It can not be that complicated.

D-50 · Jun 5, 2008

You need to keep the blur off her ear, eyes, lips, anything with detail before you process it, do not leave it bured and then try to bring it back.

And Alpha is really showing his MAXBloom roots here.... I dont think anyone was fooled by the name change. But as always i appreciate his straight forward nature, no holds barred, but also very biased against digital photography.

Alpha · Jun 5, 2008

D-50 said:
You need to keep the blur off her ear, eyes, lips, anything with detail before you process it, do not leave it bured and then try to bring it back.

And Alpha is really showing his MAXBloom roots here.... I dont think anyone was fooled by the name change. But as always i appreciate his straight forward nature, no holds barred, but also very biased against digital photography.

I've said nothing to indicate any bias against digital photography.

King Mango · Jun 5, 2008

Well I decided to give it a go. I'm not a big fan of this but it's handy to have as a skill for future $$ I suppose. This is one of my shots from last month that I took on my first day of serious photography where I was trying to get good pictures. I used the soft skin effect in portrait mode on the camera settings which ruined several good shots. Anyway This PP work is focusing solely on the skin. I'm probably not going to do anything else to it unless my friend wants something.

Original:

Glamour Post:

I'm only posting mine to show that I believe that surface blur is the filter you need to be looking into and then using a layermask to paint the effect in. I did this using surface blur on a separate layer then masking the layer off and painting in the skin again. I also did a separate layer to reduce the blowouts on the right side of her face. There was a lot of bloom to cancel out.
I also played around with select color range using her lips as a sample til I got a nice distribution around her cheeks and a few small selections eslewhere. I added a layer and filled with pure deep red, then reduced the opacity, blurred (gaussian)
Added an overall warming LBA at 50 per cent

GeorgiaOwl · Jun 5, 2008

maybe they airbrush the model's faces.

pppppprrrshhhhhhhhhhhhht. prrrssshhhhttt.

you know, like a cheap Panama City, Fla T-shirt shop!

King Mango · Jun 5, 2008

lol. That's one way of doin it!

Bifurcator · Jun 6, 2008

King Mango said:
Original:

Here's what that Portraiture plugin does by default:

And after moving one slider:

Of course if I were to then go in and finish it I could get it looking really good.

This is just loading the image, applying the plug-in, and saving the results. I guess with actions you could batch like this too.

King Mango · Jun 6, 2008

hey that's nice!

Bifurcator · Jun 6, 2008

Yeah, I like what it did to her neck and lower jowls. This plug-in is almost the famed and elusive "Make Not Suck" button.

perryfletcher · Jun 7, 2008

Take a look at this and see if this is not what exactly he is doing. http://adultchamberblog.com/2008/02/11/makeup-tutorial/ I think he is puting a diffrent color onto the skin though but I do not know what color it is. My image turnes out to dark but it is not high key like his are.

Bifurcator · Jun 7, 2008

Me?

Yeah could be. I dunno exactly his process but I know for sure (100%?) it has almost nothing or at least VERY little to do with makeup. Lighting always helps tho so if he has the facilities he would be dumb not to put it to good use. This PS glam stuff has gone so far beyond what makeup can do it's just silly - and it's dynamic so if you don't like it you can change it or sample any of hundreds of variations. This is unlike makeup where not only are you relatively stuck with the results you are also inhibited from editing digitally later.

Make-up may still be used for "photo sessions" though where you're shooting all day and choosing 10 or 12 shots from among several hundred - for each model although I would venture to guess that these days it's more a foundational base than the detailing we saw in the past. You can bet that those 10 or 12 get heavily processed after the selection process though and for sure if it's glam stuff. Make-up is also needed for motion film unless it's a dry documentary or something. Movies also get processed very heavily however. That's the business I'm in. Processing for motion picture film is usually done by scanning in the footage, creating moving masks of various types (garbage masks, lighting masks, FX masks, etc.) and then applying the affects - whether it's color correction, noise & wire removal, or glam-like enhancements like we're talking about here. This is accomplished in tools like Fusion 5, Nuke3D, Final Cut, Shake, Combustion, Adobe AfterFX, and etc. I like all of those packages allot and probably in the order listed there. There's Flame, Inferno, Flint, Smoke and Toxic too (all from Autodesk) but I don't know them at all.

Anyway, makeup generally isn't used in the same way it was 10 or more years ago by the professionals who make the top tier still and motion print and film products that we all consume and enjoy.

Bifurcator · Jun 7, 2008

perryfletcher said:
I think he is puting a diffrent color onto the skin though but I do not know what color it is. My image turnes out to dark but it is not high key like his are.

BTW, if you need a color pallet or swatch configuration to work with one very good way is to work with the natural colors already present. Blur the heck out of it and sample your swatch points from that or reduce it to a 256 indexed color image and screen grab the resulting pallet menu. Then use those to color the layer that you're mixing or using through control masks.

King Mango · Jun 7, 2008

Bifurcator said:
BTW, if you need a color pallet or swatch configuration to work with one very good way is to work with the natural colors already present. Blur the heck out of it and sample your swatch points from that or reduce it to a 256 indexed color image and screen grab the resulting pallet menu. Then use those to color the layer that you're mixing or using through control masks.

Using a reduced indexed color palette was my "secret trick" in game level design. :rockon:

perryfletcher · Jun 7, 2008

Bifurcator said:
BTW, if you need a color pallet or swatch configuration to work with one very good way is to work with the natural colors already present. Blur the heck out of it and sample your swatch points from that or reduce it to a 256 indexed color image and screen grab the resulting pallet menu. Then use those to color the layer that you're mixing or using through control masks.

I have saw those swatch pallets but do not understand them. Is there any thing that will tell you if you want to go from this color to this color you should overlay this color. For example If I want to take the skin I have in a photo which now has a red tinge to it and turn it to a pale mannequin look I should use color # whatever to get it there?

Bifurcator · Jun 7, 2008

perryfletcher said:
I have saw those swatch pallets but do not understand them.

It's just another method of color picking. It's useful when working with tones in a finite and fairly limited range like skin-tones.

Is there any thing that will tell you if you want to go from this color to this color you should overlay this color. For example If I want to take the skin I have in a photo which now has a red tinge to it and turn it to a pale mannequin look I should use color # whatever to get it there?

A color calculator or a mixing simulator? Yeah, there are, but I think they aren't useful beyond teaching rudimentary additive and subtractive color concepts to someone just getting into computer editing or stage lighting. After you understand the basic idea the tools are no longer useful unless you need specific numerical input or something. Search for "color mixing", "color calculator", "applet", "tutorial", etc.

It's more like mixing paint for painting on canvas with. You have a white canvas and want a sunset, you put yellow on the canvas, you keep adding red to the mix as you tone your way up. Err, I mean it's a feeling more than anything else. You have a face and you want it to be lighter, pick the original color and then move the lightness bar up or the cursor within the color-picker. save the swatch register and move it a bit more up, etc. Then try it with each one till one looks right. These ranges are what I was suggesting you create by first temporally changing to 256 color register mode. I think one of the tuts I linked to covers that too. It will give you a nice naturally defined range of swatch colors to try with.

A big part of digital editing is trial and error tho. If something doesn't look right the first time don't be afraid to click File -> Revert or undo and try it again... and again... and again. Kinda like adding little bits of red to the yellow for the sunset example. Move fast and try and remember when something works right. That's really all anyone is doing. Don't feel bad or anything tho... you've chosen one of the most difficult tasks there is - getting skin tones right. Seasoned pros have trouble with that one and it's become quite a science all to it's own!

As a photographer doing what you're trying to do you're lucky though. If you exposed it right you have a good base to work with from the start and only need to modify or adjust the tones and remove unwanted variation aka "detail".

SusieLee · Jun 9, 2008

Perry - send me an email. I can help you out. I do this sort of editing.
Don't worry I don't sell anything besides my photography

I agree, it has a lot to do with Photoshop, but good lighting and makeup have a lot to do with it. However, my makeup artist can only do so much and as great as I am with lighting, that look just doesn't come out of the camera that way.