Retouching and background replacement

reznap · Jan 28, 2011

Hey, just spent a little while working on a photo from ModelMayhem, posted specifically for people to edit (they even uploaded the RAW file from their 5D for us).

I prefer to retouch skin while preserving the original skin texture. I do it by dodging and burning curves adjustment layers, with inverted masks. Deleting the green screen was the easiest thing ever.. using the background eraser tool. I swear that thing is voodoo..

Just wanted to share the end result. The background is from an old photo of mine. I did use the liquify tool a bit to reshape her face a little.

I'll try and answer any questions but I'm kinda new to this.

Photographer's modelmayhem page: http://www.modelmayhem.com/183752

And after:

SimpleFoto · Feb 18, 2011

Nice, the hair even turned out really crisp.

Davor · Feb 18, 2011

This is really cool, hopefully one day i will be able to try this

Big Mike · Feb 18, 2011

I can still see a bit of green tinge on the left (her right) side of her hair.
The highlights on her face seem a little too hot.

The skin looks good though. Nice and smooth but with retained texture.
I would have zapped the spots on her arms & chest as well.

reznap · Feb 22, 2011

Big Mike said:
I can still see a bit of green tinge on the left (her right) side of her hair.
The highlights on her face seem a little too hot.

The skin looks good though. Nice and smooth but with retained texture.
I would have zapped the spots on her arms & chest as well.

Good eye and thanks for your critique.

The green tinge.. I can't believe I didn't make that better a few weeks ago when I did this. It was my first try with green screen/background replacement so I guess I can forgive myself. It is glaringly bad though, now that you've pointed it out to me.

The spots on her arms and chest should have come off, I agree.

Skin work and preserving texture is definitely my strong suit at this point. I learned a good method and I prefer to do the dodging and burning on a desaturated image. Basically, create a new hue/saturation adjustment layer and turn the saturation to zero, then delete the layer when done.

Thanks for the replies, Davor and SimpleFoto as well!

ColoringSilence · Feb 23, 2011

It's not important but maybe plump her boobs a little. Just a very little.

klam · Mar 1, 2011

Another person who doesn't like to blur the skin. Right on! I too no like blur skin to get it smooth

Decent job with the D&B. But I think you took the dodge too far. You almost eliminated the shadows on her right half of face, under her lip, eyes, etc which makes the face look flat. Shadows and highlights are a good thing, it gives the picture more depth.

Keep it up. You're off to a good start already by not using blur. Some say the hardest part of D&B is knowing when to stop.

This is what I would try to remove the green cast on hair. Make a selection of hair with color cast and create a hue/saturation layer and move the sliders until the selection matches the hue of the hair with no color cast.

reznap · Mar 2, 2011

^ Thanks for your reply. You're right about dodge and burn and losing sight of the big picture. It's easy to focus on one area and go too far.. I find that it helps to view the photo at different zoom levels constantly. I even horizontally flip the canvas to get a different perspective sometimes (new trick I just picked up).

The guy I learned most of what I know from keeps a blog, here's a link if you want to check it out:
http://photoshoparchives.blogspot.com/

You're dead on with your critique, klam. I'm actually not very proud of that image anymore, especially since I went a bit too far with the liquify tool. I think that's definitely an easy one to abuse.

Here's a more recent retouch I've done, just finished about a half hour ago. Another one of the 'free to edit/use' photos from modelmayhem.
Photographer's page: http://www.modelmayhem.com/1895650

Original:

Edit:

I did a lot of detail d&b to smooth the skin out and then aggressively carved out the highlights and shadows using a larger brush size.

Here is the dodge layer mask:

And the burn layer mask:

klam · Mar 3, 2011

I like where you took this image. Sweet job.

Flipping, zooming, shaking are definite help. Also taking a 15min break away from the monitor, this helps me the most. I usually spot things I missed and possible color issues.

Thanks for link.