Ok,
I am an hobby photographer, and am trying to learn how to "smooth out" skin of family membes in photographs.
This is where I am having trouble.
I have CS2, and when I try to follow the tutorials I always seem to get stuck. I don't appear to have the options available to me that being used in the tutorial, or maybe I just don't know how to access the correct things.

Would someone mind explaining in a more detailed manner, literally step by step process of how to do this? I tried one where I had to make a few layers, one darker, one brighter, ect. as well as another for "degrundging"... but I can't seem to get everything to come together.

Please note I don't want you to just redo it for me, I want to learn this - I just need a little help finding all the buttons ect.

Here is the image I am trying to "smooth". I understand this isn't a professional image, it was just a quick candid photo; but I don't expect to produce professional results either.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e108/kylen1985/IMG_4235Medium.jpg

Thanks in advance for any helpful assistance you may have to offer.

~Kyle

Kyle

"I have CS2, and when I try to follow the tutorials I always seem to get stuck. I don't appear to have the options available to me that being used in the tutorial, or maybe I just don't know how to access the correct things."

Yes, it is difficult to follow a tutorial when you don't know the "buzz words" and any step by step tutorial will probably leave the author exausted. Most of the tutorials I've seen are written with the assumption that the reader has a basic knowlege of the program, tools and filters.

I'm a visual person and find video tutorials very helpful. I can highly recommend the stuff on Lynda.com. Short of buying the tutorials on CD, you can sign up for one month of unlimited viewing of the ALL their tutorials 24/7 for as little as $25.00. Get a copy of something like "Photoshop for Dummies" and work through the chapters to get the basic knowlege and comprehension of the program's features and how to access them in the Photoshop menus.

Experiment and explore the menue options. That way, when you do a tutorial you will be somewhat familiar with terminology. Most tutorials have screen shots of the various dialog windows, but few here have the time to explain to you where to find them in the program.

You have to understand that PhotoShop is one of the deepest and broadest programs on the market today. I've been using it for 15 years and still have much to learn. It is not a "click and go" thing. For example, many of the slider bars in dialog boxes have no set formula. Much of it relies on a keen eye and long time experience plus the fact that functions will vary greatly depending on the actual image.

Don't get discouraged. Skin correction is not necessarily "beginner" level stuff. Start simple and build your skills. Learn to make simple selections to start with, save fly-away hair for later. :-)

Here is what I did,
1. created duplicate layer
2. made levels adjustment layer (little black white symbol at bottom of layers window)
3. created new layer and used the healing brush tool (little band aid on tool window) to remove wrinkles. You can lessen the effect with the opacity.
4. did a quick mask, Inverted selection (ctrl +I) copied to new layer.
5. On face only layer I did a blur - gaussian blur at about 5 px and noise - dust/scratches at about radius 9, threshold 0(both under filter tab). I changed the opacity to the desired look.
Hope this helps. I know there are others who can tell you other ways to do the same thing. There same to be as many methods are there are people.

Swampy -
Indeed I am not up to date with all of the terms ect. on the program but I can do some basic stuff. I've gone through the introduction from Adobe, via their popup. I appreciate the advice and I will look into that subscription for broading my scope of things.

Keiser-
Thanks for showing me what you did. You describing the buttons was very helpful to me. After dinner I will give it a shot, in hopes of you offering some more advice.

I know this isn't really retouching, but this is about the extent of my photoshop knowledge- but I guess I could make it better now, seeing as how I just learned how to make my own smoke from another tutorial on here.

Keiser - on step 2 what adjustments did you make?

I slid the midtone (grey slider) and the white slider to the left until I was satisfied with what I saw on the screen.

I have learned from tutorials on this site and others that I have found on the web. I am continuing to learn on a daily basis and hope each retouch I do becomes better and better and my techniques change as I learn.

My try...
all I did was lighten it.
Use the healing brush to remove wrinkles, thing between eyes, hole from piercing on chin, and blurred.

I didn't do anything else because I was waiting for answer to previous post.

I tried to whiten teeth also.

Looks like you can defend yourself on Photoshop...
A plugin that gives skin cleaning a head start is called "Portraiture"..
The attached sample was out of the box default..Even if I don't use it (which I normally do) it gives me a direction..
Lasa

Lasa - I don't appear to have that plug-in available.
That is a nice trick though, I hadn't considered something like that. I like how you maintained more skin tone/color. Thanks for the information!

~Kyle

Also- is this what your talking about -
PictoColor's iCorrect Portrait ($100)

I was searching for plugins and this is what I came up with.

Disregard found it... but only the trial.
Keygen anyone?

If you don't mind spending money , try mama's powder. she also has some tutorials that you can watch to learn her actions. http://www.photoshopmama.net/products.html

scroll down until you see the powders

Kyle look here very interesting plugin... has made my life easier.

http://www.imagenomic.com/pt.aspx

Lasa

My try
Color correct, saturation, healing brush, gausian blur, high pass filter

______________

hi
Here is my version, mostly I lightened the image both with a curves and levels adjustment layer. Then to get rid of the redness I used a channels adjustment layer and clicked on the monochrome and leaving every thing to the default setting, but I changed the layer mode to luminosity and lowered the oppacity to about 80%. On a new layer filled with 50% gray I dodged and burned out some of the blemishes and wrinkles.

>>>>>> I have CS2, and when I try to follow the tutorials I always seem to get stuck. I don't appear to have the options available to me that being used in the tutorial, or maybe I just don't know how to access the correct things.

You do have all the tools and options available to you. Sometimes tutorials are written for different levels of Photoshop knowledge and also -- sometimes the authors of tutorials are not clear enough in explaining what they are doing. Sometimes you have to read and re-read a tutorial many times to get what they are explaining. Being great at Photoshop doesn't necessarily mean someone writes in a clear and understandable way. So, hang in there.

Very interesting technique!

Thanks everyone for the assistance as well as the encouragement.
I'll keep practicing!

When I first looked at your pic I thought it was a lost cause. It looks like it was taken at midday and consequently the light was too harsh. I see you had her with her back to the sun to counteract that. Good move but now her neck is overexposed as is her right ear. Her face is underexposed and certain parts of the background stand out more than the main subject. There are colour issues as well. But the more I looked at the pic the more I noticed what a lovely smile she has and I wanted to try and think of a way to focus in on that.

This is a very quick and rough example of another approach you might take with the photo or other photos that have similar issues. You may not like it but maybe you will get some ideas from it.

First thing was to give it quite a radical crop. So most of the background went as did the overexposed side of her face. Now I was able to focus more on the part of the picture I liked the most: her smile.

Next I did some very quick work on her face just dodging some of those harsher lines at the corners of her eyes. I really didn't do too much here.

Then I darkened what was left of the background with a curves adjustment layer.

I fiddled around trying to sort out the magenta colour cast but after a few quick attempts didn't come up with anything satisfactory so I tried desaturtating it and ... hey! the smile suddenly jumped out. Also it sorted out the colour issues and simplified the whole picture. Now I liked the contrast of the dark background and the main subject.

Finally I used levels to up the contrast a bit more. You might think the contrast too much and want to soften it a bit but I think she has a very interesting face and I like the way the added contrast works with this pic.

Anyway just another idea to throw into the mix and perhaps another avenue for you to explore the next time you run into similar problems.

Sincerely Syd

This is my tutorial on a subject
Portrait Retouching: Glamour lips, Porcelain skin, Teeth form, Hairdo. Tutorial #4
http://www.half-lime.com/faq/?fid=937d16bb-1e6c-47a3-af9a-bc01b171568f

Some of my pictures where I've used the techniques from tutorial
http://www.half-lime.com/uploads3/38281555446364e587d086.jpg (http://www.half-lime.com/cooper/photos/our_life/2007/april/japanese_garden/196533172346364e5932151)
http://www.half-lime.com/uploads3/113326717046355bb917e03.jpg (http://www.half-lime.com/cooper/photos/our_life/2007/april/brooklyn__long_beach/57921471446355bb9d97b3)

and visit FAQ page on my site for more tutorials
http://www.half-lime.com/faq/