Lessons

Lesson Info

Retouching: Contouring

we did all of that frequency separation that we had there but because she had such tests it's really rough skin I chose to light her flatter and I chose to add film and we talked about these being tools that help you reduce texture on but also helps you not have really read scan it decreases the differences between the highlights and shadows but looking at it her face doesn't have that much structure much dimension to it the highlights on her cheeks aren't defined in the shadows underneath aren't that defined so we can take them much like it if we had a make up artist even if I had a make up artist that would still be pretty rough I would still have to do retouching I just wouldn't have to do is much playing with shadows here's how contouring works if you go ahead and download that that preset are sorry those actions we have them here it's contouring contouring color contouring neutral there are many ways to contour I'm going to show you a couple so just know I'm aware there are severa...

l ways to do this but think of it this way I and this is included also with if you purchase the course I showed you on the first day how people often contour with makeup and they often contour also in photo shop and the idea is you want to add more dimension to the face by brightening up highlights and then creating definition of shadows this is what it looks like and for makeup I'm describing a brush right now in a blank lair okay there's nothing in this layer and I'm going to grab a regular brush it's white mid level opacity here's where your highlights typically go with makeup and look up online services look up makeup contouring and it will show you how to do this but like I said my download has it as well all right so you're gonna put highlight the centre of the forehead and on the chin they're also should be a highlight down the center of the nose there's also highlights on the top of the cheekbones and also not as strong but still little bit of highlights under the eyes there you also see some people that do highlights on these ridges of the lips so that is roughly what is highlighted achieved in makeup and also achieved in photo shop I'm just going to call this highlight highlight create another layer I'm gonna call this one shadows here is where you typically contour with shadows typically yukon tore a little bit around the sides of the forehead and women that do really expensive makeup for themselves know this often down the sides of the nose sometimes a little bit under the lips because that adds a little bit lips look a little bit fuller underneath the cheekbones that and then also sometimes around the jaw line to make it look a little bit more defined something approximately like this sometimes also darkening down the eyebrows a little it's less contouring but you could do that and makeup wise if somebody has kind of a slapped her face sometimes you'll dark and just a little bit to make the eyes look a little bit more pronounced also women who do a lot of eye makeup same thing is you might add a highlight to the to the problem because that makes your eyes look more defined so take a look at that those were my highlights and those are my shadows doesn't look good yet so here's one way if your brain works this way that you could do this you can actually change the blend modes on these layers so I can change the blend modes and you click on that layer where it says normal and change it too soft light and so soft light actually makes it sort to interact with the skin tones and I'm gonna do the same thing to the shadows shadows and the thing that makes it look fake of course is a is a little bit to define for both highlights and shadows and additionally it's not blurred enough it's like this way to chris so I have a couple things I could do I can blur these and click on those layers filter blur goshen blur and now I can blur till it starts looking a little bit more realistic a little bit more blended that looks good for me I'll go back into the same thing for the highlight select on it filter blur goshen blur and do the same thing they could look a little bit more blended and I can back off capacities of this make them a little bit more subtle back off the highlights a tiny bit the shadows a little bit and now to show you the before and after here here's before and here's after so I started to shape her face a little bit and it's it's all about what you think is natural like I think the highlights look a little bit too late still fore and aft er have given her a little bit more shape if your brain works like that this is not the best way to contour but at least you're thinking like I paint white I think the paint black like maybe that works really well for you and this is technically dodging and burning if you guys have ever done the grey layer on soft light with dodging burns the same thing we're just making it more intuitive painting highlights painting shadows trying to make them look more realistic okay let's talk about the way that I usually do it um it's not that much more complicated I would do this usually with curves and I would do this with curves where I lightened up on highlights and darkened down on shadows I usually go to curves I opened it up and I am going to I'm going to use a preset and tweak it so let's say that we're doing shadows right now I go to the pre set and I want everything to be darker in shadows so I have select the darker preset but I don't want the whole thing to go dark I wantto paint this in selectively the shortcut if you want to invert the mask is command I it fills in the massive hides everything you could also grab your paintbrush over here and fill in a paint bucket and fill in the mask black so black is hiding that all right so I have one I want to name it because this is my shadows and this is so I don't get confused or talked about that before because how you going to know what this particular curves level does if you have a ton of them so added in my shadows and I'm going to go back and do another curves adjustment layer and this time I'm gonna grab my pre set and I want it to be later and same saying command I inverts it I'm going to name that high life and now I can grab a white brush and to start painting out I could use a really low opacity brush so I can build and just see what's the right amount I also use a very soft brush because if it's not soft it becomes obvious almost instantly so let's too maybe and I was try thirty percent and I concert painting on highlights and contouring her face we're getting a little bit of that needs my contour down here we need my contour there maybe filling in a little bit more under the eyes and they want on top of her lips like I recommended s so that's looking okay let's see the before after so far I brought up her cheekbones all right now let's switch over to the shadows I grab the same thing if it were not painting black or white we're revealing or hiding the mask so that's why I'm still going to use white to show the shadows the black was hiding it someone to use white on the mask now I can start painting in those shadows making those defined let's darken down the jaw line just a little bit a little bit underneath her lips maybe she's a little bit more definition on her nose and to the signs of her head and maybe a this point also give her a little more definition on the eyebrows and I can keep layering on till I think it looks right aiken still always back off my capacity and I can still always blurred if I need to here's my before and after of this so this is what makeup artists doing on your face one more thing before we move on from this right now and this is going to depend on the image right now we are on a normal blend mode we're just lightning and darkening with curves sometimes that doesn't look good because sometimes with darker skin if you light and up on the skin tone it looks too white it looks too painted on and sometimes with some skin tones I think I see a little bit more in lighter skin tones when you darkened down around the cheekbones and the jaw line it looks to read it's too saturated because when you're changing we're changing here is the exposure and the contrast and by doing that when you make something more contrast their darkened it down it often gets more saturated right when you darkened think down increase contrast you see that saturation and then conversely when you like in them up they tend to look a little bit flatter less saturated well if I don't want this color shift you change the blend mode so by changing with blood motor I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on highlights to click on normal and I changed my blend moto luminosity luminosity means don't affect the color just affect the lightness and darkness of those those particular pixels she said that was a pre subtle change but you see that it looks more natural this is before see how it looks kind of too pale and this is after it has some of that that warmth kind of red pinkness to her skin is before and here's after it looks a little bit more natural and then the same thing with the shadows I can change that luminosity and the shadows didn't make too much of a difference it depends on the photos because these are adjustment layers I can always double click on them I can go in and say you know what I want I want those lighten those highlights to be a little brighter and I can increase the contrast and I can kind of mess with those could do the same thing come into the shadows and the shadows aren't dark and often at any point if it doesn't look blend enough filter blur goshen blur and let's soften them a little bit all right so how this applies just real quick to those actions that I have available for you to download I have two actions that I have given you the first action says contour color neutral color neutral means it's going to change the blend moto luminosity for you so it will affect the colors and the other one is contour that's just normal no change blend mode because sometimes I like that sometimes they like when the shadows get a little bit redder sometimes I think that looks more natural than just darker so either way but since now you know that all I'm doing is changing the blend mode you can always do it in either one and then just change the blade mode later on but that is there all right so perfect let's do question so far on contouring and any of the things we just covered so lindsay this has to do with contouring but christina cole images earlier had asked if its possible for you to do a little bit of the edge of the jaw how you would do with how you would do that without blurring but also for contract I know you said you were going to get into that but if you could just so people know how to do that part might be great definitely let me I'm goingto run my action real quick let's do um the patrol all right so I just I ran my action it created him for me what I would do is I would come into the jaw area I had grabbed my brush on no hardness whatsoever and I would make it a much lower opacity and I would just kind of trace over it a little bit and if you need teo let's say that you do want to blur maybe it looks a little bit too crisp but then when you blur it may be your other shadows were perfect and you don't want to mess them up that's cool you just duplicate that layer wait when you first created the action and then you can call one shadows jaw shadows cheekbones you can separate them out just by dragging dragging for example the highlight one I could drag down to the icon next trash can is going to duplicate duplicate it and I could call this highlights cheeks and then this would be highlights other the rest of the face so it gives you a little bit of flexibility that way and you can see let's take a look at maya shadows here it just makes her look like she has a little bit more definition in her jaw and I can always go yeah it's a little bit too harsh filter blur gunjan blur and let's see maybe a little bit more definition than that so I'm always tweaking it's going to be different on every single photo on me mimi says lindsay that was amazing you just made my life so much easier which I think a lot uh j buck was saying with contouring she's done it appears to be affecting the saturation of the image is it and how would you neutralize that saturation shift so the saturation shift is changing the blend moda luminosity if you don't change the bloody boat you will definitely have a color shift and then so that would be using the color neutral action instead of just color action be the other one also all right any questions in here because doing right yes medio ah that's a great question that was good I like that thing we did have a question about that so much of question but a comment in kind of the earlier portion and this portion just it's always amazing how I learned new things even when I think I'm doing something the right way because I was using frequency separation and then I would use portraiture afterwards just a little tiny bit for a little bit of of smoothing and areas that I just couldn't quite get right it never occurred to me to use it on the color layer for frequency separation so it's just you always learn new things okay would know it's awesome about that is during my first retouching class here on creative life somebody in a chat room suggested I had never done it so it's some buddy and I know they're watching but somebody and after did that unlike that's brilliant and so use it all the time so it's like a win win for everybody