Photoshop retouching skin tutorial - Part 1

In this tutorial I will explain how to retouch a persons skin using Adobe Photoshop. I have also added a new technique that I have not seen detailed online before. Because this is a big subject I have broken the tutorial into three parts.

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Before and After

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Above you can see the photo we start with and then the final photo. I have given the photo a look like it has been developed incorrectly as the blue is stronger in the blacks and you can see more yellow in the main colours.

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Section - 1

Sharpness

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Look at the photos that you have taken - if they are slightly blurry they may need to be sharpened to improve contrast between edges of the different elements. This can be done on any photograph to improve the image.

The top photo that is slightly out of focus so I thought that I would make it clearer to make the details more obvious.

The gray thing is called High Pass which is a filtert in Photoshop. To find it you go Filter > Others > High Pass. Then you go to the Blending modes on the Layer Panel and click Soft Light as this will turn the normal photo a little sharper. Do not go to high or you lose the gray as that is what is saying do not sharpen this.

On this part of sharpening the photo I use a Filter called Smart Sharpen. What this does is it pulls up all the right information to boost what it looks like. You find the Smart Sharpen in Filter > Sharp > Smart Sharpen. Tweak the values so they look right, be careful as if you do too much it can look very wrong.

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Section - 2

Healing the skin

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This step hides all imperfections that you have on the subject. There are many different ways of doing this but this is the way I find easiest.

This is the Heal brush icon found in the tools pallete.

This photo shows a lot of skin imperfections and so I will use the healing brush to clean these up. To use it you press ALT on the keyboard and then click the mouse so a cross hair appears. You then paint areas on the image that need 'healing'. I do a lot of work with layers and the healing brush uses layers combining them into blocks of colour which simplifies things.

As you can see there is many different options that you can chose - I normally pick the base area below the blemish as you might have some lines marking out what you need to do as that might be a way to know what you have to change.

The image above shows the fixes I made for this photo.. This will not be seen in the final imge since the rest of the photo will be there to fill in the space. You can see what it looks like in the next section when it is put all together.

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Section - 3

Cloning out the non perfect parts

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I used the clone tool to remove the bags under the eyes and to smooth the skin further. This is ideally used at 10% transparency so that you can build layers of texture to keep things looking natural. You can also use the Opacity on the layer to pull back on what you are working on to give a hint of some texture.

This is the icon you are looking for the clone tool.

As you can see in this photo that the heal brush has done a good job. As we are know going to work on the cheeks and eyes as well as some other parts as this will take few minutes to get the right result from the Clone tool which you use in the same way as the Heal brush.

This is how the results of the clone tool look - without the rest of the background. The main thing about it is that you follow the lines of the face that you are using. This helps make it look real and different this would look different to your one as you can do the least two section in what ever order you like and how you like.

This tutorial continues on the next blog post or you can follow this link:
 http://gillbanksphotography.blogspot.com/2011/07/photoshop-retouching-skin-tutorial-part.html

Photoshop retouching skin tutorial - Part 2

This is continuing from the last blog post where I was talking about retouching the photo. This is the link to that post:
http://gillbanksphotography.blogspot.com/2011/07/photoshop-retouching-skin-tutorial-part_28.html

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Section - 4

Smoothing the skin out

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Here I will talk about different ways to smooth the skin out using a technique called airbrushing. I will show you an easy way to do this using layers. I use the Topaz Lapz Re-Mask plugin but it might be easer to use the eraser so you can remove what you do not need. The first picture shows where we are after the first part of the tutorial.

The next stage is to copy the layer by dragging this layer to the bottom of the layer panel and placing it on the small icon that shows a page with a bent over coner. It is next to the rubbish bin which is on the right had side at the bottom or you can hit Ctlr-Shift-Alt-E (Called Layer up) which will make a layer of everything visible in the layer pallet. We do this to make the next part easier in case you mess up. If there are problems all you have to do is delete this layer and make another one.

This is the rubber button and this is found in the tool panel.

As you can see in this image that I have taken out the background, cloths, lips, eyes, nostrils, eyebrows and the star make up. You should only take out things that you don't want to change, things that are sharp and clear.

What I have done is used a blur filter on this as that will show me how the skin should look at the end. I do this on a different layer again and I normally adjust the opacity for the layer so it does not look as strong. Be careful as this can easily look fake which is not the goal for this photo - it should look like real skin. Now make another layer so you can make the next layer look even better. There are two ways you can do this.

The first is to copy both layers and then merge them by right clicking and going to Merge layers. The other way is to have all the over layers turned invisible so you can do the layer up which I showed you earlier.

This is the two layers above mixed together with the Topaz Labz Clean filter which gives the feel of skin to the photo. I have again pushed back the opacity on the layer which will be seen in the final image.

As you can see this looks the much better then the start of this tutorial. it is also the mixture of all the images put together. As it is softer and smother over all.

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Section - 5

White balancing the photo.

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The best way to do this is to say to make one more layer by having all the layers visible and hitting the layer up way.

this is how the photo looks before colour balancing which is really easy to do. As you can see it looks a lot better than the first photo with good feel to the photo. This is a great photo that is looking airbrushed and smoothed out.

This is the best way to do the Curves and that is by getting this screen up and hitting auto button as this will save you time finding gray spots. To find the Curves you go to the fill and adjustment layers button at the layers palette which is half black and white in a circlar (This will be a new layer). There is a differnet way to do this which is Image > Adjustment > Curves, or the shortcut which is Ctrl-M (This will be on the last layer you have made).

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Section - 6

The layers used as well as the tools

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This section is to show how the layers look and where the tools I used are found. The final stage of the image is in the third tutorial.

These are the layers that I was talking about for your seeing pleasure. As you can see there is so many different things you can do.

This is layers that I have just shown you how to make and this is what it looks like in one big long list of layers. This also helps show you how the layer palette could look.

This is the toolbar that has all the tools that you would need to use and there is is a lot to them I have just picked. This is toolbar that you have got on the side. I have also made some more images of the tools that you might use.

These are the tools bars that I have used and would like to know how to use. If you like to know more how to use the no selected tools please stay tuned as I hope to write some more tuts about the story.