Fashion/Skin retouching

[robinstanley]

Hi Everybody,

I’m a fashion photographer based in London. I shot these pictures last week and now want to retouch them.

http://www.pointblankphotojournalism.com/fashion.html

I just finnished reading a interesting thread started by Shellby about how to retouch skin without using bluring. “How to get highly polished skin?”

I was also very impressed with Klino & Indrani’s work.

The quesion I want to ask is (time considerations aside) how do I get the best possible result. Shellby did your colleague let you in on his secret?

Should I start by cloning any blemishes away on each individual channel?

I don’t want to take any short cuts that may compromise quality, If neccessary in willing to clone pixel by pixel to get the result I’m looking for.

I’m looking for perfect skin but I really want to avoid that overdone, fluffy icecream look, I’m thinking high fashion look think Vogue rather than Maxim.

Thanks
Robin

[Dan Ryan]

Here is one more.

[Syd]

Well I took a shot at this one too. I didn't use any blurring. I used a very small amount of the Healing brush and then with a very low opacity, soft paintbrush smoothed out the skin. I decreased the saturation and added a diffuse glow to get that sultry look.

Syd

[santajuana]

Hi Robin, you must try this technique, it's really simple.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/art...&seqNum=3&rl=1

Hope this help you to achieve the result you want.

Silvia.

[PhotoVagrant]

Not really my field but here's my attempt used airbrush action from 1Click

[KR1156]

I was just messing around with the shot and the way it's lit...seeing what i can come up with.

[NancyJ]

Each image is different but here is my take on one of yours (and the steps taken)

First I used the patch tool to clone away some large problems - scars, hair on the forehead and beauty marks (tho they can be left in if desired) then I tweaked the upper arm to give a straighter line using the liquify tool.
I then used byRo's quick degrunge trick (see tutorials section) brushed it in at a very low (around 20%) opacity then dropped the layer opacity to around 50% too.
The skin is flatter now, in a good way and bad, the skin is smoother but the highlights are lost.
I made 2 duplicates, 1 set to color dodge and one set to color burn and black masked them both. I then gently brushed on highlights and shadows (color dodge layer for highlights, burn for shadows)
Then I used selective color to modify the color balance of the image and enhance the slight green color cast - particularly in the background.
Finally I copied the blue channel over the top, set the blend to soft light and the opacity to 30%.
You style may vary in the finishing touches but for the general retouch I find that the patch, clone and heal tools are great for scars, spots and wrinkles and the 'degrunge' trick is perfect for wuickly fixing uneven skin.
Obviously if you're working on a high detail beauty shot where pore detail is very strong then pixel by pixel is a more viable option but on long shots and low res images, its not worth it.

[KR1156]

nancyj i like the colorizing a lot...the green really makes her pop more.

[NancyJ]

I use LCD monitors so they're usually pretty sharp although I've heard they're worse for colour calibration than CRTs. Its not just your work that looks too strong, if that makes you feel any better. There are a few people whos work I find to be 'over sharpened' or similar, whether its my eyes or my monitors I dont know but I can often see very clearly things that other people may barely be able to see.
Sometimes I wish I could show people what I see

[NancyJ]

Thanks KR1156.

This one is a similar method - I could have done more - especially with the hand but my fella says its bed time

[creeduk]

Originally Posted by NancyJ

I use LCD monitors so they're usually pretty sharp although I've heard they're worse for colour calibration than CRTs. Its not just your work that looks too strong, if that makes you feel any better. There are a few people whos work I find to be 'over sharpened' or similar, whether its my eyes or my monitors I dont know but I can often see very clearly things that other people may barely be able to see.
Sometimes I wish I could show people what I see

I know that feeling, I use a Dell M60 50% of the time and I find things are sharp, bright and vivid. Sometimes I have done some very very subtle details and then found they don't really show up on othe screens. So knowing how other see things is often a thought going through my head. Iused to have a CRT at work but the new lease machines are all CRT and I was not able to keep my CRT I found they would give a more rounded view of what the general audience would see.

[Verywierd]

My try.

Cleaned up spots etc with healing brush.
Smoothed skin with gaussian blur and median filter on separate layers, black mask and painted in as required.
Adjusted saturation and contrast.

[NancyJ]

Tried to get and enhance what you were going for with the coloured lights, hopefully I achieved that. Method very similar to the other too. If I was doing this properly I'd have removed the stray hairs over her ear too.

[Flora]

Great!!

Robin,

welcome to RP!!

...not my cup of tea either ... just wanted to try ...

I strongly brightened the picture and minimized the colours just to see what I was doing ... the procedure will probably work on the original as well ... even if I think that for the original the smoothing should be much stronger to simply see any improvement!

* Spot Healing Brush +

* A simplified version of Rô's Tutorial.

[Dallas_TX]

This may not be at all what the photographer had in mind. But, I thought the composition in the oringinals were great. I tried to enhance the photographers use of the "S" curves he had throughout the images and run with that. About 99% of this was done with a paint brush, nothing fancy really.

Anyway, good job on the photography.