Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Getting the balance right The main thing I show on these pages is how to use the paint brush to smooth the skin tones on the face and hands. I happen to prefer using the manual painting approach (rather than relying on a blur filter), because the painting method offers more control over the retouching. An important issue here is how much to retouch? This is mostly down to personal taste. My own personal view is that it is better to fade any painting work that s done and let the natural skin texture show through let there be a few wrinkles and flaws! It is possible to retouch to produce a clean-looking image, but still keep the model looking vaguely human. Beauty retouching Beauty photographs require more intense retouching, and the objective is usually to produce an image where the model s features appear to look flawless. This can be done through a combination of healing and painting brush work. Client: ET Nail Art Model: Karen Gillan @ Bookings Makeup: Camilla Pascucci 1 The top photograph here shows the before version and the one below shows how the same image looked after I had added a new empty layer and carried out some basic spotting work (mostly using the healing brush) to clean up the nails, removed some spots and got rid of unwanted stray hairs. 404
Chapter 8 Image retouching 2 After that I used the COSe LASe command to create a merged copy layer at the top of the layer stack and worked with the paint brush on the merged layer. The trick here was to hold down the O A key to sample a skin tone color and gently paint using low opacity brush strokes with the blend mode set to Lighten. This meant the paint strokes only affected those colors that were darker than the sample color. Similarly, I switched to Darken mode when I wished to darken only those pixels lighter than the paint sample color. This selective method of painting can produce more controlled results compared to using the Normal blend mode. 3 This shows the finished retouched version in which I faded the opacity of the painted layer to 60% and added a layer mask so that I could carefully mask the areas where the paint retouching had spilled over. Lastly, I added a Curves adjustment to lighten the eyes slightly. 405
Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Liquify tools Warp tool (W) Provides a basic warp distortion with which you can stretch the pixels in any direction you wish. Reconstruct tool (R) Used to make selective undos and restore the image to its undistorted state. Twirl clockwise tool (C) Twist the pixels in a clockwise direction. Hold down the O A key to switch tool to twirl in a counterclockwise direction. Pucker tool (S) Shrinks pixels and produces an effect similar to the Pinch filter. Bloat tool (B) Magnifies pixels and is similar to the Bloat filter. Push left tool (O) Shifts the pixels 90 to the left of the direction in which you are dragging. Mirror tool (M) Copies pixels from 90 to the direction you are dragging and therefore acts as an inverting lens. Turbulence tool (T) Produces random turbulent distortions. Freeze mask tool (F) Protects areas of the image. Frozen portions are indicated by a Quick Mask type overlay. These areas are protected from any further liquify distortions. Thaw mask tool (D) Selectively or wholly erases the freeze tool area. Hand tool (H) For scrolling the preview image. Zoom tool (Z) Use to magnify or zoom out. Liquify The Liquify filter is designed to let you carry out freeform pixel distortions. When you choose Filter Liquify, you are presented with what is called a modal dialog, which basically means you are working in a self-contained dialog with its own set of tools and keyboard shortcuts, etc. It is therefore operating like a program within the Photoshop program. To use Liquify efficiently, I suggest you make a marquee selection first of the area you wish to manipulate before you select the filter and, once the dialog has opened, use the C0 L0 shortcut to enlarge the dialog to fit the screen. Basically, you select one of the Liquify tools to manipulate the image preview and when you are happy with your liquify work, click E or R to OK the pixel manipulation. This will then calculate and apply the liquify adjustment to the main image. The Liquify tools are all explained in the column on the left and the chart shown in Figure 8.10 also summarizes the effect each of these tools will have on an image. The easiest of these to get to grips with is the warp tool, which allows you to simply click and drag to push the pixels in the direction you want them to go in. However, I also like working with the push left tool, because it lets me carry out some quite bold warp adjustments. Note that when you drag with the push left tool it shifts the pixels 90 to the left of the direction you are dragging in and when you O A drag with this tool it will shift the pixels 90 to the right. The pucker tool is sometimes useful for correcting overdistorted areas and squeezing the pixels inwards again. The reflection tool is perhaps the most unwieldy of all, as it copies pixels from 90 to the direction you are dragging and therefore acts like an inverting lens, which if you are not careful will easily rip an image apart! Apparently, retouchers who work on adult magazines are fond of working with the turbulence tool. This is for reasons I have yet to fathom and probably inappropriate for me to enquire about further in this book! 406
Chapter 8 Image retouching Warp tool Reconstruct tool Twirl tool Twirl tool (with O A key held down) Pucker tool Bloat tool Push left tool Mirror tool Turbulence tool Figure 8.10 These illustrations give you an idea of the range of distortion effects that can be achieved using the Liquify tools described on page 406. Freeze mask tool Thaw mask tool 407
Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers One step at a time The key to working successfully with the Liquify filter is to use gradual brush movements to build up a distortion. This is why I prefer to set the Brush Pressure at an extremely low setting and use a Wacom pad to apply the liquify brush strokes, with the Stylus Pressure option selected. Liquify shortcut Prior to CS4 you could access Liquify using the CSx LSx shortcut. This has now been removed in CS4, but you can easily reset this as a custom keyboard shortcut. Figure 811Th 8.11 The Liquify if dialog options. The Reconstruct Options are shown circled here. Liquify tool controls Once you have selected a tool you will want to check out the associated tool options, which are shown in Figure 8.11. All the tools (apart from the hand and zoom tool) are displayed as a circular cursor with a crosshair in the middle. The tool options are applied universally to all the tools and these include: Brush Size, Brush Density, Brush Pressure and Brush Rate. If you mouse down on the double-arrow icon next to the field entry box, this will pop a dynamic slider which can be used to adjust the settings. You can also use the square bracket keys [ ] to enlarge or reduce the tool cursor size, and the rate of increase/ decrease can be accelerated by holding down the S key. I highly recommend that you use a pressure-sensitive pen and pad such as the Wacom system and, if you do so, make sure that the Stylus Pressure option is checked and set the brush pressure to around 10 20%. Note that the Turbulent Jitter control is only active when the turbulence tool is selected. In this context the jitter refers to the amount of randomness that will be introduced in a turbulence distortion applied with this tool. Reconstructions Next we have the Reconstruct Options. The standard mode is Revert and if you apply a Liquify distortion and click on the Reconstruct button, the image will be restored to its undistorted state in gradual stages each time you click the button (while preserving any areas that have been frozen with the freeze tool). If you click on the Restore All button the entire image will be restored in one step (ignoring any frozen areas). The default Revert mode produces scaled reversions that return you to the original image state in the preview window. However, there are some alternative options which are more relevant once you have created a frozen area. For example, the Rigid mode provides one-click reconstruction. Stiff, Smooth and Loose provide varying speeds of continual reconstruction, producing smoother transitions between the frozen and unfrozen areas as you revert the image. You can use or 408
Chapter 8 Image retouching C. L. to halt the reconstruction at an intermediate stage (but do avoid applying this shortcut twice, as this will exit the Liquify dialog and you ll lose all your work!) Another way to reconstruct the image is to click on the options triangle in the Reconstruct Options and select one of the options from the list. This will pop a dialog control like the one shown in Figure 8.12, which will allow you to use a slider to determine what percentage of reconstruction you would like. The reconstruction can also be achieved using the reconstruct tool to selectively restore the image. Mask options The mask options can utilize an existing selection, layer transparency or a layer mask as the basis of a mask to freeze and constrain the effects of any Liquify adjustments. The first option is Replace Selection and this replaces any existing freeze selection that has been made. The other four options allow you to modify an existing freeze selection by adding to, subtracting from, intersecting or creating an inverted selection. You can then click on the buttons below. Choosing None clears all freeze selections, choosing Mask All freezes the entire area, and choosing Invert All inverts the current frozen selection. Multiple undos in Liquify Don t forget that you also have multiple undos at your disposal while inside the Liquify dialog. Use Cz Lz to undo or redo the last step; COz LAz to go back in history, and CSz LSz to go forward in history. Figure 8.12 You can control the exact amount by which an image is reconstructed to its original state by going to the Reconstruct Options and selecting the desired reconstruction mode. Figure 8.13 Freeze masks can be used to protect areas of a picture before you commence doing any liquify work. In the example shown here a freeze mask was loaded from a layer mask. When you freeze an area in this way it is protected from subsequent distortions so you can concentrate on applying the Liquify tools to just those areas you wish to distort. Frozen mask areas can be unfrozen by using the thaw mask tool. 409