Skin texture

[superfrasky]

Hi guys, need help to make skin texture in photoshop. Anyone know how??

[byRo]

Hi there, superfrasky. Welcome to RetouchPRO

That's a very big question in just a few words. I think the correct answer, at this point would be - Depends.

What are you going to use it for? Retouching? Painting? 3D textures?
Do you have a specific image? Or is this a general question.

Everybody around here is always ready to help. Just fill us in a little bit, OK?

Rô

[byRo]

I'm supposing that you mean that you have a smoothed-out "plastic" skin and are trying to get to something like the image. (please correct me if I'm wrong)

Don't know if you have already tried doing a search in the RP threads. I looked up "skin texture" and it seems that nobody has posted much except maybe mixing in a little noise / grain.
Which seems funny, in 3D making the perfect skin texture is a hot subject (procedural, subsurface scattering, fresnel, texture / bump mapping etc.etc.) - and in 2D I can't find much info.

I have some ideas - but does anybody have a good answer?

Rô

[Cameraken]

Hi, superfrasky. Welcome to RetouchPRO

That’s a good question. Thanks for posting it.

I usually just add noise to match the grain. But by you posting that question and the skin sample it got me thinking that maybe its possible to do better.

We could perhaps create a pore brush or a pattern or a texture that might work better than adding noise.


I took your sample and ran median at 6 and then added noise at 3

I wonder if there is anything better?

Ken

[superfrasky]

thanks for answer Cameraken, but the noise filter dont make the real pore effect. This is the real question, how to make skin texture with pore
Thks!

[Cameraken]

superfrasky.

Yes I understand your question. I just posted that to show that it’s not that good when you do look close up. (I did not fade this as I usually do)

But you have got me thinking. ‘I wonder if there is anything better.’

What we really need is a good sample of some wrinkles that need removing.
But maybe the answer is just a lot of work. I don’t think we could create a texture that would ‘fit all skin’

Ken

[goose443]

One major problem is that pores are very different thoughout the face and body. It would be difficult to get that look with a single brush. Most likely you would need a whole set of brushes (nose pore brush, cheek pore brush, neck pore brush...) At that point you might as well becom a dermatologist.

Another solution would be to collect nice high rez facial pictures of your friends and family. A front view, side view and maybe 3/4 view. This way you can pull "maps" whenever you need them and apply them to other images. The more samples you have with varying pore structures the more you'll have to draw from.

[Stroker]

I agree that high-rez photos would be good.

Failing that, maybe get fractal, which is something I've had good success with.

- new layer and fill with 50% grey
- Noise monochrome 16
- Gauss 3

- new layer and fill with 50% grey
- Noise monochrome 8
- Gauss 2

- new layer and fill with 50% grey
- Noise monochrome 6
- Gauss 1

Set the top 2 to Linear Light or Overlay or something. Mess with Opacity. After that, it's just a matter of adding colour and tweaking.

Attached is a quick-n-sleazy whack at it. You should be able to see the patch that I replaced as I didn't spend much time on it. One thing sorely missing is brighter highlights. Although, I did gave it a bit of wiggle with Liquify in a lazy attempt to follow the skin.

[Vernon]

Hi, superfrasky.
I inferred that you are creating very close-up renditions of skin, et al for glamour imagery.

As to technique, I share with you my approach to such endeavors. Perhaps they will help:

• Search the Internet for examples of skin textures.
• Drag a suitable one onto its own layer above the subject/model.
• Transform it (rotate, skew, etc) to match the angle and skin-pore size you want
• Once you have oriented the skin sample to match the underlying model/area, set the Layer to Overlay
• Now, make a Layer Mask (set to Hide All) then, using a soft white Brush at a low opacity (5~10%), paint lightly in the shadow areas as this is where you will see skin texture the most.

A reminder about masking: white will reveal and black will hide the texture when painting on a mask. thus, if you overdo it in a particular area, switch to black and reverse what you have done - the magic of this is the original image and the image sample are essentially unaltered, so you always have a "safety net".

I am working on a tutorial for another forum, but once I complete it I will see if I can create one on this type of work technique.

[superfrasky]

Stroker! Great!

[superfrasky]

Vernon, thks, but the problem is that Im working with 64 MB images and find skin textures with this size is ....!

[goose443]

You can also try this:
-Fill the background with skin color (or use the face you're working with.
-Make a new layer and fill it with whever skin color you're using. (You can tweak the color later)
-Make a layer mask and add noise to it.
-Apply the mask to the layer
-set a bevel and emboss following the natural highlights of the original photo. Set your highlight mode and shadow mode to the highlight and shadow colors of the original photo.
-Tweak tweak tweak
-use liquify and free transform to fit your new texture over the photo.

Below is a very quickly done sample of this skin texture.

[Kraellin]

superfrasky (ok, that's too long, so from now on it's 'frasky'),

welcome to RP.

i'm curious here... 64 Meg images and working in glamour retouching. most of the glam work i've ever seen tends to tone down skin pores and texture, so why the other way around and why such high res pics?

as for making your own textures, photoshop shld be able to do this quite easily. there's all sorts of approaches, but if you've got a particular image that you're wanting to apply your texture to, i'd start with that.

make a blank image to the size you want to work with. sample one color out of the target image and paint your new image with that. make it solid, 100% opaque.

duplicate the image to a new layer. add noise...lots! blur it, preferably with a gausian blur set to 'uniform'.

make a new blank raster layer on top of the previous ones. paint it pure white. add noise. again, lots! blur it the same way.

make a new blank raster layer. paint it solid black. add noise same way, and blur it.

adjust opacities of your various layers.

add another blank raster layer. pick a different color from your target image of the skin tone. paint it solid on this layer. add noise the same as before and blur, only this time, use motion blur set at about medium.

readjust opacities of various layers.

add an adjustment layer for contrast/brightness. set contrast somewhere in the 20 to 40 range and brightness accordingly to bring up the light on the other layers.

ok, i'm doing this from memory and i think i've forgotten a few things in there. if i recall correctly i added a pattern/texture thing to one or two of those layers before doing the blur. you want fine textures, like 'sand' or 'fine gravel' or 'cement', stuff like that.

and on reading this thread i also made a skin texture/pattern from the attachment, but it actually doesnt work very well. in fact, i made two, one sharpened highly and the other just as it is. neither was satisfactory.

also, in following any of the above stuff, play around with it. dont take what i said as a literal tutorial, cause, like i said, i was doing that from memory and i'm sure i've got some steps wrong in there. but, it could give you some ideas on how to proceed.

Craig

[superfrasky]

Kraellin, waiting anxiously the process.... (if you want, of course..)

[Caitlin]

The Nagel brushes have a few sets of skin brushes - I've never used them myself so not sure what the results are like. The main thing I don't like about the Nagel brushes is they are not meaningfully named, and it's not immediately obvious which one is for what!

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopbrushes/