smoothing out the skin on a persons face in adobe

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missmoloko

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Hi

Is there a quick fix as in one or two simple clicks to cleaning up a persons face on a portrait. At present I have portrait professional but it takes a while to load in - dont get me wrong it doesnt take ages but i'm still looking for a quicker simpler solution.

Any suggestions!

Miss moloko:)
 
i might listen to a bit of Moloko for a change :)
 
No real quick fix but if you make a duplicate layer (turn off the background layer by clicking on the eye icon on the layers palette) now with the erasier tool on the duplicate layer eriise all the picture except the skin part (so you have a sort of mask thing) now add a little blur to that (turn on the background layer first) and ajust the blur untill it looks ok.
Not a quick fix but it only takes a minute or so, you havent got to be exact with the mask part, you can also ajust layer opacity to fine tune the effect.

8274926180_9ac0716862_b.jpg
 
Thank you i'll have a go at that. So you dont know of any plugins then with a simple slide of a slider bar to get the effect you want.

Miss moloko
 
missmoloko said:
Thank you i'll have a go at that. So you dont know of any plugins then with a simple slide of a slider bar to get the effect you want.

Miss moloko
Click to expand...

The clarity slider in Lightroom does a fairly good job.
 
IMVHO when it comes to skin retouching you can either do it quickly or you can do it right.

If it takes too long to load portrait professional, then maybe you should look at the power of your processing machine, or the number of images you are retouching to that level, or at which point you do it in your workflow ?

If they are all sold images then I would have thought waiting for a plug-in to load wouldn't be an issue.
 
There are some great techniques in the Scott Kelby book "Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers " - you might find some demos in his Youtube channel or demonstrated by other people on You Tube. They vary from a few minutes to 15 minutes depending on how many steps he does.
 
mhuk said:
There are some great techniques in the Scott Kelby book "Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers " - you might find some demos in his Youtube channel or demonstrated by other people on You Tube. They vary from a few minutes to 15 minutes depending on how many steps he does.
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15 Minutes !! Then my "a few hours" would be way to slow then :D
 
missmoloko said:
Thank you i'll have a go at that. So you dont know of any plugins then with a simple slide of a slider bar to get the effect you want.

Miss moloko
Click to expand...

There Imagenomic portrait pro which is fairly simply to use it's a plug-in for photoshop (and not free)
 
meonshore said:
IMVHO when it comes to skin retouching you can either do it quickly or you can do it right.

If it takes too long to load portrait professional, then maybe you should look at the power of your processing machine, or the number of images you are retouching to that level, or at which point you do it in your workflow ?

If they are all sold images then I would have thought waiting for a plug-in to load wouldn't be an issue.
Click to expand...

I don't think the OP meant the load up speed, I think they meant the time to set up the matrix after opening the program (I could be wrong)
 
Yes sorry I meant the time it takes in portrait professional to click on all the points on the face before you get started.
 
missmoloko said:
Yes sorry I meant the time it takes in portrait professional to click on all the points on the face before you get started.
Click to expand...

Ah OK - haven't used it so I didn't appreciate that.

You should take a look at Imagenomic Portraiture. I use it for my portrait work, in fact I just retouched 34 images using it this evening.

It is a plug-in, and once loaded up you simply sample the skin and it shows you the mask it will create in a small are of the screen. If you move the dropper and re-sample is shows it again. You can select the degree of smoothing with sliders.

I do still retouch major blemishes by hand with the heal and clone tool, but this does with care knock out the minor stuff and keep the skin tone and texture.

It isn't cheap - but it is one of my most used plug-in investments and worth it.
 
Yes sounds like what im looking for. I would still take out spots etc by hand just want something quick and easy to smooth out the skin. I'll have a trial. How long did it take to do 34 images?
 
meonshore said:
You should take a look at Imagenomic Portraiture. I use it for my portrait work, in fact I just retouched 34 images using it this evening.

It is a plug-in, and once loaded up you simply sample the skin and it shows you the mask it will create in a small are of the screen. If you move the dropper and re-sample is shows it again. You can select the degree of smoothing with sliders.

I do still retouch major blemishes by hand with the heal and clone tool, but this does with care knock out the minor stuff and keep the skin tone and texture.

It isn't cheap - but it is one of my most used plug-in investments and worth it.
Click to expand...

This looks worth looking at, most of the time I am put off plugins etc by the very overdone smoothing pictures they show on their websites but these look quite good :thumbs:
 
missmoloko said:
Yes sounds like what im looking for. I would still take out spots etc by hand just want something quick and easy to smooth out the skin. I'll have a trial. How long did it take to do 34 images?
Click to expand...

To load the plug-in, with my saved settings, select the right skin tone, process the image (automatically) and return to Photoshop - about 1 minute each.

But before that I knock out the major blemishes and do any other retouching I need to before I use imagenomic to even out the skin. The time it takes me to do that depends entirely on the nature of the image and the subject.

Kerioak said:
This looks worth looking at, most of the time I am put off plugins etc by the very overdone smoothing pictures they show on their websites but these look quite good
Click to expand...

As with everything to do with photography the power of the tools can often exceed the skills of the photographer. You can sledgehammer an image either through a lack of retouching ability, patience or a lack of understanding of the tool.

It is perfectly possible with Imagenomic to produce well retouched images with skin tone, and texture remaining. It is equally possible to create something that looks like they have been wrapped in clingfilm.
 
That is exactly what I was looking for when I submitted the thread.

I've also been told about Nik software colour effects pro for the skin softening. Does anyone know which is better imagenomic or the colour effects pro ?

miss moloko
 
I am also looking at the plugin for portraits, also the noise one.
Does any-one know if the plugins work with Elements 10, or do I need full Photoshop.
I have Lightroom also.
 
Ahh, OK, just found it. They will both work with Elements too.
 
missmoloko said:
That is exactly what I was looking for when I submitted the thread.

I've also been told about Nik software colour effects pro for the skin softening. Does anyone know which is better imagenomic or the colour effects pro ?

miss moloko
Click to expand...

I do have both.

Imagenomic is specifically designed for skin smoothing/retouching and so every $ you are spending on that product is for that piece of technology. It is a specialist tool.

The one filter in Nik that does the retouch does work but IMVHO not to the same degree as Imagenomic - it doesn't have the same algorithms specifically designed to identify skin and really you are paying for the other filters as well with those $. Not that the other 54 filters don't make it a good product or value for money.

Personally I'd go for the specialist product and get the best you can.

If you want effect filters then maybe get Nik later on.
 
Why not look at the tutorial I did for TP here

It still works and it is as powerful as you want it to be.
 
I learned my technique from Guy Gowan and it works amazingly yet takes very little time (or expensive plugins). Involves knowing how to use channel masks and it helps if you use a tablet as well. I can photoshop skin in around 5 mins making it look great but still natural.
 
decigallen said:
I learned my technique from Guy Gowan and it works amazingly yet takes very little time (or expensive plugins). Involves knowing how to use channel masks and it helps if you use a tablet as well. I can photoshop skin in around 5 mins making it look great but still natural.
Click to expand...

I like the Guy Gowan technique but one thing you fail to add, it is not free because you have to buy his DVD or be part of his tutorial network. (unless you obtain it by devious means of course!)
 
Weeeeellllll, actually.... I got it for free legitimately. He presented a seminar at a conference I was at. It was such a simple and effective technique that I only needed to see him do it once. I've modified and refined how I use it over the last year and its brilliant. What's important to me is that it gives natural looking results.
 
decigallen said:
Weeeeellllll, actually.... I got it for free legitimately. He presented a seminar at a conference I was at. It was such a simple and effective technique that I only needed to see him do it once. I've modified and refined how I use it over the last year and its brilliant. What's important to me is that it gives natural looking results.
Click to expand...

So how about a tutorial to show us how it's done? :)
If you have modified it to a technique that works for you, you would be sharing your technique, and not his.
 
decigallen said:
Weeeeellllll, actually.... I got it for free legitimately. He presented a seminar at a conference I was at. It was such a simple and effective technique that I only needed to see him do it once. I've modified and refined how I use it over the last year and its brilliant. What's important to me is that it gives natural looking results.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I forgot that one, I have seen it at a conference too.
 
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