Hi Everybody,

I’m a fashion photographer based in London. I shot these pictures last week and now want to retouch them.

http://www.pointblankphotojournalism.com/fashion.html

I just finnished reading a interesting thread started by Shellby about how to retouch skin without using bluring. “How to get highly polished skin?”

I was also very impressed with Klino & Indrani’s work.

The quesion I want to ask is (time considerations aside) how do I get the best possible result. Shellby did your colleague let you in on his secret?

Should I start by cloning any blemishes away on each individual channel?

I don’t want to take any short cuts that may compromise quality, If neccessary in willing to clone pixel by pixel to get the result I’m looking for.

I’m looking for perfect skin but I really want to avoid that overdone, fluffy icecream look, I’m thinking high fashion look think Vogue rather than Maxim.

Thanks
Robin

Here is one more.

Well I took a shot at this one too. I didn't use any blurring. I used a very small amount of the Healing brush and then with a very low opacity, soft paintbrush smoothed out the skin. I decreased the saturation and added a diffuse glow to get that sultry look.

Syd

Hi Robin, you must try this technique, it's really simple.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=101733&seqNum=3&rl=1

Hope this help you to achieve the result you want.

Silvia.

Not really my field but here's my attempt used airbrush action from 1Click (http://www.1clickactions.com)

I was just messing around with the shot and the way it's lit...seeing what i can come up with.

Each image is different but here is my take on one of yours (and the steps taken)

First I used the patch tool to clone away some large problems - scars, hair on the forehead and beauty marks (tho they can be left in if desired) then I tweaked the upper arm to give a straighter line using the liquify tool.
I then used byRo's quick degrunge trick (see tutorials section) brushed it in at a very low (around 20%) opacity then dropped the layer opacity to around 50% too.
The skin is flatter now, in a good way and bad, the skin is smoother but the highlights are lost.
I made 2 duplicates, 1 set to color dodge and one set to color burn and black masked them both. I then gently brushed on highlights and shadows (color dodge layer for highlights, burn for shadows)
Then I used selective color to modify the color balance of the image and enhance the slight green color cast - particularly in the background.
Finally I copied the blue channel over the top, set the blend to soft light and the opacity to 30%.
You style may vary in the finishing touches but for the general retouch I find that the patch, clone and heal tools are great for scars, spots and wrinkles and the 'degrunge' trick is perfect for wuickly fixing uneven skin.
Obviously if you're working on a high detail beauty shot where pore detail is very strong then pixel by pixel is a more viable option but on long shots and low res images, its not worth it.

nancyj i like the colorizing a lot...the green really makes her pop more.

I use LCD monitors so they're usually pretty sharp although I've heard they're worse for colour calibration than CRTs. Its not just your work that looks too strong, if that makes you feel any better. There are a few people whos work I find to be 'over sharpened' or similar, whether its my eyes or my monitors I dont know but I can often see very clearly things that other people may barely be able to see.
Sometimes I wish I could show people what I see ;)

Thanks KR1156.

This one is a similar method - I could have done more - especially with the hand but my fella says its bed time :(

I use LCD monitors so they're usually pretty sharp although I've heard they're worse for colour calibration than CRTs. Its not just your work that looks too strong, if that makes you feel any better. There are a few people whos work I find to be 'over sharpened' or similar, whether its my eyes or my monitors I dont know but I can often see very clearly things that other people may barely be able to see.
Sometimes I wish I could show people what I see ;)

I know that feeling, I use a Dell M60 50% of the time and I find things are sharp, bright and vivid. Sometimes I have done some very very subtle details and then found they don't really show up on othe screens. So knowing how other see things is often a thought going through my head. Iused to have a CRT at work but the new lease machines are all CRT and I was not able to keep my CRT :( I found they would give a more rounded view of what the general audience would see.

My try.

Cleaned up spots etc with healing brush.
Smoothed skin with gaussian blur and median filter on separate layers, black mask and painted in as required.
Adjusted saturation and contrast.

Tried to get and enhance what you were going for with the coloured lights, hopefully I achieved that. Method very similar to the other too. If I was doing this properly I'd have removed the stray hairs over her ear too.

Great!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Robin,

welcome to RetouchPRO!! :pleased:

...not my cup of tea either ... just wanted to try ...

I strongly brightened the picture and minimized the colours just to see what I was doing ... the procedure will probably work on the original as well ... even if I think that for the original the smoothing should be much stronger to simply see any improvement!

* Spot Healing Brush +

* A simplified version of Rô's Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213).

This may not be at all what the photographer had in mind. But, I thought the composition in the oringinals were great. I tried to enhance the photographers use of the "S" curves he had throughout the images and run with that. About 99% of this was done with a paint brush, nothing fancy really.

Anyway, good job on the photography.

Hi to everyone! Haven't been here for a long time.
I liked these photos and did 3 of them.
Tried to be consistent to some point on the skin tone.
Here they are ...!

i did a version of the girl with the machines, i over did the smoothing purposely, i just liked the way it looked.

nancy J did some really nice hue adjustment to the picture she did, i basically did the same thing. i think yellow photo filter i used.

If you like I'll tell you how I did it.

I like a lot godmother, please share!

ok

It was hard but not long :dizzy:

1- Look at the chanels and kept the one with more detail (RED), deleted the other 2 (now the image is B&W) so change the mode to grayscale and then again to RGB. with the image in B&W I patched the bad skin with good skin in 50% (ctrl+shift+F) all over the face.

2- Colorized the image (one layer for the skin, one for the lips, one for the teeth,etc) trying to mantain the colors in the original (well the colors that were left and guessing the other). merge the layers and play with the levels. But I didn't pay to much atention 'cause I knew that the next step would fix the details.

3- Reopened the original image, copy it all and pasted it in a new layer of the retouched file blended soft light and turned down the opasity 40%...50%)

4- One again I merg the layers and now the image had more sense. Again played with the levels, move the curves a little and adjusted the tone and saturation of the diferent colors.

Finally, some highlights in the mouth, the earing. Some shadows in the nose. Some unsharp mask to the eyes and eyeshadow.

English is not my native lenguaje so I do what I can. Hope this helps you understand my image.

I like the first one bettel (is more REAL)

This is my porcelain version.

For this one, I took the retouched picture, mask the skin and made 3 copys of the masked layer.

The first masked layer gaussian blur (about 10%) Desaturated and with more light.
Second above: overlay.
Third layer blended COLOR (30%)

When it looks good to you, merge the layers and final touches like shadows and high lights.

Again sorry for my english

thanks for the reply, very clear and well written....was able to follow and duplicate easily! i never used that approach before....i like it. thanks.

mike

Did Robin ever come back?

I don't think so. I even sent him a private message asking to use one of his picture on my retouch portfolio, but he never aswered.

hey, my name is aaRon, and im new at this forum. thought i'd intro myself, and say hi to everyone on this board.

i thought working with these files were ok. didnt take much time, and didnt do much for them to look decent. color corrections were key on this one for me.

i actually like these pics, and would love to use em for portfolio purposes as well. i think im going to try and email the photographer too, just like Godmother...

aaronology101@yahoo.com

a bit Crude, 15 minute work, but shows the direction I'd go in

ektacrow, interesting wet skin look. Care to share that process?

ektacrow, interesting wet skin look. Care to share that process?


Painting with dodge/burn using multiple passes (like 3) reducing the radius of the brush in each pass.

My try ... used some light blurring but recovered sharpness with the high pass filter in an overlay blend layer.

i don't speak english, sorry...
:wavey:

Had a quick go at it...

Let me add a remark please: The images are very poor, almost no tonal range and underexposed. It's almost impossible to get the results you want to go for by retouching if the basic material is missing. Try to shoot with proper exposure next time. Darkening it is far more better than lightening up underexposed areas.

my final retouch. please i want c&c...

Here is my picture...I will share psd file if anyone like this one...I'm not very happy about retouching to the borader of plastic fantastic, but I tried to get it as real as possible...

PATRICK: The thing about retcouch is really to get a bad picture to loog great...therefor the photographer chose those pictures for us to have a go at! maybe he likes some of the retouches we and send us a email, and away we go to stardom, ;)

well, please mail me at if u want the psd...there are 2 psd-files on 7mb in total!

EMAIL: treplanke@hotmail.com

cheers

gerry

It was easier because the images where so low-res.

This is what I did:

1) remove blemishes, fixed hairline and worked a little her waist to make her a bit more curved.

2) balanced the exposure a little and boost a little the contrast

3) then remove some noise and sharpen a little.

4) painted over another layer some highlights to give the "oily" effect and flattened the image.

5) once flattened selected via selective color the skin and de-saturated it

6) the mess a little with the curves.

I saved some variations as i worked and came out with 4 options
a) regular b) sharper c) darker d) washed.

cheers

Here is my take.... What do you think?

Hope you like it!

silvia.