Skin Smoothing

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Betty

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I know this has been asked before, and for that I am sorry, but I just cant seem to find what I need, and I realise this goes against all my real beauty images ;)

Basically, Ill be shooting a friend soon, who has very bad skin, she knows it and would love a more flawless look. Every action Ive tested so far just blurs the skin waaaay too much, or looks plastic, so does anyone have a decent action they can link me too? I dont want a tutorial, I want an action, and can learn how to do it myself from that.

If anyone has a paid action they are willing to pass on (if I chuck you some cash, is that ok mods? Delete if not), otherwise can you point me towards a good one that doesnt cost the earth?

Sorry again guys, I know there is a decent action out there for me, paid or otherwise :D
 
Just a quick, stupid question: have you looked at Portrait Professional?
 
Not yet, whats the asking price? :D

Just looked, is £35 a decent price for what it is?
 
Dee, do you have lightroom...? reason I ask is that the prescence > clarity tool when used as a brush does an excellent job of smoothing the skin.

Will send a PM.
 
I do John, but not really getting to grips with it, I always steer back to CS3 :p
 
mr_pants said:
Just a quick, stupid question: have you looked at Portrait Professional?
Click to expand...

Time = money = can't be arsed if ANYTHING takes more than a few minutes

I use PP all the time with older/more sensitive/bad skin peeps - the default is good, but I tend to tone down the face sculpture and skin effects

Otherwise - it's quick, easy and brill = gets my vote any day

:)

DD
 
Betty said:
Not yet, whats the asking price? :D

Just looked, is £35 a decent price for what it is?
Click to expand...

There's a demo. Why not give it a try? I paid for it because I liked it, but haven't actually used it yet. Perhaps I should give portraits a go.
 
Thanks DD and mr pants! Ill try the demo then, see if its any good :thumbs:
 
Have u tried lookin at portraiture plugin has many features and is very quick but it cost a bit more than portrait profesional...
 
The way to do it is manually and it doesn't take that long. I'll try to do this from memory so.....

Clean up any obvious defects like boils, weeping pus-filled sores and hatchet scars using the usual clone/heal methods. Create a duplicate layer. Select the quick mask tool, then a paint brush of a suitable size. Paint the areas of skin you want to smooth - they should start to appear reddish. When done, exit quick mask. Go to top menu > select > inverse (you could avoid this by painting the areas you want to protect rather than smooth but I find it easier this way).

Now go to Guassian Blur and select a highish number, say 10. You can play around with this figure a bit. The idea is to give a plastic doll type of effect.

Now deselect the selection (Ctrl D). Go to the layers pallete - the copy layer should still be active. Click on the Opacity slider and reduce it until you have the skin effect that you are happy with. Make fine local adjustments via the history brush and/or eraser. Certain areas need to be relatively untouched to retain a natural effect, like the edges making up the nose/nostrils, and obviously eyes (or eye if she has only one), eyebrows and lips etc. A bit of practice and you'll find it fairly easy.
 
Cheers MisterE and MD, will take it on board and have a go :thumbs:
 
adamjt7 said:
Have u tried lookin at portraiture plugin has many features and is very quick but it cost a bit more than portrait profesional...
Click to expand...

I find portraiture gives a very artificial, over cooked look. Even their own gallery seems to show this
 
Oh dear, those images on the front page are very fake :shake:
 
I've seen some acceptable/good results from portrait professional. And with enough practice, I've seen some superb results.
Out of the two, I think I would go with Portrait Professional, especially as Diddy Dave makes use of it.

Me? I'm an old fart and go down the traditional route :thumbs:
 
I use many different options, choice is often down to many variables. how bad the skin is, how old the subject is, the subjects sex, what the client wants.

Often all that is needed is the healing tool and a soft layer mask of some sort.

Portrait Proffesional is very good at what it does

Kodak Airbrush is also good but without complex masking it effects the whole image including hair, but is better for the older client, where a more obvious result is needed.

Portature is very quick but like airbrush it effects the whole image, but it can be used to change the look of the lighting, which is what they are trying to show on their gallery liked to on the above post, don't just look at the picture, read the text box and try the before and after buttons.
 
I think i posted this before but if you look through the channels most skin blemishes occur in the blue and green.
If you copy and past the red channel then change the blending mode from 'normal' to 'luminance' you'll end up
with a mostly unblemished porceline look. Then you can adjust the capacity to bring some reality back to the shot...
 
I often use PP when I don't have time to spend in PS and only if the photo lends itself to it. The face sculpting is generally overkill so I usually turn that off and results are mostly acceptable.
 
Portrait professionals very good if you tone everything down a bit especially the face sculpture ( I take all that right off).

Jenny.
 
Thanks everyone, I havent been ignoring you, its been a busy weekend!

Will have a look at all the links and report back :thumbs:
 
You can try a free action called Glamour Blur after you do the blemish cleanup. It can be downloaded from here: http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm. I just started playing with it but it shows potential.

I've found the median filter works a bit better than straight-up gaussian blur as well.

But mainly I use Pro Retouch from Totally Rad Actions. It works quite well, but I don't think you can buy it separately.

-SteveL
 
There are many way to apply skin smoothing. I find I don't stick to any one at the moment. What I do find useful is the best way to create the mask so you don't apply smoothing all over and spend tedious amounts of time paint the mask on/off.
I have a method, but I can't work out the best way to put in writing. It's very easy once you can do it. If you try using channels the red one is almost ideal on its own to apply as the mask. You can also use the method on the TP link on post 12.
 
Ive had a practice with what you've all suggested, some are working out better than others, but Ill keep at it until I find the one :thumbs:
 
Having just read through this I became curious of what a little skin smoothing might do for my skin. I took some head shots of myself last night to use on one of those virtual hairstyle site (time for a new style). The onboard flash was used for quickness, and I was horrified at my skin :lol:

Anyway, reading above someone mentioned Gaussian blur and a light bulb went on. A bit of twiddling and this is what I came up with (watch for a moment or two ;)):

anim_9b5357a6-bb36-3bf4-7163-041b89d4c3c5.gif


The technique needs a little tweaking, and bare in mind this is a 100% crop ... but all I did was create a new copy layer, used Gaussian blur at level 13, set that layers opacity at 60% and using the eraser tool, erased everything but the face on that layer then in places like the eyes and lips and any definition lines. Flattened the layers and hey presto. Like I say, it needs a bit of tweaking, but I'm amazed at the difference that little bit did! If your friend has blemishes I think using the heal/blemish tool before flattening the layers will also solve that problem.

HTH :shrug:

* Disclaimer* I was not drunk when this was taken, just extremely tired :lol:
 
Oh you wouldn't believe how much I'm tutting right now.

Blur, like a hammer to crack a nut. It may be acceptable to the glamour industry, but you can learn better methods that retain skin texture etc.

You can learn to do it properly, without hitting it with Gaussian Blur, with this ebook

http://www.grygarness.com/books/9780955830341.html

If you Have Katrin Eissman's Photo Restoration book, the last chapter is Carrie Beene's skin method.


If you want to press a button, Portraiture, but not with the defaults. It's what I used to use until I learned dodge and burn techniques (that don't use the D&B tools ironically).
 
Jason there is no need to tut at me :D I was simply sharing something I had just discovered :lol:
 
Jo said:
Jason there is no need to tut at me :D I was simply sharing something I had just discovered :lol:
Click to expand...

Jo, please don't think I wasn't tutting at you, just the thread in general :)

Blur's pretty good at masking the flaws, but if you want to print bigger than A4, it's going to show, if you've gone for a crop, then it's going to show even more.

This is a crop of a waist up shot retouched without the use of blur.

Before
20080526_IMGP2819_1.jpg


After

20080526_IMGP2819_edit_1.jpg


Pores, skin grain etc all retained.

It's not as quick as hitting a button though
 
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