Hey guys,

I have been for months, trying to find a great method for perfecting skin. I've tried all the methods I've been able to find, and I havn't found anything I'm totally happy with.

I remember there was some talk somewhere a while back about creating pore/detail brushes for skin. For example, completely smoothing out the skin, then using brushes to re apply detail adding pores, etc. But I havnt found anyone who's actually done it.

Obviously I'd have to create differant brushes for differant areas of the face, forehead, nose, cheek etc since the pores are differant.

Just curious if anyone had any insight into this, It'd be great to get everyones take on what would make the brush set work.

Just putting this out there and seeing if I can get a dialogue going, any opinions, help, pointers, etc etc etc would be great, and of course if they turn out great I'll post em for everyone.
:)

Jayce

Jayce,

Ive been looking at that too. I can readily get the proper skin textures loaded onto a brush, But I cant apply it without it altering the underlying background color significantly.

I use a white pore brush, and black and gray and then skin tone one - they all dont blend well for some reason. Ive also included layer blend modes such as overlay and soft light without having much success with these brushes.

I especially get problems when I try to overlap the brushes - even though they have big feathering they look poor at the intersection.

I have been doing really well with making up full face overlay masks that have the precise skin pores in each area - they blend in perfectly in the softlight mode and are overlapable and totally controlable. Just havent been able to do the same with brushes.

What do you think the issue might be? Any ideas?

Ray

Hey Ray,
I have played a little with this idea. I created a new layer in normal mode and set the texture brush to luminosity at fairly low opacity. Sample the local skin colour using the color picker and shift the circle slightly to the right in the foreground color pop-up window (so the texture color is slightly darker than the local skin tone. If the color of the brush is the same as the local skin tone, the texture doesn't show up). This avoids all the color shift problem. You apply the texture by clicking the brush instead of dragging it. If you drag the brush with strokes, the texture gets smudged. This is as far as I can get BUT I find this method very slow :sad: and clumsy.:dizzy: It is really difficult to control and blend the texture with brush. Your texture face mask technique we have discussed in your Dior's tutorial is much better, more elegant and effective in my opinion. :tongue:

hmm, im not sure, could you post what the brush looks like?

im not sure but are brushes adjustable for dodge/burn?

maybe with dodging or burning instead of an actual color might work better?

im really curious about what the mask looks like, is that really an efficient way to do it though? what about differant angles etc?

You create the texture brush by sampling any specimen of skin texture.

The texture face mask has been disussed here:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12475&page=2&pp=15

Paul,

no offense intended here, but maybe the answers to your questions to Ray concerning skin textures would interest other members of this forum as well? Aren't we all here to share and learn?

Frank