The quick de-grunge trick

[NancyJ]

Originally Posted by PatrickB

No nit-picking here, but I've already seen this tutorial months ago, I think I remember it was even with the same picture. How come?

Unlikely, unless its a MASSIVE coincidence, the image in this tut is one I pulled off stock Xchng and Ro used for the tutorial - the probability that someone else took the same image and used it to demonstrate the same tutorial is minute.

[elshagon]

Thanks for the tutorial, just used it for the first time and it worked out great.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by elshagon

Thanks for the tutorial, just used it for the first time and it worked out great.

Welcome to RetouchPRO, elshagon
I'm glad this was useful.

Originally Posted by PatrickB

No nit-picking here, but I've already seen this tutorial months ago, I think I remember it was even with the same picture. How come?

Maybe Patrick is referring to the tutorial mentioned by shelby here, published soon after mine which covers the same ground and coincidentally uses some of the same words.

(The image is different though)

Rô

[PatrickB]

Nope, that's not it. It was using exactly the same picture. But reading yours again the technique is (as far as I remember) different, although it covers skin smoothing as well

Don't remember where I found it though.

[rari]

Hi byRo,

I have reading yours tutorials and I'm very impressed with your knowledge in photoshop. Your english is great too! Congratulations! It's my first post here, because my english is bad and i'm ashamed to write something. I'm from brazil too.

"Estou realmente impressionada com seus posts, vc mora mesmo no brasil? Seu ingles é excelente, incrível...um dia chego lá...hahaha...Vc não participa de nenhum forum de fotografia aqui do brasil? A sua contribuição seria ótima, pense nisso."

Abs,
Rari

[SteveB2005]

Hey Bill. I like what you did with the "keep the pores" technique and for myself, this has opened up a new approach for my own goals in retouching. I feel you made it, but perhaps pull back just a bit and display a more natural result. I am working with the same area as to how much or how less to apply. Of course it depends on the source image. Over all a good job. steveb

[Bill M]

Thanks, Steve. Yes, I would never leave what looks like a 30 year drop in age for any finished effort. His wife might like it if I could adapt it to his real face, however. I recorded an action at the same time I was following the steps of the tutorial, and this is the default push-button result. It still amazes me. But I always try and get natural looking results when I finish something. You would want the viewer to have to look closely to see if anything was touched up. Thanks again.
Bill

[blue dog]

read my note

[blue dog]

Ro,

I didn't feel that 5.1 was enough because I was looking at the red welts on her jaw. I ran it up to 6.1 and the results were horrid. As you said, That is a critical choice!

Since I am new and starting to realize how out classed I am, help me get calibrated. Is this similar to the results that you and others achieved?

[Verywierd]

Originally Posted by blue dog

Ro,

I didn't feel that 5.1 was enough because I was looking at the red welts on her jaw. I ran it up to 6.1 and the results were horrid. As you said, That is a critical choice!

Since I am new and starting to realize how out classed I am, help me get calibrated. Is this similar to the results that you and others achieved?

I was reading the tutorial and playing around with PS and did this which is almost as fast and simple:

1.Create three duplicate layers
2. Desaturate the topmost layer and apply high pass filter. This is used to restore the skin texture to taste. You can switch it off until after you have finished working with the other layers.
3. Apply a gussian blur and a median filter (separately) to the other two duplicate layers, adjust blur to taste with the median layer more heavily blurred. Black mask these two and paint back selectively to taste using a soft white (or grey) brush. Apply the gaussian layer first as a general clean up, then the median layer more selectively on the more obvious spots. The transparency setting of the layers provides one more fine tuning option.
4. Finally re-activate the high pass layer and blend as required using soft/hard light and layer transparency. If you want to have more control you can always apply a black mask to this layer too.

Other than the above I did some clean up of the background and colour/contrast balancing including making her lip colour match her necklace.

By the way, you missed a bit under her chin when painting the background black.

[Kraellin]

one note here about byRo's tutorial; he mentions near the end using 'invert'. if you're a psp user, this is the same as 'negative image' and not 'invert' on the layer palette, nor inverting/converting to grayscale.

also, since psp has no 'linear light' blend mode, try 'hard light' or 'soft light' and adjust the opacities to suit.

you can also try adjusting the opacity of the brush in the last step when painting with white on the mask for more control.

craig

[blue dog]

TooWeird,

I felt like my result was too fuzzy. Now that I see yours I know I was right.

What's with the handle? Pick something nice for yourself. If you think that YOU are too weird, then you just don't know enough people.

[bella]

I have been searching for a way to smooth skin without creating the "plastic" unnatural look. I have tried many tutorials to no avail. I just tried this one and I love it. Thank you Ro for this tutorial.

Bella

[Verywierd]

Originally Posted by blue dog

TooWeird,

What's with the handle? Pick something nice for yourself. If you think that YOU are too weird, then you just don't know enough people.

On a philosophical note, I think that deep down everyone thinks that everbody else is just that little bit strange; and of course it works both ways. So, the guy or girl with a bone through the nose, green hair and a tattoo of Barney the Dinosaur probably looks at Joe Normal on the street and sees a weirdo.

On a mundane level, I use the name for various purposes other than as a nic in forums. You might note that the spelling of Verywierd is "wrong". You would not believe the amount of email I get just to tell me that

While it may not be "nice", it does tend to stick in people's minds.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by blue dog

read my note

Hi there, blue dog.
Nice change to see some graphs instead of graphics!

The supression of a range of frequencies will certainly ruin any good edges in the image. A good edge needs the appropriate mix of odd numbered harmonics - start eliminating harmonics and the edge gets mucked up pretty quickly.

Which is why the de-Grunge must be masked near the edges. There is no way to combine the edge / skin in one process. In fact, part of the "wow" is in the contrast between the smoothed skin and the hard edges.

In my de-Grunge plug-in the hard part is being not the de-Grunge, but deciding on a good masking process.

As to deciding the correct radius, my method is to use the lowest radius possible to eliminate most of the grunge. Sometimes one pass isn't enough. So just apply the method again, at an appropriate radius for the "exceptions" masking as required.

Rô
PS. I'm not sure how you arrived at the graph, but something to remember is that the Gaussian blur / High-pass is very far from being a perfect Low-pass / High-pass filter.(tutorial planned)