Portraits - Post Processing

Becky · Sep 11, 2006

Ok so today I did a shoot of a 5 month old baby, and a few with the childs parents (eesh, you do one persons kid and everyone wants some of their kiddies!!).

The lighting in the room we used was slightly on the harsh side coming from one half of the room, but wasn't too bad,
and I got to experiment with my speedlite a lot which was good. Anyhoo... theres a few photos I really like but one of the people in it has a few shiny areas of their face.

I don't want to go overboard with post processing, I like to keep them fairly natural... but whats the best way to go about slightly reducing the areas of shine? I use PS cs 2.

Please and thank you :biggrin:

Big Mike · Sep 11, 2006

Try a Google search, there are many, many skin retouching techniques and tutorials on the web.

Here is what I might try to do. Make a duplicate layer (as always). Use the clone tool and set it to a low opacity and soft brush. Use clean areas of their face to clone over the highlight area. In simple cases, this is all you might need. Sometimes this will overly smooth out the skin texture, which may not be what you want...so you will have to be more careful. Maybe using a layer style other than normal will allow you to retain some of the detail when you get rid of the bright spots.

As always, you can adjust the layer's opacity to fine tune.

zombiekilla · Sep 13, 2006

I use this tut quite often, Im not sure if its too much processing for you or not, but you can check it out!

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=171753

JohnMF · Sep 13, 2006

In martin evenings book he recommends this technique: (similar to Big Mikes)

use eyedropper , set it to take a mixture of 3 pixels area, take a sample of the normal skin area. now create a new layer, select the brush tool and set the edges to the softest it will go, now paint over the high end skin tones (on the new layer). now chnage that layer mode to Darken. You then lower the opacity slider to until it looks natural.

your photo should look like it hasnt had any photoshopping done to it at all with this technique

BTW i recommend that fellas book, he knows his stuff, he knows all the true pro techniques