Editing portraits using CS2

[…] Most of my portraiture clients are older and female. Typically they have been lifelong smokers with an unending battle with sobriety.

[…] what I need now are tips and tricks I can
use in Photoshop that will allow me to really bring out the true beauty of these women. They deserve special treatment because not only are they hard working, kind and usually mothers, but they will be giving me a larger portion of their revenue than most clients other photographers concentrate on. […]

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[…] Most of my portraiture clients are older and female. Typically they have been lifelong smokers with an unending battle with sobriety.

[…] what I need now are tips and tricks I can
use in Photoshop that will allow me to really bring out the true beauty of these women. They deserve special treatment because not only are they hard working, kind and usually mothers, but they will be giving me a larger portion of their revenue than most clients other photographers concentrate on. […]

I humbly suggest you do as much as you can in-camera. Soft portraiture is an age-old art with a great number of resources. It was rarely done very well, but when done right it was amazing. They used very little post-photo touchup. You shouldn’t have to Photoshop much at all. Period.
Here’s the beginning trick – find a true portrait lens. Soft imaging is not simply ‘fuzzy’. A true portrait lens exploits intentional, variable spherical aberration in three spatial dimensions. One cannot possibly replicate excellent soft work in Photoshop because Photoshop has no knowledge of the dimensions.

Then, of course, there’s correct lighting – another thing CS cannot create.
If you wish to pursue such an approach, we could go to the more appropriate group.

wrote:

Most of my portraiture clients are older and female. … what I need now are tips and tricks I can
use in Photoshop that will allow me to really bring out the true beauty of these women.

Hi,
It was not easy but I have finally aquired my CS2. My clientele necessitate certain editing techniques that I would like to learn and adopt early and throughout my Photoshop training.

tutorials would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ron

[…[ Do you know of a spherical aberration plugin or something like that? This way it would allow me to keep my soft distortions local and still have super clear and sharp layers for eyes and other props in the photo.

This is what I remember from a tutorial called "The Penthouse Blur"
[…]

wrote in message

Hi,
It was not easy but I have finally aquired my CS2. My clientele necessitate certain editing techniques that I would like to learn and adopt early and throughout my Photoshop training.

Any information, either first hand or links to

tutorials would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ron

This is what I remember from a tutorial called "The Penthouse Blur"

1. Select the picture you want to affect and use the key combo CTRL +ALT + tilde ("tilde" is the key just below the ESC key on a PC keyboard). This will create a selection based only on brightness. just the brightest parts of the layer are selected.

2. Without deselecting at any time, Hit Control + C and then Control + V. You will now have a new layer which contains a mostly transparent copy of the original picture.

3. Make sure the layer you just made is selected, then go into ADJUST > LEVELS and increase the brightness of the layer. The starting value is 255, try about 230 – 220. depending on the brightness of the original picture. The brighter the original picture, the lower you’ll need to make the value in order to see any kind of real difference.

4. Once you’ve adjusted the levels, go into FILTERS > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR and blur the layer. The value you enter will depend on the size of your image, but a good start is 6. Your image will now be quite blurry, so use a soft-edged brush and erase the layer’s eyes and mouth to make them stand out more.

5. Next, set the layer to between 40/60% opacity. and you’ll have a soft-focus effect on your image.

If you have $99, the Kodak Digital GEM Pro plug-in does some sophisticated blurring to even out blotchy skin tones and still maintain fine details. It splits the bluring algorythm into small, highly-detailed elements, which it preserves, and medium-fine and large detail, which it blurs to various amounts. You can download a demo at http://www.asf.com/

As a technique, I recommend duplicating the background layer and using the Healing Brush to remove wrinkles. The result looks like a bad retouch job. Then reduce opacity of the layer to about 45%. The wrinkles return, but lessened – sort of as if there was a fill light hitting just them. Unlike blur-based techniques, this maintains all the skin texture.

Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson Photography