[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