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Seeking guidance, portrait retouching techniques

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Lylejk - Very nice!
 
Sam B - looks very natural. Really nice.
 






My try, 2 views:
 
I'm overwhelmed. You've taken my mundane snapshot and made my daughter look like a beauty queen and me like a real portrait photographer. Responses to individual posts follow.
 
Allen Gerdes said:
I think that with a little work, the first image makes a nice business headshot. First, I am not a big fan of the wrinkled muslin backdrops, unless the backdrop is blurred. I extracted and replaced the background using Topaz Remask. I also, did some skin softening and lightening of the dark areas below her eyes and also enhanced the eyes. Finally, I applied a warming/glamour filter and lightened the highlights in the hair slightly.
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Beautiful, Allen. My daughter would like to use your retouched photo on her website if you have no objection. I agree, the wrinkled backdrop had to go; next time I'll use a larger aperture to blur it. I googled Topaz Remask. I like the way you softened/lightened the skin, enhanced the eyes, and the warming/glamour filter. Can you tell me more about how you did it?

Again, thanks.
Brian
 
lylejk said:
Tried my best not to go overboard (trust me; I can make her look like she's 21 if you want me too). Do a search here (or elsewhere) on degrunging. I did apply some degrunging but kept her character intact (to my mind's eye of course). Added some soft glow fill flash to also soften her skin some (call it a simulated beauty dish effect). I then added vignetting to cause the subject to stand out from the background. :)
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Very nice work, Lyle. I searched degrunging as you suggested and found another of your posts discussing GIMP and the Wavelet Decompose plugin. Do you use GIMP exclusively in lieu of Photoshop, or is the plugin usable in Photoshop as well? Can you tell me more about the soft glow fill flash and vignetting? Your work inspires me, and I must learn to do this sort of retouching.

Again, thanks,
Brian
 
mikes said:
A bit of Portrait Professional and Corel. The black hair needed separation from BG, skin smoothing and sharpening applied.



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Very nice, Mike. I like your choice of background. The work on the face is excellent. If Portrait Professional is your tool of choice, I probably want it; I see it sells for $26.95, which looks very reasonable. I currently have Photoshop and Lightroom; would you recommend switching to Corel? Is Portrait Professional usable with Photoshop?

Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or did you enlarge Lynne's eyes, botox her upper lip and give her a nose job? If so, kudos to your artistic judgement; you've created a beautiful woman. :)

Thanks for the effort and guidance,
Brian
 
Excellent work, Pixel, and on the other shot as well. Can you tell me a bit about how you did it? I truly admire your artistic judgement. What tool(s) did you use?

Many thanks,
Brian
 
tom60634 said:
For a corporate type photo the background should be smoothed.

Your original lighting seemed to emphasize her character lines, thus aging her appearance. The skin needed to be smoothed but keep her natural texture.

The original lighting was verging on a low-key attempt, the facial shadows needed to be lifted to keep your daughter from aging too soon.
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Nice work, Tom, and thanks for the comments on lighting. My lighting technique is a work in progress; "emphasizing her character lines" is exactly what I want to avoid. If you have additional advice, I welcome it.

Thanks,
Brian
 
longboard said:
Excellent work, Pixel, and on the other shot as well. Can you tell me a bit about how you did it? I truly admire your artistic judgement. What tool(s) did you use?

Many thanks,
Brian
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I thought your lighting was fine no problem there but the wrinkled background had to go, also a small adjustment to the white balance.

The rest was clean up of the skin, healing for small things and healing for wrinkles, this should be done on a new layer at full strength and then have the opacity of the layer lowered to bring back some detail.

Next dodge and burn to clean up skin and help with the shape of the face, I do it on a new layer filled with 50% gray and then paint with white to dodge and black to burn.

Darkened the edges of the eyes to give the impression of lashes.

Not sure but I might have done a glow to the picture with Nik filters but if you don't have it make a new composite layer, set to softlight mode and apply a blur to taste and adjust the opacity of the layer, that should help to soften the skin.
 
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