The dodge and burn facial- a better way?

[crazyfly1]

I looked for a video about this and this thread:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272

was the best Icould come up with. Nothing as far as I could find in VTC or Lynda, or How to Wow, or Total Training.

I get it though. dodge and burn on seperate 50% grey layers (until your eyes bleed, as this tut says) so you basically remove blemishes by altering contrast while keeping all of the skins surface in tact.

But there must be an easier way. I played with blend modes and came up with what I think works well and is soooo much easier and quicker.

1. I started with a new layer set to color, in cs3 I picked a 101 by 101 avg from a good spot with the dropper and then painted in at an opacity of about 65.
2. I added another layer, took another point sample and painted in a saturaration blend mode at 75%.
3. Now I add one more layer and take my sample color, bring up the color menu, and click just to the right of my current color (so it's slightly darker) and now paint at 100% in color mode to add back some color.

Now those first three are useful, but as I go back and turn them off after the image is finished I find that the next two steps are the real meat and potatoes and could stand alone.

4. Take a point sample from a spot on the face that is slightly to dark. ( I used a point in the yellowish skin under the eye). Now make a new layer with that fill color. turn the blend mode to color dodge and set it to about 14% opacity. And there you have it, you just dodged the spots that were darker than the point you sampled. Mask and paint out the eyes.

5. point sample a prt of the face that is slightly to the "too light" "shiny" "blown out" side. make a solid color layer with this as a fill color. Blend mode to darken. And you just burned everything lighter that you point. I used 36% opacity here. Drop your eye mask here too.

Really down and dirty, really fast, non destructive.

What do you think? Can I package it and sell it?
Seriously, if you have any suggestions on blend modes, or if you don't think its as good as d and b, any thoughts at all I'm interested to hear them.

Oh, and mask the nose ring.

[edgework]

Can't actually tell what you're doing, step by step, from your description, but, based on your results, it didn't work. Her skin has turned into, essentially, a duotone, a single color across the image, varied only by differences in value. Real skin has multiple hues and saturation levels as well as smooth blends from dark to light areas, and making it look artificial is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Your supplied description says it all: "Down and dirty and fast..." There is no such solution to skin retouching, not if you want to retain those subtle shifts in color that make it real. As pointed out, I would take issue with your claim that you were "non-destructive".

My example is a variant of the dual curves method described in the referenced tutorial, which I personally don't like because, like all dodge and burn methods, you're entrusting your color to the luck of the draw. Master RGB curves are particularly dangerous; they don't just affect light and dark, they also have a dramatic influence on the reds in general. You could try luminosity modes, but that still does nothing to keep color under control.

I used a targeted curve layer, sampling darker reds and clear tones to make my channel adjustments reflect the actual colors involved, then painted into the mask where I wanted blotchy colors to be brought into line. It's not really a dodge/burn problem anyway. The problem areas are light and dark variations, they're color issues, all fairly similar. A single curve works well across the range of tones.

A few swipes with the healing brush at a 7 pixel diameter took care of the more unsightly pores along her nose.

Now the skin surface is ready for any further adjustments: smoothing, curves to shift color... Took about fifteen minutes.

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/skin.jpg

[crazyfly1]

Thank you Edgework, You are right, the image is serverely color altered. I turned off the first three layers and posted a screenshot. (btw that's what I meant by nondestructive, no work done on pixels, just layers) Still, color is different, but not as bad. What I'm hoping for is that we can come up with something new under the sun here. My selection of color could maybe be better, or maybe linear dodge insted of color dodge. Maybe the blend if mode? I think that has possibilities. I just got to thinking that if we are just working on a face which is basically one color (althogh with many different shades as we have seen ) then photoshop is smart enough to see all the darker areas and lighten them and all the shiney skin and darken it. What you saw in my first post was my first attempt. I know there are people here with more experience and better understanding of blend modes. Maybe if we gang up on this there is a way.

Just reread your post Edgework. could you post a picture where you would typically D&B to fix it so I could try this method on that?

[crazyfly1]

Here is the origional

[edgework]

Originally Posted by crazyfly1

What I'm hoping for is that we can come up with something new under the sun here.

Why?

Maybe the blend if mode? I think that has possibilities.

Blend if sliders are incredibly powerful. Just not for what you're trying to force them to do.

What you're looking for is a short cut. Read any number of extremely long threads that have appeared here in recent weeks; there are no short cuts. There is nothing new. Retouching is a pain in the ass, and if you're not able or willing to commit long blocks of time applying meticulous brush strokes, you aren't cut out for it. You might as well use Neat Image, or just blur everything and hope for the best.

Trust me, if there was a short cut, a one-size-fits all approach, something that could be put into an action, everyone would use it and no one would think it was special.

Just reread your post Edgework. could you post a picture where you would typically D&B to fix it so I could try this method on that?

I never use D&B exclusively. Nor do I rely an any one tool or approach. In general, I use D&B for fine-tuning, after major color and value differences have been brought under control. D&B is useless for things like removing shadows. It's quite effective targeting the myriad small variations that make natural skin "natural" and which need to be smoothed out for fashion and beauty work. It's does a good job when the areas that need to be balanced are already close together. Then you don't need to worry about color drifts. It's a scalpel, not a shovel.

[Godmother]

Originally Posted by edgework

D&B's a scalpel, not a shovel.

Now you can print that on a T-shirt/hat and sell it to retouchers all over!

[edgework]

Originally Posted by Godmother

Now you can print that on a T-shirt/hat and sell it to retouchers all over!

Go right ahead. With my blessing.

[Sistere]

Hi crazyfly1,

Thought I would toss in a couple of extra cents here.

Edgework pretty much hit on all the major points of D&B within the context of your 'Facial' question.

If you are wanting to just play around with D&B in a 'skin' based context, what I like to do is use D&B to deal with dark, blotchy (Not Necessarily Red blotchy) skin tones instead of the various healing tools, so that I can keep the same look and texture of the skin. Then, when I have a more even gradient within the major skin tones, I will hit the smaller blemishes with the HTs.

I threw this example together just to show you what I am talking about.

This sample has NO healing tools applied, so you will still see small blemishes. What I did, was address the dark areas under the eyes and nose line by:

1. Duping the image layer
2. Setting the duped layer to "Luminosity Mode"
3. D&Bed on the Lum. layer
4. Set the Lum. layer to about 83% opacity to further blend.

Now do remember, this was a quick hack job. I am preparing for a trip in a couple of days. But I did want to throw this out there in case anyone wanted to play with the technique.

Warmly,
Damien
http://www.DigitalSistere.com

[abdul10000]

Originally Posted by edgework

I used a targeted curve layer, sampling darker reds and clear tones to make my channel adjustments reflect the actual colors involved, then painted into the mask where I wanted blotchy colors to be brought into line. It's not really a dodge/burn problem anyway. The problem areas are light and dark variations, they're color issues, all fairly similar. A single curve works well across the range of tones.
http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/skin.jpg

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by a targeted curve? I am really interested in your end result because it looks much more natural than the end result presented in the referenced tutorial.

Thanks in advance!

[abdul10000]

Originally Posted by Sistere

Hi crazyfly1,
I threw this example together just to show you what I am talking about.

This sample has NO healing tools applied, so you will still see small blemishes. What I did, was address the dark areas under the eyes and nose line by:

1. Duping the image layer
2. Setting the duped layer to "Luminosity Mode"
3. D&Bed on the Lum. layer
4. Set the Lum. layer to about 83% opacity to further blend.

http://www.DigitalSistere.com

Please correct me if I am wrong, you basically used d/b with curves the same way the dodge and burn tools in the palate are used. Why did you use curves if you can just use the regular dodge and burn tools?

Thanks

[superkoax]

Originally Posted by Godmother

Now you can print that on a T-shirt/hat and sell it to retouchers all over!

Hehe...I second that one! Nicely answered1

Originally Posted by edgework

Go right ahead. With my blessing.

That should RP.com do! make an account on cafepress.com and start making t-shirts with these slogans

[edgework]

Originally Posted by abdul10000

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by a targeted curve? I am really interested in your end result because it looks much more natural than the end result presented in the referenced tutorial.

Thanks in advance!

The imperfections in the original image aren't really D&B problems. I guess you could say the reds tend to be darker than the clean skin, but really they're color variations and while you can solve some of the problem with any of the standard D & B techniques that are discussed, the one problem that keeps coming up with such approaches is the possibility of color drift. Since it's really a color correction problem, curves are the tool of choice.

I sampled a representative patch of clear skin, not the darkest or lightest and I likewise sampled a comparably representative bit of red skin.

In my curve adjustment layer, I set a midpoint in each of the three channel curves and simply plugged in the numbers to the input and output slots, designing a curve that pulls red skin toward clear skin. Mask out the layer and then paint back with white, the same way you paint in strokes with D & B. Everywhere you see red blemishes, hit them with a brush stroke, small, low opacity. Curves distribute the modification smoothly across the whole range of values, and since these tones are fairly close together one curve will do well for a fair range of corrections. It's not a complete fix. No tool is. But it's as good a way as any you'll find to deal with this kind of skin problem.

Note that the usual sequence in using curves to correct color is to mask out the problem region, use your mask in a curve layer and fiddle around till you get the color you want. This just reverses the process, starting with a fixed color shift based on the values already present in the image, and fiddling with the mask to get it right.

[abdul10000]

Originally Posted by edgework

The imperfections in the original image aren't really D&B problems. I guess you could say the reds tend to be darker than the clean skin, but really they're color variations and while you can solve some of the problem with any of the standard D & B techniques that are discussed, the one problem that keeps coming up with such approaches is the possibility of color drift. Since it's really a color correction problem, curves are the tool of choice.

I sampled a representative patch of clear skin, not the darkest or lightest and I likewise sampled a comparably representative bit of red skin.

In my curve adjustment layer, I set a midpoint in each of the three channel curves and simply plugged in the numbers to the input and output slots, designing a curve that pulls red skin toward clear skin. Mask out the layer and then paint back with white, the same way you paint in strokes with D & B. Everywhere you see red blemishes, hit them with a brush stroke, small, low opacity. Curves distribute the modification smoothly across the whole range of values, and since these tones are fairly close together one curve will do well for a fair range of corrections. It's not a complete fix. No tool is. But it's as good a way as any you'll find to deal with this kind of skin problem.

Note that the usual sequence in using curves to correct color is to mask out the problem region, use your mask in a curve layer and fiddle around till you get the color you want. This just reverses the process, starting with a fixed color shift based on the values already present in the image, and fiddling with the mask to get it right.

Thanks, now I understand what you were doing. You are sort of refinning D&B, which means that you probably have to make several curves per picture to address all the different values.

[edgework]

Originally Posted by abdul10000

Thanks, now I understand what you were doing. You are sort of refinning D&B, which means that you probably have to make several curves per picture to address all the different values.

Not really. It's just one step in a process. It doesn't replace D & B, it augments it. `