How is this composition made?

[RayTracer]

I've found several of these "glamour" shots around the web and always wonder how it is done.

Is it very complicated, or can it be done with a simple tutorial?


Thanks for any info.

PS: I use PhotoShop 6

[Ed_L]

Hi Ray,

Welcome aboard. I wouldn't be the one who could walk you through the techniques, but I can tell you that Katrin Eismann's book, "Restoration & Retouching" has a section devoted to that type of retouching. I have the book, as do many of us on the site. I have yet to hear of anyone who isn't completely satisfied (or thrilled) with it. It's money well spent. You might be able to pick it up at your local library (then you'll buy it for sure).

Ed

[Doug Nelson]

I'd love to have a glamour-related Challenge. If anyone has a "plain" headshot of themselves that they'd like to see glamourized like in this example, please email it to me (standard specs). I think a Challenge might provide more information for this than a tutorial.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Ray
Welcome aboard. The basics for creating a glamour shot is to

1. Soften the foucus on the skin A second layer with a slight gaussian blur then a layer mask to allow only the skin to show while leaving features like eyes, mouth and hair sharp focus.

2. You lighten the whites of the eyes and teeth with a low opacity dodge tool. Becareful not to over whiten or they look funny. A better way to do this is to make a second layer of 50% grey and overlay blend mode and do your dodge work there.

3. Now with the dodge tool on the same layer, darken the areas around th eye lids and touch up the eyebrows. You might even add a soft brush darkened area just under her cheek bones as you see in the photo you uploaded. Use a very soft large brush and very low opacity burn tool.

4. Add a deeper color to the lips on a new layer set to color blend mode and bring out the highlights.

5. Finally enhance the highlights to her hair This can be done by adding a layer filled with 50% grey and set to overlay. Then use the dodge tool to lighten areas also use the burn tool to darken areas too

It's the basics but I hope that helps.
DJ

[Mig]

What DJ said is a part of it, but I would add they also use grain removal filters like EFT, which isn't available. Fakers use this technique all the time in the fake newsgroup, which you can find on Usenet. Playboy also uses this effect and in recent years have been going overboard with it. But to add to the problem, scanners also put their scans through this bathing process with various blur filters, further robbing the pictures of grain.
A hack job can usually be seen in the comparison between hair and skin, where the hair is oversharp and yet matted.
If you don't have EFT and want this type of effect, select the skin, save the selection in an alpha channel, or keep the selection loaded, blur the skin A LOT. Then go to selective colour and under the pulldown menu boost the whites. Also increase the saturation.
It's a freak show and a lot of people must like it, but the real challenge is making natural-looking skin grain.


Mig

[G. Couch]

Freak show is a great description. Pretty soon children will have some kind of perfect skin complex... "but Mom, everyone on the internet and in every magazine has PERFECT skin!"

I am all for subtle retouching and "softening", but some of this stuff goes way beyond.

[fury]

I never really understood the appeal to these images. Is that a real person in the example picture?? Becouse it really looks like just a nice close-up of a barbi doll. Instead of glamourising, this technique could be more acurately labled barbyfing...

[thomasgeorge]

The power and pitfall of retouching is the ability to edit reality right out of a photo..there are several threads over in the Work/Jobs area about this...I would like to hear from our new members about their thoughts on these past discussions. All the threads over there are open and begging for input....Tom