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How to soften a portrait picture ? (pic. sample)

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Here is mine. PS CS work 10 minutes. blur tool, distort, brighten and add shadow.

Hope you like. Friday night have to start drinking.

Cheers
Adam


myalhi said:
I see a lot of very good portraits (especially on the walls of
professional photographers' studios) that are very well softened
and the skin looks very smooth and clean. I have tried that with PS
CS but could not even come close. All I could do with PS CS is to
blur the picture but the ones I saw was sharp pictures with soft
skin tones. When I ask them how they achiece this result, they say
they are doing some retouching with software, that's all. If that
is not a big secret, I would really love to learn how to soften the
portrait pictures without blurring them. Here is one for you guys
to play with it and teach me how. I highly appreciate any help,
PLEASE...



--
Mehmet
http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi

Click to expand...
--
Adam-R
 
Where I can find snap shot on Photoshop CS?
Thanks.
VG said:
VG said:
myalhi said:
I see a lot of very good portraits (especially on the walls of
professional photographers' studios) that are very well softened
and the skin looks very smooth and clean. I have tried that with PS
CS but could not even come close. All I could do with PS CS is to
blur the picture but the ones I saw was sharp pictures with soft
skin tones. When I ask them how they achiece this result, they say
they are doing some retouching with software, that's all. If that
is not a big secret, I would really love to learn how to soften the
portrait pictures without blurring them. Here is one for you guys
to play with it and teach me how. I highly appreciate any help,
PLEASE...



--
Mehmet
http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Freckles or not, the model is beautiful.

I ran the softening action that I posted earlier....with a low opacity....then duplicated the layer and selectively sharpened the eyes, hair, lips and teeth.

 
Getting the orangey/yellow cast out took me longer than any other part of this. What I ended up with is obviously a retouch (something I've always tried to avoid). I think the reason for that is mainly due to the reasons others have mentioned here, it took a lot of work to overcome the makeup/colors. That and I went a little overboard on cloning out natural imperfections.

I can't give a quick summary of the steps I took, not because I don't want to share or anything, but because I took about a million steps, I never do any pictures the same way twice. I spent several hours on this, way more than I should have.... if I had taken time to record my steps, it would have taken me at least 10... and for all I knew when I started, it might not turn out well enough to bother recording my steps in the first place.

But for anyone wanting to know what I did, I can give some generalities in describing the things that had the most effect on the outcome.

I first ran levels with the dark point and light point, to get the luminosity as best I could. Then I started working on the color, first by going back to the (adjustment layer) level's middle gray dropper. I also resorted to auto color, some red-green-blue curves, and I did some selective coloring by hand.

Along the way I gave her face some lightening with diffuse glow, and some more tweaking using curves on luminosity and each color channel. All the while, I'm trying out blending modes, lowering opacities, masking out parts of layers, merging the layers, etc... I used the clone stamp tool and healing brush a lot too.

These are the main things I remember, I know it's kind of vague, but again, it was a very lengthy process.

Thanks for providing the picture, Mehmet, I really enjoyed working on it. I'm not really sure if it's softened or not, but I agree with you about not wanting blur.

In case the color is off, here is my excuse: my monitor is not feeling well, it could be about to die. I don't want to go back to my old backup monitor, I'm trying to hang in there with this one.

Bob Quinn


myalhi said:
I see a lot of very good portraits (especially on the walls of
professional photographers' studios) that are very well softened
and the skin looks very smooth and clean. I have tried that with PS
CS but could not even come close. All I could do with PS CS is to
blur the picture but the ones I saw was sharp pictures with soft
skin tones. When I ask them how they achiece this result, they say
they are doing some retouching with software, that's all. If that
is not a big secret, I would really love to learn how to soften the
portrait pictures without blurring them. Here is one for you guys
to play with it and teach me how. I highly appreciate any help,
PLEASE...



--
Mehmet
http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi

Click to expand...
 
Kent .

I guess I don't understand your response.

I go to mayalhi's web site: http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi/photos/photo_5.html ......and take the original from there. (There is no larger file size listed).

I import this image in PS. I convert it into jpg. I post it on a gallery site that I specifically use for this forum. I then list the URL in my post.

What shows up has the jaggies. It's not the clear, clean image that mayalhi posted.

I need step-by-step instructions.

I appreciate your time,

--
Ron in Italy
 
Bob Quinn said:
I can't give a quick summary of the steps I took, not because I
don't want to share or anything, but because I took about a million
steps, I never do any pictures the same way twice. I spent several
hours on this, way more than I should have.... if I had taken time
to record my steps, it would have taken me at least 10... and for
all I knew when I started, it might not turn out well enough to
bother recording my steps in the first place.

But for anyone wanting to know what I did, I can give some
generalities in describing the things that had the most effect on
the outcome.

I first ran levels with the dark point and light point, to get the
luminosity as best I could. Then I started working on the color,
first by going back to the (adjustment layer) level's middle gray
dropper. I also resorted to auto color, some red-green-blue
curves, and I did some selective coloring by hand.

Along the way I gave her face some lightening with diffuse glow,
and some more tweaking using curves on luminosity and each color
channel. All the while, I'm trying out blending modes, lowering
opacities, masking out parts of layers, merging the layers, etc...
I used the clone stamp tool and healing brush a lot too.

These are the main things I remember, I know it's kind of vague,
but again, it was a very lengthy process.

Thanks for providing the picture, Mehmet, I really enjoyed working
on it. I'm not really sure if it's softened or not, but I agree
with you about not wanting blur.

In case the color is off, here is my excuse: my monitor is not
feeling well, it could be about to die. I don't want to go back to
my old backup monitor, I'm trying to hang in there with this one.

Bob Quinn


myalhi said:
I see a lot of very good portraits (especially on the walls of
professional photographers' studios) that are very well softened
and the skin looks very smooth and clean. I have tried that with PS
CS but could not even come close. All I could do with PS CS is to
blur the picture but the ones I saw was sharp pictures with soft
skin tones. When I ask them how they achiece this result, they say
they are doing some retouching with software, that's all. If that
is not a big secret, I would really love to learn how to soften the
portrait pictures without blurring them. Here is one for you guys
to play with it and teach me how. I highly appreciate any help,
PLEASE...



--
Mehmet
http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Kent
http://www.pbase.com/kentc
 
ronald louis said:
Kent .

I guess I don't understand your response.

I go to mayalhi's web site:
http://www.yalhi.com/myalhi/photos/photo_5.html ......and take
the original from there. (There is no larger file size listed).

I import this image in PS. I convert it into jpg. I post it on a
gallery site that I specifically use for this forum. I then list
the URL in my post.

What shows up has the jaggies. It's not the clear, clean image that
mayalhi posted.

I need step-by-step instructions.

I appreciate your time,
Click to expand...
Ok. All I can tell you is my own experience from pbase. I u/l an image there (in jpg) and it creates 3 or 4 sizes s,m,l, and orig. Usually when I embed an image here, I leave off the size parameter. I copy the address from the url and paste here and then add .jpg it has no size parameter, but usually will show up here as a 'large'. (or in some cases - certain cameras - there will be no 'large' but just s, m, and original, although the medium in that case looks like most of my 'larges'.) In some cases, the large/medium shows artifacts that don't show in the original as you may have seen in my last post if you clicked on the images - the large has some 'cyan/blur' near the nose and on the cheek, can have jaggies, and when oversharpened halos and rainbow like colors everywhere, posterization in the skies, esp if the gradient tool was used, whereas the original does not.

If at your site there is only the one size 'original', then I'm not sure what's happening. When you embed, is it the same size as the original at your site? If so, I don't know where the jaggies would come from. If not, then the resizing is being done in the scripting software at dpr - it does this when there is no size parameter in the url.

You should try two posts - one with the url with 'original' in it and one without. My guess is that the original will look fine here (although large) - the others you've posted have looked good to me - and the other will have the jaggies or some discoloration from compression.

Nice retouch on the second pic, btw.
--
Kent
http://www.pbase.com/kentc
 
original=



my touch up version=



Since this thread is really only about skin ill just focus on that, but I always notice dozens of pictures that soften "everything" when doing a touchup. A girl with gleeming eyes will always jump out at you more imo. I used a custom Photoshop CS action I created (for girls skin) with USM radius's of a mere .3 pixels at 200% along with lvls and curves adjustments to reduce skin glare and blend the obvious skin pores. My result isnt dramatic but imo its somewhat natural and still model-like at the same time.

To finish my photo, I would: (actuall all this would be "before" the skin adjustments)
  1. 1. Work on her eyebrows
  2. 2. Whiten her teeth (one obvious ugly yellow spot on middle tooth)
  3. 3. Perhaps remove a few veins in her eyes a bit.
  4. 4. Clean up the stray hairs to her right (our left).
Also, something about her "lack" of freckles on her chin almost makes it look like a bit "too" touched up even though I didnt go near that area with Photoshop CS save for a few tiny spots. Given the time, I would balance the nose and chin a bit more (ie add or remove freckles with the patch tool).

Im starting to enjoy this - I almost bought a wacom pad from newegg.com the other day for Photoshop CS.
 
I got it to look better by saving it in jpg at "Dimension : 512kbps" under the options for saving jpgs. This is an option i had never thought about before... but pushing it up to 512 seems to have made the difference.

Thanks for your help,
--
Ron in Italy
 
ronald louis said:
I got it to look better by saving it in jpg at "Dimension :
512kbps" under the options for saving jpgs. This is an option i had
never thought about before... but pushing it up to 512 seems to
have made the difference.
Click to expand...
Yeah. It looks good - I almost always 'save as' at level 8 for the web out of 12 in CS. That will make a difference too. I'm assuming that you don't have different sizes at photobucket or don't have them create different sizes, because that can make a difference.

--
Kent
http://www.pbase.com/kentc
 
Ingrid: The eyes are a bit much. What I think would help here would be a bit more shading in the corners of the whites and under the upper eye-lid. That would soften things and cut down on the "stare".

Believe it or not, I didn't isolate the eyes and sharpen them.... I did a global sharpening before setting on the retouch, and if I were doing this over again, I'd pull back on that. I have a hard time judging sharpening when working on low rez images. I brought out the irisis' by slightly changing their colour and lighting, and perhaps I'd pull back on that too. I also changed the lip colour to a lighter, fleshier tone and that also puts more emphasis on the eyes.

The make-up: I have to say that for a magazine cover, this is the kind of eye I might have the make-up artist do... even for a young model. Remember its fashion, it's a magazine cover.... not a portrait . And if this were a winter edition of a high-end Vogue type mag..... it could easily be pumped up even more. If anything I'd cut down slightly on the smooth skin and introduce more skin grain.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Your observations are much appreciated and help me to think things through.

Best,

Ron in Italy
 
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