How to Get "Skin Textures" on soft retouch portraits

R
Posted By
rjlasky12
Oct 17, 2005
Views
1456
Replies
6
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Closed
Have CS2 on XP Pro

I do beauty retouching and often soften the skin – problem is – that I sometimes loose some nice skin texture too – faces look smooth and occasionally flat – but beautiful compared to bare photograph.

Im looking to add some skin pore detail and shadow/highlight drama back into photos that are somewhat flat due to retouching.

What are some of you doing to get skin texture back in?

Doing the noise filter does not look like "skin pores" – It looks like film grain.

Any way I can get a skin texture someplace as a texture download – or some technique to create it?

Id also be interested on how to add in some darker tones and highlights around cheeks, chin etc. How to accentuate the highlight/shadow transition and drama around bone areas or muscle areas or curves.

Any re-touchers in the group? Any Good retouch links for this stuff?

Thanks
Related Tags
how portrait retouch soft texture

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Y
YrbkMgr
Oct 18, 2005
Check out <http://www.retouchpro.com>. Great board, great info.
GD
glen_deman
Oct 18, 2005
Try to find (or take) a bunch of photos with very clear skin texture. These can be great source material for overlaying on the overly smooth photos.

For example, say you had a photo with too smooth skin.

<http://img423.imageshack.us/my.php?image=soft5vk.jpg>

I then placed a skin "patch", which I sharpened to exaggerate the texture, on it’s own layer. I added a channel mixer adjustment layer, with monochrome checked, and adjusted the channels so that the smooth areas of the patch were close to neutral gray and the bumps and stuff were more visible. I then turned the layer mode to overlay (also try Soft light or hard light, and adjust opacity to taste).

<http://imageshack.us>

Of course, the better the source material, the better the results (I just grabbed some random photos off the web). Er, in case the result is hard to see, the left cheek is supposed to have more texture now.

<http://img20.imageshack.us/my.php?image=softb6wn.jpg>
C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 18, 2005
A very quick way to adjust the realism is to do the retouch on a duplicate layer, leaving the background layer in its original form. Then all you have to do is reduce the opacity of the retouched layer to bring back just a little of the texture.

Chris.
GD
glen_deman
Oct 18, 2005
Oops, Chris is right, for some reason I was assuming you were working on an already smoothed picture, but since you are the one doing the retouching, you can easily just reduce opacity to bring back texture.
P
patrick
Oct 18, 2005
Just to add a bit of detail to the previous suggestions. . . .

Before doing your skin-softening retouching, copy the image to a new layer and do all your retouching on that layer.
Then add a layer mask to that layer (click on the second icon from the left at the bottom of the layers palette).
Now use a soft, black brush to paint over the areas that you want to block the softenting effect.
You can control the degree of blocking by varying the opacity of the brush up in the Options Bar.
This is a great technique as it allows you to control where and to what extent you want the softenting effect to apply.

This idea can be used for just about any effect (blur, sharpening, contrast, darkening, etc.) :
Apply the effect on its own layer.
Add a layer mask to the layer.
Paint with a soft, black brush while varying its opacity.

For darkening discrete areas, avoid the Burn/Dodge tool. Instead. . . . Add a new layer above the currently active layer.
Fill it with 50% gray and set its blend mode to Overlay. Make the layer below it active and paint on the image with a soft, black brush set to about 10% opacity to burn an area.
Paint with a white brush to dodge an area.
One nice fillip of this process is that, as long as you do not release the mouse, the effect is not increased if you paint over the same area several times, as in painting on a detailed area.
If you release the mouse and then paint over an area, its effect is repeated.
The advantage of this method over the Tool is that the effect is retained in its own layer so you can get back to it later for further tweaking.

Good luck! . . . . patrick

wrote in message
Have CS2 on XP Pro

I do beauty retouching and often soften the skin – problem is – that I sometimes loose some nice skin texture too – faces look smooth and occasionally flat – but beautiful compared to bare photograph.
Im looking to add some skin pore detail and shadow/highlight drama back into photos that are somewhat flat due to retouching.

What are some of you doing to get skin texture back in?

Doing the noise filter does not look like "skin pores" – It looks like film grain.

Any way I can get a skin texture someplace as a texture download – or some technique to create it?

Id also be interested on how to add in some darker tones and highlights around cheeks, chin etc. How to accentuate the highlight/shadow transition and drama around bone areas or muscle areas or curves.

Any re-touchers in the group? Any Good retouch links for this stuff?
Thanks
CK
Christine_Krof_Shock
Oct 19, 2005
Also this way if the client hates it, you can easily delete the layer or lower the opacity or change the blending mode…Layers keep things editable up until the last second…

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