Help please - skin smoothing on ONE person in a photo

[Crazyhorse]

Hi

I have a photo with two people in it. One person just needs a slight bit of skin smoothing.

I know how to do skin smoothing on one person but I'm having a blond moment. There's also some background I don't want to affect too.

if anyone could give me an idiots quide step by step, that would be absolutely brilliant.

Many thanks.

Lisa

 

[karmagarda]

I'm not the best on the smoothing part, but have you tried doing a select of the person, feather the selection, popping a copy on a new layer and working on that?

 

[Crazyhorse]

I'm not the best on the smoothing part, but have you tried doing a select of the person, feather the selection, popping a copy on a new layer and working on that?

Hi

Thanks for the reply. No I haven't thought of that but how do I then combine both images afterwards?

Lisa

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Hi

Thanks for the reply. No I haven't thought of that but how do I then combine both images afterwards?

Lisa

Have you worked with layers? The simplest way to have one as original / backup, copy it to the edit layer and use that. You can use blur tool with various options to smooth skin, clone tool to remove spots etc. You can always go back by erasing sections of top layer. Always work at 100-200% magnification. It also helps to very gently brighten up the eyes.

To make it even simpler Lightroom has a brush tool with 'smooth skin' preset (maybe CS4 raw module has it too). It takes about 15min to do it cleanly and looks really great afterwards.

 

[PauloWanClift]

What software are you using?

If its photoshop, then this is how I'd do it...

• Select your bottom layer.
  
• Ctrl+J to duplicate it.
  
• Perform your skin smoothing.
  
• In the main menu - Layer > Layer Mask > Hide all.
  
• In the layer pallete there will now be a black box next to the little image.
  
• Make sure that black box is selected and using a white brush simply paint on your image where you want the adjustments made in this layer to be visible.

 

[karmagarda]

Hi

Thanks for the reply. No I haven't thought of that but how do I then combine both images afterwards?

Lisa

Sorry for not replying to this! I completely forgot about it and never spotted your reply.

I was thinking of doing the smoothing on a new layer as opposed to image, then just a normal merge down on the layers. If you've feathered the selection of the area before putting it on a new layer it should blend in fine when you merge back down.

 

[joescrivens]

get Imagenomic portraiture plug in - its the easiest way of doing skin work, it rocks

 

[Crazyhorse]

Hi

Thanks for the replies, really really useful, I ended up doing a bit of a mixture of the suggestions.

Lisa

 

[p1tse]

any examples of before and after?

 

[Crazyhorse]

any examples of before and after?

Hi

Sorry, I'm afraid not. It's a police officer and child and she wouldn't appreciate them being put on a public website. (Through work, the officer asked me to do some portraits off duty).

Lisa