wonderful. They really LOVE it.

The other software at that site called Mystical Lighting has an effect in it called "etherial glow" and also "light brush" that is totally adjustable and can provide very beautiful and dramatic lighting looks to Romance Portraits. They have interactive examples at their web site so you can see the before and after effects very clearly. Really, really nice stuff.

Here is the gallery link - click on the examples. Just FYI.

http://www.autofx.com/mystical_lighting/mystical_lighting_gallery.html

Ray12