[pure]

hi,

its my first post! and i found this forum accidentally as i need some professional retouchers advice, is this the right place for me? i dont know if there are others...

the major problem with my current Job is:
...to say it brief "the transition of the skin tones from dark to medium is not natural and soft, it looks like broke or ripped."

i would like to know what these kind of skin problems are and where do they come from? i think, i never had these kind of problems and i have to retouch 30 RAW pictures, 60MB each, coming from that Digitalback. (women: phase) (and Maleskin picture: Canon Mark II...)

the photographer developed the RAWs himself, so i dont know what he did exactly. i think thats the problem, as i use to develop it myself otherwise (from Hasselblad H1 with Imacon Digiback 22Mio.)

i would be glad if an experienced person has any detailed information about that and how i could cure it or better prevent that next time when developing from RAW ( or scanning )? is it well-known or is it a mistake from developing or from certain digibacks? it gets even worse when i adjust the contrast and set the darkest and lightest point as first step and then do a nice curve to get the contrast a little crisper for the printing purpose on ISOcoated later, as it gets always darker at the offset-print.

i am about to make it softer and repair it (in Photoshop CS 2), but thats very time-consumptive and i didnt expect such big problems, as i always had very good high quality skin texture from other shootings with Hasselblad H1 and Imacon Digiback. repairing it makes it softer and the client will probably not like the too soft skin, so i am really confused a bit, sorry.

- on the maleskin-picture i didnt do any more contrast, as the photographer did it in the developing himself.
- the women-skin i did more contrast as it was to less pixels in the darkest and lightest areas.

(working in ECI-RGB in general)

here are the 2 examples, if i may link 2 pics here from my server?


http://homepage.mac.com/purepeter/Si...y/maleskin.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/purepeter/Si.../womanskin.jpg



oh, i see now, i cant post the "real" pics inside the topic as linked? so you have to click, yes? sorry

maybe i should post better examples, these 2 are, hm i dont know, but i also have more worse ones, especially the male skin

thanks

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by pure

hi,

its my first post! and i found this forum accidentally as i need some professional retouchers advice, is this the right place for me? i dont know if there are others...

the major problem with my current Job is:
...to say it brief "the transition of the skin tones from dark to medium is not natural and soft, it looks like broke or ripped."
.
*snip*.
.
- on the maleskin-picture i didnt do any more contrast, as the photographer did it in the developing himself.
- the women-skin i did more contrast as it was to less pixels in the darkest and lightest areas.

thanks

I'm not sure what you mean by broke or ripped. Are you referring to the fact that the transition from shadow to highlight looks sort of blotchy?

Bart

[mistermonday]

Pure, welcome to RetouchPRO!
It looks like these images went through some pretty heavy contrast. The man in particular is pretty bad because the armpit was driven to pure black - zero detail or color). Here is what I tried using Photoshop (CS or CS2)

The Man:
Used the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment with the Shadow Amount at 100, Tonal Width 80, Thrshold 40. Highlight amount set to zero. This smoothed outthe transitions but left the armpit pure black and rather unsightly. So using the Patch tool (under the healing brush submenu) drew a loose area around the armpit and covered it with a patch of good skin (from the left of it). This of course completedly made the armcrease disappear so I went Edit>Fade Patch and reduced the patch opacity to bring the crease back.

For the woman, the quickest way to fix her was to use the Dodge Tool with a large soft brush at low opacity and just brush over the dark areas to lighten. I did a very fast brush over so you may notice some uneveness.

Regards, Murray

[Flora]

Hi pure!

Welcome to RetouchPRO!

I'm no photographer so ... so sorry I can't help you with the why and how to prevent it ... but I'm sure you'll get help on this as well ...

As for the correction you'd like to make, if I understood you right, it is about softening the blending of dark to light areas in a smooth gradual way without softening/blurring the skin too much ... right?

Increasing the contrast like you said you did, will only make the problem worse as the procedure increases the harsh line between shadows and highlights ...

I had a go at your pictures ... not really sure if this is what you are after ... If I went in the right direction, I'll post a detailed description of what I did ....

Given the 100KB size limit for attachments here, it is a very good thing if you can post a link to a bigger size and higher resolution like you did ... but it would be very nice if you could post them here as well so everybody will be able to see what this Thread was all about even after you removed the pictures from your server...

You'll find a step-by-step 'how to..' following the first two links under my signature ....

[Janice Ong]

Flora,

Could you please explain the steps you done for the hand ? It's what I;m looking for.

That is blending the colour from dark to light.

Thanks.

[OnAir]

As mentioned, RAW conversion was to harsh. Maybe, if RAW file was converted on different computer, color settings were different from yours. Linked pictures have an embedded profile of your computer, which is not standard Photoshop profile, which, i suppose, photographer had. Anyway, photographers usually don't think about that. I replaced the embedded profile, also did tonal and color correction (just to improve skin structure).

[pure]

thanks for all your instant help. i am glad to read your advices.
Flora, could i ask you, how you did it make so smooth but looking still sharp for the Pores. thats what the client wants to see, i imagine. and its also good that you didnt change the color i think.

onair, whats in the folder "correcion" and should i do with it? thanks

thanks for all your examples. i will work on this now.

i am glad for reading your techniques,
i tried it with using a big paintbrush (stamp tool (?)) with 20% and setting luminance, its a fast method atcually for doing big areas and lot of pictures with full skin, but it looks a bit too soft and the pores are gone, i must confess.

[Flora]

Hi,

You are welcome, pure!

Here is what I did with these pictures:

Not wanting to change the colours at all, for both these pictures I simply used Neat Image ... only on the darker parts of the image in the following way:

(Neat Image is a noise removing software that can be downloaded free here)

* I looked at the Channels, saw that the Blue Channel was to one with more contrast between background and subject, duplicated it.

* I used the Levels (Ctrl+L) on the Blue duplicate to further increase the contrast .. (Attachment 1) until it looked like Attachment 2.

* I inverted (Ctrl+I) the changed duplicate, (Attachment 3) and Ctrl+clicked on it to select its luminosity ...

* With the selection still active, I went back to the RGB view, to my Background Layer ... and copied my selection on its own Layer .. (Ctrl+J) .. If you Alt+Click on the eye on the left of the newly created Layer you should see something like Attachment 4.

* Now, I have the Plug-in Version of Neat Image .. (.. doesn't come free as the Standalone version) which I run on my newly created Layer with the settings of (Attachment 5).

* If necessary, decrease the Layer's Opacity a bit, and/or add a bit of noise ...

That's all I did to it ... and I used the same method for the other picture as well ... obviously changing the various settings as necessary.

If you use the Free Standalone version of Neat Image, you can get to exactly the same result by using the same settigs as I used here, but following the 'NEAT IMAGE STAND ALONE' steps described in the second half of this Tutorial ..

Hope this helps ... and you know where to find me should you have more questions ...

Janice,

have you seen my answer to you in your Thread?

[pure]

thanks for your instructions with neat image.
this is a noise removal filter yes?

i have something similar here in my filter menu, i guess:

"Kodak Filters": ROC, GEM, Airbrush and so on...

http://www.asf.com/products/plugins/gem/pluginGEM.asp

and

http://www.asf.com/products/plugins/...uginAIRPRO.asp

is it the same? i never used it really as i wasnt to keen on making skin so soft, maybe i have to reduce the opacity

i will try your instructions with NEAT as well and compare both results

thanks

[Flora]

Yes, Neat image is a noise removal software with similar function to the DIGITAL GEM Plug-In I saw on one of your links ....

Of course you should adjust settings and everything else to your needs ... Usually, the default settings of these softwares are much too strong (at least for lower resolution images) and tend to give a terribly unnatural 'plastic' look ...

Adjust Settings is what I did here ... and do for each single picture I use Neat Image on ... and for your pictures, I applied it only to the selected shadows ... not on the whole picture ... That's why I got a softer transition of shadows/lights without losing texture. ...

And I wouldn't want to start a revolution here .... but, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't touch the DIGITAL GEM Airbrush Professional ...

[Kraellin]

i tried two methods, both similar to what flora did. in the first i ran Paint Shop Pro's digital camera noise removal at settings of 70/70/70 66/50. that's normally pretty heavy but it was needed here. i ran this on the full rgb image first. i then make a duplicate layer and ran 7 band sharpen on it at roughly medium settings. this was to try to bring out the hairs more on the forearm.

for the second attempt i split the rgb channels and did what flora did on the blue channel, only instead of neat image, i ran digital camera noise removal. recombined the channels.

the screenshot shows both attempts. the one on the left is digi noise and 7 band sharpen. the one on the right, digi noise on the blue channel.

i also dont know what's going on with the photographer's camera(s), but it's certainly a bit unusual. the forearm hairs on the woman's picture does show a bit too much contrast. in fact, i'd recommend he re-shoot. it was pretty much impossible to truly get those hairs to show right.

craig

[Kraellin]

here's another way to do this:

make a duplicate layer of the background.

run Paint Shop Pro's digi camera noise at settings to taste.
duplicate that layer and run a gausian blur of about 8 on it.
set the blend mode on the gaus layer to one of either, darken, lighten, hue, or color, again, to taste (i used darken).
adjust the opacity of the blend layer to taste (i used about a 60 opacity).

this allows you some control in how much detail you want in the skin as opposed to how much mottling.

craig

[pure]

Originally Posted by Flora

... but, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't touch the DIGITAL GEM Airbrush Professional ...

ok, does that mean this is not a good plugin?

[Flora]

Hi,

Craig,

The attachment of your first post looks very nice !!! .... The second one looks a bit too 'oversmoothed' in my opinion ...

pure

ok, does that mean this is not a good plugin?

... No, I'm not saying that .... It's just that I don't like the rather 'unnatural' finish of Airbrushing .... but it's just a matter of personal taste ...

[Kraellin]

flora,

thanks

i tend to agree, which is why i added the note of setting that gausian layer's opacity as desired. with different blend modes and different opacities, it's not nearly as bad. but then, you already know that i just wanted to show one, where if you wanted, you could sacrifice a bit of clarity for smoothness.

craig