Retouching Skin

PF268 · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 8:21 am Post subject: Retouching Skin

Hey everyone, I do a lot of portrait photography and usually spend a lot of time in photoshop making subtle changes to the picture. The thing that takes the most time is skin correction. Currently I use the patch tool, zoom in, and manually take away every little bump and color difference. Then I do the same thing on a new layer to completely remove bags under the eyes and deep creases around the mouth and nose but blend that layer at a lower opacity so It doesn't completely get rid of the lines.

Anyway my question is this : How does everyone else retouch skin here in a REALISTIC way that is still reasonably quick? I've tried quick fixes that usually include some sort of blurring using filters... but they either turn out really obvious, don't fix enough, or get close enough results to mine but still take just as long...

I'm open to any suggestions, plug-ins or otherwise.

If this helps I'll post what I like and what I don't like for those that don't understand what I mean...

Auieos · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 5:52 pm Post subject:

You should see my smudge jobs if you think yours looks fake LOL

'Auto FX mystical tint tone and colour' and 'Portrait Professional' are two plugins you may want to have a look at.

niftyned · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 6:48 am Post subject:

Redfield do a plug in called perfectum that seems ok. They have a demo version you can try out. Alien skin image doctor is ok as well. There are plenty of plug ins that would suit your purposes and most have a free trial so you can find the one that works best for you.

thehermit · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:43 am Post subject:

I would steer clear of 'out of the box' solutions to skin smoothing, it really depends on the individual image.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=316 this is the technique that can most often be employed for a variety of images.

or...

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=209

There are many ways to smooth skin and blemishes in Photoshop.

niftyned · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:02 am Post subject:

From his post I got that he already knows how to do it the proper way but he was looking for something to speed things up a bit. I normally apply one of these plugins and then tweak it to improve the result. It can cut a lot of time off if you are doing multiple images.

PF268 · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:38 am Post subject:

Thanks guys, I'm gonna try those suggestions out and let you know how it goes. And yea, I know how to retouch the "right" way but lately I've had sooo many pictures to do that there just isn't time to do that.

miloinperth · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:33 pm Post subject:

unfortunately, after many tries at various different plugins etc, there just is no quick shortcut to natural looking skin.

Zonexl · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:48 pm Post subject:

niftyned · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:42 pm Post subject:

I have to disagree. The filter used in the first image shortcuts a lot of work and then can be tweaked quickly to put some texture back into the skin. I masked the face and just added some soft grain. I spent about 2 minutes on it. If you spend 10 minutes and play with the size and amount of grain you could achieve a lot more natural skin finish.

niftyned · Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 12:18 am Post subject:

This is extreme but it is just to show how much natural texture is available in the original image. This is nothing more than an adjustment to the lighting to increase the shadows that already exist. as I said before some minor tweaks to restore some texture to skin after applying the plugin and you can cut hours off your workload.

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