http://tutorials.smugmug.com/gallery/1169397/1

... and yes they use BLUR

That's indeed a very interesting workflow. But I didnt think the final outcome of that technique was of much quality, the pores looks very unatural. Pretty cool technical info tho.

I guess it is a good technique if you have limited time to spend on an image. the dodge and burn method takes 3 to 5 hours on a single image. Some clients do not want / or do not have the budget for that amount of time. I know that we have discussed blur and bringing back texture with noise or sharpen before.

Where can I learn about dodge/burn method?

Ain't life funny. :happy:

Strange coincidences really do happen! :eek:

Both of us, separately, described the Gaussian Blur and the High-Pass filter using the exact same phrase (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=147) (funny - and I always thought it was Brazilian)

The inicial retouching technique he describes, you will also find in this tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213).

Yes, it does include a Gaussian blur, but when you combine it with a High-pass overlay the correct name would be "Band-Stop filter" (much better :cool: than just calling it a blur)

Agreed, the results may not be 100%. But between 95% in five minutes and 100% in five hours, it's gong to depend a lot on the client's necessities / possibilities.
Nice to have an option open for the quick fix when needed.

Rô

Further on in the tutorial he actually suggests using the Lens Blur rather than Gaussian Blur. I have found that Surface Blur is also pretty good or Median Blur in the Noise Filter as it keeps the lines.

For the Dodge and Burn look up the user HEYRAD and he outlines the technique

From Heyrad's post:


Everything being discussed here so far can be considered a great way of achieving the end result. The important consideration here is flexibility. If you use a GRAY layer in an overlay/soft mode, you can dodge and burn with white or black till your heart's content.. The problem is, that if your dodging and burning are on the same layers-- no flexibility... If you REALLY wanna get your hands dirty and do things the smart way... Here's a method that I developed to help get the job done with the most flexibility and control...

After I remove the pimples and do light spotting on an image, I create a layer set and call it "D&B". In that layer set I create(in this order from bottom to top) adjustment layers... Curve(LIGHTEN), Curve(DARKEN),HUE(DESAT),CURVE(CONTRAST). On the LIGHTEN curve, I lighten the mids and fill the layer with black to hide. With this layer, I'll paint with white at about 1-5% depending to lighten dark spots on the skin. on the DARKEN curve I darken the mids and fill with black as well so that I can use this to darken light spots on the skin-- the goal here is to even out the skin tones. The HUE layer is used to desaturate the image. Lord knows we get tired of looking at a monitor. Desaturating helps my eyes when I'm working on fine detail. The CONTRAST curve is helpful to display the dark/light spots better-- again for my old eyes... I select a point on the CONTRAST curve that represents the dark/light spotting of the skin and I pump an S curve in it to bring out the contrast so I can see it better... After zooming in to about elevendy billion percent to work on the fine points of the skin, I begin to zoom out and use larger brushes... When I'm finished and happy with the results. I turn off the CONTRAST and HUE curves and VIOLA.... total control. Now you can color adjust your little heart out and not effect the dodging and burning. You've got total control of the dark and light curves and you can easily revisit them with your little paint brush.

Hi Shelby,

I thought the final result of the technique was rather poor. Not worth the effort compared to Ro's method.

I retouched the same girl, not the same pose, using several different methods.

The first attachment is using the Dodge/Burn method. As you say, 3-5 hours, but the results are very good.

The second attachment is using Ro's degrunge with a Dodge/Burn layer to even up the skin tones. Compare with the third attachment which is without the D/B layer. Note the blotchiness of the skin tones. The degrunge method does strange things to the transitions between skin tones and the skin highlight quality.

I find for quicker results than a full D/B treatment, that the degrunge method works well if you clean things up afterwards with a D/B layer. The work on this D/B layer is much less demanding than in the full D/B treatment because you are not concerned with the small stuff which the degrunge takes care of. All you have to do is even the skin tones which is a larger area operation and does not take as much time.

This is one of the first degrunge images I tried. I have since refined my technique and am sure that I would do it better if done over.

Some of the things I have found to work well with the degrunge method are:

Go for a slightly stronger skin texture and then back off the opacity rather than a lesser skin texture at full opacity. In other words, I take the bluring and HighPass a little past what I tihink looks good and then back off. It seems to give a more natural effect.

As to the black ringing that you get near high contrast edges. Ro says paint the skin back using a mask and staying away from these edges. What I have tried with some sucess is: (1) get rid of major blemishes with healing/cloning. (2) add a hide all mask to a COPY of the fixed layer (3) on the mask paint in the skin areas, staying slightly away from and feathering to the high contrast boundrys. (4) of course the eyes, eyebrows, and lips are not included. But I go further. If there are dark lines still in the skin, I take a small, soft brush and remove them from the skin. Areas tha usually get this treatment are under the nose and between the chin and neck. This allows these areas to be more sharply defined in the final image without any transitions being apparent. Whether to remove lines or not is a matter of judgement. If you want the features to retain definition, remove the lines as nose and chin. If you want the features to be reduced, leave the lines in as in laugh lines. (5) now instead of keeping the mask, I attatch it to the image. This gives me a cutout of the desired skin areas on a transparent background. (6) now run the HighPass and blur degrunge steps on this cutout layer. Little or no black/white areas between high contrast transitions. This layer is placed over the fixed layer and the opacity reduced. (7) D/B layer to even out skin. (8) Often the skin result looks a little flat and too soft. On the degrunge layer (skin cutout) run USM as 10-30 amount, 50 radius, 0 threshold. This perks up the skin texture without effecting the rest of the image.

If I get time I will redo the degrunge version using my latest techniques. I am sure that it will be closer to the full D/B treatment with much less time invested.

Larry

Hi Shelby,

I thought the final result of the technique was rather poor. Not worth the effort compared to Ro's method.

I retouched the same girl, not the same pose, using several different methods.




Larry

Larry would you mind posting the original image? BTW, the first thing I noitced was the difference in the eyes. Was the reflection in the first image there originally?

~Nancy~


www.fixthepixs.com
www.datepixs.com

Can I second the request for pointers towards the dodge/burn method please?

If this doesn't produce the results that the above method would, then I guess it's good to have options, right? Its fair to say in most lines of commerce you get what you pay for, and so it is up to a client whether they want something that bit rougher for much less cost, or something tailored and flawless for a premium.

To me though I see it that having access to a faster, easier method is not a bad thing. You don't have to prefer it, but it means you can still land the work that you'd otherwise miss by only offering the premium service.

I'm still a total baby in this field, mind you, and have had a workable camera for only oh a week? lol (as in one that takes a picture that can be worked) it just seems like logic to me, though to have options available to gain a wider scope of the market :)

Nancy,

Don't pay too much attention to the eyes in the degrunge method. Since this was an experiment, I did not do too much with the eyes. The D/B method had more work done on the eyes. Compare the skin tones.

Original attatched.

Larry

Just as a note; When I say that the results that guy got wasnt of quality, I didnt meant to bash the technique, quite the opposite. I think the technique makes a lot of sense. If it can be use to save some time retouching without sacrificing too much quality, It will be a major breaktru as far as Im concerned!

Anyways Im trying to play with it to see how it compares. This is a quick retouch I did with the B&D workflow which I'll compare with the highpass one as soon as I figure it out. http://byloc.com/temp (rollover for before)

Really good

Yip, all of the examples - bar one - on my website are with the dodge and burn method.

There are some clients like portrait photographers who want retouching done in a shorter time as they do not have a big ad agency budget.

I am always on the look out for new techniques to play around with.

Tried one pass.

This one uses the lowpass - but then substitutes back an "original skin" texture - touched up for the final. Have to experiment more with the high pass parts. Looks interesting.

Ray12

Ok.. I tried to get decent skin with the highpass/blur technique but I havent had the type of results I was expecting, which was a bit dissapointing. I get very unatural artifacts, especially in highlights.. Thus, so far, I dont see how it would work for me. I am waiting for someone to prove me wrong. Im really rooting for this technique since it makes so much sense (in theory).

Meok: The problem most be the values that you are using for the GB and the HIGH PASS, if you use a higher value that the one byRo recomend, then you don't get any results.

I have being using this method in the last week and it works really fine, I did an action to simplify all the steps, and I'm very pleased

As I can see, you guys are using my photo (thats my girlfriend Irene on it) on the posts here.

Ricardo Büchner

and I dont mind at all! Use my image at will. I hope it helps people improve this technique.
And Irene said: "They better make me look good on the final results!"
Shes watching it... You guys take care

Ricardo Büchner

i am really glad to use the "high pass" filter now in daily work.
my steps are more simple:

1. duplicate skin, repair, soften, brush it, that it looks smooth and soft.
2. 2nd. duplicate the original above and blend it "soft" or "overlay", then selecting "high pass" lets you see the effect easily and you push the slider in high pass as far or less as you want providing the desired sharpness of the pores and skin details...

by the way, is there any difference in effect in your method/the tutorial and this short one?

perfect! :pleased:
thanks

http://ayrusis.multiply.com/photos/album/23

check this out guys, not taken by me, but how do we achieve such shininess? I know we've got the highpass plus clone tools and dodge and burn, but anyone can give an idea how such a shine is given?

pure,

I also do the high pass on the second layer and use softlight mode.

I used to make my texture masks in mono and then level set them to 128 or 50% with the eye dropper measuring tools. Did fine with that - but the high pass seems to place its textured results onto a good netural gray layer automatically - thus eliminating a step.

One thing I do often is take the high pass mask and smart sharpen it really high to 130-180%. It really emphasizes the skin pore details really well - and if its too much - I can use a layer mask to paint the texture on with a low opacity brush - or use the layers opacity slider to tone down the whole effect to just the level I want.

The high pass layer - all by itself- is usually not strong enough most of the time to give me the full strength of the effect im looking for.

Just another twist.

Ray

http://ayrusis.multiply.com/photos/album/23

check this out guys, not taken by me, but how do we achieve such shininess? I know we've got the highpass plus clone tools and dodge and burn, but anyone can give an idea how such a shine is given?

You should check out this link: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/photoshop-tools.htm

Dozens of highly useful actions, generously offered for all who are interested. These are not just recordings of simple steps; they reveal a solid understanding of Photoshop's deeper, more arcane structures. Their creator posts on this site frequently and the rest of his site is worth a long visit.

In particular, the Diffuse Glows actions will give you a great place to start from. Examine how they're constructed and you'll be a long way towards coming up with your own work flow.

A believable shine has to play off the natural contours of the subject. Try duping and blurring your image, put it in Screen, Soft Light, Overlay or Hard Light mode. Focus the effect on the areas that are already light with a blurred mask taken from one of your channels, probably Green. Use the Blend If... sliders to narrow the focus even more. Tune the intensity of the effect with opacity. Be careful though; it's easy to get carried away. A little glow goes a long way.

tristefoc:

Looking at those images - especially the arms - I believe that the model has been smeared with oil. This is what photographers use to achieve the shiny look, baby oil mixed with other kinds of oil and hair gel (read this in a recent photography magazine)

tristefoc:

Looking at those images - especially the arms - I believe that the model has been smeared with oil. This is what photographers use to achieve the shiny look, baby oil mixed with other kinds of oil and hair gel (read this in a recent photography magazine)


Hello Shellby,

These home applications are not new to a lot who have been in the industry (models, photographers and art directors). If you have that kind of control when photographing. Do the above before shooting. also, you can take iodine and add to the baby oil. To give it an orange effect. You can also use artificial sun tanning lotions, as well, as a second choice to facial/body make-up. Testing these home applications under photographic tests are recommended, to see how well they record.
What one can also do, is send the model to a spa. For a body waxing (legs, areas of unwanted hair), skin cleansing (deep pore cleaning), manicure, pedicure.. A lot of models have this done before hand, part of the models' fee one pays for. Make-up/Full body make-up, also helps. For times it called for. Hair/Make-up artists are very good in this dept. with the oil base make-ups, for that glow. But expensive. This reduces image-editing time as well as the cost of retouching. You should weigh the cost though. From a production stand point, this is inexpensive, they would not even give the cost a second look.. For a photographer/model (internet model who does not have an agent/agency) who has to pick up the cost by him/her self, it can be expensive. For someone who is not at that production stand point. The oil, oil/iodine, or artificial sun tanning lotion is a second choice with the addition of the spa visit (leg waxing anyway). Better from a photographic stand point, then shaving Unless it not called for. You can always retouch it out, if someone changes their mind
Some of these products one can purchase from specialty make-up distributors. Joe Blasco' (do a Google search) has a specialty line of make-up. Not only for facial, also for body make-up. He's one of the make-up artists for production movies, or was. And not only for those horror movies either. One, I remember was a heavy white titanium (yes, metal) base make-up, this was his brand of make-up. It had to be applied every 15 min. under hot lights. It was that heavy. It just sagged between the body heat and the hot lights. Photographically, it didn't record any pores of the skin. And the skin glowed. The effect reminded me of a ceramic china doll. What I was told from the ole' ti'ma's was this heavy white titanium base make-up was used in b & w work at one time. But, I see it used for color work as well. Make-up artists know how to add different tints to this stuff as well for color work (skin tones). One thing I remember is that, that titanium base make-up. The key to applying it was to go lightly, not heavy. A little went a long way.

John

i agree.

i think the more professional and expensive the campaigns are (like dior or gucci) the better the models are caressed. i sometimes ask myself why i have to cut the nails and make feet pedicure and manicure. that may be the reason. if they have to pay it on their own, the models wont go to bodycare every week. if i was a model i better go and get there.

I have two suggestions on my mind I'd like to share:

As I hardly know about any model with severe skin-problems I assume a skin with only minor blemishes to be retouched. Hence, I concentrate on very small areas which need to be flattened.

So the first solution would be to use the spot healing brush on those blemishes. Simple but if set to a very small size I cannot spot a difference to the D&B method.

The second one is to use a second layer, apply gaussian or whatever you like and paint with a very small brush in the mask to only hide the "blemished" area.

The D&B method has a great outcome since it's so detailed and I correct every bit by itself, while all the other method use the sledgehammer "run a steamroller across" technique annihilating every tiny bit of detail.

Patrick

john_opitz:

I wasn't implying that the methods where new, only that I read it in a recent photography magazine.

I was answering the question of how these images where done -

Originally Posted by tristefoc
http://ayrusis.multiply.com/photos/album/23

hi everyone

So the first solution would be to use the spot healing brush on those blemishes. Simple but if set to a very small size I cannot spot a difference to the D&B method.

The second one is to use a second layer, apply gaussian or whatever you like and paint with a very small brush in the mask to only hide the "blemished" area.
Patrick

thats right, except that i cant deliver a picture which is kind of blurry in any region of skin. the photographers wont accept it, they want to see every pore and detail. so 90% of the working examples here in this forum are looking blurred slightly.
i dont want to offend or dislike your examples, as i also did it like you and i liked it a bit blurred. its only that the client wont accept it. its his opinion.

thats what i am still trying to figure out and cant find a solution, especially when i see billboards of great plain and even skin commercials, where you see every pore and no blur.

currently i am working on skin like:

1. small or medium spots & lines: healing brush, tiny size

3. large blotched areas: d&b or Shellbys 50%grey method sometimes.

2. worst case skin, very blotchy and spotty, whole body:
surface blur & Highpass

i am still looking desperately for faster skin repair methods, as some photographers dont have the budget for relative timeconsumptive work methods like d&b or 50%grey (regarding bikini/fashion/underware commercials or nude people) :knockedou

Slow but perfect I might add :wink:

This is a hard one. I am also finding that people want the perfect non-blurred skin but are not prepared to pay for the time. These take between 2 and 5 hours, depending on the image. How long does it take you out there? Then there are other things such as make each strand of hair straight and so on and so on... :eek:

Do you guys tend to stay clear if people who make unrealistic requests, or do you offer the blur method as a faster option?

Oh and the 50% gray is dodge and burn. Avoid using the actual dodge and burn tools as this is destructive to the pixels. The gray layer and painting in with 5% white or black to dodge or burn is non-destructive.

please dont get me wrong,
i am only repeating what the photographers told me.

they expect 100% quality and sharpness, at minimal effort.
i think a professional retoucher with some 5 or 10 years of experience working at high class studios or retouching offices could deliver that as he might have techniques which i am not aware of at my current level.

thats still a miracle for me. its like me working always 50% at overtime or overexpense for the money i get.

:happy:

by the way: what do you think of using the stamp tool at 20% and a very big radius at radical blotchy skin parts and bringing back the pores with highpass?

:hat:

thats right, except that i cant deliver a picture which is kind of blurry in any region of skin. the photographers wont accept it, they want to see every pore and detail. so 90% of the working examples here in this forum are looking blurred slightly.


Sorry Spezi,

you missed the whole point in my posting ;)

I try explaining it with teachers method:

What is a blemish? It's one or more pixels with a different luminosity than the surrounding area. And what's a pore or skin detail? It's one or more pixels with a different luminosity than the surrounding area. So the difference between blemish and pore in scientific terms of photoshop is: zip!

Looking at it from a different angle a blemish is merely a detail of skin with the main aspect "annoying". So the most obvious way to get rid about blemishes while keeping the overall details is to approach each blemish one by one instead of wiping out every single detail and bringing those details then back in by doing noise overlays and stuff.

And you will most certainly follow my statement that d&b is merely another method of blurring away those unwanted pixels ;)

As a description I retouched a part of our example girlfriend pic with three different methods as written on the pictures.

so 90% of the working examples here in this forum are looking blurred slightly.

i dont want to offend or dislike your examples, as i also did it like you and i liked it a bit blurred. its only that the client wont accept it. its his opinion.


Please don't compare our examples here with any high-quality work in magazines. Most certainly nobody delivers his final-results in a 100k-limited jpg-file ;)

Talking about my examples (I estimate you are talking about the website), it's the sam eproblem of resizing the pictures for the web. Plus you can't turn shit to candy, thus a bad picture cannot be made perfect by nobody. Just compare the top picture (Anja looking to the side) with the one in the right bottom corner (Christiane's eye). Latter was heavily cropped and shot under bad light conditions while the other one was a clean outdoor headshot.

thanks patrick, i guess i missed it sorry. may i ask what was your main subject you wanted to express in the end? i am bit confused in the moment.

i am still searching for the right english word for the areas of normal skin that are looking like the skin of a cow. (bad example, but i think you know what i mean)

is it "blotchy" as my dict. says? everyone has it, its normal, but it looks not even on a commercial shoot, lets say.

i dont know if you cant compare the work of the people here and the professional work of studios. there are a lot of good people here, and i appreciate the work of them also, i also experienced that you sometimes get weak quality )not technical, more like the lights are wrong or the shot is done in a hurry) from good photographers, as everyone makes mistakes, so its natural to get bad image quality with very bad models skins, in my opinion. also the models are not caressing their bodies so well sometimes.
sure, JPG artifacts and small images are a different pair of shoes thats right. for real.

:dizzy:

My "expression in the end" was that I consider it a lot easier to spot heal over a blemish than having two adjustment layers where to paint in ;)

And I didn't want to be a critic about other people's work, but hard fact is that a portrait picture downsampled and resized to fit the 100kByte limit will hardly show enough detail like pores and will make it very difficult to spot differences :chinese:

Photoshop: I often reduce the cow effect by using the red channel or overlay with a technique similar to the d&b method, haven't found a better way either!

sure
got it...

I've just come upon this method which is similar to most of the other methods explained in this thread and the other skin threads. What is different from all the others is the use of add noise filter and using " monochromatic gausian" to give that noise skin texture that I've seen examples of on the "orange peel" thread.
I've been playing with this method after I have been doing the D&B method and am finding the results very close to some of the "Dior" ads.

Read this thread and link up to his site to see his examples.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1032&message=7928247

Not a lot of detail there. That is like the Glitter Guru's method.

See these:

Smoothed out skin (http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/beauty_retouching.html)

and:

Glitter Guru Method (http://graphic-design.com/Photoshop/glamour.html)

The clone stamp at big sizes also smoothes out detail. If you do not want to loose detail only use brushes that are exactly the same size as the blemish you wish to remove. The same goes with dodge and burn. Do not use huge brushes as this will start to look soft. Zoom right in... and I mean at pixel level, then dodge and burn - darken the light areas and lighten the dark areas. Then you can do a high pass sharpen after this at a low opacity.

Shellby

I completely agree the D&B method is what I have been doing and is my chosen method of retouching. But if you are looking for that smooth skin feel and with some photos that have a little too hot of lighting using this method but not as strong as shown on his website can really even out a photo and smooth things out without loosing much detail at all, the noise monochromatic gaussian really brings things back. To me the results were better than the Glitter Guru method.

I was actually responding to Pure's request for no blur and realistic retouching. I put the links to the Glitter Guru and the other one to Illustrate that these methods all cause a loss of detail.

His photogrpaher does not want any blur or loss of detail whatsoever

so, at this point, i ’d like to say a big thanks to everyone here, as i learned a lot in this forum for this short period of time i discovered it...

in the end, it saved me hours not unless to say days of working hours, for my actual work, especially the "high pass" is one of my best discovers.

:bow: :classic:

its me again:

talking about the healing brush. is there any advanced technique available for using it, other than the usual one? most problems occur when i use the healing brush at medium sizes and touch lighter or darker areas than the actual one. using it for repairing cow-like areas of the skin/body makes sometimes nice blendings from cow-like to normal skin.
sorry for "cow" i dont know the correct english expression for this kind of natural skin-problem :hat:

I tend to agree that nearly every retoucher (and I mean the pros too) tend to over smooth skin by a pretty good margin. It is really easy to do when you are working with pixels rather than with a negatives and airbrushes. No offense but the whole plastic skin thing doesn't work for me.

Here is a very fast porcelain skin retouch (just did the skin didn't touch anything else). I've described my technique many times on this forum, so I won't go into it again. (It really helps to have a higher resolution image to work from too.)

Michael

Photoshop I try to avoid getting the catch lights in the pupils if I can.

must read your technique. where did you describe it please?

slightly oversmoothing also for me sometimes a big problem, as it is very easy to oversmooth, right. i dont like it oversmoothed, but i tend to do it, as i want to blend away those largesurfaced cow-spotty areas in the skin, mostly in the areas of arms, legs, belly, shoulders, frowned forehaeds

blending back texture with highpass, which wont work perfectly with every kind of skin....unfortunately

overall i like your (you all) way of sharing experiences with people and friends. there must be a large number of pros who wont give any hint at all. :ogre:
i also like to share everyting i know or have.

thanks

I describe my technique here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=84898&postcount=5)

Only a newby to both the site and to Photo editing so hope my question/questions dont come across a bit odd :).
Saying that there are no silly questions but , and leave the rest unsaid.
Firstly with the term "Grunge?". Would i be correct in assuming it means to get rid of the rougness from texture??.
Secondly with some of the advice given here on "how to do" with the tutorials, would it be okay if i were to copy for further reading whilst attempting to work through the process??.
Just thought it may be best ask permission first??.
CHeers
Volvo

Firstly with the term "Grunge?". Would i be correct in assuming it means to get rid of the rougness from texture??.
I use the term to refer to blotches in the skin. Not to be confused with pores.
Have a look at a test "before / after" picture from the plug-in I'm working on.
Should be pretty easy to see the difference without the "grunge".

Secondly with some of the advice given here on "how to do" with the tutorials, would it be okay if i were to copy for further reading whilst attempting to work through the process??.Anything you do for your own use, like copying, printing is a GOOD :classic: thing.
Posting stuff from RetouchPRO on any other site, without full permission, is a BAD :pirate: thing.

OK?

Rô

Thank you for the reply Ro , was only after use of info for my own excercise in learning ey:)..
Cheers
Peter

here is my attempt with the The techniques discribed.

tom

here is my attempt with the The techniques discribed.

tom

It would be great if there was original too ;).

sorry, here is the original.

Meditom :
Don't want to be an ass, but somehow she looks like a CG-character...

Could be my eyes :P

i just demonstrate a technique. normally i would reduce the effekt.

with greetings from germany

meditom, welcome to RetouchPRO, :bigthmb:

That came out fine! (OK, yes, slightly exaggerated - but you already know that).

Something that does cause a strange impression - and nothing to do with the skin - is the eyes.
Somehow iris and pupil seem a little out of shape. The original also shows this strangeness but as you have enhanced the eyes, it calls more attention.

Look forward to seeing more of your work.

Rô

byro, what technique did you use, posting your latest example?
thats very good. i would have needed that for skin today.
i had to clone the skin by big brush as no blur was good enough for that kind of skin, very difficult. sometimes i cant get rid of the blotches, they just get blurred. then i always use the clone stamp. this makes it also blur but at least the area looks even and plain like yours. the skin i did today was a nubian looking woman, like dark blotchy skin.

i wish for my example i had known a better way. its way to blurry, though hipassed, but i was running out of time. :bow:

by the way: color profile, is there any recommended RGB one?
i usually use ECI-RGB as it is good for skin tones, sometimes Adobe-RGB when no skin is there at all. yu?

Just the normal de-Grunge trick (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213).

I am finishing a plug-in to automate the trick somewhat, as well as masking the edges.

In this case (atteached) I applied the trick twice, first radii 6 and 2, then radii 12 and 4.

Rô

i wonder if there are plugins out there who utilize this "blur - highpass " feature.
as skin repair is a basic and everyday need, isnt it?

i looked at kodak, they have ASF tools.

http://www.asf.com/

are they any good?

:D

You could record an action.

I'm not sure an action would save you much time at all, everything in the action would have to bring up the dialog box for adjustments anyway.

Michael

Just the normal de-Grunge trick (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213).

I am finishing a plug-in to automate the trick somewhat, as well as masking the edges.

In this case (atteached) I applied the trick twice, first radii 6 and 2, then radii 12 and 4.

Rô

OK, here's the very, very beginner quesion: Where is the High Pass for the quick de-grunge in PS6?

Maureen :confused:

Can't be certain for PS6, but in PS7.0 you find it at Filter>Other>High Pass

Rô

byro, may i ask you something about the quickdegrunge?
i think i got it, i am not 100% sure i am doint it right.

i saw .your example of the breast area. currently i did one too,
could you please have alook?
i didnt get how to remove the spotty darker areas. hm, somehow the quickdegrunge didnt remove it here as good as you did.

i did it like: duplicated layer, had a view at gaussion, at number "8" the grunge was gone, but it looke very blurred (?), ok i wrote down "8" and applied this in hipass filter, and after that applied one third (2,5) in gaussian at the same layer. then i did like written, linear light with 50%.
the result is here:

did i do it wrong? i dont know. i think i dont know the right amount of hipass. this affects the gaussion then. mayb i do it way to high or low....dont have the faintest idea. must i play around with it more often?

:dizzy:

thanks

1st example is my own workout of byro quickdegrunge
2nd is the Kodak Digital GEM Filter "Digital GEM Professional" with hipass layer above
3rd is my own kind of degrunging with clone stamp and healing brush in combination with little gaussian blur or surface blur and hipass.

i dont know what to think of these 3, whats your opinion? i d like to work on it and speed things up, also to improve it ....

Can't be certain for PS6, but in PS7.0 you find it at Filter>Other>High Pass

Rô

Thanks, Ro, I'll pop over for a look!

Maureen :wink:

.....i didnt get how to remove the spotty darker areas. hm, somehow the quickdegrunge didnt remove it here as good as you did.

......had a view at gaussion, at number "8" For the method to work well you want to use the lowest radius possible (makes for a finer skin). When I was deciding on the radius it became clear that there were two types of "grunge" present. For the finer grunge I used a radius of 6, and then applied again for the "spotty darker" areas with a radius of 12.

As you used a radius of 8, you got caught in the middle - pores larger than necessary and remnants of the darker spots.

Of the three, the Kodak plug-in gave a better result. I downloaded the free sample. As I see it, it works like the plug-in I still dream of making (the seven-band equalizer), although this has three bands.

Your method seems to leave the pores uneven. In places the skin is almost flat, in others quite heavily textured.

Rô

thanks for more detailed insights, thats very helpful for me,
i try it later and report then.

7band equalizer sounds terrific, the kodak "digital GEM" has 3 bands, how do you recognize?

the kodak "digital GEM" has 3 bands, how do you recognize?I don't have it installed on this machine, but as I remember there are three sliders that correspond to high / medium / low frequencies.

Rô

yes first i used the digital GEM and secondly applied the GEM airbrush plugin

http://www.asf.com/products/plugins/airpro/pluginAIRPRO.asp

2 combined. i didnt find any other plugins so far who work well in this short period of time.

From Heyrad's post:


Everything being discussed here so far can be considered a great way of achieving the end result. The important consideration here is flexibility. If you use a GRAY layer in an overlay/soft mode, you can dodge and burn with white or black till your heart's content.. The problem is, that if your dodging and burning are on the same layers-- no flexibility... If you REALLY wanna get your hands dirty and do things the smart way... Here's a method that I developed to help get the job done with the most flexibility and control...

After I remove the pimples and do light spotting on an image, I create a layer set and call it "D&B". In that layer set I create(in this order from bottom to top) adjustment layers... Curve(LIGHTEN), Curve(DARKEN),HUE(DESAT),CURVE(CONTRAST). On the LIGHTEN curve, I lighten the mids and fill the layer with black to hide. With this layer, I'll paint with white at about 1-5% depending to lighten dark spots on the skin. on the DARKEN curve I darken the mids and fill with black as well so that I can use this to darken light spots on the skin-- the goal here is to even out the skin tones. The HUE layer is used to desaturate the image. Lord knows we get tired of looking at a monitor. Desaturating helps my eyes when I'm working on fine detail. The CONTRAST curve is helpful to display the dark/light spots better-- again for my old eyes... I select a point on the CONTRAST curve that represents the dark/light spotting of the skin and I pump an S curve in it to bring out the contrast so I can see it better... After zooming in to about elevendy billion percent to work on the fine points of the skin, I begin to zoom out and use larger brushes... When I'm finished and happy with the results. I turn off the CONTRAST and HUE curves and VIOLA.... total control. Now you can color adjust your little heart out and not effect the dodging and burning. You've got total control of the dark and light curves and you can easily revisit them with your little paint brush.

Shellby can you post anyone psd file with the basic layers to view curves?
thanks

Not really sure what you are asking, sorry.

You can create the curve layers using adjustment layers at the bottom of your layeres pallet.

layer set for d&b .Thks for your help, very useful

Not really sure what you are asking, sorry.

You can create the curve layers using adjustment layers at the bottom of your layeres pallet.
Shellby

Re: the curves layers. You say on one you lighten the midtones and on one you darken the midtones. I tried your technique and with some success. I was very impressed, however, I wasn't sure how much to lighten and darken those curves. Would it be right to say lighten the light curve until the darkest spot you want to eradicate disappears and darken the dark curve until the lightest spot you want to elimnate disapppears? Also what is the main advantage of the D&B technique over, say, judicious use of the healing brush? I mean would you use this technique to remove freckles, pimples etc or do you only use it to neutralize uneven tones in the skin. I used it on a picture to remove freckles and while at first glance it appeared to have worked very well, upon closer inspection, I noticed lighter colored spots where I had removed the freckles. Obviously I had over lightened and I just need more practice. I probably had the lighten cure too light as well.

Sincerely Syd

You can actully use a Softlight layer to do the dodge and burn.

Command, Shift, N
to create a new layer, then in the box that appears select SOFTLIGHT as the blend mode and check the box that says 50% GRAY. Now on this layer you can paint with 1-5% white or black to dodge or burn. The tablet is good for this as it works on pen pressure and you don't have to keep dialing in the paint brush opacity as you do with a mouse.

This method is for evening out the skin tone. I use the healing brush / clone stamp tool before doing dodge and burn.

I also use healing and cloning before using the Blur / Sharpen method.

Hey Shelby...
I was wondering something. I have usually been D&B on a Copy background layer but am realizing it may much better to do it on a layer so I can go back later. My question is How do people handle the Sponge (saturation) part on a Layer and not on the Copied background...As it does not work on a layer?
My problem is that I do BG copy..Blah blah.. Then I either have to do D&B last since it is on a background copy I cannot go any further with more layers etc.. and then go back to D&B layer. Or is this Possible?
Hope that makes sense. Basically they are 2 questions. How to Sponge (saturate) on some kind of layer instead of the Background copy layer? And is there a way to do Sponge/D&B/ and continue make other layer adjustments then go back to that BGC and do some more D&B/Sponging?
Thanks for any replies...
Snook :eek:

thats a good question i also asked myself what to to with the parts of the image i am d&b’ing with a layer above, as it gets less saturated when d&b’ed, doesnt it? i could be wrong also.

what about blending method, soft light or overlay? i am using soft light.

i sometimes also do more contrast with a duplicate "soft light" layer, with 25%, but i think it looks nearly the same as using a little S-curve.

thanks :confused:

I am going against the norm for sure, But I have never really liked the "S" curve. Never use it myself.. I find it harsh for some reason. I know it is probably the proper way but I use other techniques..:+}
Snook

yes the s-curve for itself is too much, if you dont paint in the s-curve’s mask with lets say 30% black and hide the parts which go to deep dark and too overwhite.´, like i use to do, but better do that basically for every image with the histogram correction and the alt-key for viewing the parts which will go too dark or to white and paint these away also with 20 or 30% black in the mask

:wavey:

could i please ask:

i forgot which blending it was..
i read somewhere if you work on an image
and finally want to test which amount of pixels are gone
by light or darkness, you can copy the backgroundlayer
onto the 1st position, choose "luminosity" ?, then you could
see whats wrong...

is this right?

thx

Setting the blend mode to 'difference' will show wich pixels are different in both images

thanks

i forgot to mention
, does it make a big difference for the quality of the skin,
to work on a 8 or 16 bit image in photoshop?

and did you ever remove goose bumbs?