Orange Peel Skin Texture - How to get

[ray12]

There are times when after all my retrouching and healing - I end up with a Perfect but FLAT Complexion. I use dodge and burn to get some shading back in - and that helps some. But how do others get that orange peel "Pores" look in the skin? Obviously getting it there in the original photograph is helped by a good makeup artist.

Ive been thinking about making up a texture swatch that I could blend in afterwards using masks to control its application.

Does photoshop CS2 have any facility to do this directly?

Should I clone some textures from some very hi res images and re-use those.

Are there people out there who have such a skin texture library or swatch kit they use - and might be willing to share with the community?

We all get a little Flat at times - anyone have any textures to share?

Also - some tips on creating and storing textures ONLY might be a nice tutorial.

Thanks

[superfrasky]

I have similar problem ray12, and I m looking some textures from some very hi res images. Anyone know if its exist?

[superfrasky]

This picture is from dior web page. This is a perfect retouched skin.

[shellby]

Hello

Good to see another thread on skin!

That dior advert doesn't seem to have a lot of detail left in the pores. Some of their stuff has that hyper-real look where the skin looks perfectly smooth, but I noticed in a recent glossy mag that they are doing some of there adverts with a far more "realistic" look - by this I mean that you can actually see the pores.

I have never used another image to bring back the pores (I am interested to know more about this), but you can add noise. I have also heard of people creating brushes the size of pores and adding them back in.

There is a great thread on usind dodge and burn methods by Conrad.

Blurring is not used in pro retouching - I have heard this many times from retouchers who I have asked to crit my work and they can always tell when blurring has been used.

[superfrasky]

Thks for your reply Shellby. Yes shellby everyone know how do it but anyone can make it. The dior image doesn't seem to have a lot of detail , but for the makeup industry is good. In this image, the reallism is total and pores.
Anyone know how do it?

[creeduk]

To add pores afterwards or again I would think of looking for skin textures used by many 3D apps (bumpmaps) and try blending back into the image. I will dig through my 3D stuff see what turns up.

[creeduk]

Basically similar o what is suggested, the bumpmap for pores I have is basically a neutral grey background with some burned spots to make a seamless pattern the apply as an overlay. So similar to the noise suggestion. I exaggerated the effect so it would show up on this size.

[ray12]

Thanks for all your inputs. I have been experimenting some in the meantime.

As I said - I can get the blemishes GONE with the heal brush.

I can use the new "surface blur" filter to get an even skin tone all over by blending the smoothed average tone back into the image thru the gentle use of masks.

I can get the shading to look good - both dark and light by using a 128 gray screen in overlay and using white and black airbrush to selectively get the edges of features and highlights to pop out - but the skin - still seemed to look "pasty" sometimes.

Here's what Ive been experimenting with: I just tried taking a super hi res picture of a model and looking for one with really good pores. I cut out this sample area, desaturated it to monocrome - and then level adjusted the chip to come in at a gray level 128 which is the netural overlay color.

When this pattern is used in an overlay or soft light mode - just the texture ONLY shows up on the model and it can be controlled in strength through opacity and by using a mask to feather any annoying edges out that might look out of place. You can even free transform it to have it fit at an angle or for creating smaller or larger size pores. I suppose you could even use warp on a layer to conform the texture patch better to the subject - say around the cheeks.

So far, Im liking the results - smooth, blended skin, blemish free with some highlights and shadows and now some texture too!

The swatches im making now are still somewhat small in size and I would need to work at making a bigger sheet of this "Real" skin pore texture. I am also seeing that pores on a forehead are somewhat different in pattern than on a cheek.

Maybe I end up making a good size texture overlay sheet for foreheads, another for cheeks. There is a special pattern of skin right under the eyes that is very unique and I suppose that a texture pattern of "under the eyes skin" could be found and created as well. I havent gotten this far tonite but maybe in the next couple of weeks I can begin to create these kinds of templates.

Am I on the right path here??

Any enhancements or any corrections to my thinking or process?

I would be especially interested in seeing what the 3D guys come up with for their animated character patterns for skin - maybe some of you might be able to paste a 600x800 sheet of texture for us to try out some. If a fractal program has already been written out to create these lifelike bumps and valleys - then maybe im re-creating the wheel here.

This post is pretty detailed and technical - I hope it meets some needs and creates some new frontiers in getting that "Great Look". I know ive been looking for it and working towards being able to create it myself for sometime now.

Maybe we can do a tutorial on a technique like this someday.

Thanks for your community spirited inputs. Thanks for your suggestions.

Ray

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by creeduk

Basically similar o what is suggested, the bumpmap for pores I have is basically a neutral grey background with some burned spots to make a seamless pattern the apply as an overlay. So similar to the noise suggestion. I exaggerated the effect so it would show up on this size.

How do you create a neutral gray background, Creeduk? Do you then add a bump texture to that?

Maureen

[Cameraken]

Hi Ray.

You may find this of use.

http://www.cslab.uky.edu/~lteri2/Fac.../introPage.htm

I think page 7 may be of help.

Sure is interesting reading

Ken

[superfrasky]

Thanks ray12 for your reply. I so think that we can do a tutorial on a technique like this someday.
Thanks ray12

[byRo]

Ray, you might find this thread interesting.

There Stroker posted a method, using three layers of noise, which can give good results.
I doubled the size of the posted image, used Stroker's method and masked the final stage (pores).

If you are interested on 3D skin then this might interest you. [Warning: might raise some eyebrows at work ]

You could say that the 3D folk actually have it a bit easier. Correct skin texture modelling depends on lighting and relative angles which they can calculate while we have to imagine.

Rô

[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

[Duv]

You might also have some success blending in natural textures such as this pane of ice that I blended into the image. Natural textures are more "chaotic" than maps and noise and may add a bit more realism.

Dave

[Panpan]

If possible, I wanted to use the woman's own features instead of importing or creating them. The goal was to blur the freckles and to emphasize the pores at the same time.

I created overlay-mode high-pass layers for radii 1,2,5,6 and 9 of the wonan's skin only, omitting the larger facial features. I then inverted the radii 5 and 6 layers and duplicated the radii 1 and 2. By adjusting layer opacities, I got rid of most of the imperfections.

I put all the high-pass layers in a group and added a mask to that group. I used it to mask out the nostrils and the jaw line because the technique tends to put halos around strong edges.

I worked on the rest of the imperfections with the usual 10% white and black brushes on a soft-light layer (alt-click on the new layer icon; select soft light mode and checkmark 50% grey; press d for default color, select the brush tool and press 1 for 10%; paint on this layer to darken; press x to switch to lighten mode).

I left some imperfections to show what the high-pass technique will NOT do. Notice the low-frequency freckles on the bridge of the nose and on top of the cheekbone under her right eye. Notice also the two freckles on the jaw line because edges were omitted. Lastly, notice the lines under her right eye (I
fixed some, but not all). Those lines are too long to be affected by the small-radius blurring. They have to be fixed with the soft-light layer.

I feel this technique is a good time/quality compromise between high-end retouching where you have to spend hours dodging and burning versus blurring everything and recreating texture.

Pierre

P.S.: I have not seen this technique before. Surely it's not new?

Edit: I added the completed version

[creeduk]

Originally Posted by maureeno

How do you create a neutral gray background, Creeduk? Do you then add a bump texture to that?

Maureen

Maureen there is an option under edit>fill... to select 50% gray this is neutral gray and when set to overlay does not show up. this allows you to creat a dodge and burn layer with out effecting the original image.

[ray12]

Duv, great idea on the texture. Nice example. Who would think of Ice? Thanks for the pattern - it works nicely.

Panpan - I never tried that - it produced some really nice looking pores on the cheek.

Heres an update: Im beginning to further refine the technique how to use skin textures from existing glamour models. It allows me to extract just the "Texture Only" from the models skin and to place it anywhere I want to - on my very flat overly-airbrushed looking skin.

I'll try to see if I can explain it more simply. Im now getting it down to a workflow kind of technique.

Heres how: I locate a model that has the skin texture im looking for. I make a selection of it and copy it. I look for a large area of even texture.

I paste that into my pasty looking picture on a new layer above where I want to use it and turn the blend mode of that layer to overlay. On that new layer I use the Hue-Saturation-Levels adjustment (control - U) to bring the saturation of the texture patch all the way down to black and white. Then I use the level control to bring the luminance of the patch down or up to exactly 128 gray (50% gray is the same). This is the perfect overlay color because now all that shows up is the "texture only". I use the "Color Sampler Tool" (Under the eyedropper in the toolbox to measure the level so its exactly 128 - otherwise the patch will not blend well). Voi-la! Now I have a repositionable texture only patch that I can use anywhere in my new image.

I usually end up putting a mask together with the texture so I can get nice smooth blended edges and I control its strength using the opacity slider.

Heres the great part - when im done using this texture patch to fix up the texture in the left cheek, I hit Duplicate Layer (Control - J) to get a new layer of the patch. I then slide this new layer over to the right cheek or forehead. I adjust the opacity for strength or I touch up my mask with a white or black brush to further blend in the texture. Each time I use the patch it has been refined from the step before it - so this second patch usually ends up requiring even less work to get it to look nice. Life is good.


Im still looking for texture screens or texture bumps - or especially - how to make them.

How are the 3D guys coming? Can anyone create a large plane of skin pore or forehead texture? There's got to be some kind of special math-matical formula out there somewhere!!!

Ray12

[Cassidy]

Have to laugh, today waiting in doctor's office, started perusing the mags on the table, mostly inspecting the skin textures on the ads, lol

[ray12]

We are strange puppies!!! I do the same kind of thing at check-out lines.

[NancyJ]

Originally Posted by ray12

How are the 3D guys coming? Can anyone create a large plane of skin pore or forehead texture? There's got to be some kind of special math-matical formula out there somewhere!!!

Ray12

http://www.cache.daz3d.com/store/ite...02/popup_2.jpg

and thats just poser - couldnt find any Maya renders and I'm not at home right now.

[maureeno]

Here are some for download purchase:

http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Ind...Key=human+skin

This one is really nice:

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/272019

[ray12]

NancyJ and Maureeno - Great stuff. Nice Finds.

Nancy J - the link to the photo you gave is incredible - it has all the textures figured out - I was especially impressed with the ability to re-create eye line wrinkles realistically!!

How could we be able to use this stuff??

Just like a lot of people are not familiar with the intracacies of retouching or photoshop masks - Im not familiar on how to warp a grid into a 3D person. Its almost like we would need an intermediary. The programs have to have a real strong learning curve. I would like to have a small sub-section of what they have to offer - the grain and wrinkle patterns around facial features as textures.

Maureeno - I looked at the textures for sale - and have to do some more browsing to see and understand which ones would be of interest. To pay 4 to 10 bucks for a template that could be re-used would be very cost efficient. Id be looking for cheek texture, eye lines and forehead and general body skin texture.

A good sheet of that stuff could be warped or masked or displacement mapped pretty nicely to add that texture back to our over zealous smoothing efforts. Cool stuff.

Im starting to look at some Nagle textured brushes - Dont know how to use them to their fullest yet - but there are some 30 to 60 skin related brushes from what I can see on the main download page. They are free if you have the insight and artistry on how to use them smartly. Its amazing how little I know about so much - even in just this one little area.

Ray 12

[RooB]

Originally Posted by byRo

If you are interested on 3D skin then this might interest you.

I love 3D work, and I have used software like that here and there, when needed, to interject a little something into my work.

If you're interested, check out Blender3D, a free 3D renderer.
http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html

I did a fair bit of basic 3D compositing for a landscaper-- I would take a 2D image of a house, and then build and render 3D elements into the landscape such as bridges, decks, outdoor lamps, etc. There are things you can achieve in 3D in a short order of time that would take days to do working in 2D, and if you make a mistake in perspective it is just a matter of tilting things in 3D space and re-rendering.

People, now, they're something else. Rendering people in 3D is fairly easy, but rendering people in 3D so the lighting is natural and looks good is very complicated, on top of that, to render realistic lights and shadows in 3D can take hours of time to render an image for even our fastest computers.

I've included a render I was working on awhile ago, trying to achieve a little realism in my 3D rendering with a single light-- when it comes to complicated 3D, I'm very much a beginner. But, it's still a lot of fun to get involved with.

[Klaatu Baradda]

Greetings All,
Here's another approach that is perhaps a bit more direct in creating skin texture (particularly pores) without a lot of hullabaloo.

1) Create a new layer (above your model's face) and Fill it with 50% gray (Edit>Fill>50% Gray)
2) Add Noise (10%-Gaussian-monochromatic)
3) Go to Filter>Stylize>Emboss (135°/2/100)
4) Set the layer blending to Overlay
5) Add a mask to the layer with "Hide All" (i.e., filled with black)
6) Grab a soft brush, low opacity (10%) and set foreground color to white.

Now, paint on the mask where you want the pores to show. Typically, this will be stronger in the darker or shadow areas of a face.

Of course, you can tweak the Noise and Emboss layer to be smaller or larger pores OR you can alway grab a photo of skin, desaturate it, use it as the embossed layer and carry on with the other steps.

[byRo]

Interesting to see that some RtP buddies have also been dabbling in 3D stuff.
I, myself, am still scaling the learning curves of Blender and Poser.

[hijack ]

Besides making skin texture, I've been thinking of two other interactions between the 2D and 3D worlds:

1) Filling in missing parts: When an image is missing a part (a hand, maybe), we may have to browse through hundreds of images trying to find a hand that has the right pose and lighting - why not just pose and light one ourselves, in Poser?

2) Restoration (Modelling): If an image is very badly damaged but we can still make out enough features then, instead of trying to fix up the old image, just make a
new one conforming to all the features that we can still see. (doesn't seem possible yet - at least not with Poser / Blender, but someday we'll get there)

[/hijack]

Rô

[cricket1961]

Nice talk going on here.
The one thing I need to add that I see is missing is that skin texture varies all over the face. The nose texture is different from the cheeks, which is different for the forehead etc.
You really can not make just one texture for a face, the pore differ that dramatically. You can always tell when someone has done something like this because the image looks to unreal when you look closely. There has to be variations.
Noise looks like noise no matter how many different types you layer on top of each other. Its not "honeycombed" enough. But it is a good means of adding some low level texture.
But in the end, the models skin texture should look like the texture that already exists.

Regards
Chris

[byRo]

Originally Posted by cricket1961

The one thing I need to add that I see is missing is that skin texture varies all over the face. The nose texture is different from the cheeks, which is different for the forehead etc.

Agreed! Somebody in 3D world has probably done such a "mapping" of the different textures. I'll snoop around some more.

The image posted by NancyJ does exhibit different textures at different places, but I don't know if that because it uses a specific texture map for this model or some sort of mapped general procedural (calculated) shading.

Don't forget though that even if we get some realistic texture we still have to bend (conform) it to the surface of the face. Probably wouldn't need to be perfect, just not looking totally flat.

Rô

[NancyJ]

The picture I posted uses the best technique for getting realistic skin texture - photographs Its a texture map made out of high resolution photographs manipulated to fit the model. Poser isnt a very advanced rendering engine.
You can get some very good skin shaders for maya which use procedural layers , specular maps, colour maps, bump maps and are generally very complicated

But IMO theres never any need to give a model texture in her skin if it wasnt there in the first place.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by NancyJ

But IMO theres never any need to give a model texture in her skin if it wasnt there in the first place.

Agreed. However there are cases where the texture just isn't there. We may have a battered old photo, a blow-out, or an image that needs replacement parts, then it would be nice to have a technique that would lend a bit of (false) realism.
(Obs: The best correction for over-zealous smoothing efforts is to start again and not be over-zealous in your smoothing efforts, OK?)

Photographic Texture Map vs. Procedural shaders:
As I understand it ....
- The former can give great (almost perfect) results but must be recreated for each model and may suffer from problems if the 3D lighting is too different from the original photographic lighting.
- The latter is not a perfect imitation of skin and can get quite complicated to understand but, on the other hand, once configured is very flexible to use.

Is that about right?

Rô

[NancyJ]

Originally Posted by byRo

Photographic Texture Map vs. Procedural shaders:
As I understand it ....
- The former can give great (almost perfect) results but must be recreated for each model and may suffer from problems if the 3D lighting is too different from the original photographic lighting.
- The latter is not a perfect imitation of skin and can get quite complicated to understand but, on the other hand, once configured is very flexible to use.

Is that about right?

Rô

pretty much yeah. Texture maps are great but not very practical. Getting the photos in the first place is hard work - ie getting enough pictures to cover the whole body (first you need a filling nude if you're going for full body ) then you have the get the lighting completely neutral and flat whilst maintaining detail. Once you've got the photos you've got to turn them into a flat image to skin your model with and as you say that takes a lot of tweaking for individual models. Shaders are difficult to get to grips with but they're very versatile and becoming more advanced every day.