Smooth/Silky look finish

Pegasus_Thrust

Pegasus_Thrust

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Hi this might be a daft question and it's one I'm struggling to phrase correctly but here goes.....

I'm seeing a lot of peoples work, namely wedding photos that has a certain silky smooth look finish to them that really sets them off.

I currently use LR and a bit of gimp where necessary to finish my pics but I can't put my finger on what it is that produces that silky look.

Does anyone know what I mean?...... Can anyone perhaps shed any light on it?


for example, this great set of shots seems to have elements of that finish to them:
http://www.mjphotography.org.uk/tunbridge-wells-wedding-photographer-eridge-park-emily-henry/

.....my photos aren't too bad but they all seem to have a bit of a matt finish
 
Well I wouldn't describe any of that lot silky smooth, they're all very high contrast and saturated. you describe your photos as matt looking so could you be having problems with a lack of contrast and saturation, possibly overexposure? Why not post an example and we'll try and compare for you?
 
As above he's defiantly added sat, he has also lifted the shadows, try bringing up a curve layer and lifting the left most of the line up about a square (if your on PS and got the small grid on)

I dont know what he was shooting with but I looked at the picture of the champagne poring and he has some bad CA going on there, nice pics tho :)
 
Those photos aren't all processed the same way, IMO. Some of them look as if they'd had a white fill layer put on top with a low transparency. Could that be what you're seeing? Some photos look 'silky smooth' because they've had a surface blur applied.
 
If I want or need to apply softness or smoothing to an image, especially skin, I use a short action I made a while ago.

To create the action,
Open the image in PS,
Open the actions pallet,
Click the new action icon at the bottom of the pallet, (it looks like a piece of paper with the bottom left corner folded up),
In the pop up panel that appears name the action SMOOTHMASK, OK.
Now start the action recording by clicking the triangular start button at the bottom of the pallet, its two to the left of the new action icon.

Now with the action recording,

Copy the background layer, rename it SOFTMASK, then change the blending mode to overlay, this increases the contrast and saturation.
Now apply a high pass filter, (filter-other-high pass) set to 8 pixels, OK.
Invert, (image-adjustments-invert).

AT THIS POINT, THE RESULT LOOKS OVER THE TOP.

Stop the action recording by clicking the stop button; it’s the square button on the left at the bottom of the pallet.
The action is now ready to use on any image at your convenience.

The softness can now be controlled with the opacity slider. I find that the lower the opacity setting the better.

If you only want to soften or smooth a section of an image, perhaps a young persons face.

Then.

Add a layer mask and with the foreground colour set to black, the background set to white and then using soft round brush set at 25% opacity paint over the eyes, mouth, nostrils etc gradually bringing back the sharpness wanted, by masking the softness. Swapping to white using the X key to paint away any errors made.
If the rest of an image is to be sharp,
Then still in the mask
Enlarge the brush and increase the opacity, paint over the rest of the image leaving only the skin of the face and neck to appear soft.

Rhodese.

PS, I’ve never used Gimp but I assume it has actions.
 
Last edited:
Brilliant! Thanks for asking the question OP and thanks Rhodese - this is exactly what I was looking for! Works perfectly!
 
Your welcome. :thumbs:
Rhodese.
 
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