This lovely young lady has a small bump about where every skin pore should be. On top of that she's broken out somewhat. I've attached an image of the photo before I began retouching and one after I worked on it with the Healing Tool. (PS-CS)

I'd appreciate suggestions on how to smooth out this girl's skin without making it look soft focused or otherwise blurred. I'm sure the answer is on the board somewhere, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it.

Thanks, - Dave

this is mine

That was fast! What did you do? I would like to apply that to my "after" image. - Dave

This technique may help you
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213
Regards, Murray

My favorite noise filter for skin is Xero's Fuzzifier filter. Applied selectively, can be quite effective. I also did a bumpmap step (only ever so slightly) to add a somewhat skin texture. Byro also has a technique (degrunge) that is very effective. This one's my favorite though. :)

This technique is good for images that have small bright and dark areas adjacent to each other such as the 'bumps' on the persons forehead. It does not work well for large blemishes. For the technique to be useful, you must be reasonably adept with using a dodge/burn 50% gray overlay layer. The D/B layer is used for cleanup and final refinement. The High pass layer does the heavy lifting for the small blemishes so that there is not that much to do with the D/B. Of course a D/B layer could be used for the whole image, but I find that the D/B is tedius if very dark and very light areas have to be treated. Especially if they are small and adjacent.

1.Clone/stamp any large blemishes away on a duplicate layer. In this image there were none large enough to worry about.

2.Make a duplicate of the clone/stamp layer and run the High pass filter on it. Run the radius up enough so that the dark and light blemishes stand out. For this image a radius of 8.0 was used. See attachment 1.

3.Set the HP layer to linear light and invert. Attachment 2. Note the very dark spots have become very light and the very light very dark.

4.Add a hide all mask to the HP layer. With a small, about the size of the small blemishes, white brush, opacity about 20%, dab over the blemishes until they blend in. Attachment 3. Note that there may be small light gray areas and the image will look slightly splotchy.

5.Clean up on the D/B layer. For the gray areas, use a very small white brush, and dab the area. The idea is to stipple the area so that it introduces a little texture. Attachment 4.

Larry

Hi there

I assumed you wanted to keep texture and pores.

I first used the healing brush to remove some of the worst bumps.

I duplicated a layer and produced a pore mask with a highpass filter and turned the visibility off.

Then degrundge with a 15 highpass and 5 blur... masked as needed.

Stamped a layer set the blend mode to screen and applied gaussian blur at 10 pixels. Reduced opacity to around 70 I believe then duplicated and changed the dups mode to multiply. I grouped the screen and multiply layers and applied a mask to remove from eyes.

Turned on the pore mask and adjusted opacity as needed. Then sharpened.

Butch

Hey Larry...we must have been typing at the same time

Butch

Try duplicating your bkg layer 2 times. On the top layer run a highpass at 1.5 and set to overlay. Middle layer gausian blur by 20. Make a layer mask on the blur layer and paint black on the layer mask in the areas of the eye, eyebrow and hair in the upper left. Use different opacities when painting to reveal original detail to your likeing. It is a quick fix anyway. Hope it helps.

Here is a degrunge version for comparison with my previous post. I would use this version if I were looking for 'effect' and the previous version for a more normal retouch.

Degrunge:

1.Duplicate background.

2.High pass, radius 8.0. Opacity 50%, linear light, invert. Gaussian blur about 2.7. On duplicate.

3.Hide all mask on dup. Paint skin back with white brush, full opacity. Do not paint eyes or eyebrows. Attachment 1. Does not look good to me. Needs work.

4.D/B layer. At high mag, clean up small poors. The ones that look like white circle surrounded by a black ring. Lower mag, even out splotchy skin tones. There is quite a bit of work here, nothing was gained time wise by the degrunge over the other method. Attachment 2.

5.Stamp layers, Ctl-Alt-Shift-N-E (ver 7, different in latter versions), from top of layer stack. This creates a new layer which is contains all the work of the layers beneath it.

6.Run High pass on stamp layer, radius 8.0, same as original High pass. Note that you cannot use the original High pass layer, it contains the imperfections that you removed with the D/B layer. The imperfections would be emphasized. Change mode to soft light. This is a sharpening step, adds snap to the skin. Attachment 3, final version.

Larry

Hey Butch! Are you still typing? I am still at it.

Just having fun.
lasa

Merry Christmas :bigthmb:

So simple. I didn't even do any pre blemish removal. I did do the degrunging twice (same settings, just different opacity adjustments on the blur layer. To do a highpass filter in GIMP, just Dup for total of three layers, Gausean blur the Top layer and set to Grain Extract and Merge down and set the resulting layer to Overlay.

I set the blur radius for the Highpass to 7 and the blur layer set to 15. I also adjusted the opacity of the blur layer until I just got a good focus. I then turned off the base layer and merge all visible layers (note that I made many copies of the original). I then dup the base layer and set it to the top. I set it to Grain Extract and merge down. I then set the layer property to Overlay and dupped til the skin looked good. Again, I did the above steps twice for the result shown (well I did do a dup for three layers, set the Top layer to Overlay and merged down and set the resulting layer to Lighten and played with Opacity for a contrast enhancement). :)

This may be a bit much, but here it is anyway.

Scott

Happy New Year everybody! :)

Was sorta' bored this evening, so I lurked around online. Found this post, and thought I'd give it a shot without spending too much time on it. My efforts are attached here. This is just an idea of what could be done, as I would need a few additional hours to perfect it. As I perceive it, there are a bunch of problems with this particular photo, with the patches of miscoloration of the model's skin being the major one. It could have been diffused by professionally applied make-up. Oh well,that is what we retouchers are for as well...

happy new year.

my try. done with healing brush.

regards rob

Hi Butch,

Could you please go a bit more into detail. I love the look of your process, but am not exactly understanding some of the steps.

What do you mean when you say "produced a pore mask with highpass filter, and what radius"?

When you say stamped layer, what do you mean by this?

Not sure which layers were duped and set to multiply either. Thanks in advance!

Hi there

I assumed you wanted to keep texture and pores.

I first used the healing brush to remove some of the worst bumps.

I duplicated a layer and produced a pore mask with a highpass filter and turned the visibility off.

Then degrundge with a 15 highpass and 5 blur... masked as needed.

Stamped a layer set the blend mode to screen and applied gaussian blur at 10 pixels. Reduced opacity to around 70 I believe then duplicated and changed the dups mode to multiply. I grouped the screen and multiply layers and applied a mask to remove from eyes.

Turned on the pore mask and adjusted opacity as needed. Then sharpened.

Butch

I copied the background layer and used screen blending mode. To this layer I added an aggressive Gaussian Blur of about 45. I then copied the blurred layer to a new layer and used mutliply blending Mode. I decreased the opacity of the multiply layer to about 34% to keep the photo from getting too dark.

Next I selected the Screen Layer and the Multiply layer and used new group from layers option to combine the layers and to that group I added a group mask.

Then I painted the mask in with a white brush.

I think your rendition turned out really great Phil!

Here is my try

[URL=http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c154/MacKenzie02/_MG_1995after1.jpg]

Here is my try

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c154/MacKenzie02/_MG_1995after1.jpg?t=1168057392

I copied the background layer and used screen blending mode. To this layer I added an aggressive Gaussian Blur of about 45. I then copied the blurred layer to a new layer and used mutliply blending Mode. I decreased the opacity of the multiply layer to about 34% to keep the photo from getting too dark.

Next I selected the Screen Layer and the Multiply layer and used new group from layers option to combine the layers and to that group I added a group mask.

Then I painted the mask in with a white brush.

Great technique and explanation there Phil

Merry Christmas :bigthmb:

Okay, are you going to tell us what you did?

Good Job BTW!

i went with an over-the-top look...it was fun to work on this image.

This is the best compromise that I came up with.

I tried Phil's technique on this one and it did most of the work for me. Thanks Phil! The rest was D&B. Here is a tip I found somewhere (but for the life of me I can't remember where so apologies for not acknowledging if it was from any of you out there)! If you are losing texture on the skin, copy the original layer, move it to the front, desaturate it, set the blend mode to Soft Light, turn down the opacity of the layer (usually to the low thirties but I suppose it would depend on the resolution of the image). Now add a layer mask and mask out the areas where you don't want more texture or additional contrast.
Sincerely Syd