Realistic Skin Smoothing

Transcription

1 TIP SHEET #7 Realistic Skin Smoothing I think it s fair to say when it comes to retouching techniques, the number of different ways to smooth skin is seemingly endless. From blurring techniques through to 3rd Party Plug Ins, all will produce different results however when it comes to portrait retouching the goal should ultimately be smooth skin that retains a level of texture and ultimately looks realistic. In this tutorial I want to take you through a technique that I turn to again and gain because it does exactly that; maintains texture, looks realistic but also give you, the Photographer / Retoucher total control over how much of the effect you wish to apply depend on the subject.

2 Step 1: Vivid Light Blend Mode With you image open in Photoshop, let s start off by creating a duplicate layer by going LAYER > NEW > LAYER VIA COPY or by using the keyboard shortcut Command/CTRL + J and then rename it Smooth Skin. We do this so that our original is safe but also, as you ll see later, so that we can use it to control exactly how smooth we want the skin to be. Step 2: Vivid Light Blend Mode Now that we have a duplicate of our original image in the layers panel, start by changing it s Blend Mode to Vivid Light. This will create what looks like a very high contrast version of our picture but next go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS and then INVERT or simply use the keyboard shortcut of Command/CTRL + I Step 3: High Pass Filter Next go the FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS and for a high resolution picture a pixel radius of around 20 will be perfect (For lower resolution images you ll need to add in a lower amount). We now need to add a small amount of blur, so go to FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR and for high resolution images a pixel radius of around 3 is all we need.

3 Step 4: Blend Options The actual smoothing has been applied however at this stage you ll see that our picture doesn t look quite right and we ve lost the highlights and blacks in the all important areas. So the next step here is to click on the fx icon at the bottom of the layers panel and choose Blending Options from the pop up menu. Step 5: Blend If (Part 1) Within the Blending Options are the Blend If sliders and we can now use these to bring the image back to looking normal but also retain the smoothness we have applied. First off we ll be using the upper most Blend If slider labelled This Layer. With the Option/ALT key held down click on the black marker to the far right. This splits the marker in half so now drag the one half across to the right until you get a reading of approximately 0/200

4 Step 6: Blend If (Part 2) The previous step brought back some of the lighter parts of the image so now we need to being back the darker areas, certainly around the eyes, nose and mouth. To do this, whilst again holding down the Option/ALT key click on the white marker to the far right to split it in half and then drag it to the left until you get a reading of approximately 60/255. Step 7: Layer Mask At this stage our entire picture has the smoothing applied to it, including our subjects hair, teeth and the background. Also the smoothing / softening is actually a little too much at this stage so we now need to restrict where the effect is applied and also reduce it to the desired amount. To do this simply hold down the Option/ALT key and click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel. This hides the smoothing. Then with a soft white brush at 100% opacity paint the effect back in over the skin then lower the opacity of the layer to around 40%

5 Step 8: Contrast We ve now given our subject smooth skin and also maintained a realistic amount of detail and texture and indeed you could stop at this point and carry on with other areas of retouching you may wish to do. However I do find that adding in a touch more contrast at this stage finishes the smoothing effect quite nicely and I do this by firstly creating a merged/stamp layer at the top of the layer stack by going to SELECT > ALL > EDIT > COPY MERGED > EDIT > PASTE and then FILTER > SHARPEN > UNSHARP MASK. Amount of 10%, Radius 10 and Threshold 0 works just fine. CHECK OUT MY YOUTUBE PAGE FOR 100 S OF FREE TUTORIALS