Portrait help!

[Renee Marquis]

Can someone do a Tutorial for portraits..... I would love to know how you would soften the face, take away blemish, hot spots, and sharpen the eyes. I have done a few, but not sure if I am doing it right.....
Here are two before and after shots of mine. Keep in mind this is my very first attempt in portraits, with lighting boy do I have a lot to learn.... Thanks in advance for any help with this!

The one image is very over exposed and I need help fixing it! The others all turned out pretty good.

Two on the left are edit, the two on right are unedit.

[Renee Marquis]

Here are the other two....

[lostmysnorkel]

nice images Renee!

As with most stuff, there is loads of different ways to achieve what you're asking, so I'll just give you MY way and wait for others to post theirs!

I am assuming you use Photoshop BTW:

For a FULL make-over of a portrait:

Starting with the eyes, use the Magnetic Lasso (the coat-hanger) and select the pupils of the eyes with a 2px feather. CTRL-J to put these on a new layer and adjust contrast/saturation etc to really 'pop' the eye colour.

Flatten image again.

Creat a new layer (copy of background)

Use the Dodge Tool, set at around 10% exposure on the mid-tones, and gently brush the whites of the eyes and the teeth. (This whitens them slightly)

Flatten again.

New layer.

Healing Brush - remove blemishes, spots little scratches etc etc....you can soften some wrinkles a bit now as well if you're careful. Blood vessels in the eyes etc etc.
(This is the stage where it's worth spending the time on)

Flatten Image

New Layer.

I now run a Portraiture Plug-In, from Imagenomic .... thanks to Brian Smith for the recommendation - which smooths out the skin wonderfully.

Without the plug-in, you could use a gentle Gaussian Blur (but this adds a furhter step later on)

Once the plug-in/gaussian blur has done it's stuff on the top layer, take the erasor tool and erase the eyes, eyebrows, teeth & lips, hair, jewellery and clothes (the tip of the nose and chin sometimes need it too). This reveals the 'sharp, unblurred' layer beneath.

Now adjust the opacity of the blurred/softened layer to bring it back to a natural look. NOTE BELOW:

IF YOU USED GAUSSIAN BLUR: you will now need to introduce some texture back into the skin. Add Noise would usually do the trick, but be sparing with it.

Flatten Image

New Layer

Open Curves and nudge it into a shallow S-Curve if the image needs a little contrast.

Flatten

Sharpen (Unless you wait until you send it for printing)

Done.

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Depending on the subject you can do as much or as little as needed at each step, or miss some steps out entirely. The two girls you have posted would need very little skin work, if any, nor would their teeth need whitening by the looks of it. Perhaps 'pop' the eyes a little, certainly Dodge the shadows on the Blonde girls eyes a bit.

(And I'd clone the Bulldog clip as well.....)

Hope this helps!!!!!!!

NOTE: Before anyone jumps on me for all the New Layer/Flattening that goes on, it's simply 'cos I hate having a huge stack of layers !!!!!!

[Renee Marquis]

Thanks Snorks... I will diffently TRY this, I havent done much with layers. So this might be a little over whelming for me. I do layers here and there so kind of know what to do. Will try and post when I have time to work on one..... ~Renee

[MickT]

Hi Renee....yep I do same as Snorks nowadays also using the imagenomic plug-in...it's Brian's workflow for portraits and I love the results...have done a quick edit of one of yours to illustrate....
Cheers
Mick.
PS...ooops..forgot to get rid of the creases in her dress...:doh:

[f1nut0]

I know nothing about these type of photos. I wish I did. But I think the dress thing is more natural then the teeth on the last edit. they just seem a bit to bright.

[MickT]

I know nothing about these type of photos. I wish I did. But I think the dress thing is more natural then the teeth on the last edit. they just seem a bit to bright.

You're right M8...but in the edit I haven't actually done anything specifically to her teeth...they were very bright in the original....should probably have taken more care over the curves adjustment....:)
Cheers
Mick.

[f1nut0]

Hi Mick

Sorry I just took it that you had made a change to the teeth as well. I will say the skin looks very good in these photos but then again the girls do have youth on their side.I have seen so many photos on the net that do not look real.

[Renee Marquis]

Thank you both for the comments, and insite on what to do..... I am diffently learning a lot and will apply these tec... THANK YOU!

[MickT]

[QUOTE=f1nut0;196376]Hi Mick

Sorry I just took it that you had made a change to the teeth as well./QUOTE]

No need to apologise M8...you were right...:)...think my monitor is due for re-calibrating too....:dizzy:

[cjf]

ck out this alot of great info. and tutorials and help......free to join http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/

[koocha]

Photoshop is great for this, but there's a much easier piece of software I use. Literally about 2 mins and it's done.

It's called Portrait Professional and can be downloaded from here:

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

I think it's superb and for what it can do it's realy cheap too. Only £40 inc vat right now.

Let me know your thoughts on it

[David Worthington]

i have used it SELECTIVELY for months...it saves so much time and easy to get results with minimal effort

[AsylumVoid]

I've used it, but I find it scary. It's almost too perfect like using pitch correction until it sounds unholy, lol!