What’s Your Preference?

Rentham · #1 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 03:33 PM

Some quick thoughts on shooting and retouching this beauty shot: Rentham Creative | Blog

windrider86 · #2 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 03:40 PM

Can you post here for us what steps you took?

dlambert · #3 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 04:18 PM

Really nice write-up. I love the idea of separating color from detail adjustments.

Rentham · #4 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by windrider86

Can you post here for us what steps you took?

Sure. The blog post is more about some of the things I learned during the process. But in summary, here are the steps I took:

Correct white balance, lens distortion, and crop in Lightroom
Add minor capture sharpening in LR
Use LR local adjustment brush to add a little exposure, clarity, and contast to the eyes
Export to Photoshop
Liquify some sections of the hair to bring them more in line with the rest
Use the clone tool to fill in some sections of the fly away hair
Use the clone and healing tools to remove any single, stray hairs
Use the healing brush to remove any obvious blemishes on the skin
Stamp Visible and Duplicate layer
Do the Split High Pass technique so you have one color layer and one detail layer
Working on the detail layer I like to use the healing brush with small brush size
Working on the color layer I used a large, soft cloning brush and lower opacity
Proceed to clean up any rough patches of skin or blemishes on the detail layer
Use the color layer to give the face nice, even skin tones
Do any final work on eyes (clone out redness, etc)
Output sharpening and done.

You can Google "beauty retouching" to get more information on the split high pass and other techniques. The best video tutorial I've found for it is by ISHPHO on YouTube.

zona5101 · #5 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 05:19 PM

very nice edit. Nice write up on the blog too!
Is there anywhere on your blog where you go more into the Split High Pass technique ? Or do you have a reference to it I can check out?

thanks!

roger9 · #6 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 07:49 PM

Great work...i am new to this photography side and i am learning editing...people like u are becoming so much helpful in my learning...
can you suggest me some tutorials?

Rentham · #7 (**permalink**) 03-29-2011, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zona5101

very nice edit. Nice write up on the blog too!
Is there anywhere on your blog where you go more into the Split High Pass technique ? Or do you have a reference to it I can check out? thanks!

Here are the instructions excerpted from this thread:

Start with two copied layers of the image to be separated
Working on the bottom copy, run the gaussian blur filter at the intended pixel frequency
Select the top copy, chose Apply Image from the Image menu
In the Layer dialog, select the bottom layer which you blurred in step 2
In the blending dialog, choose subtract
Enter '2' into the Scale box, and '128' for the Offset
Preserve transparency, mask, and invert should NOT be checked
Choose OK
Set the blend mode to your top layer to Linear Light. Keep opacity at 100%

It is important to note the above instructions are for 8-bit files. The 16-bit instructions are slightly different. They are included in the linked thread. I use 8-bit because my iMac is from 2005 and has a hard enough time handling 5D MkII files as it is.

To illustrate, I exported one of the unedited outtakes from the shoot into Photoshop and ran the technique on it:

You can see there are two copies of the same layer. The first (bottom) layer I arbitrarily called "color". I then applied the Gaussian Blur filter at 9 pixels. Why 9? I saw someone else do it, and it seemed to work well. No secret magic formula here.

Here you can see the settings for the Apply Image command. With the second (top) layer (called "detail") selected, we are applying the "color" layer to it. Blending mode is Subtract. Do not preserve transparency, mask, or invert. Scale is 2, offset is 128. You can see a bit of the image in the screen cap. It is grey with a faint amount of color. Click OK. Then on your detail layer change the blending mode to Linear Light and....

... everything looks the same as it did before you started. If you're like me, you'll be like "Okay, great. Now what?" The thing you accomplished here is separating the frequencies so you can work on color and detail independently of each other. This should help you avoid those tell-tale smudges when you're cloning or healing. Skin tones can be worked on without losing detail in the skin texture.

From this point on it is sort of impossible to give step by step instructions. I highly recommend watching the videos from ISHPHO on YouTube, that I linked above. He has a two part video that goes over this technique in detail and you can see him do a full retouch. It is much clearer when you actually watch someone do it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roger9

Great work...i am new to this photography side and i am learning editing...people like u are becoming so much helpful in my learning...
can you suggest me some tutorials

Thanks, Roger. I'm certainly no expert in this technique or editing in general. I've learned what I know primarily by watching YouTube videos, reading forums, and asking questions. I also have a membership to Kelby Training and I find those videos extremely helpful.