Touching Up: Preserving Natural Skin Pores

[Iba Oshun]

Before





After



I would love to know how to touch up this photo with out making her look, well, painted on.
To get the look that i have here, i used a blur or two, cleaned it up, and also used diffuse glow to make it appear lighter.

I am new to photographing people [other than candid photos] so any pointers would be nice!
Thanks in advance

[autofocus]

Still look too painted to you? Multiple steps involve to get here

[RLucas]

Her skin looks good to me. The image as a whole is way oversaturated.
If you want her to look milky, go to whatever saturation settings you have, and back off on all the colors. Find your levels dialogue, and set your white point. I used the little bit of background that was showing through. It should just about correct itself.
I would leave any softening alone. Like I said before, she has beautiful skin, and i don't think it needs to be touched up.
Here is what I came up with. I will take it down if you wish.

[Iba Oshun]

Vince: Is there a way to do what you did but keep the red? She wants it to "really show" and those were her words when i took the photo lol

Luke: Yours looks great as well, but she was stuck on "getting rid of the wrinkles" i assume she is not comfortable with her natural self. She didn't loosen up until she put her make up on in the next set.

I kind of want to stick to flowers and clouds *smile*
Thank you both for responding so promptly and not just looking and ignoring

[autofocus]

OK Iba..I dialed in a little more red and yellow in Selective Color..gotta keep the customer happy. BTW, how are things on Pluto..haha

[Iba Oshun]

Now that, Vince, is lovely.
Care to tell me how you did it?
Re:Pluto - its cold... very cold LoL

[edbayani]

overall her skin looks good except for the freckles on the back.
with rubberstamp tool and at 2 pixel size, opacity set at 10% pass over the slight lines under the eyes. then put a blank layer on top blending mode set to soft light, brush with 10% white to soften the back, flatten and with levels, move the middle slider a little to the left to lighten the mid tones a bit.

[teaking]

I have saw many ways to soften skin one way I know of to keep skin texture is to use a lowpass and a highpass filter on seperate layers.

The lowpass being selective gaussian blur or in photoshop surface blur it keeps the edge details and blurs the inner part, the highpass filter is set to soft or hard light mode and by changing the radius you can bring back skin detail. The trick is using a mask to mask the skin area to limit this process to the mask area.

All colour enhancements can be applied to the image.

[autofocus]

Originally Posted by Iba Oshun

Now that, Vince, is lovely.
Care to tell me how you did it?
Re:Pluto - its cold... very cold LoL

OK, get your pad and pencil out...I can give you exact settings on some, but for others like color adjustments you can do to your taste. Here you go:
1) Shadow /Highlight Tool-Settings for both shadows and highlights set the same amount at 4%, Tonal Width: 58%, Radius: 250 px
2) Lasso Tool around the eyes and eyebrows and the mouth
3) Select>Inverse
4) Filter>Reduce Noise. Settings - Strength: 10, Preserve Details: 30%, Reduce Color Noise: 100%, Sharpen Details: 10% (these settings can be bumped up or down depending on your preferred end result)
5) Selective Color - adjusted channels to my liking (this will be up to you to decide)
6) Levels Adjustments for both colors and brightness
7) Filters>Diffuse Glow. Settings - Graininess: 1, Glow Amount: 2, Clear Amount: 19
8) Unsharp Mask - Settings - Amount: 26%, Radius: 0.7, Threshold: 0
You then asked for more red, so once again adjusted red and yellow channels in Selective Color

There you go...my secret recipe, don't share it with anyone on Pluto now! Remember, all images and the end results you want are different, so many of these settings can be changed on an image by image basis. This, however, is what I did on your particular image.
Note: Steps 2 and 3 above had to be done with the lasso tool on this copy...but on an original image you can do the noise reduction step as your first edit, no need to lasso anything, and then bring back the eyes and mouth 100% with the History Brush.

Have Fun

Vinnie

[klam]

I did a retouch recently where I did not blur the skin to get it smooth and kept the skin textures intact(pores) for the most part. I lightened and darken on pixel level plus many other steps in between. Unfortunately this technique took me many hours to do. It's not worth the time to do unless the picture print is going to be 8x10 or larger so you can actually see the detail of work, IMO.

I posted my retouch here on DPS if your interested to take a look. Beauty retouch

Also teaking mentioned one of the other technique that is good to use here on your thread.