Let's Talk Florian Sommet Beauty??? (PRO TOPIC)

[skoobey]

So... going down to business. Yes, I know he is great. Yes there are many aspects of his approach. But for now, I'm lost when it comes to a few of the things...

Couple of questions, so any advice would be highly appreciated.

1) How is this smoothing of the texture achieved?

http://www.floriansommet.com/wp-cont...beauty_142.jpg
http://www.floriansommet.com/wp-cont...eauty_55_0.jpg
http://www.floriansommet.com/wp-cont...beauty_134.jpg

I have tried a couple of methods, yet i can't seem to get there. I shall do a set of similar shoots asap in order to compare apples with apples... in the mean-time I am pretty sure it has to do with coloring with low opacity on top of all the layers, but what else? Maybe it is done underneath some of the D&B, or perhaps even under a small radius HP layer?

2)How does he get that paleness of the skin?

http://www.floriansommet.com/beauty1/ellebelgium

I do understand that it can be partly achieved while doing the RAW conversion by lightening the red and the yellow (or orange, depending on the complexion), but it almost seems as if that he had painted with white in the lighten mode, yet doing so over such a wast area would most definitely cause a loss in the detail which is most certainly not the case here.

Now, I have had some success by actually splitting the image into a low and a high pass, and then choosing my colors very carefully making a gradient layer on top of the low pass, inverting it's mask a and then slowly brushing it in into the areas that I found needed the effect the most. It does not affect the darkest of the shadows, as I set the blending accordingly.

Gradient_map_lightening-skin.jpg
Sara1.jpg

P.S. This is my first post, so fingers crossed we make some great works of art, people!

[skoobey]

Oh come on, does anyone even know who does his retouching?

[gazhilla]

The skin work looks like pixel d and b to me and the pale skin is orange desat followed by carving Imvho

[JonathanHoglund]

Hi,

So I thought that i'd evaluate the Elle Belgium images.

When it comes to the texture of the skin there are quite a few different techniques that you can use. I would guess that a very subtile and precise D&B layer is the way to go. However if you are more comfortable using a Frequency Separation technique go ahead. I wouldn't recommend using the healing tools since these have a blurring effect (most of the time) regarding texture. Remember though that skin that "perfect" isn't achieved in a heartbeat. Take your time.

Regarding the tonality of the images let's start by evaluating the color, luminosity, saturation and the histogram. Measuring the CMYK values of the skin tone (highlights through midtones) you can see that there are basically no Cyan (except for a few percent here and there). Only Magenta and Yellow are present with Magenta being around 5 to 10 percent higher. However, evaluating the color in the shadows there is a obvious colorcast of blue (just take a look at the eyelashes of the attached color image). So split toning in definitely been used here with a focus on the shadows.
When looking at the saturation map you can also see that the image is quite desaturated except for the lips.

Achieving this effect can be done in may different ways. Experiment, use selective masking and a variety of different adjustment layers.

Good luck and hope I helped.