Skin Retouching with Wavelet Decompose in GIMP

[patdavid]

I had looked around for a while to find a method that worked well for me to retouch and smooth skin in portraits in GIMP. There were many methods I found, but mostly they were about slapping a gaussian blur over the image and masking out the skin to make it "smooth".

Then I found the Wavelet Decompose plugin for GIMP. This plugin is amazing.

It basically will decompose your image into different frequency scales for you, isolating features in your image based on their size. This means that you can separately edit features while not disturbing others on a different scale level. For example, you can smooth the tones of skin textures that might be sun-damaged or blotchy, without even affecting the finer details such as pores and wrinkles (the things that make skin look normal for the most part :) ).

You can also suppress or reduce the size/appearance of these other features with an amazing level of control vs other techniques I have seen.

These are some simple examples (and bear in mind this is just about large scale skin toning, I didn't really get into spot blemishes or anything easy to deal with):





I figured I would share a walkthrough of how I personally use the tool, and hopefully it might be helpful to some others in some fashion! :)

The full tutorial can be found here:

Getting Around in GIMP - Skin Retouching (Wavelet Decompose)

I'm open to any discussion/feedback/etc. about this technique...

[Madog]

Thank you for this, nice tut, and a very handy tool.

[RLucas]

Very cool tut! Thanks for sharing. I already use Wavelet Denoise, so I am familiar with the concept. i am going to download this now. Thanks for sharing!
It's also nice to see more Gimp related stuff coming around.

[mshockley]

I just started using Gimp and am about clueless! After a total computer meltdown I'm now running with a linux operating system---and my photoshop software of course will not work. If either of you could help me learn how to add these plug-ins to Gimp I would be so happy!!!

I've also found several mentions of a download that will allow me to add photoshop plug-ins to gimp---but again--clueless as to how to proceed.

With that said, I had finally gotten to where my Photoshop Elements was in the bag, and I could pretty much get whatever done it might be that I wanted to do with an image---BUT--I think I might like Gimp better!...That is if I ever figure it all out and get some of these plug-ins that are all over the place!

Any help would be great---but you have to remember this is all very new having only ever used Windows in the past.

[mshockley]

Patrick your site is great, I will be spending considerable time over there trying to get smart!

Another big question maybe you can answer: right now the onky thing I've figured out is to use RawTherapee to process my file---which I actually like compared to my previous Windows based product--but if I save it as a TIF file--which is what I like to do--I lose my EXIF data when I open it in Gimp. I cannot figure a way around this. The only way the data is intact is if i process out as a JPEG. Do you have any info. on this?

[Jim Bryant]

That program makes all your subjects look like "plastic Barbie Dolls!"

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by mshockley

Patrick your site is great, I will be spending considerable time over there trying to get smart!

Another big question maybe you can answer: right now the onky thing I've figured out is to use RawTherapee to process my file---which I actually like compared to my previous Windows based product--but if I save it as a TIF file--which is what I like to do--I lose my EXIF data when I open it in Gimp. I cannot figure a way around this. The only way the data is intact is if i process out as a JPEG. Do you have any info. on this?

Gimp is free share software, which is not up to standards on what the industry uses. Photoshop does not strip out the capture info. Maybe get Light Room, it's only $99.00 or so.

[patdavid]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Gimp is free share software, which is not up to standards on what the industry uses. Photoshop does not strip out the capture info. Maybe get Light Room, it's only $99.00 or so.

This is actually FUD, as there is no real "standards" on what the "industry" uses. Please don't spread misinformation to others, it only does them, and yourself, a disservice.

GIMP is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), not "share" or otherwise. There is a big difference.

That program makes all your subjects look like "plastic Barbie Dolls!"

No, the program only does what I tell it to do. You may feel that I made them look like plastic dolls, and that's fine, but your comment still doesn't actually address the methodology I have outlined here. Did you actually read the article?

I mention a few times that the effect should be approached with a light hand, lest you find yourself in "mannequin" territory - and that the amount of smoothing is highly dependent on your own tastes...

Originally Posted by mshockley

-I lose my EXIF data when I open it in Gimp. I cannot figure a way around this. The only way the data is intact is if i process out as a JPEG. Do you have any info. on this?

This is a known problem, as TIFF doesn't usually contain IPTC/EXIF data by default. One method I normally use is to use exiftool to re-write the EXIF data once I am done processing. (this is beyond the scope of this particular forum thread, I think - Try the GIMP Users group on Flickr for more information on how to do this, they are pretty nice people over there, and very helpful).

[mshockley]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Gimp is free share software, which is not up to standards on what the industry uses. Photoshop does not strip out the capture info. Maybe get Light Room, it's only $99.00 or so.

I have to say this....the only reason I am becoming familiar with Gimp is due to a system crash that wiped my hard drive clean last week. To make a long story short I am now running it as a Linux machine without a Windows Operating System, therefore my lovely installment CD of Photoshop must sit on the shelf as it is only supported by Windows/Mac OS. I cannot afford to purchase a new PC...

With that said, I have had several days to play around in Gimp and honestly am not finding it to be much different from Adobe at all. It may not be "the industry standard", but so far it has been capable of doing whatever I've asked of it. The only reason I was even asking about the EXIF data is because I enjoy participating in the weekly assignments here at DPS, and the rules state that your EXIF data must be there to be considered for the judging. Otherwise I couldn't care less if my EXIF data is visible to anyone else. I will always have it on my RAW file.

I venture to guess that as time goes by, Gimp can and will compete with Adobe's product, just as I am finding that the open source operating system Ubuntu can quite nicely compete with Microsoft Windows.

Did I want to learn an entirely different operating system and a different photo editing program??? Does it feel great to have purchased Photoshop and not be able to use it?? Absolutely not! But as a result, my eyes have been opened to just how powerful Gimp can be.