Fantastic Editing Techniques

[araine]

Simple techniques at making your portrait shots better.





1. Use Healing Tool to remove blemishes, pimples, or any other blemish on
the skin that is unwanted. For larger more difficult blemishes, use the clone
tool with a low opacity to blend as needed against the skin.

2. Use circle marquee tool to select the eyes of the first person. If you are
not sure how to select both eyes at the same time, highlight the first eye,
and the hold the shift key down, and highlight the next eye.

3. Once both eyes are selected, duplicate that layer. Make sure your eyes are
still highlighted and select the main layer, and hit the Ctrl + J key to make
a new layer with just the eyes on it. (Apple + J for the MAC).

4. Now, you can use this opportunity to change eye color, or just edit them
enough to make them pop. Select the eyes layer, and press the Ctrl + L key
to bring up the levels key. Now, you can move the levels how you want to get your
desire of color, but I usually try to stick with the natural colors and just
pump them up a tad. So, if they have brown eyes, I add some red, blue eyes, some
blue, and green eyes, some green.

5. Once you reach what you wanted, then click okay, and use the eraser tool to
erase around the excess color around the eyes.

6. Repeat this step to the other people's eyes.

7. Once you are sure that you have what you were aiming for, MERGE all 3 of the
layers.

8. Now to work on the skin and overall appearance. DUPLICATE the main layer. You
can do this by selecting the main layer and pressing the Ctrl + J key. (Apple +
J for MAC).

9. Select the top layer. Go into your filters, and go to blur, SURFACE BLUR.
You are going to use this tool to smooth over your appearance. REMEMBER: Don't do
it too much, you want the skin to have a smooth, but not too unatural feel to it.
Also, the reason why I am using the Surface blur instead og Gaussian Blur is because
surface blur retains fine detail, and Gaussian Blur does not. Smoothing the
appearance of your image also helps with getting rid of some nasty artifacts or noise.

10. Now, use the eraser tool at 80% to erase over the top layer where you want
parts of your face, objects, hair to show through with more detail. Example,
I will go over the eyes, lips, and some of the hair near the face.

11. Once you get where you desire, then MERGE the layers.

12. Now, you can be done at this point, or add more touches, like adjusting the
levels of entire picture, brightness and contrast, and more touch ups to the skin.
If you need to whiten teeth, make sure you use the dodge tool lightly over the
teeth. Don't do it too much! No one has snow white teeth!

[Jim Bryant]

From first look I would have thought that it wasn't the blemishes that were bad, but the distracting background with the dirty window panes, trees and flag growing out of their heads.

Next time you find yourself in such a situation, ask yourself before even pressing the shutter button, "How can I improve this photograph?" One would think you'd place the couple in a more pleasing environment in which to capture a portrait.

Blemishes are one thing to edit, now let's see you edit out the window panes

[Trader]

Originally Posted by araine

7. Once you are sure that you have what you were aiming for, MERGE all 3 of the
layers.

Thanks for taking the time to share your work with us. I have found that it is far better to never merge all you work. Rather than merge the layers, I like to Group them into what they do; i.e. Hair, Eyes, Lips, etc. That way when you are finished and show the client the end result, if they say they don't like something you have done it is much easier to go back to that group and turn it off or lower it's opacity or what ever needs to change.

[araine]

I appreciate your critiques. Merging is a technique that I have learned over time with my graphic design experience, so it's a hard habit to break, but I will look into that. As for the window panes and flag, I completely agree, but I was only doing this to help with editing people. This was not a professional shoot that I was doing, it was just a quick snapshot of family members that I took as I was leaving my uncle's house.

[Jim Bryant]

We all learn by lessons. Even if it's a quick snap or a paying job, always get in the habit of checking your background and eliminate that unwanted clutter.

[Free]

Originally Posted by araine

Merging is a technique that I have learned over time with my graphic design experience, so it's a hard habit to break, but I will look into that.

Haha, I was just about to say the exact opposite, I was trained to do everything possible to retain pixels - use layer masks, adjustment layers and every thing on it's own layer. As Trader mentioned, client doesn't like the final colour of their lips, it's much easier to fix that layer rather than the entire image again. Not to mention if you just tweak the flattened image again, you're losing quality every time.

I come from web design though, where clients can change their mind 10 times a day, I guess it comes down to what you're designing and where you were trained

[AlieS]

The background, though unfortunate, is able to be worked with.

Here is what I would have done with the picture.



For the background I isolated it and made it a new layer, which I then set the blend mode to overlay.

[araine]

I am a graphic designer for Betty Crocker, and they have us Merge everything for space issues, but I agree. I have gotten to points where I have had to re-create something because of it.

[KathrynWilson]

A matter of taste of course, but whatever method it is that use to smooth skin, I personally only apply it to women in portraits. In men I just touch up blemishes, as I think it looks a bit too bizarre. I'm also a big believer in ONLY smoothing skin, not the whole shot. Hair is not supposed to be blurry.
E.g. (more processed than I normally do)

This to me is a snap-shot, looks like it was done with a disposable camera. This doesn't scream "Professional portrait!".

Like Jim said, the background is just... well, wrong. White balance is a tad off and the exposure is dull. This photo needs some pop and it is missing it. The edits you did are subtle, if that was the look you were going for, then you acheived it, but i fail to see the point of making those many edits and having such a little gain.

~Eric