Skin toning on dark skin

[ElectronicLady]

I have a photo that I'm working with that was a bad snapshot to begin with. Using the picture for a personalized notecard, I used a paint effect. However, I really would like to know how to get rid of those multi colored and dark noise spots without using a paint effect.

I've attached the pic. Any suggestions and/or tips would be very appreciated.

[Flora]

Hi ElectronicLady,

Welcome to RP!

If this is what you had in mind, I did it this way:

To lighten up the image:

• Duplicated the Background Layer.
• Changed the duplicate Blending to 'Screen'.
• Duplicated the 'Screen' Layer and adjusted its Opacity until I was satisfied with the result.
• Merged Visible... the action for merging 'visible' without losing the underlying 'steps' can be downloaded here.

To correct the colour blotches:

• Duplicated the Merged Layer.
• Blurred it with Gaussian Blur (3-4 Pixels Radius) and change its Blending to 'Color'.
• Created a new blank Layer and, with a soft Brush (Opacity 30-50%), sampling colour from surrounding areas, I painted over the still differently coloured spots.
• Used Neat Image to minimize the noise (Neat Image can be downloaded free here ).

Hope this helps...

[philbach]

I used several of the same steps. I copied the background to screen and copied the screen layer several times to separate the hair from the dark background. Selected the lady and copied her to a new layer so I could place a different background under her. To the portrait I used G blur with Lighten and on another layer with G blur to darken and then clone and healed the rest.

I felt a lighter background would help this photo.
I used a gradient followed by render clouds followed by Render lighting filters.

[itdphoto]

Copy the layer, colorize it so that the skintone is uniform, blur a bit, and then mask everything except the skin from the colorized layer.


Jason
www.ITDPhoto.com

[Ms Bay]

Hi Electronic Lady!

First of all I agree the background was too dark for such a nice hair do, so I lightened it up first and blurred the edges of the hair so they wouldn't look too sharp against the new color. The background still looks a little dark here, but I went back later and lightened it even more so you can see the details in the hair with levels. It worked fine.

Once that was done, I opened the image and GB it to a 2.5, then I opened the History pallette and made a snapshot of the blurred copy. Still being in the history pallette I clicked on the original layer to choose it and clicked in the square of the blurred copy to use it with the history brush. Then choosing the history brush ,I made a new layer and carefully painted over the parts of the face, neck and arms that I wanted smooth with a soft brush. This smooths the skin beautifully, you're actually painting from the blurred image as your source. I then used the swatch pallette to choose a nice brown color that would cover the blotches and staying on the new layer used with the history brush I used the paint bucket with a soft light of about 50% to color all of the area.

I then selected, with the magic wand, the white parts of the eyes and teeth and in the adjustments I used brightness/contrast to lighten them. Deselecting the area once lightened, I used contrast to sharpen the full image to make it uniform and GB it for the glamour shot look.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but I'm use to working this way so it didn't take long to do at all. I see some of the others used less steps than I did and the photo still looks good. That's the wonder and flexibility of PS!! I hope this helps you also.

[yelhsaneerg]

i realize this thread is very old but i thought it'd be something fun to try anyway, so here is my version....i smoothed out the skin using noise>dust & scratches, blur>gaussian blur, noise>add noise, then masked and painted to give the skin a smoother appearance...next i added a new adjustment layer and tweaked the coloring a bit, brought down the red tone, then i added a sepia tone layer, and that's pretty much it :P hope u like it

[byRo]

Originally Posted by yelhsaneerg

....i smoothed out the skin using noise>dust & scratches, .... painted to give the skin a smoother appearance ...

Welcome aboard!

The hard part of retouching is not making the skin smooth, but doing it in a way that nobody notices - and in consequence makes everyone believe that the original model had perfect skin.

I would recommend reading the threads on this site which treat the subject of skin retouching. There are many techniques possible but applying a blur (or dust & scatches) just makes the retouching too obvious.

Have fun!
Look forward to seeing more of your work.

Rô

[lkroll]

Tough one; bigger would have been better by the way. That said, I used Retinex (more contrast), byro Degrundging, and Power toning selectively (for skin tone/coloring). Lot's of smudging too.

[Ant]

Wow. This thread illustrates the term "Bad Advice" and "Poor Examples" some help....

I hope you all have improved since this threads inception.

[lkroll]

The original was just too bad. I have to agree that you can only "polish a turd" so far. The lady still looks quite pretty, but the size and the photo itself is extremely poor. Still believe that if I had a bigger picture, the results can be made much better and presentable. byro Degrunging will also help a lot with the skin texture/acne issues.

Not saying that my results were really that good, but Ant: I believe in contructive critism (i.e., what would you do to improve a bad capture; complaining about it is out of the scope for a retouch forum; in other words, put out or be silent). Not trying to offend; just not in a good mood right now.

[Ant]

lkroll,

Definitely garbage in = garbage out. But, for the most part, that doesn't excuse bad masks, poor color corrections or tonal adjustments or big blurs. I was purposely not singling anyone out, just saying that this thread, like many here when someone asks how could I improve this, they get a bunch of 'answers' that look nearly as bad. The one technique that worked was essentially a button push (neat image).

I think a lot of people think that it doesn't matter if the mask is bad because it wasn't a large move or because they can't see the slop on their monitor that no one can.

- huge halo, magenta hair, washed out tonal adjustment, quite yellow skin tone.

-magenta hair, flat lightening, red/yellow excessive skin tone

-blurry, flat mess

-green, flat, blurry mess

-dear god my eyes!

Like you said, you can't polish a turd and I avoid retouching junk any time I get the opportunity. I turn down jobs left and right that need fixing beyond what is there. I don't want my name on anything that will never look good. This is also why I no longer work for a particular ad agency that would continually use horrid stock images supplied as jpgs for banners and POP displays.

The original, with the exception of the pixelated noise looks loads better than the "corrected" ones.

remove the noise and errant pixels and a small shift on the overal skin tone and it's as good as it's going to get. And, interestingly, the original poster only requested how to get rid of those multi colored and dark noise spots ......

edit: spelling

[saby]

Hi

Changed RGB space
softened skin

saby

[Ant]

basics yo

15
50
65
(and whatever)

ex. attached.

[saby]

Originally Posted by Ant

basics yo

15
50
65
(and whatever)

ex. attached.

Hi Ant,

what do these numbers mean

saby

[Ant]

Typical CMYK values (percentages if you will) for dark skinned individuals.