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Glamour Retouching Part 1

This was again taken by hell and victoria smith of light workshops, light workshops, dot com currently doing the california photo festival, I'm giving them a plug because our great people, people like ben wilmore probably teaching there right now, another one of our creative live hall of famers. Also, people like jane counters isar teach there and who it sounds like jane, maybe teaching a class up here creative lives sometimes, but anyway, so this is ah, halibut or is shot beautiful model what we're going to do is get rid of distractions and emphasize the features of the young model here. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to do two things one I'm having some blemishes, so we're going to fix that and there are some things that are not blemishes but are distractions, and we're going to minimize that that's one of the main concepts when it comes to re touching the difference between removing and reducing. Okay, you want to remove the acne scar, the whatever you can't remove the mole t...

hat marge has a mole, that my mole is part of her show a photograph to somebody without a mole with a moelis and marge, they're going to say who's that okay so you there's certain things that you can't get rid of that's just part of the person if the mole is casting a shadow like the eiffel tower you'd better minimize that because it's a distraction to the story of aunt marge it's part of her but it's not her okay so there are things to do with the difference between we're moving completely and reducing just minimizing it is a distraction the other part of retouching is enhancing or elaborating or something that's there and that's things like eyes or scan or stuff like that so those are the two things were going to do in this case I'm going to bypass for time and jump right into the removal of the blemishes because I have a blemish removal snapshot was going to say that I have a pree said that this I'll sell to you for nine ninety five this thing it automatically does this for you it's not part of the class actually if I had that feature it would be a ten thousand dollar one and you would gladly pay it I think you might have missed one right under her lip no I understand her knows that that's actually is a diamond stud will leave that in there we could take it out but what I did purposely leave in here and that's again I'll go back to our healing brush here and show what we did and let's actually turn on our ability so there's a lot of dunce going on here, they actually go quite quickly, and you would have to still do those one at a time and photoshopped the benefit of photo shop. Doing this sort of retouching is you have the healing brush and the healing brush. The nice thing about the healing brush is it doesn't sample from a particular area, it actually kind of recreates it from scratch. If you're using especially what's known as the content where option within the healing brush and remind me tomorrow when we get into there, I'll show you that as well. So when you do with the brush, you're not worrying about click. Okay, where did that sample from? Did it sample from? Like I did when I did the whole in the in the trees and its sample, the woman's face, you kind of go that's probably not appropriate the thing with photoshopped that healing brush with content where it actually recreates the texture, it doesn't actually borrow it per se, so you can actually go a bit faster and photoshopped with content aware healing brush. Um, so this is definitely slower, and this is a case where I probably should oer and oer would do it inside a photo shop. I would do the tango and here take it as far as I could jump over under photo shop and do the final retouching their other words, take this as far as I can in this case, why I wanted to show it what you can do is to show that it actually your quality of what you're getting is not less because you're doing it in adobe kamerad. The features air here to do an absolutely beautiful job of retouching it's up to you, which is going to be quicker in this case that much blemish work, probably quicker and photo shop. Okay, you could also do your content where phil, using a little teeny, uh, lassos. Speaking of jane counters, isar, probably one of the world's best re touches, does great classes on retouching, and she does some of the most unique techniques in retouching that only really cool people use and at least me out of the equation. But there are different ways of skinning that cat. I just wanted to show how far you can push it and basically show off and go on in hand, and then they're so nan and end it. But that is that I did leave this little part here with this healing brush, because let's say that this is that proverbial mole that's kind of known little beauty mark it may be distracting it may look like a pimple or a blemish or something like that, so I want to minimize it I don't want to take it out and this comes up to this concept of a pass ity and this is actually great because this sort of concept is where you could get rid of circles under the eyes or minimized wrinkles without removing them is basically wanting to first get rid of something click let it move over to a different location which you could move to get just what you want and then you confined to in the opacity and again I'm gonna tap that wiki for visualize so I'm not seeing any of the points it's still active but then basically you can take it down to zero and you just dial in the amount of distraction removal that you want. You could also think of it as putting on makeup how much a little powder do you want to put on it so it's minimized without it being distracting so the fact that you have opacity as well as hell and clone and feather means you've got a ridiculously powerful set of retouching tools just in this one little option known as the spot removal tool okay makes sense nod your head enthusiastically yes they're all nodding their heads enthusiastically so has hopefully you are in television land okay now I'm going to um work on the eyes, I'm gonna work it whatever is the most amazing, the most work, and right now I'm going to say the eyes and there's eyes are a standard thing of retouching when it comes to glamour work and the basic concept, what a lot of people do when they're trying to emphasize make eyes pop is you wantto emphasize the iris, the color portions of the eyes, and specifically you want a color or lighten the portion of the iris that's opposite of the primary light source the direction of the light source which is causing the speculum highlight on the I also known as the catch light, is obviously where the light is coming from, we can see that catch light is above that means that's where the light's coming from, so we're gonna lighten the portion of the eye opposite of that what you're trying to imitate is it the light that light just happens to be in coming in just the right angle to hit the lens of the eye, which sits on top of the eyeball and is actually hitting that area. And when that happens it's magic, right? A portrait that has that happened when the light is just right, it hits that and all this on the irises light up his magic well, we're faking it, we're going to make fake magic, okay? You do not want to lighten the entire iris because by definition especially since you're always going to have a shadow underneath the eyelid that would mean the light source would be coming from within the eye coming out which of course would be demon possession so you do not want to do that so what we're going to do is we're going to come up here we have new adjustment brush I'm going to use not a full feathered brush well come up here and zoom in a little bit more so I've gotta brush looking down here that's probably gonna have you know a little bit of ah um the other too little bit of a softness to it explained a little bit more of a feather to it I wanted to be inside the iris but I'm going to find tune this later on um in terms of the shape that I'm going to create I'm going to come up here and I'm gonna find tune this later on but I'm going to start off with just taking exposure but the great thing is when you have something that's wet like this like an eye uh um eyes chrome glass reflective surfaces that are really exaggerating by reflecting all the environment around them you could just do a heck of a lot of work with it and it's really fun the fact that I've got a dozen things at my disposal including color so I'm gonna come up here and I'm gonna tap what was that key to show and hide the mask? It's not the same as the wiki it's the why? Because we'd like you that's right? That is coming down here. That is thie show mask so that's a toggle on here so I'm gonna come up here and I want to go opposite of the primary light source. I don't have auto mass turned on, I'm not trying to hide it in there. Um to selected in there, I just want a nice, big soft adjustment. I'm going to tap that. Why key? And you're going to see what I'm doing in there and I actually like that, I think that's a nice natural I like soft it's not going outside of it. If I did do a little spill, I can hold down that option or all key get my racer tool and find tune that shape. Um, some people like a little crescent in there, so they're going to come up here and I like erasing to create shapes rather than trying to paint them. So if I want a little bit more of a crescent shape in here, I'd rather erase it, then try and paint it from scratch so there is a little bit more of a crescent shape. Like I said, I'll often times I'll start off with something like exposure so I can see the shape that I created but actually what I really want probably mohr than exposure is that shadow I want to bring up that shadow and I want to add clarity I want to emphasize the actual structure of the iris you know when you see somebody with really light eyes that they're just kind of magical yet they got the dark specs and they just you know, we're kind of kind of going for that so I'm taking that clarity I'm taking the shadows to bring in that detail I can take saturation up for the actual color that's part of the eye and then maybe even contrast again it since it's a wet surface it's gonna have some inherent contrast to it and maybe depend upon how greedy I want to get take that exposure up. So here is the eye before after before after came you could do it any way that you want that is density at one hundred if I wanted to lighten up more of the I I'm kind of getting a lot of that shadow there's nothing stopping me from reducing the density and actually doing war of the I think I'm gonna leave that right there for now I do have this set that pin is active, that mask is active can I come over here and just go to the other eye of course that's the thing with the brush that's unique about it is I'm not doing separate little adjustments I just have one adjustment and I can go anywhere within that file to do it and again I'm painting and then doing a little bit of racing to fine tune it once you get going on that the big soft subtle brush you should go really really quickly with this the nice thing is since this is not destructive I can continue to find two in this one small done that's the great thing about us when you're all done you'll have all these pans and you confined tuned balance out the I and the teeth and things like that it's amazing some people do retouching and they'll do something like this and photo shop and then they're flattened the image and then they'll do something else and flatten the image then you come to the end of the image and kind of going eyes away too bright you know so having that flexibility too in the entire process to go once you did it yeah the teeth are a little heavy handed now I want to balance that out so I love that about we are speaking of the eyes I'm going to lighten up the whites of the eyes as well someone has to now say new and I'm actually before we do that let's uh let's go back to that area here because I don't want to forget it I just spent all that time creating this adjustment exposure contrast highlight shadow clarity saturation over four hundred twenty seven layers and photoshopped would've been needed to do this one adjustment I like that I can probably use that again I can make money with that any time you go I can make money with that what should you do? Save a preset but remember we and we touched on this presets we did that for the little antique ing we did a little high key one presense presets presets wouldn't it be need if you could jump around without needing toe presets come up here and say new local correction setting and save your presense click we're going to call this iris pop it could be one thing to remember about making presets both in the regular presets panel as well as thes targeted presets is they're all going to come up alphabetically on the file, not chronologically, so if this r I if I want to put all my eye presets together, I'm going to call it I hyphen iris pop that means when I go to I whiten they'll be next to each other I won't have to search for you know certainly wouldn't call them popping of the iris because I'm going to be popping teeth and all sorts of things so I iris pop it is now pre set over here I was pop have already got some things going on here now my need to say new now I want to do is white in the eyes a little bit I's the working on eyes is often not specific tio making them brighter though that's part of it it's also because you can see there's even a little bit of yellow going on here well have scarring of the eye you're spending a lot of time outdoors or whatever you may also have veins in the eyes I actually retouched out the eyes using that healing brush so little teeny veins in the eyes again the eye is obviously the window to the soul that's where everybody's going first thing you look at in any kind of portrait so the eyes had better be just one hundred percent so great that you now have that adjustment brush with that little story stray eyelash which is a line rather than going dot dot dot dot dot just get rid of the eyelash and you're done so again fantastic knew what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take that exposure up a little bit and then I'm going to take things like saturation down take out the ambient light in the eye whether that's because the room is blue and I'm getting a blue cast in there whether the eye is slightly yellowed because of scarring from the sun whatever reducing the saturation and increasing the middle time exposure it's great it's actually the exact same thing we're going to do for the teeth so sometimes even used the exact same setting for lightening up the teeth and getting rid of staining but in this case we'll do that we're gonna tap our why key again I'm still not going to use the mask and like big soft and subtle we've got our mask visible here let's turn off our green and I'm going to come up here and I'm gonna go into the eye because I've got a internal corner here so rather than do a little teeny tiny brush I'd rather go bigger than I need hold down that option or old key use eh um less feather on my eraser and now what I can do is I can come up here and do that hard edge including that hard internal ej and I think that's a little bit I do want more of a feather there I like having that that much I'm talking about the erasure here so um I can't erase that interior corner that sharp edge faster by going and doing this so again watch I'll do this corner corner hold down option are old and I'm done when I come up here and hide that I've done the whitening of the eyes I can see that I wanted fine tune that a little bit and here is the whites of the eyes of a very bad mask ok, not too much I've got that still here come over here do the other eye this gun will do it without seeing the mask I come up here and get a little carried away option or all race come up I like that little white one it is still active the pen is still active here come over here make that as a preset new local correction I hyphen whites of the eyes enter and here is now the poor and after in those obviously you also want to always look in the context of the image to see whether it's working or not, knowing that I confined to in those I like that we'll use that as a starting point now um those pulled back it may be that those whites of the eyes are a little bit heavy handed there I'm goingto find tune that but let's first do this skin this is where we're gonna come up and do a skin softening. Now the model has got beautiful soft skin we've gotten rid of the blemishes were going toe get rid of. We're not even going to get rid of everything you do see a lot of poor structure inside the skin I'm not concerned with that. People have poor structure when you see retouching where people don't have poor structure then that's a sign of bad retouching your plastic skin but what I do want to give it a bit of a glow let's say this is a glamour this your typical perfume ad or something like that so what I want to do is I would do one herself in that skin so I'm gonna come up here and say new again and I'm going to take advantage of that anti clarity and because I'm going to target in a brush I can actually get away with a lot more the problem with anti clarity especially if you go over an area that has contrast like the eyes they get kind of mushy and get this kind of white water white water color looked to them as long as you stay away from that reducing them the contrast within subtleties like skin is actually really nice actually does a beautiful job so in this case this image has ninety percent skin in it so rather than paint in everywhere I want this effect I'm actually gonna paint it everywhere and just a race where I don't want it that's another tip sometimes it's quicker to raise something than it is to paint it I'm gonna take the size of the brush up I've got my clarity down that's the only thing that's being adjusted I'm gonna show that mask so I can see make sure that I cover everything thinking manager mike awesome new into those pro tablet I'm not going to hold down that option are all key that's going to give me my eraser and I do not want to soften the eyelashes or the eyes I also don't want to do the anywhere where there's hair but again you can see how sloppy I'm doing that adjustment it's got a big feather onto it I'm also going to not do the lips and again big sloppy one sometimes the bottom of the nose but I'm gonna leave that right there. Let go of the eraser, tap the waikiki and now we've got our skin softening, okay? And you'll notice not only is it doing a really nice job of overall softening for it, but it's also doing a little soft ing almost a little light spill along the edge okay, look at the edge of the cheek because I let it go over the edge it's even softening that transition, which I also like in this way as well the other thing that you can do with it rather than just softening skin tone, which by the way, if we look at the poor structure it's still perfect exactly the same all I did was softened the subtle contrast within there and that subtlety is exactly what we wanted it's actually is a wonderful way to soften skin tone without making it look plastic okay, the overall look is this beautiful glamour glow, but in reality, it's actually just this wonderful softening of contrast. Speaking of softening, of contrast, we just softened edge contrast, one of the things that we do in lighting, especially with figure and portrait work, is we exaggerate that light over a person's body in this case of face. In other words, we're going to exaggerate the light on the cheekbone and the shadow underneath the cheekbones we actually play with contrast and actually can want increased contrast in certain areas reduced contrast and others that's asking that's getting a little greedy, but it would be really need if in one slider weaken, take out ej contrast in another slider ad mid tone contrast, meaning we can do this you see the bronze ng that's going on? I'm going exaggerated for teaching purposes, okay, I am exaggerating the light and shadow across her face. I'm actually because I'm doing that which were actually doing is you're shaping the light and exaggerating it's becoming mohr three d more dimensional that the nose is coming out, the cheeks are coming out all these things are coming out as long as I'm controlling it and it's something that I want that exaggeration of the tone ality in a scene while minimizing edge contrast, is actually pretty darn freaky, cool okay because that's giving me a huge amount of bronze ing going on at the same time that I am minimizing the distractions of skin can you do that easily with one brush and photo shop no you can't it's pitch in its really cool one there's no clarity and photo shop at all not even a feature except for the adobe camera filter in there but this ability to add edge contrast with a smart soft smart edged soft edged selection we're not using the the auto mask but that is really cool and I love it and there's all sorts of things that you could do that I'm not adding any sort of saturation or anything else to it any time you increase contrast by definition you are also increasing saturation so you'll notice that I'm also increasing saturation at the same time that I did that and when I did that that's also where those eyes are looking pretty good I think now tapping that I still think that those whites of the eyes I don't need that much exposure okay so I can take it down a little bit okay fine tune it last let's go into something else and that's actually those eyes are looking I can take well you know what take up that exposure just a little bit for that glamour glow but speaking of those eyes let's do one other thing to it we have softened the skin by anti clarity I think I just did another little paintbrush there um soften the skin by doing anti clarity can I add clarity to the eyes, especially in women? The popping, the eye lining of it exaggerating the contrast with an eye as well as pulling out shatter detail is a really cool thing some women spend a lot of time doing that kind of stuff amazing what you guys do so I'm going to say new and I'm going to now really quickly now with a brush that big okay, but a really big soft brush again my feather is going to be back up to one hundred big soft brush I want to be able to see that mask show that mask always want to see it I'm gonna come up here on the eyes and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to do a little bit of shadow I'm gonna pull out shadow detail, which means I'm going to further enhance those eyes and I'm going to add clarity okay? And remember that those work together if you use too much clarity, you're going to use a little bit of shadow because you could get a little bit excessive so let's see, I'm going, I know I'm going to change those settings, but let's come up here and we're going to do a few things here I'm going tio come up and just do the eyes which is a wonderful makeup job right there and I'm gonna then hide that and hide that and what that did and let's take down that slider you will see everything that's going to be adjusting everything but you kind of see what I did by exaggerating the contrast in the eyes I'm gonna actually delete that pen so you can see just that adjustment do you see what we did there? It did a lightening of the eye it did a darkening around the eye and it did a little bit of pop inside the eye which I can still find tuned let's take that shadow make sure that it's that pin is still selected okay, so I think this is that one right here so it's still selected so I can come up here and fine tune even mohr that shadow in that area question why clarity as opposed to sharpness remember sharpness? Is that a pixel level those individual pixels and that's going to change the structure the grain structure it's also goingto exaggerate any sort of textile potential artifacts. This is a clean, incredibly clean file that hala victoria created sharp everything is part of it sharpness really isn't an issue for me to exaggerate and do an unnatural sharpening I mean what what's not sharp about that I don't I don't want to draw attention to the pixels sharpening draws attention to the pixels what I wanted to do by doing that clarity is exaggerate the eyelash from what's behind the eyelash I'm actually changing the apparent distinction of objects in the scene by doing this this halo of contrast sharpness is at a pixel level it's sharpening pixels it's could completely care less whether it's one shaping pulled from another it's just global sharpening of every pixel in that area so I rarely will do targeted and also in this case that would have brought in sharpening of every single little piece of fleck of makeup and everything else so very good question but in this case that one thing I'm going to hit the delete key again so you can see it there is just that little extra pop that I'm doing to the eyes by doing that one big sloppy giant clarity and shadow like come over here and take that clarity up you know you can kind of see if I hit it make it active you know I want to I can exaggerate but I don't need toe again there's some point you're getting greedy okay so that is another adjustment that's making my eyes pop even more I can hit new I'm going to do one more thing related to that I don't need the shadow it could be the exact same adjustment let's let's try that because this same one that I'm going to do for an overall I pop right here and let's, go ahead and make that into a preset because you guys are going to get used to this now making presets any time you think that you can any time you see dollar signs or actually let's not put it into a capitalist setting. Let's say, any time you go ooh, any time you go or wow course well, I'll get twenty five cents every time you say it. I did copyright while it's pretty neat, huh? Every time you say wow, save it because there's no reason for you have to recreate that if this is going to be a global eye popping, which is adding clarity and bring in some shadow detail. So this is going to be what I because they're all going to be next to each other. I mean, this is just maybe a general pop. Okay, it's the whole the whole entire I I never have to recreate that again. I'm creating this bat utility bill, which again? You guys are too young for that of things that go on, just going to pull that out and pull that out and do this in there again. Don't recreate the wheel every time that you do some work.