PP Skin retouching Question

[Ballyn]

Hey everyone! I'm not new to the forum, but I had to re-open a new account because I shut down my email used for this account and when I forgot my password, I couldn't have it emailed to me!

Anyways, I've looked at so many tutorials for skin retouching in photoshop but it just never turns out the way that I expect.

I am retouching some wedding & baby photos and would like to smooth the skin.

I've tried the select tool and coloring in tool and then using the Gaussian Blur...it just looks very fake to me.

Any tips?
Thanks in advance!

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[mJs]

can you maybe post an example?

[Flash Harry]

It always looks fake to me, just remove spots/blemishes unless your doing model stuff for vogue. H

[GeneralBenson]

It always looks fake to me, just remove spots/blemishes unless your doing model stuff for vogue. H

Agreed. Or use a very subtle Guassian, reverse mask it, and paint back in the face, but without the eyes and mouth. Then adjust opacity to less it if you want.

[cidrmakr]

If you are going to do much of that work, go buy a plug in to do it. Saves a lot of hassle and makes the images pro. Messing with blurs and layers just never works right. I use imaginomic portraiture with a mask although it makes a really good mask itself. It is really good. Also works on flowers or anything else you want a soft look to.

[g-fi]

Portraiture X2. I love it, and you have complete control over the level of retouching. Also good is Coffee Shop's Perfect Portrait (and it's free, whereas Portraiture is not, but it's totally worth the $) which has a pretty good skin smoothing action.

CoffeeShop Free PS/PSE Actions!: CoffeeShop Actions and Presets!

[bigtwinky]

When doing the Gaussian blur, make sure you bring down the opacity of that layer in photoshop. You never want a 100% blur. Play with it so it feels right.

You want to smooth out the skin, but not really get rid of all the pores in the skin.
Make sure you layer mask in the eyes, lips and hair

[Dao]

I like this tutorial

Christy Schuler I Retouching

[redtippmann]

When I used CS3 I did this:
Removing blemishes(learned this from Scott Kelby)
1)Get the zoom tool (z) and zoom in on the area you want to retouch, then get the healing brush tool from the toolbox. Do NOT use the spot healing brush.
2)The key to using the healing brush correctly is to find an area of skin to sample that has similar texture to the area you want to repair (this is different than the clone stamp tool, where you're looking for matching color and shading as well). Move your cursor over this "clean" area of skin, press and hold option (PC:Alt) key, and click once to sample that area. Your cursor will momentarily change to a target as you sample.
3)Now, just move the healing brush directly over the blemish you want to remove and simply click. Dont paint! Click. Once. That's it. Thats the whole technique-BAM-the blemish is gone!

EDIT: If you want skin softening that is a different (17 step) process.

[burnws6]

I like this tutorial

Christy Schuler I Retouching

+1 If you want real PP on skin, disregard everything on here and follow that tutorial. Best proven method to keep details in pores while smoothing skin.

[kkamin]

-1

I like this tutorial

Christy Schuler I Retouching

I'm sure she is a nice person but she is a hack. 3 of the 5 portfolio images she is using are Lynda.com lesson files that she doesn't have licensing rights to be using. She basically took a Lynda.com course and made a video reiterating what she learned. It is sort of 2nd hand knowledge from someone with an obvious thin understanding of retouching (or she wouldn't be doing what she is doing).

Tutorial: Photoshop CS4 Portrait Retouching Essential Training

Here is the course she took. It is phenomenal. It is taught by Chris Orwig.

As for retouching, if you can tell something was retouched, it is a FAIL. Many people said they do not like retouching, that it looks fake, but that is just bad retouching. Good retouching is invisible and you will just think that the people have really nice skin, bright eyes, nice teeth, etc.

The book 'Skin' by Lee Varis is a good resource too. When you build up some chops, check out Retouch Pro's video tutorials on Youtube--any retouching video by Chris Tarantino. He doesn't blur his skin at all. He uses the old school clone stamp tool at a very small size (3 pixels or so) and a dodge and burn softlight layer to even out tones and remove blemishes and unwanted lines. It takes a large time investment to use his method, but it is a high-end retouching method that looks flawless.

Check out Amy Dresser's site for inspiration too. She is a rock star retoucher of sorts. If you put your cursor over some of the images you can see the 'before' and 'after'.

http://amydresser.com/beauty.html


Good luck!