Photo Retouching

Posted by Tara on May 9th, 2010 | View Comments

I’m just learning how to retouch photo’s myself in Photoshop. I don’t mean basic colour editing etc, I mean how they make models look in magazines. They really don’t look near that good in real life. I’m finding that it is very much a skilled area of Photoshop.

The reason that I wanted to learn this skill is because part of being a photographer is to keep up with technology. I don’t think you can ever be a professional anymore without knowing how to use the technology that is now demanded.

I Started by looking up, “Air Brushing” and didn’t get that many results. Turns out after many google searches later that I should have been looking for “Retouching”. I thought that I would show you some of the tips that I’ve learned. I visited way to many sites that I might have learned one thing, but I couldn’t find any site that really went for it.

I wouldn’t suggest trying this on an image that isn’t of professional quality. You need to be able to zoom really close, if you don’t have a large amount of pixels then this tutorial will not come out nicely and will be clear that you have edited it. I suggest an image at least 2000 pixels.

Soo I figured I would have my go!

I picked my Image. which I fount using deviantart. Here is the link, if your interested.

LINK BELOW – Make sure it is a stock image, and you follow there rules. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for people stealing photographers work.

http://www.deviantart.com/#catpath=resources/stockart/model&order=13

The first step that I do when i get an image is colour correction. You can do this many ways, Selective colours, curves, levels. Just to name a few. I chose for this image to use levels.

ADJUSTING LEVELS

I forgot to mention until now that I’m using CS4 so some of the things that you see might be a little different on earlier versions but i think it is clear enough to understand. If you need any help then please contact me and I’ll be happy to sort any issues you have.

PATCHING SKIN

I like to cover imperfections of the skin with the patch tool. I think that in most cases it works better then the spot tool, and healing tool. however in situations where the patch tool isn’t working for me I do try them. There are other options but this is what i prefer.

SMOOTHING SKIN

This is my favorite tip! Ok, so everyone has bumps and dips in there skin, but in magazines they have perfect smooth skin right? Well… I figured out how you do this. Start by selecting the face area. You can do this using the lasso tool, or quick selection tool. I prefer to use the quick selection because you can use the – selection brush and take out what you don’t want as well. Make sure that you deselect the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, etc.

Just make sure that you image looks something like mine.

MOUTH ISNT UNSELECTED YET, BUT SHOULD BE BEFORE NEXT STEP.

Now copy and paste what you have selected. You should now have a new layer that is a copy of the skin you have selected. Make sure you have The new skin layer selected.

With the new layer selected go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Hit it and a new window should pop-up.

Now Drag the slider until the persons face is just a little blurry, like what you see in the PHOTO ABOVE. Hit ok to accept. You now want to turn down the opacity of this layer. You should see that the Face now looks smooth.

Don’t worry if you have now made the eyes, mouth, or eyebrows blurry. all you do is go back and erase over them. I tend to do this even if I don’t see any blurriness. I also do around the edges of the face.

RESHAPING FACE

I think that the best way of doing this is using the liquefy tool. Very carefully push in cheeks, nose, raise eyebrows reshape lips. etc. Changing the size of your brush will really help you. So if u can’t seem to move the part you wish then make the brush smaller/larger. I like to be very gentle with this. I think that it is very easy to get carryied away. Note: look for the restore all button in that menu. It brings you back to the start of when you first opened liquefy.

BRIGHTEN EYES

You must do on the original image layer, so make sure you have it selected.

Select the Dodge tool, make the brush size a little smaller then the coloured part of the eye. Change the Range to Mid-tones and the exposure to about 15% (You can play with those settings to get different results.)

Go over the whole colour of the eye and pupil and Lighten until you are happy with it. It is really easy to want to brighten the eyes too much, this will make for an unnatural photo. I zoom out every so often to make sure I’m not doing that.

You can also go over the white of the eye to make that pop as well.

If you want your eyes to be more dramatic you darken the rim of the iris. You can do this by selecting Burn tool, making the brush size very small and putting an outline around the colour. 99% of the time you should turn down the exposure before doing this, reason being the same as before. You will create an unnatural looking eye if the rim is to dark.

The burn tool is very helpful to extend, darken eyelashes as well. can create the look of mascara when the model isn’t wearing any as well.

UNDER EYE CIRCLES

I think that almost every image will need darkness under the eyes fixed, unless it was fixed by the smoothing step. SELECT> The eyedropper tool and choose a colour that is close to the eye that isn’t effected by discolouration. Create a new layer, and make sure your have it selected. Now using the paint brush colour over top of the darken area.

SEEN IN PHOTO BELOW.

ALSO NOT EYE COLOUR CHANGE FROM STEP BEFORE.

BOTTOM PHOTO IS UNDER EYE FINISH

After paint brushing go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur

Now Drag the slider until the under eye is just a little blurry. Hit ok to accept. You now want to turn down the opacity of this layer.

< Your under eye area should now look like the bottom photo

Many of the next steps use Gaussian Blur and turning down the opacity… so instead of repeating myself I am just going to show you images of what i did to guide you.

I adjusted the colour of the eyes, and put highlights and shadows on the cheeks, forehead etc. you can do a lot of shadows and highlights. I tend to only do a few important ones but many people go over the whole image adjusting them.

After colouring.. again Gaussian Blur and lower opacity. As you see in the picture to your left you can use this method for eyeshadow. My image didn’t have much of the lip showing so i only did a faint bit to give the indication that her lids have eye shadow on them.

I would normally do this to create blush as well but this model was already wearing enough blush for me.

Make sure that you erase it off the places that it colour shouldn’t be, like eyelashes, the eye itself, and hair etc.

FLY AWAY HAIR

Ok, for anyone who has tried to fix hair it is a huge pain in the backside. I had to literally take out each hair. even know I’m aware that there are other methods. I thought that the patch tool was the best one for this image.

Take the patch tool and take away stray hairs all around the outside of the hair, and on forehead etc.

This can be a very long process, and because this model has frizzy hair it took me over 2 hours to get rid of all the strays.

COLOURING HAIR

I don’t think that you have to fix everyone’s hair. I think you need to most in models who have dyed hair. You know the half grown out… was dyed blond but there hair is brown.

Guess what.. yea I’m going to colour the hair using Gaussian Blur. I’ll give you an image of what mine looked like. so same as before. Blur then lower opacity.