[buchner]

Thanks one more time for your attention alehandro!!

Forgive my ignorance, but I am not finding a way to reveal the pores nicely as you did... I can find some extra contrast (showing the pores) but only blending blue n green channels. The very last part, Im not getting it (lightness on top layer, then erasin or masking other parts but skin). Doesnt seem to improve what I already got blending the two channels (G and B) and then ajust it (using curves) to approximatelly match the "lightness" layer tone...
I dont want to take your time, explaining something you already did (my ignorance is not your fault).
Do you know where I can study the subject (is that the Dan Margulis technique?) more deeply? maybe my doubts will be fullfilled...
Im searching under his name (lots of stuff) but coundnt find yet this very same subject (skin - channels - lab mode,etc)

Ricardo

[makeovermagic]

i thought i'd take a shot at alehandro's picture -- just curious if i'm achieving a good look -- this is a combination of many techniques, and i'm just learning.

MOM

[Alehandro]

Hey Ricardo, i wish i could FTP to you that pdf file with Dan Margulis "Professional Photoshop.The Classic Guide To Color Correction", with over 400 pages of useful stuff, but unfortunately it's in russian, i think you can order that book at Amazon or Barns & Nobel. Or here is another solution, go to www.edonkey.com , download their software, install it, then search
for any "Dan Margulis" with "any" format selected, i see they got 3 kinds of pdf's now online, it's about 42-58 mg.
Here's a li sample of what i have in english
Nice job MOM keep up the good work

[Craig_H]

Originally Posted by makeovermagic

i thought i'd take a shot at alehandro's picture -- just curious if i'm achieving a good look -- this is a combination of many techniques, and i'm just learning. MOM

Skin looks nice, but you have smoothed out the lips, eyes and eyebrows. They're no longer sharp. You didn't use a layer mask I'm assuming?

[makeovermagic]

Craig,

Thanks for the feedback -- I did use a layer mask, but I left the opacity too high.

MOM

P.S. Thanks Alehandro for the nice comment and also for the articles; they are very informative.

[buchner]

Originally Posted by Alehandro

Here's a li sample of what i have in english
Nice job MOM keep up the good work

Wow, Alehandro!
Thanks a LOT for the file!!
Excuse me for not answering right away (I was traveling).
I will check that material.
Ricardo

[a-delusion]

Here's on i made

[eogg]

Hi all,

I've recently been messing around with two different skin technique, described in two excellent tutorial from here : ray12's (essentially, surface blur, color/light enhancement, and I've remained low-level in the important step of restoring some texture back) and Ro's (high-pass with quite a low radius, invert, linear light, blur).

First I did use Ro's. But the edge fringing is tiresome to get rid of, so I tried out ray12's. But the texture disappears very much...
And then, I was very interested by Panpan's post in page 1 of this thread : I realized there was more to the highpass / GB combination than what Ro told us !

--

As a matter of fact, the highpass filter can be used to "filter out" (more or less) whatever size of "imperfection" you wish to.

My initial problem was to get rid of obvious cellulite patterns in a thigh, but I wanted to keep as much natural texture as possible. OK ? And neither technique yielded excellent results...
In fact, both seemed to smooth out the surface of the skin (in fact, the small grain texture - less than 1 mm in size), but didn't really touch what I wanted (its larger texture - cellulite patterns must be something like 1 cm in typical size).

(Also : I understand that these techniques weren't meant to remove cellulite in the first place !)

So I tried several uses of the high pass filter (... and some FFT, too ! But that was too far-fetched it seems), and I came up with this : using byRo's technique with high-radiuses is... awesome !

My workflow to get rid of cellulite patterns is as is :
- duplicate layer
- run high pass. Select the smaller radius that reveals exactly the level of detail you want to "downplay" (or erase !). My tests have given me radiuses around 8 pixels for low-res pics
- desaturate (some color often comes in at these radiuses)
- change blend mode to linear light
- Image > adjustments > invert
- And now's a rather fun part... run a gaussian blur with preview on : there seems to be a very small range of radiuses that will enable the highpass layer to "destroy" the targeted range of imperfections. I've come up with radiuses around 3 to 4 pixels for that, which is consistent with byRo's one third rule.

Then, there is some (lot) of masking out to do, since the edges of the image (of the body, namely) will have an ugly "double fringe".
This masking can be partially automated (duplicate original, highpass, find edges, levels & curves, select dark areas, expand selection, fill with black, blur a little, paste the result into mask) but not entirely.

--

Another possible use of "high-passed" layers is, on the contrary, to have some texture stand out : namely, a high-pass layer with a very low radius (~.5 to 1 pixel for a 3 MP pic) that you *don't* invert before blending as linear light will have very little details stand out... like actual skin pores !

--

My conclusion for today is that high pass filter is incredibly powerful to downplay (or overplay !) elements of texture that have a coherent "typical size" (very little size = skin pores ; rather little size = superficial skin texture ; rather large size = cellulite patterns - for example).
The problem is in the handling of edges... sometimes, the induced fringe is very large. I need to investigate this !

[eogg]

In fact, here are some pics...

0 - Original
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/skincell_orig.jpg
(see what I'm meaning, by "cellulite patterns" ?)

1 - Surface blur
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/skincell_surfblur.jpg
(actually, cellulite is pretty much washed out, but isn't it too much)

2 - Surface blur + noise (quickly done, could be more crisp...)
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/sk...blur_noise.jpg

3 - High pass with a low radius (purely byRo's technique)
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/skincell_hpass1.jpg
(cellulite is still here...)

And now, what I messed around with :

4 - High pass with a higher radius (edges masked out manually)
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/skincell_hpass2.jpg
(now, what do you think of that ?)

5 - Step 4 + step 3 added
http://gcatshare3.free.fr/retouch/skincell_hpass2+1.jpg

[slim_easy]

Hai, i am joko from indonesia, i have been studying photoshop intense lately, since i garaduated. I like it to be here among pro senior, wish to learn more...

btw, after reading the topic and learning, i have develop my own picture from the attachment above, please give me some advise..
The image only tweak for smothing skin and bring back the pores. I didnt do any application for the skin color ( still learning for enhancing skin tone color ).

Joko,

P.s : sorry my bad english..

[ranamosleh]

Hi every one I found this PDF its good..

have a look at it..

http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/~oanacula/cula-ijcv05.pdf#search='cheek%20texture%20patch'

[byRo]

Been reading eogg's posts and thought it's time to post a new version of the deGrunge.
I included a new sharpening layer which gives good and very quick results.
For those who like to see how everything works (if you don't just skip ahead), here's a step by step description .....

- Make a dulicate layer [<Ctl><J>]
- Invert [<Ctl><I>]
- Set Blending to Linear Light, opacity 50% (everthing just went grey now)
- Run Hi-Pass, starting with the lowest radius, increase until the pore texture is just gone but the "grunge" is visible (for me it was 0.8 here)
- Stamp to a new layer [<Ctl><Alt><Shift><E>] (obs. if using PS7 you'll need to do [<Ctl><Alt><Shift><N>] first)
- Duplicate this layer [<Ctl><J>]
- Run a GBlur on this new layer until the grunge is just gone. (I used 7.0) If there is some stubborn grunge, instead of increasing the GBlur radius, make a feathered selection and do a local GBlur (as in the middle of the cheek)
- Add a hide-all mask to this blurred layer [<Alt><New Mask>]
- Select your Hi-Pass layer and push it up to the top (looks wierd)
- Invert the layer[<Ctl><I>] and "Voilá" we're right back at the original
- (Now comes the fun) Select the mask of the blurred layer and paint in where you want to smooth the skin.

OK, up to now that's just the deGrunge, but wait..

- Duplicate [<Ctl><J>] the Hi-Pass layer and crank up the opacity to 100%
- Add a hide-all mask [<Alt><New Mask>] and paint in where you want to sharpen up (hair, eyebrows, eyes, nostril edge, lips)

I have (been nice and) posted an action which does all the setting-up, you only need to decide the Hi-Pass radius for the pores and the GBlur radius for the grunge - besides that, just paint the masks.

The attachment shows the finished layer set-up (I lowered the blurred layer's opacity to 70% to not look too "plasticky") and it is quick (I timed myself - it took a whole 73 seconds!)

Rô

[KR1156]

ByRo.....thanks for taking the time to make that action.

Another quick & esasy way to sharpen pore information is…

• Duplicate your bkgd layer

• Run unsharp mask on Red Channel

• Run unsharp mask on yellow channel

• Than set that layer that you duplicated to luminosity.

*you can always mask out any info that you don't want sharpened.

:::last image is a cleaned up versiion:::

[cspringer]

Originally Posted by ray12

Thanks for the inputs - very helpful.

byRo - thanks for link - i think it takes us an additional step closer. The idea of doing a displacement map or an emboss on multiple layers of noise is great. The final image was pretty good.

cameraken - these 3d guys have really done their homework lately it seems. I wonder if they have some bump screens that we can use for glamour kinds of things. Could they create 2200x2200pix skin texture screens on a flat plane with their stuff?

Below is an example of one of the images I was working on. A couple. The goal was to enhance the image. Its not done yet - but here are 3 stages of development. Original, pasty, then with just a little skin texture borrowed from a celebrity hi res image i found - cheek texture only. Just FYI.

Keep the ideas coming - theyre really great.

Ray12

find a leather purse, chair, etc. and take a picture. Paste to picture and try different layer modes/opacities or load in texturizer. Add a mask and tweak.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...r-skinfix2.gif

[pyromania]

Hi! I've been reading your comments. Thank you so much for all your advices. I came to here googling "creating real skin". I've been working on making a 3D model from an asian man, but what I found is tiny pictures, oftlenly blurry ....