Tutorial: Portrait Touch-up (repost)

[JakeB.]

More of PS tutorial, but... Portrait Touch-up This lesson with go through one of the more intensive portrait touch-ups, generally reserved for shots that will go into my portfolio. There is not going to be a drastic change to this photo... I've started with one that has already been color corrected. I'm using Photoshop 7.0. Here is the original image opened in PS. The first thing I wanted to do was get rid of a few distractions in the background. I created a new layer, to track my progress. For cloning, I used a soft edged stamp at 100 pixels in diameter; You should use your own judgement on the size. I use the soft brush when I want the cloned area to blend in well, a hard brush when there is a defined area that I can't go out of. Here you can see I cloned out the stickers on the double doors in the BG. Next, I wanted to take care of a few blemishes on my subjects face. Again I created a new layer. I use the healing brush when I can to take care of this. The healing brush takes the area you meter from and blends it with the area you apply the brush to... this helps create a smoother effect than cloning. Here you can see my brush settings, and the after effects. Next, I wanted to get rid of the stray hairs (flyaways) around her head. This could be done by cloning or healing, but if you have a fairly shallow DOF you can also enhance that effect at the same time by using Guassian Blur. Here I create another layer, then cut out the forgrouond area. I generally use a combination of the Magic Wand tool, the eraser, and the Lasso tool to take the foreground out of this layer. Then I apply the Guassian Blur to the layer. Depending on the settings for your blur, it may creap back into the foreground, so go back and use the eraser to get rid of any blur that is covering your subject. I also used the eraser on a large setting at a very low opacity to fade the layer from bottom to top, that helps enhance the effect of a diminishing DOF. On this shot, I also wanted to darken the background some. I already have the background cut out so I just copy that layer. Then I take the burn tool, at a fairly large size, and burn the whole layer. Then, I reduce the opacity of that layer to my liking. Next, I wanted to touch up the eyes and teeth a little. Use whatever method you like to select these areas, but I lasso the whole face, then erase what I don't want. The teeth and whites of the eyes are on a seperate layer from the iris'. For the whites, I open the saturation bow and reduce the master saturation to about 75%, and bring the lightness up to about 50%. I used the color balance and saturation tools to adjust the color portions of the eyes. This makes the eyes and teeth a bit too bright, so i use the layer opacity to adjust to my liking. I also wanted to add a little color to the lips. Again, I used the lasso, eraser, and magic wand to select the area onto a new layer. I used the color balance box instead of the saturation, to make the whole layer more red. Again, this was maybe a little too much, so I reduced the opacity of the layer to liking. Finally, some skin smoothing. I again used a combo of the lasso, and eraser to select the areas I wanted to smooth. Make sure to erase the eyes, mouth, and nostrils from this layer; we want those to be as sharp as possible. We want some skin texture to show through so, again, reduce the opacity of the layer to your liking. That's it. Was it worth it? Maybe not, but I want the best shot possible to represent me.

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[Burrito]

in for reference

[cambodian]

[tuan...]

you forgot the blemish on her chin!

[DjTripp]

Good ish, thanks for the write up

[Mr Fatty]

wow, that's awesome... all I've ever used was the healing brush to remove freckles!

[Egg-weezy]

Good stuff!!

Nice bump dj tripp

[DagYo!]

levels, contrast, saturation, unsharp mask, history brush and healing tool sometimes, that's it.

[A's 94 GSR]

I like it. Nice write up.