Portrait retouching.

[Camm]

Hi all,

Found an interesting article on retouching portrait, but did not explain in detail how it is done. Does anyone have any step by step procedure for retouching portrait?

http://canong2.dynip.com:8080/canon-g2/digital-darkroom-article27.shtml

 

[togu]

Hi Camm, thanks for sharing the link.

The term "retouching" is pretty general. As mentioned in that article, you can retouch portraits by cropping, adjusting skin tones, colours, sharpness, applying some special filters etc. It'll take the whole Photoshop Bible to explain all. Any particular areas that you'll like to ask?

 

[Camm]

Oops, sorry for not being specific. I'm interested to find out how to clean the face of blemishes, hot spots and wrinkles.

Thanks alot

 

[igpenguin]

Sorry, I don't have a step by step tutorial or link to provide. But just to give a general idea:

Depending on the photoediting program you use, you may have few or a myriad of tools and techniques to use.

Generally web links and books focus on Photoshop (or PS Elements). The technique proscribed is similar to skin-grafting (pardon the analogy) though here the original skin area is usually preserved.

In Photoshop there's the clone stamp and healing brush (PS7) tool. You can set a number of options within these tools - I'd start with the brush size to define the size of the "graft" to apply with each stroke. You can also tweak the opacity of the brush. The alignment option can be checked too - try it out to see the effects of turning on and off the option.

That is one conventional way - you may discover your own methodology as you experiment.

PS. Hot spots might be better dealt without photoshop - adjust your flash technique and get the person to clean away any facial oil, for instance.

 

[togu]

Healing brush rules! :gbounce:

 

[horizoner]

Oops, sorry for not being specific. I'm interested to find out how to clean the face of blemishes, hot spots and wrinkles.

Thanks alot

just add on to wat igpenguin and togu had said ...

for wrinkles .. u might want to try this

1) duplicate the layer and "clean up" using the new layer
2) adjust the opacity of the edited layer while the original one is below

well ... esp for older ppl, it won't look natural with totally no wrinkles. so i use this method to tone it down to my liking by adjusting the opacity.

 

[khalix]

just add on to wat igpenguin and togu had said ...

for wrinkles .. u might want to try this

1) duplicate the layer and "clean up" using the new layer
2) adjust the opacity of the edited layer while the original one is below

well ... esp for older ppl, it won't look natural with totally no wrinkles. so i use this method to tone it down to my liking by adjusting the opacity.

for blemishes.. try this:
1. apply gaussian blur to the pic. Adjust the radius until the blemishes 'nearly' invisible.
2. From history, click 'Open' and then click the 'Guassian Blur' to set the history brush.
3. Use history brush and select a soft brush (mode: Lighten) to clean the blemishes.

 

[jstay]

Photoshop 7 has very good tools for touching up portraits:

Healing Brush - for removing blemishes, wrinkles and pockmarks on faces, or even ugly pits on smooth rock faces

Liquify - with judicious use, you can slim someone's face, beef up an anorexic or enhance his/her figure.