Fashion Image Retouched

[phaqu22]

Check this out and see what ya think. All critiques welcome.

[Flora]

Hi phaqu22,

Welcome to RP!

Honest opinion?

I like very much how you enhanced eyes and lips, but I personally find the skin a tad too yellow (this could be my monitor...)....
... one other thing is that while you maintained the original skin 'grain' in some parts of the model's face, in my opinion, you oversmoothed her cheeks and side of her nose so that it looks unnatural ....

[Duv]

The skin tone is within the realm of possibility, based on the numbers. Having said that, I tend to agree with Flora that the original or close to skin tones might work better.
I'm not sure why I'm posting other than to agree with Flora concerning the grain. If you want the overly smooth glamour skin then you need to alter the rest of the face to match the cheek. Pores, grain..all that good stuff has to come together in a coesive whole. I agree, tone down the cheek. Introduce the "idea" of pores, grain..whatever ties the image together. Great start though and welcome bigtime!!

Cheers
Dave

[phaqu22]

I appreciate the info. I worked about 15 minutes on this image so it is gonna be kinda rough but I thought it was a good first post to have critiqued. Thanks again

[MBChamberlain]

Hi and welcome to RP,

The goal of all retouching work is to make it hard to tell it was retouched. I quote one of my photography friends, "If it ain't good enough to print, it ain't good enough to retouch." Keeping that philosophy in the back of my mind helps to remind me that I am working on good source material and, therefore, it needs very little modification.

1. Retouched the skin until I was completely happy with it (pic 1)
2. Duplicated layer, added heavy median, opacity at 40%
3. Created mask, painted out the median layer around eyes, eyebrow, and lips
4. With 50% grey painted in the area around the eyes and over the lips to soften them a little, but less than the rest of the skin
5. Hue and saturation layer at 50% to brighten the eye color, masked to iris area
6. Selective color to slightly adjust the skin tones
7. Unsharp mask, painted in with history brush
8. 50% grey layer 15% monochromatic, gaussian grain blended at 40% masked with 40% grey on cheeks and nose, at 30% grey on rest of face
9. Done (pic 2)

I don't want to sound like I am bashing your work with such a long post, your work is good, and you appear to have the methods down well. I suppose my real advice is back it off a little and remember that less is more.

Take care,

Michael

[phaqu22]

[quote=MBChamberlain]Hi and welcome to RP,

The goal of all retouching work is to make it hard to tell it was retouched. I quote one of my photography friends, "If it ain't good enough to print, it ain't good enough to retouch." Keeping that philosophy in the back of my mind helps to remind me that I am working on good source material and, therefore, it needs very little modification.

1. Retouched the skin until I was completely happy with it (pic 1)
2. Duplicated layer, added heavy median, opacity at 40%
3. Created mask, painted out the median layer around eyes, eyebrow, and lips
4. With 50% grey painted in the area around the eyes and over the lips to soften them a little, but less than the rest of the skin
5. Hue and saturation layer at 50% to brighten the eye color, masked to iris area
6. Selective color to slightly adjust the skin tones
7. Unsharp mask, painted in with history brush
8. 50% grey layer 15% monochromatic, gaussian grain blended at 40% masked with 40% grey on cheeks and nose, at 30% grey on rest of face
9. Done (pic 2)

Explain to me what the Heavy Median is also why all the grey layers and what is the best way to bring some grain back. I don't seem to know where some of the filters or tools are that you used. The monochromatic and Gaussian grain layers?

Thanks
Shane

[MBChamberlain]

Hey Shane,

The median filter is located Filters>Noise>Median... heavy median means a high radius (25 px in this case).

Most of the talk about grey is refering to mask layers. A mask layer is a greyscale channel that defines transparency. A normal layer that contains transparance contains an alpha channel, but erasing not only modifies the alpha channel but also deletes the data underneath. A mask layer is a way of modifying only the alpha channel. You can create a mask by clicking the second button from the left in the layers pallette. In the layers pallette you will see a second thumbnail next to the layer (this can only be done on normal layers, not background layers). By painting in white, black, or various shades of grey you are erasing areas of the image. The mask below is the one I used for the softening layer. In RGB, white is visible, black is invisible, and grey is partly visible. As a result the second image is all you are overlaying onto the original skin.

The history brush is a nice way to selectively apply filters. You click next to a history state and the little paintbrush symbol will appear next to it, then actually move to another history state. Then you can use the history brush (under the regular brush) to paint the marked history state over the current history state.

The actual grey layer is an ordinary layer filled with 50% grey. Then you apply Filters>Noise>Add Noise... Check the monochromatic and gaussian check boxes, set the slider to an appropriate amount (15% in this case) and apply it to the layer. Then change the blend mode to overlay and you will usually fade it to about 8% in this case I wanted to add more grain to the image so I added a mask layer, applied two shades of grey to get a higher grain and lower grain area, then adjusted the layer opacity to tone it to an acceptable amount.

Masks and the history brush are two of the most powerful (and underused) capabilities in Photoshop.

Hope that helps you,

Michael

[phaqu22]

Thanks Michael i will work on some of these ideas.

Shane

[plewis6]

Michael,

Couldn't beat it, even with your step by step. Nice work and useful explanation. My questions came in regarding why Median rather than gaussian blur (although I can clearly see there is a difference)?

Second question, my understanding is that you "blend out much of the skin texture with Median, but then put back texture using a 50% grey layer with added noise to replace the lost skin texture. Is this correct? My assumption is this is faster than trying preserve the skin texture everywhere with healing brush and the like, plus you can fix larger areas that have shadow indents etc. yes?

Also, didn't get what you meant by "applied two shades of grey to get a higher grain and lower grain area"?

My attempt below, close but no cigar.

Thanks,

-paul

[MBChamberlain]

Good work Paul,

Median is more of a preference than anything else. I like it because it does not "bleed". It is essentially a uniform blur with edge detection.

To "soften" the texture you literally remove all of the skin texture on one layer and blend it with the original, but before you do you should clean the skin as much as possible with heal and clone. Adding grain is done bacause a side effect of softening the skin is practally eliminating grain. The part about using two shades of grey refers to the mask. On a mask (in RGB) a lighter grey will display the masked image at a higher opacity than a darker grey, therefore in this case the lighter grey areas on the mask will display more grian.

Michael

[Ken Fournelle]

Michael,

Thank you for your excellent method for glamor/portrait retouching method.

Median preseves the edges, would you, have you considered a slight gaussian blur to soften those edges?

You said:

"Then change the blend mode to overlay and you will usually fade it to about 8% in this case I wanted to add more grain to the image so I added a mask layer, applied two shades of grey to get a higher grain and lower grain area, then adjusted the layer opacity to tone it to an acceptable amount."

By "fade it to about 8%", I take it to mean you change the opacity to 8%?

thanks,

Ken

[MBChamberlain]

Ken,

I should have mentioned that. A light Gaussian is a good followup to the median filter.

8% is where it usually ends up but it varues from about 3% to about 12% opacity.

Michael

[Ken Fournelle]

Michael,

I must admit you lost me with the History Brush application of the USM.
Do I click next to the USM history state, select the History Brush and then paint?

Care to try one more time?

thanks,

K

[MBChamberlain]

To use the history brush:

1) Select the history state you want to copy from by clicking in the area left of the state
2) Select a different history state to copy to by clicking on the state
3) Select the history brush and paint away

Michael

[Ken Fournelle]

Thanks, Michael!

k