Skintones

[Klaatu Baradda]

Here is our shot at it.

[tmosley]

Originally Posted by Klaatu Baradda

Here is our shot at it.

Very natural look to it....good job

[tmosley]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

tmosley have a look at a couple of tutorials in here in the tutorials section, namely:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=191
and
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=148

For my part I thought I'd have a go at this image and my steps comprised as follows

Adjusted levels
Removed Stray Hairs and as much of the shadow as possible
Fixed Blemishes with the clone tool
Selected a tonal area of the skin I liked and used a low opacity brush in Hue mode to even the tone a bit
On a new empty layer using a very large soft brush with same colour but
in normal mode, applyed a 3% opacity quick brush till I was happy with tone.
On a new layer, filled with 50% grey and set it to overlay and using a 3% large brush and only using black and white, added some highlights and some
shadowing for interest.

Soakin it all up.....if you guys were in fla (jacksonville) i'd save you plate of BBq from the cookout, lol.

[Klaatu Baradda]

Originally Posted by tmosley

Very natural look to it....good job

Hi Tre,
Thanks for the props. If you're interested, here's the methods we used.

As you can see we replaced the background using a solid color and then applying Lighting Effects (2 light sources). The first real challenge was the harsh shadow on the left of the model. We removed it by creating a layer mask (with the new background showing through).

The other challenges were the eye-shadow makeup (too harsh for a glamour shot) and the parting of her lips which gave her an almost snarling expression. We painted the lips closed (sampling color from the image on the fly), emphasized the irises of her eyes (dodge/burning), lightened the whites (dodge), and used the Clone Stamp Tool set to Color to change the color of her eye-shadow makeup to her natural skintone (referencing her cheek color).

We used the Patch Tool to eliminate blemishes and irregular wrinkles around her neck. For the softening of her skin we duplicated the background and used Gaussian Blur (7.5 pix) then created a layer mask and painted (white soft brush) in the mask avoiding any lines or edges of the model (staying within the large areas of her skin). This layer was set to 75% Opacity. This is a common method among glamour retouchers for softening skin and eliminating rough or irregular areas (and splotchiness) while still keeping the tone and texture. It also gives the model's skin an added glow.

We spent about 45 minutes on this and with more time would have focused on widening the mouth and making the transition of the mask better. Of course, a higher resolution photo would have helped with the masking. This was just too low to make a really convincing extraction or mask.

[tmosley]

After getting some guts and really reading all the stuff you guys gave me....here is one of my final touches.....be gentle. I know i need to work on some stuff (like removing the stray hair without it LOOKING like i was tryin to remove the stray hair)....but im workin on it

[tmosley]

Originally Posted by Klaatu Baradda

Hi Tre,
Thanks for the props. If you're interested, here's the methods we used.

As you can see we replaced the background using a solid color and then applying Lighting Effects (2 light sources). The first real challenge was the harsh shadow on the left of the model. We removed it by creating a layer mask (with the new background showing through).

The other challenges were the eye-shadow makeup (too harsh for a glamour shot) and the parting of her lips which gave her an almost snarling expression. We painted the lips closed (sampling color from the image on the fly), emphasized the irises of her eyes (dodge/burning), lightened the whites (dodge), and used the Clone Stamp Tool set to Color to change the color of her eye-shadow makeup to her natural skintone (referencing her cheek color).

We used the Patch Tool to eliminate blemishes and irregular wrinkles around her neck. For the softening of her skin we duplicated the background and used Gaussian Blur (7.5 pix) then created a layer mask and painted (white soft brush) in the mask avoiding any lines or edges of the model (staying within the large areas of her skin). This layer was set to 75% Opacity. This is a common method among glamour retouchers for softening skin and eliminating rough or irregular areas (and splotchiness) while still keeping the tone and texture. It also gives the model's skin an added glow.

We spent about 45 minutes on this and with more time would have focused on widening the mouth and making the transition of the mask better. Of course, a higher resolution photo would have helped with the masking. This was just too low to make a really convincing extraction or mask.

I'll try one using your method too, thanks.

[tmosley]

I brightened this one up a bit....

[AndrewR]

Here's a quick one I done.
I duplicated the layer and put a slight blur on it, I then masked over the parts that I needed to stay sharp. Adjusted the hue/saturation, then removed some of the slight blemishes with the healing tool.