Skin retouching in Photoshop cs5. Free portrait photo retouching

Adobe Photoshop allows you to make stunning masterpieces from any photo, I suggest you take your photos out of the darkest corners of your computer and turn them into masterpieces!

What photographers and retouchers once spent hours and days doing in a dark room or on a retouching table can now be done in a matter of minutes in Adobe Photoshop.

The enormous capabilities of Adobe Photoshop allow you to turn inexpressive and boring photographs into real masterpieces.

Where should you start with photo retouching?

Here's our original photo:

First of all, open the photo in Photoshop.

Now look at the photo. Most likely, the photo will either not have enough light, or there will be too much of it.

You need to add contrast and brightness. To do this, move the appropriate sliders until you see a balanced result.

It's time to get serious about your skin. To do this, you need to use the following tools: "Healing Brush", "Patch" And "Stamp", We do basic retouching.

These simple manipulations will give us a good result:

Now your task is to correct the color balance of the photo, sharpen the hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and give expressiveness to the eyes and lips.

Also, if necessary, you need to work with saturation and sharpness. In some cases, it will be useful to play with light and shadow in the image to create volume on the face.

As a result, this will give us the final result:

It's a completely different matter. It turned out to be a real model :)

Let's compare with the initial raw photo:

The photo on the right looks much nicer to the eye.

As you may have noticed, even from the most gray and nondescript photograph you can get a stunning picture thanks to Adobe Photoshop and knowledge in photo retouching.

Video course "Photo retouching", is intended for those who want to learn how to process digital photographs with high quality using Adobe Photoshop.

The course is recorded on DVD. Each step will be shown and explained directly on your monitor screen. At the same time, you don’t need to travel anywhere; you can study anywhere where you have access to a computer. Internet access is not required to view the course.

The course contains 45 video lessons.

Here's just a small part of what you'll learn:

• Features of retouching and tips that will help you avoid mistakes in photo retouching;
• Review of basic tools for photo retouching;
• How to determine what needs to be corrected in a photograph;
• High-quality tone correction of photographs;
• Removing scratches, dents, glare from photographs;
• Using adjustment layers;
• How to remove unwanted noise;
• How to increase the sharpness and clarity of photos;
• How to properly manage color when processing photographs;
• Increasing image saturation;
• High-quality retouching of portrait photographs (processing of skin, eyes, hair, removal of glare, etc.);
• Tools that should not be used for retouching, and which ones should be used very carefully in order to preserve the structure of the skin;
• Non-standard retouching options;
• The best ways to recover old photos;
• How to add depth and volume to a photograph;
• Retouching black and white photographs;
• You will learn how to take high-quality photos in black and white;
• How to turn a black and white photo into color;

Along with the course you receive 4 additional bonuses, which include 7 additional video lessons that perfectly complement the course.

• Bonus 1. A set of video lessons on photo restoration.
• Bonus 2. Video lesson on color correction of images.
• Bonus 3. Video tutorial on creating a retro style.
• Bonus 4. Video tutorial and actions on toning photos.

In this lesson Photoshop You will get acquainted with another interesting way of fine face retouching. It differs from the well-known methods of skin smoothing, and in some ways significantly surpasses them in quality of execution.

We will use the Burn tools for the main retouching. (Burn Tool) and Clarifier (Dodge Tool), as well as cloning tools: Stamp (Clone Tool), Patch (Patch). Try it and you will be surprised by the results you get.

Begin!

Result before and after retouching:

Typically, in the work of professional photographers, dodging and burning are used to adjust individual areas in photographs to achieve the correct balance of light and shadow. In Photoshop, however, when retouching portrait photographs, the average user never uses the Burn and Dodge tools. (Burn, Dodge). Typically these tools are used when working with landscape images rather than people. Today you will see in practice that D&B (Darken and Brighten) affect only the level of darkening of the skin, without damaging its structure in any way. Often those who do retouching abuse the Blur tool. (Blur), creating a plastic skin effect. We will never resort to this favorite straightening method, and you will see how carefully the facial correction is performed.

Step 1. Rating the photo.

Open (Ctrl+O) in Photoshop any photo you want to improve. I used this photo of a girl in my work.

The girl's eyebrows are painted on quite heavily, but don't worry, we'll correct them later.

Before we start retouching, let's evaluate our field of activity. Look at the eye area. They look very tired, the sclera is red and there are dark areas in the lower eyelid area.

The areas around the mouth also need correction, as pigmented dark areas are clearly visible along the edges of the lips.

The lips look good, but adding volume will only give them more charm.

The general lighting makes the girl's face very flat, which also needs to be corrected.

Step 2: Create the "D&B" Layer (Darken and Brighten).

Some users prefer to work with these tools on separate layers. I usually make adjustments on one layer, alternating between the Burn and Dodge tools.

Create a New Layer (Layer-New Layer) and at the bottom of the dialog box change the blending mode to “Soft Light” (Soft Light). There we also activate the checkbox of the function “Fill with a neutral color of the Soft light mode (50% gray)" In the top line of the dialog box, enter the name of the layer “Dodge and Burn” (Dodge and Burn). Click OK and start dodging and burning on this layer.

Step 3.

Dodge and Burn tools (Dodge, Burn) are activated in the toolbar when you right-click on their icons.

Most people rarely use them, usually resorting to a brush (Brush) black or white colors to perform correction. Before the release of the fourth version of Photoshop, there were good reasons not to use D&B (Darken and Brighten), as they changed skin tones towards gray and orange. However, in later versions of Photoshop, the settings have become more precise and flexible, which allows for excellent retouching of images.

Regarding D&B settings when smoothing skin, keep the following points in mind:

The brush of the tool used should be as soft as possible (hardness 0%) to create smooth transitions from one area to another.

Frequent changes of brush diameter are required (size) when moving from one retouching area to another. To do this, use the keyboard square brackets (the left bracket decreases the size, the right one increases).

In the top settings panel of the D&B tool (Dodge, Burn) Pay attention to the three different modes of the tool: Light, Midtones, Shadow (Highlights, Midltones, Shadow). To achieve high-quality retouching results, I usually use the Midtone settings (Midltones).

Exposition (Exposure) should be very low, around 5-10% to create a gradual change in the image. Small touches with a tool will make these changes invisible.

Below is a screenshot of my Clarifier settings (Dodge):

Step 4.

First, select the retouching area, and while there, adjust the image by switching between D&B tools. Apply Brightener (Dodge) on the sclera of the inner part of the eyes to remove redness. Lighten the iris a little to create a clear, open look. Swipe the Dimmer (Burn) along the border between the sclera and the iris. Use Brightener (Dodge) in the inner part of the lower eyelids, hiding small wrinkles and darkening. To compare the result with the original image, periodically turn off the visibility of the gray layer (click on the eye next to the active layer icon).

This is what the gray layer looks like at this stage:

Result before and after eye retouching:

The girl's eyes still look natural and have their original structure, but her eyes and skin have acquired a rested look.

Before moving on to the next area, use my tips:

1. If you have the opportunity to work on a graphics tablet, use it, because the result will be better than when working with a mouse.

2. Zoom in on the area being processed using the Zoom tool by about 300% on the keyboard, press the combination Ctrl and the + sign (increase) or Ctrl and sign – (decrease).

3. If the skin tone you are treating has turned gray or orange, use the Sponge tool (Sponge), which is in the same group as D&B instruments. In the top settings menu, go to the “Desaturate” mode (Desaturate) to soften the orange tint, or turn on the Saturation mode in case of correcting the gray tone of the face. Use Pressure (Flow) 20% for Sponge brush settings.

Step 5.

Let's move on to the mouth area. Here, as well as in the eye area, you can use D&B, but I would not recommend this method alone. Large areas of retouching are best treated with the Stamp and Patch tools. (Clone Tool, Patch Tool). Let me remind you how these tools work. When working with a Stamp, place the cursor in the place where you want to take a skin sample and right-click on it while holding the Alt key. Then, move the cursor to the correction area and right-click again, copying the selected sample to the selected area.

The operating principle of a Patch is similar to a Stamp. Select an area of ​​skin of any size to be corrected and transfer the selection to a clean area of ​​skin to show the copy pattern. When you release the mouse button, the copied skin area will appear on the area being adjusted. I usually use Patch in my work (Patch), since it is possible to control the shape of the corrected zone, unlike the Stamp (Clone Tool), where the brush shape is already set to round.

Move to the skin on the left side of the mouth and begin correcting the dark spots.

Same as in step 4, I used Brightener (Dodge) to even out dark areas. If you accidentally overdo it with lightening, switch to Darkener (Burn) and return your skin color to the desired state.

This is what happened after correcting the lower part of the face:

Now the mouth area looks much better.

Step 6.

Next, let's adjust the shape of the lips. They look good, but could be made fuller with D&B. Swipe the Dimmer (Burn) along the contour of the lips, giving them clear outlines. Clarifier (Dodge) add transverse lines for volume. Darken the areas under the girl's lower lip, imitating a shadow.

After correction, lips look fuller.

Next, you can continue to smooth out your facial skin using a similar principle. Below is a gray layer with my adjustments. I added a dimmer (Burn) shadow in the cheek area to make the face more voluminous.

To make your nose visually thinner, use Darkener (Burn) with little exposure (Exposure) on both sides of him. The dark dot at the tip of the nose of the gray layer shows a softening of the highlight.

I also leveled it with a dimmer (Burn) chin area and brightener (Dodge) softened the brightness of the model’s eyebrows. During work, you can not change the settings of the tools, with the exception of their sizes.

As a final step, create a New Blank Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) with Normal (Normal) mixing mode. Select Brush (Brush) with soft edges in a light pink hue and low opacity (Opacity) 5-8%. Apply it to areas where skin imperfections are still visible.

We're done. I hope you found this lesson useful and added another useful experience to your retouching knowledge.

There are many ways to retouch skin in Photoshop. Often after retouching, the skin looks unnatural. We'll show you several ways to even out your facial skin while maintaining pore texture.

Step 1 - Removing skin defects

Tools and Patch Ideal for skin retouching.

Tool Healing Brushworks the same as Clone Stamp (Cloning stamp). Healing Brush- allows you to correct skin defects taking into account their environment. Similar to cloning tools, the toolHealing Brushuses certain areas of the image (skin) to copy. But unlike a stamp, a toolHealing Brushtakes into account the structure, lighting, shadows of the processed image area (skin).

Patch Tool is a mixture Lasso (Lasso) and tool Healing Brush. Patch allows you to reconstruct a selected area by cloning pixels taken from a neighboring area or sample. LikeHealing Brush, Patch tool takes into account the structure, lighting and shadows of the processed image area (skin). That is Patch creates patches on the image. You specify where the patch will be located(Destination - destination)and what will you use to “darn” it?(Source - source).

Which tool for what?

Using Patch Large areas of skin such as wrinkles can be retouched. By usingHealing BrushIt's worth retouching small details. If you are processing portraits of private individuals, be sure to ask in advance whether freckles, scars and moles need to be removed. Small pimples can be removed without asking the customer. In this example we will show how to useHealing Brushminor skin abnormalities can be removed.

Select a toolHealing Brush
- Set the cloning source by clickingAlt + left mouse buttonin the appropriate place in the image
- Move the tool over the areas of the image that require restoration.

This way we remove all small pimples and small problem areas on the face.

Step 2 - Skin color

After processing Healing Brush and Patch skin may appear uneven. Some parts may be lighter and others darker. In order for the skin to appear fresher and cleaner, it is necessary to correct this deficiency. At the same time, it is important not to affect or disturb the light-shadow pattern.

First we will enhance the effect of uneven skin. The fastest way is to create an adjustment layer Vibrance and move both sliders - Vibration and Saturationright to about +100. The value depends on how dark your face is in the photo. The darker the face, the less you need to move the slider to the right.

Vibrance

Now you can clearly see where the color imbalance is. By the way, the adjustment layer Vibrance can be used to identify extra tones in an image.

Create a new layer with 50% gray fill. To do this, go to the menuEditing - Filland in the drop-down list of the dialog box select 50% gray color . Blending mode -Overlay. This mode operates as follows: all pixels whose brightness is greater than 50% gray will lighten (for light) and darken (for dark) light and dark areas, respectively, the rest, whose brightness is below 50%, will become transparent.

Now take a soft brush with a transparency of 5-15 percent. Set the toolbar to dark gray as your foreground color and light gray as your background color. Using the X key you can quickly switch between them.

This is what happens - this is what you see in normal mode.

Adjustment Layer Vibrance can be disabled or deleted.

Adjustment Layer Vibrance appeared in Photoshop CS4. If you are working with earlier versions of Photoshop, you can useChannel Mixer. You need to check the box hereMonochromeand move the sliders of the red and green channels to the left, and the blue channel to the right. So I have the same effect in black and white as a dynamics adjustment layer.

Step 3 - Smooth skin while maintaining pore texture

Option 1 - Blur the skin - classic method

Filter the simplest (classic) way to get smooth skin.

Merge all visible layers onto a new layer CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + D and turn it intosmart object. Advantage smart objectis that the degree of blur can be changed at any time.

Now select from the menuFilter - Blur - Gaussian Blur (Filter => Blur => Gaussian Blur).

Choose a radius at which the skin is sufficiently blurred.

Add to smart objectblack mask (by pressing ALT ) and a white brush (transparency approximately 50%) paint on the places where we want to see the effect of the filterGaussian Blur. The filter should not affect the contour of the face, hair, eyes and mouth.

We regulate layer transparency, set approximately 40-70%. Pores appeared on my face again.

Option 2 - Blur and sharpen in one layer

When blurring skin with the Gaussian Blur filter, some detail and fine pores are lost. The greater the blur, the greater the loss.

The second popular method for smoothing skin is blur combined with sharpening.

As in the first option, all visible layers are combined into one layer CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + E .

Selecting blending modeVivid Lightand invert the contents of the layer using CTRL + I. This blend mode is similar toOverlaywith the difference that the pixels are not multiplied, but added, and not divided, but subtracted.

Important: Convert the layer tosmart object, so you can change the blur and sharpen filter settings at any time.

Selecting a filter Gaussian Blurwith a radius of approximately 3-4 pixels. Click OK.

Then apply the filterHigh Pass (Color Contrast). To do this we go to Filter > Others > High Pass. In the filter select a radius from 22 to 30 pixels.

Filter High Pass (Color Contrast)often used to sharpen an image.

Using a layer mask, you can apply a filter only to those areas where you want to see its effect.

Try changing the blending mode toOverlay.The advantage of this method is that the skin pores remain on the face after blurring.

Option 3 - Blur and sharpenusing Blending Options

As in the first and second options, all visible layers are combined into one layer CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + E .

Convert the layer tosmart objectand apply the blur filterGaussian Blur - Gaussian Blur or Surface Blur - Blur over a surface. Then go to Blending Options (to do this, double-click on the layer in the layers window) and select the Gray option in the color zone.

Now you can decide whether you want to reveal the skin blur and hide the pore texture (you need to select the top slider for this) or reveal the pore structure from the bottom layer (you need to select the bottom slider for this).

In this case we select the blur effect. Moving black slider right. Pressing A.L.T. you can split the slider triangle to create smooth tonal transitions. We do the same with the right one ( white ) with the slider, moving it to the right.

If you turn off all other layers and leave only this layer on, you will see what happened.

For comparison, blur and sharpen from the second option.

And at the end, a little advice. If the texture of the pores does not appear as you expected, it can be placed on a separate layer. Go to channels. Select the blue channel STRG+A, copy it STRG+C and paste it into the document STRG+V .

Then in Blending Optionsyou can remove all the light areas, leaving only the dark details in the pores. Change the mode of this layer to Luminosity.

To this layer you can add a layer mask to hide or reveal pores in certain places. This is what this layer looks like (all other layers are turned off).

This is what the effect looks like:

Before and after retouching:

A very useful and effective technique for processing photographs, it is not complicated and quite fast and everyone should know it! This lesson will be useful for those who often deal with photo processing, and for those who want to learn how to create beautiful effects in Photoshop. The author here considers a large number of manipulations with layers; it should be noted that we will use a large number of layers, so in order to repeat everything later in practice, you need to have a fairly powerful computer at home. Of course, you can reduce the size of the photo, thereby reducing the load.

Here is a picture that has been half changed:

Before starting this lesson, the author decided to show us how we will arrange layers to correct the skin in a photograph. It should be noted that this scheme can be considered successful, because thanks to it you can not only quickly find the necessary layers, you can also change their effect on the photograph. Below are all the layers. Now it’s the turn to give the names of these layers in Russian. Let's go through the order of a retouching layer, an adjustment layer, light correction, make-up, various “overwriting” of freckles, and at the very bottom is the original layer.

Step 1

We'll start by duplicating the original layer, then use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) and the Healing Brush (J). Next, using these tools, remove all spots, pimples and freckles from the skin (of course, if there are any in the picture), etc. For work you need to use only a soft brush, as with its help you can get a better result. If you come across large areas, then you can use a brush with a larger diameter, but it should still be soft.

Step 2

It's best if you duplicate the layer right now. Now it is necessary to give the skin of the face a so-called plastic effect, thanks to this the model can be safely printed on the main page of the magazine. But it's best to start working with the area around the eyes and eyebrows. Open the Warp Tool or filter Shift + Ctrl + X. Now enlarge the area around the eye just a little bit using these tools in the filter.

Step 3

Now let's start adding contrast and adjusting the light in the photo. To do this, we will use one interesting Angel Face technique. Duplicate the layer again, then apply a Gaussian blur to it Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with a blur value of about 8-10px. Then change the blending mode to "Soft Light" or Soft Light in the Russian version of Photoshop. We don't want this effect to affect the entire photo, so we'll use a mask. Create a layer mask and paint it as shown in the picture. The author used a large soft brush for the mask, sometimes reaping the transparency.

Step 4

Now you need to focus on the process of correction and drawing. To do this, you first need to use a brush that has a low density (about 20%). The color is selected on the area of ​​the skin that will be correctable in the future. Also, after you have chosen the brush size, set exactly the same size on the Eyedropper Tool (I), for example, the author took 51 by 51 pixels. Next, start experimenting with correction, be sure to look at the author’s results to understand the full meaning of the lesson.

The changes are very noticeable, especially in the areas around the nose, try to do the same.

Step 5

After we have corrected the skin, let's do the eyes. Basically, we will repeat here what we did in the previous step, only now take the color more carefully. Now make a selection around the eyes, then go to Layer > New > Layer via Copy to duplicate the area onto a new layer so we can work with it. On a new layer, use the Dodge Tool with these settings to highlight the eyes a little.

Step 6

This is the final step before we start applying adjustment layers. Follow these three points very carefully.

1. Use a brush with a low opacity of about 20% to apply eye makeup. You don’t have to try so hard with this step, we’ll still correct everything in the last steps with adjustment layers.

2. Now repeat the technique we used in Step 4, only this time in the areas around the eyes themselves.

3. Now let's adjust the white part of the eye. There are many ways, but the author chose the best and at the same time simplest. Create a new layer, select a white brush with soft edges. And now carefully whiten your eyes, just don’t overdo it.

Step 7

Create two new adjustment layers:

These are the layer settings Levels and Curves or Levels and Curves.