Beauty Retouching Help

[Gregory Storm]

Hi. This is my first post. I found out about this site through Model Mayhem reading a post on beauty retouching. I like this site.

I'm a photographer and up to this point I've done my own retouching. Now I'm starting to take beauty shots and since I'm aiming for magazine ad campaign level of quality, I want to make sure I'm applying the best techniques to accomplish the task.

As I take more beauty shots, I'm starting to notice something. Women, especially blondes, have hair on their faces (see example below).

I like showing the person as close to who they are a possible, but after looking at some beauty ads in Vogue I realize I need to go a little further.

Here is the original full resolution (2.87MB) photo at www.gregorystorm.com/retouchpro/beauty_059.jpg. And this is my original pass that I sent to the model. http://www.gregorystorm.com/retouchp...beauty_059.jpg. On my second pass I'm going to remove the mole, the forehead vein, and the couple fly aways on the top right.

Here are my questions:

1.) Is there a better way to remove the little blonde hairs other than one strand at a time with clone or heal?

2.) When do you know when to stop retouching beauty shots?

Thanks,

Gregory

[Damo77]

Hi Gregory, welcome to the site.

Usually I don't take those fine facial hairs out completely, just tone them down a bit (ie blurred layer on top, reduce opacity).

A couple of things I notice about your photo:

1) the odd pinkness on her lower eyelids - perhaps she's really like that, I don't know, but I'd probably un-pink them a bit.

2) The clumsy way your cyan background (in the jpeg) meets her skin - particularly at her temple and neck. Be careful to make sure that looks natural.

Actually, this photo raises a question I've pondered before. If you're shooting somebody at 3/4 angle, and you only have enough depth of field to make one eye sharp, not both, should it be the front eye or the back eye?

I would say the front eye is more important. You've managed the tear duct in one eye, and the eyebrow in the other. In my opinion, that's a bit of a drawback to the photo, but I'm keen to hear what others think.

[Alison]

Hi Gregory,

I think Damo is correct. You seem to have somehow got the near eyebrow out of focus which makes the image look a little out of whack. I've added my version below that isn't finished but what I did was use gaussian blur, add mask, and use balck to transparent - what this has done is put the rear eyebrow and eye a little out of focus. I could then use the burn tool on the closer eyebrow to emphasis it more.

Here are my questions:

1.) Is there a better way to remove the little blonde hairs other than one strand at a time with clone or heal?

I ran my copy through neat image and lowered the layer opacity till I liked what I saw.

2.) When do you know when to stop retouching beauty shots?

When it looks like what the client wants, or you feel satisified that you have achieved your goal - or never

[Ant]

Poor Greg. He thinks he's in the right place, but .....no.

[chillin]

An interesting post from that forum:
"Anthony Rhoadesphoto.net patron, Aug 07, 2007; 04:11 p.m.

Bottom line. You want your images to look like Harpers Bazaar and Vogue images, you pay a high end retoucher to make them that way. Doing it yourself will get you in trouble. retouchpro specifically will get you in loads of trouble... it's about as pro as Sears Portraits"

"http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00M1wS"

[Ant]

LOL @ chillin

[chillin]

--- LOL @ Ant

[pixelzombie]

Originally Posted by Ant

Poor Greg. He thinks he's in the right place, but .....no.

example of an ad beauty retouch: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6148797&size=lg

Dodge and burn.

very nice, any chance of seeing the before shot?

[Gregory Storm]

Originally Posted by Damo77

Hi Gregory, welcome to the site.

Usually I don't take those fine facial hairs out completely, just tone them down a bit (ie blurred layer on top, reduce opacity).

Thanks Damo.

I've done that before on other photos, but that didn't seem like a good idea with these close beauty shots because the loss of detail in the skin. If I were do to that here I would overlay a high pass layer of skin to put back texture.

Originally Posted by Damo77

A couple of things I notice about your photo:

1) the odd pinkness on her lower eyelids - perhaps she's really like that, I don't know, but I'd probably un-pink them a bit.

2) The clumsy way your cyan background (in the jpeg) meets her skin - particularly at her temple and neck. Be careful to make sure that looks natural.

Yeah she has a lightness to her eyelids that can be toned down. I agree that the neck could be masked a little better. How do you key out your backgrounds?

Originally Posted by Damo77

Actually, this photo raises a question I've pondered before. If you're shooting somebody at 3/4 angle, and you only have enough depth of field to make one eye sharp, not both, should it be the front eye or the back eye?

I would say the front eye is more important. You've managed the tear duct in one eye, and the eyebrow in the other. In my opinion, that's a bit of a drawback to the photo, but I'm keen to hear what others think.

Normally you would want to focus on the near eye, but doing that can sometime cause focusing problems depending on the color of that person's eye, so focusing on the near duct is safer.

Since this was my first dedicated beauty shoot, I was experimenting. The problem with this shot is a low aperture. It was shot at f/4.0 which is way too low for this type of photo because of the depth of field. I should have shot it at f/8.0 or above. Other shots were shot at much higher apertures.

Thanks again,

Gregory

[Gregory Storm]

Originally Posted by Alison

Hi Gregory,

I think Damo is correct. You seem to have somehow got the near eyebrow out of focus which makes the image look a little out of whack. I've added my version below that isn't finished but what I did was use gaussian blur, add mask, and use balck to transparent - what this has done is put the rear eyebrow and eye a little out of focus. I could then use the burn tool on the closer eyebrow to emphasis it more.

I ran my copy through neat image and lowered the layer opacity till I liked what I saw.

Hi Alison,

I like what you've done, but it looks more Dave Hill to me. Using any blur seems like the opposite of what I'd want to do to make a beauty shot pop. Bringing the near eyebrow back in focus is less of a problem for me because I have other shots to take a sharper eyebrow from. What is neat image?

Originally Posted by Alison

When it looks like what the client wants, or you feel satisified that you have achieved your goal - or never

Yeah, unfortunately that's what I thought. Never. :-)

[Gregory Storm]

Originally Posted by Ant

Poor Greg. He thinks he's in the right place, but .....no.

example of an ad beauty retouch: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6148797&size=lg

Dodge and burn.

Hi Ant,

My bad. On which forum should I have posted this?

Gregory

[Ant]

You're fine Greg. Enjoy what you get here, like what Alison put forth... See chillin's first post.

good luck.

[Cassidy]

Greg we all have to start somewhere and here is a great place to acquire skills, with regard to removal of hair, do a search, there are a few threads in here which follow it up. Don't overlook the tutorials either, Byro's degrunge is sort of like a swiss knife technique found here

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=213

for the facial fuzz (also search peach fuzz) I used Byro's technique, the rest of the pic is bits and pieces I've picked up here and no it's not perfect

[Insensitive.]

Hey you guys, this is my first post, im a n00b lol. I just wanted to take a try, something simple, i smoothed her skin completely, which might not seem too natural, i also played with her eyes a little bit, but i think she ended up looking a little bit crosseyed lol.


http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...eauty_0592.jpg

[gsd]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

... Byro's degrunge is sort of like a swiss knife technique found here

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=213

that's a great degrunge method. thanks for pointing it out.

i really need to dive deeper into the tutorials.

[JMB]

So far, here's what I got.
Hope you like it.

[mrbeagle]

Originally Posted by Alison

Hi Gregory,

I ran my copy through neat image and lowered the layer opacity till I liked what I saw.

I think you should step away, and come back and look at it in an hour. It's all over the place.

[mrbeagle]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=213

for the facial fuzz (also search peach fuzz) I used Byro's technique, the rest of the pic is bits and pieces I've picked up here and no it's not perfect

yours is great, very easy on the eyes. It is tough because both eyes are out of focus to begin with but the skin looks great.

[mrbeagle]

Originally Posted by Insensitive.

Hey you guys, this is my first post, im a n00b lol. I just wanted to take a try, something simple, i smoothed her skin completely, which might not seem too natural, i also played with her eyes a little bit, but i think she ended up looking a little bit crosseyed lol.


http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...eauty_0592.jpg

again this one you should look at in an hour.. it's almost horror movie like. Skin is blotchy and too fake, you made her crosseyed and she's got scary veins. Keep at it.

[kneff]

Here's my try on the photo. First I wanted to say this women has natural beauty, although I have never seen so much hair on the face. It was accented alot by the lighting. Another thing was that she has large pores in her skin, which can be very noticeable up close. This is my first time of ever sending a pix here so don't laugh. But, I've got the before and after. What I thought was really amazing about this pix, and alot of you might see this all the time working with natural retouches, is you could see the camera perfect in her eyes, but flipped upside down. Please let me know what you think. If my pix's don't show, then I'm doing something wrong. I'll try to repost. Thanks

[kneff]

Let me try this again.
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...NEFFlowres.jpg

[Insensitive.]

Originally Posted by mrbeagle

again this one you should look at in an hour.. it's almost horror movie like. Skin is blotchy and too fake, you made her crosseyed and she's got scary veins. Keep at it.

Lmao...
Its funny how you bascially just repeated everything i said,
Yet you still needed to say it...
My first retouch ever.
I did a damn good job for a n00b

[Insensitive.]

Originally Posted by kneff

Let me try this again.
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...NEFFlowres.jpg

I LOVE what you did.
The skin is smooth, yet you still see the texture.
Its beautiful.

[Alison]

Hi Gregory,

Hi Alison,

I like what you've done, but it looks more Dave Hill to me. Using any blur seems like the opposite of what I'd want to do to make a beauty shot pop. Bringing the near eyebrow back in focus is less of a problem for me because I have other shots to take a sharper eyebrow from. What is neat image?

I just wanted that near eyebrow to look more in focus than it was, then I went off on a tangent Neat Image and Noiseware are free noise reduction programmes, they also have ones that you can purchase. Looking at the image I posted, I think the skin is more smooth than I would have liked. Probably shows why we should walk away from the work every now and again - refresh the eyes and brain

Yeah, unfortunately that's what I thought. Never. :-)

But the good thing about digital and photoshop, is that we can get many different looks out of one image

[Alison]

Originally Posted by mrbeagle

I think you should step away, and come back and look at it in an hour. It's all over the place.

I looked at it this afternoon and it looks bloody awful

[cainam]

Sometimes it becomes boring, skinretouching.
(but I always start, and than I can't stop anymore).

[kneff]

I'm confused as to who posted to my pix. Was it the one saying that I made her eyes look crossed? This wasn't my first retouch...actually, I retouch pageant photos, which are completely different than this one. But, this was the first time I added an image for anyone to see. It said I had a reply, but I couldn't figure out who replied..LOL Sorry, I usually just read stuff and don't post alot.
kneff

[chillin]

I still see lot imperfections. I’ve done only few retouches. I really have hard time with the facial hair.

[kneff]

What was your method of hair removal? What imperfections? I need to know these things. I know the pix isn't that great, but its actually the first time I've given it a go on the face without using a blur method. I tried to remove all of the hair, which probably didn't need to be done. Getting caught up in the shadow on the side of her face was the worst part with the hair. And like someone asked, how do you know when its time to quit. I could have kept going, and when I first finished, I thought it looked "alright". But, again, after looking at it later, I just wasn't happy with it. I've got another method I'm going to try and see if I can't get the face smoother and more evenly toned w/o losing texture. I need critiquing since this is what I do. Well, not so much with natural photos, but there may be a time when I'll need to do them.

[chillin]

Originally Posted by kneff

What was your method of hair removal?

The facial hair is still there. Short of burning one by one I don't know good method of removing it without altering the skin texture.