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Glamour Retouching!
Welcome back! I'm going to post a few of my portrait retouching techniques - nothing terribly difficult, and easily done with Photoshop CS2/3/4 if you have that program.
While not a required piece of hardware, I'd strongly suggest getting a pen tablet like the Wacom Bamboo Fun http://www.wacom.com/bambootablet/bambo
Now, I'm going to show you a few step by step to retouching. Generally speaking, this can be applied to just about any kind of portrait shot, but I prefer to use these techniques to "highlight" and bring out the beauty in people. A little Botox never hurt, eh?
Here's my photo that I plan on "glamorizing" using my technique:
As you can see, she has reasonably clear skin, and she's certainly a pretty model, but we can help "enhance" some things.
Now, here's what we need to do. With a healing brush, we need to remove the blemishes that are present the model - as I've pointed out in red:
First thing you need to do is duplicate your original "background" layer - the first layer on your photoshop palette. Shortcut for this is "CNTRL J" if you're on a PC, and "APPLE J" if you're on a mac. The reason for this is that you NEVER work on the original layer if you can help it, especially if you're working with JPEGS. That way, if you mess up, you can delete the layer you were working on and start again.
Now, find your healing brush on your photoshop tool palette on the left, it looks like a little "Band Aid." On the duplicated layer, find your offending blemishes and select a sample from an area near the blemish of the SAME tonality, by holding down ALT plus clicking with the mouse. Now you're ready to heal - click on the blemish and clean it up using a quick click and stroke. Repeat this for other blemishes, and bear in mind, that you must pick a sample from the same area as the blemish, otherwise it will look funny.
After you've cleaned up the blemishes and are happy with the results, flatten your layers to make one whole image - you can do this from the menu by selecting the layer menu, then flatten.
Now, we're going to enhance her eyes a little bit. She has some lovely green eyes, and we can make them pop by using a simple trick.
Here are the before for the eyes:
As you can see, we can make the eye whites a bit more "brighter" and maybe add in a bit more highlights to her pupils and iris. Create an empty layer directly above your background layer - can do this from the layer menu - and change that layer mode to "soft light." Select brush, and zoom in to 100% (CNTRL + for PC) to see the eyes better - and change your brush opacity to about 15%. You can change the brush opacity (NOT the layer opacity) on the bar right below the menus bar in photoshop.
Now, with a white brush (make sure you have white selected - check your color palette on the left menu bar), add in a bit more white to the white areas of the eyes and add in a bit more highlights to the catchlights in the eyes and iris' as well. This will help bring out the colors of the eyes more. Now, with a black brush (check your color palette and select black), paint in a bit of black on the outer edge of the iris an paint in the pupils a bit. After you've done that to your satisfaction, with a smaller sized black brush, paint in more black on the eye lashes to help bring them out more. This is where you'll really appreciate having a wacom tablet!
Here is my result:
Additionally, you can use the same soft light blend mode using a white brush to paint in some highlights into her hair, that's really up to you and your personal taste. :) Once you're done, flatten your layer again!
Now, we're moving on to skin smoothing. There are a lot of techniques on the web, but my favorite is the high pass technique. It retains skin texture authenticity and doesn't do the plastic looking skin retouching like others do.
Again, duplicate your layer, and then go to filters > Others > High pass. The amount you want to use is enough to get an embossed look like this:
After you've done that, you need to invert your layer. Go to Layer > Invert to get a look like this:
After that, change that high pass layer's blend mode to one of the two - Soft Light or Overlay. You'll get a pretty pleasing effect, but as with all things, you need to control where the effect takes place! To do this, you need to apply a layer mask - Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. You'll see a white thing appear next to your layer's icon on the layer palette. Now, you need to invert that mask, by doing CNTRL I on a PC to invert. This will "hide" all your skin edits for now. Stay on that layer, and select a white brush with 50% opacity, and paint on the model's face where you want the effect to take place, avoid the eyes, eyebrows, and lips and nostrils, while getting other areas. You'll see on the layer where you've painted. If you've made a mistake, don't panic - switch to black and paint over the mistake to hide. Pretty nifty, huh?
Here's my skin retouching :) along with all of my other edits.
While not a required piece of hardware, I'd strongly suggest getting a pen tablet like the Wacom Bamboo Fun http://www.wacom.com/bambootablet/bambo
Now, I'm going to show you a few step by step to retouching. Generally speaking, this can be applied to just about any kind of portrait shot, but I prefer to use these techniques to "highlight" and bring out the beauty in people. A little Botox never hurt, eh?
Here's my photo that I plan on "glamorizing" using my technique:
As you can see, she has reasonably clear skin, and she's certainly a pretty model, but we can help "enhance" some things.
Now, here's what we need to do. With a healing brush, we need to remove the blemishes that are present the model - as I've pointed out in red:
First thing you need to do is duplicate your original "background" layer - the first layer on your photoshop palette. Shortcut for this is "CNTRL J" if you're on a PC, and "APPLE J" if you're on a mac. The reason for this is that you NEVER work on the original layer if you can help it, especially if you're working with JPEGS. That way, if you mess up, you can delete the layer you were working on and start again.
Now, find your healing brush on your photoshop tool palette on the left, it looks like a little "Band Aid." On the duplicated layer, find your offending blemishes and select a sample from an area near the blemish of the SAME tonality, by holding down ALT plus clicking with the mouse. Now you're ready to heal - click on the blemish and clean it up using a quick click and stroke. Repeat this for other blemishes, and bear in mind, that you must pick a sample from the same area as the blemish, otherwise it will look funny.
After you've cleaned up the blemishes and are happy with the results, flatten your layers to make one whole image - you can do this from the menu by selecting the layer menu, then flatten.
Now, we're going to enhance her eyes a little bit. She has some lovely green eyes, and we can make them pop by using a simple trick.
Here are the before for the eyes:
As you can see, we can make the eye whites a bit more "brighter" and maybe add in a bit more highlights to her pupils and iris. Create an empty layer directly above your background layer - can do this from the layer menu - and change that layer mode to "soft light." Select brush, and zoom in to 100% (CNTRL + for PC) to see the eyes better - and change your brush opacity to about 15%. You can change the brush opacity (NOT the layer opacity) on the bar right below the menus bar in photoshop.
Now, with a white brush (make sure you have white selected - check your color palette on the left menu bar), add in a bit more white to the white areas of the eyes and add in a bit more highlights to the catchlights in the eyes and iris' as well. This will help bring out the colors of the eyes more. Now, with a black brush (check your color palette and select black), paint in a bit of black on the outer edge of the iris an paint in the pupils a bit. After you've done that to your satisfaction, with a smaller sized black brush, paint in more black on the eye lashes to help bring them out more. This is where you'll really appreciate having a wacom tablet!
Here is my result:
Additionally, you can use the same soft light blend mode using a white brush to paint in some highlights into her hair, that's really up to you and your personal taste. :) Once you're done, flatten your layer again!
Now, we're moving on to skin smoothing. There are a lot of techniques on the web, but my favorite is the high pass technique. It retains skin texture authenticity and doesn't do the plastic looking skin retouching like others do.
Again, duplicate your layer, and then go to filters > Others > High pass. The amount you want to use is enough to get an embossed look like this:
After you've done that, you need to invert your layer. Go to Layer > Invert to get a look like this:
After that, change that high pass layer's blend mode to one of the two - Soft Light or Overlay. You'll get a pretty pleasing effect, but as with all things, you need to control where the effect takes place! To do this, you need to apply a layer mask - Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. You'll see a white thing appear next to your layer's icon on the layer palette. Now, you need to invert that mask, by doing CNTRL I on a PC to invert. This will "hide" all your skin edits for now. Stay on that layer, and select a white brush with 50% opacity, and paint on the model's face where you want the effect to take place, avoid the eyes, eyebrows, and lips and nostrils, while getting other areas. You'll see on the layer where you've painted. If you've made a mistake, don't panic - switch to black and paint over the mistake to hide. Pretty nifty, huh?
Here's my skin retouching :) along with all of my other edits.