Other skin treatments( after D&B)

[kapalika]

Hello everyone!

Im quite new and hungry for knowledge
I`ve some questions about skin treatment.

I know that Dodge&Burn metod is the best to achive perfect skin and i`m practicing it a lot.

but i wonder:

what you do if D&B is not enought? When there is no good skin texture?
you use noise, emboss on grey softlight layer ? texture from other part if its possible? or mayby some of you use custom skin textures?and how to create those?

how to use a red chanel( less imprerfecions) to make skin better?

what are other skin treatments after cleaning a skin with D&B? Like sharpen or add noise or sth?

Cheers

[tarnishfiligree]

I would NEVER use D&B to correct imperfections in skin.

Also, I would never use add noise.

The most effective tool would be the clone/heal tool in PSP or PS.

When you use clone/heal, you aren't taking away from the skins texture; you're simply copying a piece of good skin over a piece of bad skin, so the pores and such stay in tact.

[igot2pman]

The problem with the heal/clone tool is when you have a lot of fine detail. It can sometimes be obvious when used if the pattern does not match up exactly. Hence, D&B is used to remove dark or discolored skin. It can also remove blemishes color, but you are correct in that it will not remove it, it will only make it less obvious.

If you find there is no skin texture, you can Highpass some other skin from a different picture then paste it into the current project set to soft light blending mode. Then use a layer mask to only show what’s needed.

Remember that each part of the face has different textures if you’re going for a high end retouch.

Hope this helps,
-Keven

[TommyO]

Kapalika,
Welcome to RP !
You will find that everyone has differing preferences; also techniques differ depending upon whether you are talking about glamour retouch (& similar higher end work) vs portrait retouch (& similar lower end work).

Remember, we are working on two dimensional images made up of pixels. No matter what tool/technique you use, you are simply manipulating pixels. The problem is our eyes & brain are very sensitive to the slightest changes to perceived detail and texture. So, in D&B or whatever, we are trying to lay out pixels to look as natural as possible.

D&B is just very slow when done on a pixel by pixel basis. Many people use D&B very effectively to clean every problem with skin, blemishes included. Most of us don't have that much patience. So, careful use of the healing tools can work well.

It boils down to your level of patience, what your client may be paying for, etc, etc. I recommend learning all of the various techniques and use each at your discretion.

[kapalika]

Thanks for replays,

For now I use healing for some basic cleaning and then D&B for the rest(right now i`ve a mice only so doing everything on a pixel is horros to my klicking hand

but still i wonder how you can use your red chanel to improve skin? If you make a teksture from there you cannot put it on grey soft light layer becouse it will blend with old texture? or mayby use other channels to add a skin texture where is not enought?
im thinking right?

[William Wilson]

As a portrait photographer I work at what's been described as low end I don't want to do radical changes however most subject never have decent makeup I find the use of some of the high end retouch techniques are proving to be of use to me. Normally my choice is to start with the patch tool with fade, then the clone or the healing tool and finally D&B.

[igot2pman]

Originally Posted by William Wilson

Normally my choice is to start with the patch tool with fade, then the clone or the healing tool and finally D&B.

I totaly agree. This is how I do 90% of my pictures. Unless its going to be printed big, then I do D&B fist and as a last resort clone/heal.

-Keven

[flice]

Originally Posted by tarnishfiligree

I would NEVER use D&B to correct imperfections in skin.

Also, I would never use add noise.

The most effective tool would be the clone/heal tool in PSP or PS.

When you use clone/heal, you aren't taking away from the skins texture; you're simply copying a piece of good skin over a piece of bad skin, so the pores and such stay in tact.

Just curious... why would you "NEVER" use D&B? If anything this is the only true way to retain original texture. You're not supposed to even the skin out completely with D&B but make the blemishes blend in better. If you don't go all out you get smoothe original skin.

Once you start cloning and healing you're actually taking one area, making a copy of it and putting it somewhere else, in most cases due to the lighting you'll be dumping the texture close to where you got it from thus in the risk of creating patterns if you don't do additional changes afterwards.

Check out www.mortenlaursen.com, he earned himself the nickname "mr. skin" here in Europe.
I used to work for him as assistent and retoucher, and I guarantee that he does not use clone & heal to do anything more than takes away beauty marks or undodgeable marks. The skin is cleaned completely with D&B... I got sore fingers to prove it hehe x)

If you're bothered by redness in facial skin then use selective color and take out 10 magenta from red, add 5 cyan to red, then add 7-10 meganta to yellow. (adjust to fit of course).
If it's only partial areas that suffer, then of course add a mask and brush it in manually.

If your clients complain about the time spent, you say that art takes time and costs money

[AliasAngel]

Flice - that work is lovely. Any chance I could get a psd from you so I could see the technique used in high resolution rather than web size? Pretty please? And I'm assuming you used curves or something and not the literal dodge and burn tools, correct? But my main is question is how you get texture when there really isn't any in the photo to start with (either due to a soft picture or just a hairy model or somehow abnormal texture)?

[Salomon]

i use D&B 95% of the retouch... it takes a looot of time and patience... then other tools are for tweaking, & colors..

[Revolver]

if there's no good skin I would clone or heal the REALLY pitted stuff and then with large pores i select small selections of the area in question with a 5-10px feather and shrink them so they still have the pore texture but they are smaller. I then take the opacity down slightly and continue until the area is finished. Another way is to duplicate the layer and go over the 2nd layer (carefully) with a 13% soft brush until it's relatively smooth and then copy the skin from the original layer (minus the hard lines like nostrils and lips etc) and lay a high pass filter over it of about .8 depending on how close the image is or how high your resolution is. You then make that layer the top layer and make it an overlay. t's worked for me in the past for REALLY bad skin. . . it's another one that you might want to play around with. Everyone has their preferences . ..

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by flice

Just curious... why would you "NEVER" use D&B? If anything this is the only true way to retain original texture. You're not supposed to even the skin out completely with D&B but make the blemishes blend in better. If you don't go all out you get smoothe original skin.

Once you start cloning and healing you're actually taking one area, making a copy of it and putting it somewhere else, in most cases due to the lighting you'll be dumping the texture close to where you got it from thus in the risk of creating patterns if you don't do additional changes afterwards.

Check out www.mortenlaursen.com, he earned himself the nickname "mr. skin" here in Europe.
I used to work for him as assistent and retoucher, and I guarantee that he does not use clone & heal to do anything more than takes away beauty marks or undodgeable marks. The skin is cleaned completely with D&B... I got sore fingers to prove it hehe x)

If you're bothered by redness in facial skin then use selective color and take out 10 magenta from red, add 5 cyan to red, then add 7-10 meganta to yellow. (adjust to fit of course).
If it's only partial areas that suffer, then of course add a mask and brush it in manually.

If your clients complain about the time spent, you say that art takes time and costs money

Do you use a tablet to do D&B work? I find when I do it with a mouse i want to kill myself because it ends up hurting my wrist SOOOOOOO much. . . . D&B is beautiful but it hurts!

[Salomon]

lol i heard of a profesional retoucher who used to retouch with a his laptop touchpad !!
but yeah, if you can afford a wacom do not hesitate. touchpad or mous, it is unthinkable for serious retouch work.