new db technique

[Guest]

Hi,

I normally dodge and burn on two masked curve layers with the brush set at 5% opacity and 0% hardness. I have heard that one can dodge and burn between low pass and high pass layers by eye dropping a color on the skin.

How is that possible? Can it actually be done?

Thanks

[klev]

Re: new db technique

You mentioned 0% hardness and always the same opacity. This could turn out to be a complete mess or it might work okay. I would suggest that you vary opacity as necessary, because if you have to go over precisely the same small area repeatedly, you will have more unintended results.

In early versions of photoshop you either had 0% hardness or 100%. This means you had to make your own in betweens. If you're working with 0% all the time, do you vary brush size at all? I would have to choose a low enough opacity to use several passes of decreasing size on many details if I did it that way. 5% seems a bit high for this, so I suspect you don't do that.

Regarding the eyedropper, I've done something similar without ever using frequency separation. I never use it, so I can't help you there.

Anyway you can only consider these things for local adjustments.

Example : Toning down skin highlights

Select eyedrop tool. I usually use a 3x3 setting

Save a sample of the skin highlight

Save a sample of skin near the highlight, which represents the desired color

Create a new curves layer

Use the curves adjustment layer menu to select only the red channel in your curves layer

Drag a point starting from the red coordinate of the highlight sample to the red coordinate value of the "good" skin sample.

Repeat with green and blue channels.


If any of these generate curves adjustments that look too steep, choose points that are closer together in value. If the color balance looks off when you apply this layer to highlight sections, adjust the point in the appropriate channel. It may take a little practice. Try it. If you have trouble, post a response with any followup questions.

[Guest]

Re: new db technique

It should be 0% hardness, 100% opacity and 5% flow, when it comes to the brush tool. Yet, it won't work. Could it be that it only works with the tablet instead of the mouse?

Between the low and hi pass layers I add one white filled layer (DODGE) and a black filled layer (BURN) both with a black mask. I start using the brush set as above and I see white and black lines! What is wrong with that?

[klev]

Re: new db technique

It should be 0% hardness, 100% opacity and 5% flow, when it comes to the brush tool. Yet, it won't work. Could it be that it only works with the tablet instead of the mouse?

Between the low and hi pass layers I add one white filled layer (DODGE) and a black filled layer (BURN) both with a black mask. I start using the brush set as above and I see white and black lines! What is wrong with that?

This strategy is useless. If you think someone else made it work, you should request a psd file from them to see what they did differently. I can go into great detail regarding the problems, but no one would find it interesting.

From my perspective

1. Luminance blending is ugly.
2. It applies the same offset to all pixels across every bit of data, which looks
even worse with a non-linear color space.

I also think your brush settings are going to make your life more difficult. I know I couldn't control anything if I used that as my default brush without any changes at any time.

[Guest]

Re: new db technique

https://youtu.be/ZeEXY2kIpVo?t=19m18s

It is technique number 4 I wonder why it won't work to me.

I think I shoud get back to dodge and burn on two seperate masked curve layers.

[Guest]

Re: new db technique

So, this is what my layers palette looks like:

http://41.media.tumblr.com/bb82f9d54d28dd298fc5cd81db040cc5/tumblr_o13v7ktdLT1s5o348o1_400.png

I was wondering if I should move the d&b into the freq sep folder or leave it standalone.

[skoobey]

Re: new db technique

Than it is painting, not DNB. DNB=shading.

Yes, you can, and it's not a sin as many would suggest, but just as with dnb you need to know what you want before you start the work. Try to avoid the easy trap of making everything smooth, so that the skin texture looks like it's floating on top of the image.

[klev]

Re: new db technique

https://youtu.be/ZeEXY2kIpVo?t=19m18s

It is technique number 4 I wonder why it won't work to me.

I think I shoud get back to dodge and burn on two seperate masked curve layers.

I want to clarify that I think that is a very bad idea. He relies on a constant offset where I would only consider translations that apply some kind of scale factor to the data.


His method applies a constant offset, so you replace the original coordinates (r,g,b) = (base+detail,base+detail,base+detail) with

( a*fill + (1-a)*base + detail, a*fill + (1-a)*base + detail, a*fill + (1-a)*base + detail)

where 'a' is approximately equal to the value of your layer mask divided by 255. Note that if your layer mask is 255 (pure white), this equation is now

(fill + detail, fill + detail, fill + detail)

but if fill is much brighter or darker than the original base, a*fill can grow very quickly relative to (1-a)*base, so you converge very quickly toward a constant value instead of a smooth component.

If you don't understand this it's fine. The guy making the video also doesn't understand it. He just knows that the results work for him, which is fine.

The method I suggested applies a scale factor based on the original value, which should be more stable. I haven't tried it with the frequency separation approach. It should work assuming that you sample appropriately. If it just shows white and black in your swatches, you had an alpha channel selected at the time or accidentally hit 'x'.

[Guest]

Re: new db technique

Try to avoid the easy trap of making everything smooth, so that the skin texture looks like it's floating on top of the image.

Do you mean I'd better local D&B in tiny dots and lines instead of doing freq sep (lasso tool and blur)?

[skoobey]

Re: new db technique

Exactly what I thought. You don't go selecting an entire area on low pass and blur it. That gives you a sort of flat area, but it is definitely not a precision tool.

Simple. You paint(no freq sep) when you need to override something that is present in the image. You dnb when you want to shift tones but preserve detail that's already there.

So you paint in lashes, because you are overriding skin texture, but you dnb skin because you want to keep the detail.

Freq separation is useful when replacing portions of texture and then you go to the low layer and make it blend by painting, but you don't really do this instead of DNB(you can use it to smooth out knee caps and wrinkles in clothes for example, but not for detailed work).

[adtechniques]

Re: new db technique

why need change your D&B if it work good. D&B is play with light. Nothing more.

[adtechniques]

Re: new db technique

And don't touch LF with brush, it's bandbass and make BLUR

[klev]

Re: new db technique

Do you mean I'd better local D&B in tiny dots and lines instead of doing freq sep (lasso tool and blur)?

There are very few situations where there's a good reason to resort to blur. For example I'll use it if I need to make something look out of focus to match something else. It is generally a bad tool for general refinement, because in general any kind of smoothing requires a light touch.

In general if you have a good workflow that provides the necessary control, you should be able to make minor adjustments to refine it over time.

[Guest]

Re: new db technique

You don't go selecting an entire area on low pass and blur it

So the bigger takeaways here is that I can do away with freq separation except when cleaning up the skin with the healing brush tool on the texture (hi pass) layer.

It's easy for me to make everything smooth - remove skin blotchiness - with different (amateur) techniques. One is to smooth out the color by using the mixer brush tool (sort of smudge the color). One more is to add an additional duplicate layer of the original image between hi and low pass then apply blur or portraiture to it then I cover this layer with a black layer mask and paint over the areas where I need it.

As I understand, the main idea of local dnb (pixel-level) is to even out the skin to achieve that even surface look while the goal of global dnb is to sculpt and add volume and dimensionality.

Now that I understand the conceptual difference between the two I still wonder how to properly apply local dnb. I have seen some amazing dnb masks by retoucher Vilca (https://www.facebook.com/JesusVilcaRetoucher). Are those tiny dots and lines made on a seperate sets of masked curve layers? Since they appear white on the mask I still can't tell if they've been made on the dodge or burn layer.

Also, I'm in two minds whether I should use different visual aids for local and global dnb. When I do global dnb I normally set a tone help folder made of a color blended mode hue/sat layer with saturation -100 then on top of that I add a multiply blended mode curve layer with the curve slightly pulled up. Should I set a different monochrome layer when doing local dnb?

Thanks

[skoobey]

Re: new db technique

Bigger takeaway is that you pay the attention to the result, rather than technique. If it looks good, it is good.

"Portraiture"... it's pointless to talk about that "retouching" here. As for the masks on the Jesus retoucher facebook page... I've both seen and done much more detailed masks(yes, it needs to look just like the image in some instances), but in general yes, you go into that amount of detail or greater, depending on the image, sometimes you need to, sometimes you don't, and he has quite a variety there, so you can see that it all depends on the input and the desired output.

There is no "local" and "global". It all ends in one result. If you're affecting the "look" rather than fixing/smoothing things, you still have togo into detial to make it look good. So, you can do a "fix" pass and a "look" pass, and it can be a good idea if you tend to change your mind a lot concerning the final look.

That desaturation layer should go above everything. That is fine, you can reduce the fill of that curve layer, or the opacity, or lift the curve, lower the curve... doesn't really matter. It's just an aid for lighter areas, and screen adjustment would be helpful for darker areas.