Skin texture?

[fotogen]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this forum and do not know my way around yet.
I have seen many photographer adding extra texture to the skin for beauty work. This texture looks like little bumps on the skin, almost like goose bumps or deep pores but very fine. Gavin O'neal does this on some of his beauty work.
www.gavinoneill.com/flash/index.php

Can anyone please direct me to tutorials on how this is done. If you have any tips, that would be great as well.

Thank You

[gene_spark]

I think this would be the Tut you are looking for:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=209
lg.
Gene

[Cuervo79]

Welcome to Retouch pro Fotogen, I doubt that the photographer you linked is using that on all his work. What he or his retouchers are doing is the D&B technique, along with the use of the healing and clone tools. There are really no shortcuts for these type of results. The link is this one http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272

O and Gene, the link to the dior look most of the time uses blur as one of the steps, which doesn't give the result that Fotogen is looking for, mostly it can be used to have a porcelain skin look or "airbrushed" look. For beauty it is rarely used.

[fotogen]

gene: That is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much.
Now I need some good pores and skin texture map. Anyone know where I can get some besides making my own?

C79: I do agree with you on not using blur. I stopped using blur a long time ago. It is more work not using blur, but the results is very natural. I do not use dodge and burn because I really don't know how and it sounds like it is way too time consuming. I use healing brush in both "lighten" and "normal". The skin does look a bit like porcelain under the eyes or the chin where heavy healing is used, but then I heal in a textured area of the same model's skin over it. This adds the natural texture of that model's skin back in. However, sometimes, this is not enough due to many young models not having very large or defined pores, even when photographed close up at f11 or f16. So additional texture is needed and that is what I am looking for.

[Cuervo79]

Well its just a technique you are the one who has to judge if its useful or not. I can confirm that you won't get the results like the link you posted without it though. The "skin texture add" doesn't always work. And yes D&B is very time consuming if you do it at pore level, but it can be used at more general levels and that becomes quicker.

Seems like the "dior look" is what you're looking for so for the time being it will help you on your quest. I do however recommend you start looking at the D&B technique specially if you want to get more natural results for beauty photography.

[Gary]

In CS4, try Filter/Texture/Texturizer, select Sandstone with 50% scaling and relief at 2. Match the direction of the light source and hit OK. I apply this filter to a duplicate layer and use a low opacity white brush on a hide-all mask to apply to the skin. This way, allows you to alter the overall layer/effect opacity.

Cheers.

[flexmanta]

I love using what Gary explained there. I used to do it a lot some time ago. Just a tip, if you work in 16 bits, the texturizer will not be available. In that case, on a new 50% gray layer set to overlay. Create some noise, blur it 1 or 2 pixels, give it a small bevel and emboss and, as Gary says, mask the layer in where you want it.

It's also a good thing to liquify the texture layer so that it wraps the face, or you could also create a displacement map with a grayscale version of the original photo.

I have always wondered if anyone out there was using real skin texture files instead of creating this pseudo bump map. I'll have a look.

[gene_spark]

Hello fotogen
This technikes..and I never use them anymore ...bec. for me it looks too fake...:

Make a new Layer. fill ist with neutral grey and then fill it with Noise around 10 %..blurr the noise slightly between 1 or 2 Pixels and use the embossing Filter Height 1 or 2, amount high aund try to match the angle with the direction of the Light..set the Layer to overlay or soft light or soo..play...:-))

oh flexmanta was faster :-))

If you want to have more pores Think of only the green channel..and then use High pass
lg.
Gene

[fotogen]

Thank you everyone for the great tips.
Gary: Do you please have a before and after sample of that technique?

C79: Can you please direct me to a good D&B tutorial? I am looking for what you are suggesting, removing blemishes using D&B.

Here is a thought: I was thinking of photographing yellow sand paper for wood for its texture and use that as skin texture map, has anyone tried this? Sand paper for wood as all these grains (bumps) distributed pretty evenly

Thanks again
Hadi

[fotogen]

Here is an image that i used healing brush to get rid of the blemishes and the circles under the eyes etc... and then used the texture from other parts of the model's skin, specially her upper arms to add some texture back to the face. I add the texture from other areas using healing brush again. What do you think please?

[Der_W]

I might not be Cuervo79 ;-), but I can direct you to a nice d&b-tutorial I think: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272

[flexmanta]

SURPRISE! There are real skin texture patterns for sale. Good stuff.

http://www.glamourretouching.com/skinporepatterns1.html

[fotogen]

Thanks again to everyone.
I saw the skin textures for sale yesterday. I might consider buying it but I have to figure out if I would know how to apply it correctly where it would look natural

[Gary]

Originally Posted by fotogen

Thank you everyone for the great tips.
Gary: Do you please have a before and after sample of that technique?

C79: Can you please direct me to a good D&B tutorial? I am looking for what you are suggesting, removing blemishes using D&B.

Here is a thought: I was thinking of photographing yellow sand paper for wood for its texture and use that as skin texture map, has anyone tried this? Sand paper for wood as all these grains (bumps) distributed pretty evenly

Thanks again
Hadi

Hadi
Here's one where I applied the texture (at the settings that I first mentioned..) to a duplicate layer and then blended it down at approx. 50% opacity. And, search Grain Surgery 2. I use this program to replace the skin texture to specific areas where I have removed larger blemishes.

Cheers.

[fotogen]

Gary, that looks pretty good. I personally like more and deeper pores (texture), but that is my personal taste

[fotogen]

flexmanta: Have you used the skin textures for sale? Can you share an image that you have done that with?

Thanks

[Gary]

Originally Posted by fotogen

Gary, that looks pretty good. I personally like more and deeper pores (texture), but that is my personal taste

Then adjust the scaling and relief within texturiser to get the look you're after.
I would also suggest that you check out: http://www.atncentral.com/download.h...ge_enhancement and try Ronny's, CSpringer and Kent's skin fix actions. Each has skin texture enhancement features within them. All three are valued contributors to the dpreview.com/retouching forum.

Cheers!

[flexmanta]

I haven't used them because I don't need it anymore. I thought about it some years ago, but now, the images i usually retouch come from decent camera backs and the photograph usually has all the texture I need.

Nothing better than the original texture after you have separated frequencies.

[Cuervo79]

Originally Posted by Der_W

I might not be Cuervo79 ;-), but I can direct you to a nice d&b-tutorial I think: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272

LOL I posted that link on my earlier reply I guess Fotogen didn't see it.

The thing is it depends on what you want to do Fotogen, because if you see the examples you posted in your original post you'll see that yours doesn't look quite the same.

Normally D&B is done after you've used the healing and clone tools to take all the "bad parts" of the skin: pimples, scars, stray hairs, dirt, etc. Then you either go to work D&B on a pore scale where you soften the pores (you don't take them out) or D&B on a general scale where you target patchy parts of the skin, so the skin looks flawless.

The uploaded examples are 100% crops of a retouch I did, the ORG is the original layer, the Heal has just the use of healing and clone tools, the GenDB has the healing and D&B on a general level to take away the blotchy parts of the skin as well as contouring the face (it has a layer that has changed the color of the skin to prevent any of the D&B to look gray or desaturated), the last PoreDB has the healing and the GenDB and then I went to do D&B on a pore level to make them less obvious.

Granted that took me about 3 hours but gets the result as you wanted, although I still need to polish on my contouring since sometimes you may make the face look flat.

[fotogen]

C79: Thank you for posting the images. The transformation is amazing, WOW. Great job. Now I am starting to understand why D&B is used. I will go through the tutorial and try it myself.
thanks again

[fotogen]

C79, Looking at differences between images 2 and 3, in image 3, the redness of the skin is gone and the contour of the face on the right side of the image, models's left side, is modified and seems smoother. The images looks a bit yellower, more natural skin tone. Was all of this done with general D&B. Can you please tell me what brush size, flow you used to paint the D&B layers into the image? Did you do lower the saturation in images 3 at all?

[Cuervo79]

Originally Posted by fotogen

C79, Looking at differences between images 2 and 3, in image 3, the redness of the skin is gone and the contour of the face on the right side of the image, models's left side, is modified and seems smoother. The images looks a bit yellower, more natural skin tone. Was all of this done with general D&B. Can you please tell me what brush size, flow you used to paint the D&B layers into the image? Did you do lower the saturation in images 3 at all?

As I mentioned, when I do D&B I also add a layer to color the skin, this is done with a solid color layer with a blending option of color and an opacity of 40%, you have to try different places to pick up the color (look at the shadows first) in order to get the best looking color. I also mentioned that I do 2 types of D&B 1 takes care of the general shadows and blotchy parts of the skin (a more general one) which is why you see it as smoother. And then a D&B that focuses on the pores themselves.

Brush sizes vary, depending on the photo so I don't recommend a special size since you'll have to select it depending on your photo and your zoom. The same thing happens to opacity but I can tell you here that I go from 5 percent to 30 percent in opacity and flow.

[fotogen]

C79, your tips are invaluable. I am learning so much. Thank You.
Just to clarify, adding a color layer with color blending mode is for the purpose of evening out the skin tones, correct? I guess one would layer mask this layer and then brush in the color to all over the skin?
One more really stupid question, I never figured out with "brush flow" means and what effect it has. Can you please help me with that?

Thank you again for your time and effort in helping me
Hadi

[flexmanta]

Cuervo79 seems to follow the same workflow i do, so i have a question for him.
See, i am currently practicing separating frequencies to work on them separately. Basically i end up with 2 main layers, a low freq one, and a high freq one. I d&b on an overlay layer on top of the hf layer to smoothen the "good" texture of the skin. The low freq layer contains all the bad stuff, and is usually the one that hold all the color irregularities. So, i have been doing different things to get rid of those irregularities with different techniques.

I have used good ol alienskin skin smoothen, median, surface blur. They all work perfectly. I'd like to know what choice did you make regarding that, fixing the low freq. As seen on your samples, from 2 to 3.

[Cuervo79]

@Fotogen the main task of the solid color layer is to color parts where I worked D&B because when doing it it changes the tone of the skin sometimes it becomes gray or loses its original saturation, currently I'm in the process of deciding if to use it on all the skin or just on the D&B parts (originally I used it on all of the skin) on the example I posted it looks better on all of it but that I think is because of the heavy makeup the MUA added. Regarding the flow you have to play with this in order to see what it does, I never really did any tests if it works better than just adjusting opacity but its what works for me right now. For example if I want something really soft I have the opacity set to 5 percent and the flow to 10 If I want something considerably stronger and "faster changing" I go 20 20. As I see it the more flow you have the faster the brush reaches the opacity percent so to me it gives me a bit more control. Remember I haven't done any real testing of this this is only what I think it does LOL.

@flexmanta
When I'm doing the degrunge technique I follow the same workflow: Healing and clone, a bit of general D&B and on the top of that serveral layers of degrunge (I don't have 2 layers separate I end up only with one) and use different values for the high frequency I start at 15 and go down in multiples of 3, the low frequency is always 1/3 the value of the high. But this only happens if the "main" technique is degrunge. If the main technique is D&B I don't do this I only do dodge and burn.

The examples I posted have NO degrunge (high/low frequency separation), its all healing, cloning, D&B, and a separate layer to change the skin tone.

[flexmanta]

Cool. Yeah, thats what i used to do, but have recently found out that, by separating frequencies i can get almost any effect that i need depending on what I do with each texture size. Im tellin you, im really impressed with it. Currently i am trying to adapt it to my workflow. In the past, i would just have a duplicate of the original, and i would do all my cloning and healing there plus a retouchers overlay layer for D&B. But now, i can go as far as i need with each part, since affecting one doesnt change anything on the other (if properly separated). I have even been able to median the c**p out of the low pass layer without making the skin look anything other than realistically flawless.

[Cuervo79]

Can you post more examples? I can tell in this one the classic "mushyness" that the degrunge technique sometimes leaves. I've tried to use it to replace D&B but it doesn't have the same look.

[flexmanta]

This is not the degrunge technique. Degrunge (never used it) is done by low passing one layer, and high passing the second layer on hard light 50% opacity. This frequency separation is done by duplicating layer, bluring the first one, and substracting the detail of the non blured one with the apply image comand.

The mushyness comes mainly from the evenness of color in the low frequency layer, the detail on the high frequency layer has been dodged and burned as if i was dealing with one single layer containing it all. After the frequency separation, the image stays intact, no noticeable difference. It just gives you the freedom of touching the parts separately (color imperfections on one layer, and texture on the other). That way, d&b will cause no color shifting. The point of this all, is not smoothing the skin by lowering the opacity of the texture layer, or inverting a high pass layer (which is simply horrible).

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/160/99259042.jpg

[Cuervo79]

Thanx for putting more examples... I can see now that the "mushyness" I was refering to is just a blotchy part next to the right nostril that its a bit enhanced by the desaturation of the skin.

Was the technique you use taken out of the "highpass sucks thread" in MM?
I read the description of the last action and when I did it it was exactly what I do in the degrunge technique (only I later changed the highpass layer for the apply image technique written in the original post) the only thing is that it let you independently adjust the high and low separations...

Can you describe your high/low separation technique in steps?

[flexmanta]

Got me, it is the high pass sucks technique. I retouch in 16bits most of the time, there is an action that will do it all for you. Basically, what you do for an 8 bit image is:

-duplicate layer
-Blur 3-4 pixels on the lower layer (you want the low layer to contain all the color imperfections, so dont blur it to complete smoothness).
-Then, on the top, unblured layer, apply image. Suybtract, scale 2, offset 128. Then set that layer to linear light at 100%.

Unlike degrunge, with this technique, separated layers will look exactly the same as the unseparated single layered image. All what's left is to work the layers differently. You can even use plugins to work with the low pass layer (bad texture), as the goal is to make it really smooth as the good texture is preserved on the high freq layer.