After seeing Chanelle's amazing work on re-touching faces, I feel extremely amatuer!

Below is the sort of basic, quick re-touching I usually do. The first image is what it looked like straight out of my camera, the second is the photoshopped version.


sample - before (http://www.finaldrivemagazine.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10005/img33-forum.jpg)

I was told that they wanted the make up to be heavy, hair/clothes darker and blemishes removed. This is what I did...

sample - after (http://www.finaldrivemagazine.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10005/newimg33-forum.jpg)

Now the way I usually get rid of blemishes is to use a combination of the clone tool and the healing tool [I have Photoshop CS btw].

It always blurs the skin a little. I was wondering how on earth you can manage to smooth out the skin but keep the detail?? On Chanelle's images [username Shellby here] you can still see every tiny pore of the skin clearly and I'm stunned.

I've had a go but failed miserably. Can anyone give me a clue/head start so I can have a play?

Thanks! :pleased:

I'll post up my miserable attempt at the close-up of the skin I tried later :(

Welcome to RetouchPRO! Here is a link to an excellent technique provided by one of RetouchPRO's moderators, Ro.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213
Regards, Murray

Pardus,

the secret of realistic-looking skin is details. The smaller your brush, the bigger the outcome.

Sledgehammering across the skin with some blur almost always irons everything down, including the pores. Quite obvious since pores are nothing but blemishes which are wanted in opposite of akne etc.

Hence, the way to achieve a realistic skin is to manually remove the blemishes and keeping the pores with just tiny corrections hardly bigger than the blemish itself. Don't know if that expression is understandable though :)

I posted a small attachment to show