Photoshop Skin Retouching

[blue0xio]

The skin retouching is composed of three steps.
First, the impurities of skin are removed.
Second, balance the color differences of skin and the third, the skin is smoothed, taking into account the natural skin pores. The third step is the most challenging, because there's about to soften the rough structures and pore sharp still present.

The skin retouching is recommended if pimples, spots and light reflections let the skin effect of restlessness and unclean. The effect of the retouching is silky-smooth skin that will look even more natural.

In this tutorial I will show how skin retouching can result in silky-smooth skin with a fine pore structure.

1. Step: Remove skin blemishes

The patch tool and healing brush are ideal for touching up blemishes.

The Healing Brush tool works like the Clone Stamp. Choose areas with the Alt key and then as a source of focused areas of the skin can be processed. The difference is that Clone Stamp is to compensate for brightness, contrast, hue and saturation. Thus a source of healing brush forgives variations in color consistency of the goal area, etc.

The Patch tool is a hybrid of lasso tool and healing brush tool. A source is thereby selected by the tool, and then slid a better range in the selection. The Patch tool provides the skin with retouch on, but is also a proven tool in the photo editing, even if the graphic parts should be removed from the unidentified image.

Which tool is exactly what?

The Patch tool can quickly touch up the larger areas such as wrinkles. The repair tool is intuitive, because the pre-selected area is not necessary. This can edit more small and detailed parts of the image.

Whether you want to remove freckles from the picture, always depends on the client. For pure post-processing of photos for model / private, definitely consult with the person to lead, because track freckles, scars and moles also part of the external identity. Small bumps are no problem and can be removed safely. In this example, I show how the Healing brush used to remove the small skin abnormalities.

With Alt I choose in the adjacent area of skin to be treated to provide a clean area. With a small, soft brush then I fix the impure skin. The spots disappear very quickly and easily.

So I go by the face and remove the disturbing elements.


2. Skin colors converge

The skin may appear restless when isolated areas are darker or lighter than others. The balance, makes the skin look more vital and clean.

It would be ideal if I color skin irritations in the reinforcing effect, so I have a perfect measure for compensation. The quickest way is that I create an adjustment layer dynamics and both controls (dynamics and saturation) is approximately + 100 to move. It all depends on the attitude of regulators such as the face is dark already. The darker face, the less I move the slider to the right.

Now I see clearly where there are imbalances in color. By the way: On the adjustment layer dynamics, it is also very good image color cast to judge.

I put a new layer with 50-percent gray in the mode to Overlay. 50 percent gray is almost the original value. I paint with dark colors in the plane, they are multiplied in contrast and saturation, reinforcing the image.

Now pick a soft brush and very low opacity (5-15 percent). It is ideal as a dark gray foreground color and set the background color to a light gray color. You can quickly change the colors with X so that the skin offsets the shadows and highlights.

Right now, the following happens - you see it in Normal mode:

The adjustment layer dynamics can then be deleted or deactivated.

The adjustment layer dynamics are there only in Photoshop CS4. Alternatively, I can work in previous versions of CS4, choose a channel mixer from the adjustment layer. Here I present a monochrome and regulated red and green channel and down the blue channel. So I have a similar effect in black and white similar to the set level dynamics.

3. Step: keep skin smooth and pore

3.1 - The classic: blur and reduce opacity

The Gaussian blur is there for a very long time in Photoshop, and it was so early for retouching purposes, particularly for smoothing skin. With this filter, a person can brush up on some easy way.

I copy all visible layers reduced to a new level with Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E, and convert it into a Smart Object. This has the advantage that I can always vary the degree of blur.

Now I choose menu Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur.

I choose a radius of the screen also makes the correct blurred.

I fill the Smart Filter mask with black color, so that no area is covered by soft focus. Then I paint with a soft white brush that should be blurred with medium coverage from all parts of the skin . I save the edges of the image especially hair, eyes and mouth.

Now I reduce the layer opacity to between 40 and 70 percent. Thus I have softened the rough skin structures something without changing the entire structure. By reducing the opacity of the pores get back into the picture. If necessary I can customize filter for the smart blur .

The Gaussian blur of skin can definitely be used for smoothing. However, this process will go more loss of detailed information , stand out even at high resolutions. For a fine skin, retouching is recommended to combine with other tools and filters.

3.2 - blurring and sharpening

In the normal blur, reduce the opacity of the layer mask, the softness of the skin and the visibility of pores with a controller or in a balanced. The soft-colored skin, the less structures remain visible from the pores.

Another popular method combined with the skin smoothing is blur with a sharpening.

I choose my visible from all levels and add these copies in its own layer (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E).

Now invert the layer content with Ctrl + I. Bright light has a similar effect to Overlay. Only that of the 50-percent-gray plane with darker colors are not multiplied, but is added and for the brighter colors are not negative multiplied, but is subtracted.

Important: Now is the object level in a smart-converted, so I use the blurring and the high pass filter which can vary at any time. And then we understand what happened or what was done in this level.

Now, I choose a gaussian blur to my level structures. At a value of 3-4 pixels, the pores are visible again. I confirm with OK.

The high-pass filter at a value 22 to 30 pixel radius I reinforce the edges of the image.

The high pass filter is often used for sharpening by the level of a 50-percent gray level, it sharpened the contours and Overlay mode with the existing image. Here, this effect is reversed. The high pass converts the image back from 50-percent gray in to normal view and plays the previously applied blur again.

It is useful effect in the current mode to Overlay try to look at whether the multiplication of the gray level is more effective than the settlement with Burn and Dodge (addition and subtraction).


03.03 blurring and sharpening

Alternatively to the method shown I can do this way:

I copy all the visible pixels to a plane (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E).

Then convert it to a Smart Object. Apply a blur filter (Gaussian blur). Now go to Blending Options and select the gray color region.

Now I can decide if I want to show the blur and hide the rough structures, then I choose the top slider, or the pore structure of the underlying high-level hole, then I choose the bottom slider.

I decide to take the blur effect as the layer contents. Select the values same in the image

If the level alone appears, you see what happened:

For comparison, the variation of the blur and sharpen in a plane:

A small final tip: If the pores are not in a picture do quite as thought to be, you can also view these separately in a plane. This is, by rule, the blue channel selected (Ctrl + A), copy (Ctrl + C) and inserted in the document (Ctrl + V).

In the color range of mapping in the blending options I hide all bright fields. There remain only the dark, porous elements. Select the Luminosity mode, only the brightness values of the pores get away with it.

So I can level with the appropriate mask layer over existing levels present this to the pores to increase somewhat. This gives a soft layer of the skin pores. It looks like when it is only displayed.

The effect is a slight increase of the pore image:

Before-after comparison of the skin retouching:

blue0xio Reviewed by blue0xio on 8th Mar 2011. Photoshop Skin Retouching The skin retouching is composed of three steps. First, the impurities of skin are removed. Second, balance the color differences of skin and the third, the skin is smoothed, taking into account the natural skin pores. The third step is the most challenging, because there's about to soften the rough structures and pore sharp still present. The skin retouching is recommended if pimples, spots and light reflections let the skin effect of restlessness and unclean. The effect of the Rating: 5

[Perl]

Good tutorial

[CammyD]

Nice tutorial man .

[Profit]

Nice webmaster tutorial lolz.

Anyways, its a good tutorial. Explains every detail pretty good. Thanks for sharing bud.

[blue0xio]

Thanks Dude..!

[SuicidalMedia]

Thread moved to Graphics Area, nice tutorial.

[ENC0DE]

awesome, i am gonna remove a pimple of my face now!

[axxo786]

lol encode

[Phobos?]

Very Nicely done. thanks for this

[Nitish]

At least give credit to the original tutorial writer. Don't just bluntly copy it.