A great tutorial on Skin

[pure]

byro, may i ask you something about the quickdegrunge?
i think i got it, i am not 100% sure i am doint it right.

i saw .your example of the breast area. currently i did one too,
could you please have alook?
i didnt get how to remove the spotty darker areas. hm, somehow the quickdegrunge didnt remove it here as good as you did.

i did it like: duplicated layer, had a view at gaussion, at number "8" the grunge was gone, but it looke very blurred (?), ok i wrote down "8" and applied this in hipass filter, and after that applied one third (2,5) in gaussian at the same layer. then i did like written, linear light with 50%.
the result is here:

did i do it wrong? i dont know. i think i dont know the right amount of hipass. this affects the gaussion then. mayb i do it way to high or low....dont have the faintest idea. must i play around with it more often?



thanks

1st example is my own workout of byro quickdegrunge
2nd is the Kodak Digital GEM Filter "Digital GEM Professional" with hipass layer above
3rd is my own kind of degrunging with clone stamp and healing brush in combination with little gaussian blur or surface blur and hipass.

i dont know what to think of these 3, whats your opinion? i d like to work on it and speed things up, also to improve it ....

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by byRo

Can't be certain for PS6, but in PS7.0 you find it at Filter>Other>High Pass

Rô

Thanks, Ro, I'll pop over for a look!

Maureen

[byRo]

Originally Posted by pure

.....i didnt get how to remove the spotty darker areas. hm, somehow the quickdegrunge didnt remove it here as good as you did.

......had a view at gaussion, at number "8"

For the method to work well you want to use the lowest radius possible (makes for a finer skin). When I was deciding on the radius it became clear that there were two types of "grunge" present. For the finer grunge I used a radius of 6, and then applied again for the "spotty darker" areas with a radius of 12.

As you used a radius of 8, you got caught in the middle - pores larger than necessary and remnants of the darker spots.

Of the three, the Kodak plug-in gave a better result. I downloaded the free sample. As I see it, it works like the plug-in I still dream of making (the seven-band equalizer), although this has three bands.

Your method seems to leave the pores uneven. In places the skin is almost flat, in others quite heavily textured.

Rô

[pure]

thanks for more detailed insights, thats very helpful for me,
i try it later and report then.

7band equalizer sounds terrific, the kodak "digital GEM" has 3 bands, how do you recognize?

[byRo]

Originally Posted by pure

the kodak "digital GEM" has 3 bands, how do you recognize?

I don't have it installed on this machine, but as I remember there are three sliders that correspond to high / medium / low frequencies.

Rô

[pure]

yes first i used the digital GEM and secondly applied the GEM airbrush plugin

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

2 combined. i didnt find any other plugins so far who work well in this short period of time.

[superfrasky]

Originally Posted by shellby

From Heyrad's post:


Everything being discussed here so far can be considered a great way of achieving the end result. The important consideration here is flexibility. If you use a GRAY layer in an overlay/soft mode, you can dodge and burn with white or black till your heart's content.. The problem is, that if your dodging and burning are on the same layers-- no flexibility... If you REALLY wanna get your hands dirty and do things the smart way... Here's a method that I developed to help get the job done with the most flexibility and control...

After I remove the pimples and do light spotting on an image, I create a layer set and call it "D&B". In that layer set I create(in this order from bottom to top) adjustment layers... Curve(LIGHTEN), Curve(DARKEN),HUE(DESAT),CURVE(CONTRAST). On the LIGHTEN curve, I lighten the mids and fill the layer with black to hide. With this layer, I'll paint with white at about 1-5% depending to lighten dark spots on the skin. on the DARKEN curve I darken the mids and fill with black as well so that I can use this to darken light spots on the skin-- the goal here is to even out the skin tones. The HUE layer is used to desaturate the image. Lord knows we get tired of looking at a monitor. Desaturating helps my eyes when I'm working on fine detail. The CONTRAST curve is helpful to display the dark/light spots better-- again for my old eyes... I select a point on the CONTRAST curve that represents the dark/light spotting of the skin and I pump an S curve in it to bring out the contrast so I can see it better... After zooming in to about elevendy billion percent to work on the fine points of the skin, I begin to zoom out and use larger brushes... When I'm finished and happy with the results. I turn off the CONTRAST and HUE curves and VIOLA.... total control. Now you can color adjust your little heart out and not effect the dodging and burning. You've got total control of the dark and light curves and you can easily revisit them with your little paint brush.

Shellby can you post anyone psd file with the basic layers to view curves?
thanks

[shellby]

Not really sure what you are asking, sorry.

You can create the curve layers using adjustment layers at the bottom of your layeres pallet.

[superfrasky]

layer set for d&b .Thks for your help, very useful

[Syd]

Originally Posted by shellby

Not really sure what you are asking, sorry.

You can create the curve layers using adjustment layers at the bottom of your layeres pallet.

Shellby

Re: the curves layers. You say on one you lighten the midtones and on one you darken the midtones. I tried your technique and with some success. I was very impressed, however, I wasn't sure how much to lighten and darken those curves. Would it be right to say lighten the light curve until the darkest spot you want to eradicate disappears and darken the dark curve until the lightest spot you want to elimnate disapppears? Also what is the main advantage of the D&B technique over, say, judicious use of the healing brush? I mean would you use this technique to remove freckles, pimples etc or do you only use it to neutralize uneven tones in the skin. I used it on a picture to remove freckles and while at first glance it appeared to have worked very well, upon closer inspection, I noticed lighter colored spots where I had removed the freckles. Obviously I had over lightened and I just need more practice. I probably had the lighten cure too light as well.

Sincerely Syd

[shellby]

You can actully use a Softlight layer to do the dodge and burn.

Command, Shift, N
to create a new layer, then in the box that appears select SOFTLIGHT as the blend mode and check the box that says 50% GRAY. Now on this layer you can paint with 1-5% white or black to dodge or burn. The tablet is good for this as it works on pen pressure and you don't have to keep dialing in the paint brush opacity as you do with a mouse.

This method is for evening out the skin tone. I use the healing brush / clone stamp tool before doing dodge and burn.

I also use healing and cloning before using the Blur / Sharpen method.

[snook305]

Hey Shelby...
I was wondering something. I have usually been D&B on a Copy background layer but am realizing it may much better to do it on a layer so I can go back later. My question is How do people handle the Sponge (saturation) part on a Layer and not on the Copied background...As it does not work on a layer?
My problem is that I do BG copy..Blah blah.. Then I either have to do D&B last since it is on a background copy I cannot go any further with more layers etc.. and then go back to D&B layer. Or is this Possible?
Hope that makes sense. Basically they are 2 questions. How to Sponge (saturate) on some kind of layer instead of the Background copy layer? And is there a way to do Sponge/D&B/ and continue make other layer adjustments then go back to that BGC and do some more D&B/Sponging?
Thanks for any replies...
Snook

[pure]

thats a good question i also asked myself what to to with the parts of the image i am d&b’ing with a layer above, as it gets less saturated when d&b’ed, doesnt it? i could be wrong also.

what about blending method, soft light or overlay? i am using soft light.

i sometimes also do more contrast with a duplicate "soft light" layer, with 25%, but i think it looks nearly the same as using a little S-curve.

thanks

[snook305]

I am going against the norm for sure, But I have never really liked the "S" curve. Never use it myself.. I find it harsh for some reason. I know it is probably the proper way but I use other techniques..:+}
Snook

[pure]

yes the s-curve for itself is too much, if you dont paint in the s-curve’s mask with lets say 30% black and hide the parts which go to deep dark and too overwhite.´, like i use to do, but better do that basically for every image with the histogram correction and the alt-key for viewing the parts which will go too dark or to white and paint these away also with 20 or 30% black in the mask

[pure]

could i please ask:

i forgot which blending it was..
i read somewhere if you work on an image
and finally want to test which amount of pixels are gone
by light or darkness, you can copy the backgroundlayer
onto the 1st position, choose "luminosity" ?, then you could
see whats wrong...

is this right?

thx

[NancyJ]

Setting the blend mode to 'difference' will show wich pixels are different in both images

[pure]

thanks

i forgot to mention
, does it make a big difference for the quality of the skin,
to work on a 8 or 16 bit image in photoshop?

and did you ever remove goose bumbs?

[alexandrab]

Hi,

I used the High Pass filter, D&B. Stayed away from the edges with blurring. Here is the effect: