Dire need of help (portrait cleanup)

[Wes]

A very good friend of mine asked that I do some shots of his nephew while he was in town. I was happy to do it, plus it gave me an opportunity to see how well I could do with shooting someone with dark skin. Here's one of the shots I came up with...




Okay, feel free to critique, but what I'm really looking for here is a way to clear up his complexion. Originally, I wasn't going to do it. However, I was asked to see what I could do just to see how it would turn out.

If it were just one or two zits I would have no problems. However, when the acne is this extensive I don't even know how to get started. If someone could give me step by step instructions on how to fix this, I would be forever grateful.

Of course, I'm assuming that it CAN be fixed.

Thanks!

[srwatters]

There aren't enough pixels in that shot to clean it up. It will look terrible and without any skin texture. If I had the full size image, I would use a combination of the patch tool, spot healing tool, clone tool, and Kodak airbrush to fix his complexion. Granted it would take me about 30 minutes to do a good job, but I've worked on some nearly this bad and gotten good results.

[Wes]

Scott, that's pretty much what I was afraid of.

Harumph.

What of the shot itself? I'm still pretty new at portraiture and would love any advice on how to do better.

[CaptainTom]

This was a VERY quick attempt to show you what direction you might try.
Assuming you have PS ?
The clone stamp is your best friend......

Scott is right about the image size. The more pixels you have to work with, the cleaner the results, and more natural looking than what I have doen in 5 minutes.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by xmenporsche

What of the shot itself? I'm still pretty new at portraiture and would love any advice on how to do better.

I'm not a big fan of on camera flash so the first suggestion would be to move the light source away from the camera. In this case I would put it on camera right and higher to 'short light' the young man. Next suggestion would be to turn his face to camera right until his left ear disappears. You don't want to see just a bit of the lobe showing. Either all the ear or none. Last suggestion would be to make your light source bigger. If all you have is a shoe mount strobe, then I would bounce it into a reflector. That lowers the light level but makes it much larger and softer. There are other diffusers you can use (Fong Dong, pocket bouncers, etc.), but I prefer softboxes, reflectors, and umbrellas. YMMV.

[epoh]

my random 'girl' tip - Next time you are at Walgreens or the like, go to the makeup aisle and look for "Powder Leaves" - it will look like a tiny book. Each little page has compressed powder on it - keep one of those books in your camera bag. Anytime you shoot someone with an oily complextion let them use one or two pages. It will help get rid of a lot of the shine, which will make the zits/acne less noticable and easier to fix later.

[Killeenguy]

this is what i came up with...it didn't seem to be that hard for me. but all i did was cloned his current skin tone with a layer over the existing photo. just use this shadows vs. some other skin tone from another face.

the idea is to lesson the blemish not totally eliminate.

[Wes]

Very nicely done, Ruben. I'll have to go home and give it a shot on the original - as soon as I can figure out how to do it.

Amy - great tip. How many times do you use each page before it cannot be used again?

[epoh]

Wes - you just use the page once and toss it (most ppl only need one page). They are usually pretty cheap, maybe $2 or $3 for a book with 20 pages.

[Killeenguy]

Originally Posted by xmenporsche

Very nicely done, Ruben. I'll have to go home and give it a shot on the original - as soon as I can figure out how to do it.

Amy - great tip. How many times do you use each page before it cannot be used again?

no prob..i'm going to be working at the house tonite..so let me know if you need any walk through help....i find that easier to do then explaining ...like iming i mean.

[kdr0014]

Just a thought, I don't know if anyone else brought it up. Do you have a tablet and photoshop? I think a lot of this photoshop stuff becomes a lot easier if you're using the right tools. The composition is pretty good I think. You might want to get a little tighter, but I think most of the problems in the image are more a result of tools and execution. You might want him to pull his shoulders back, so he doesn't look so timid. at least the one closest to the camera. Just an opinion, but I think it is a shot with a lot of potential. It looks kind of snap shotish, which is fine for family vacations, but portraiture you want to be more than a moment or frame of time. The complexion shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes to fix with the right tools. Like ruben said, clone, and healing brushes can do amazing things. If you apply them appropriately. Were you hand holding the camera? The noise level seems high, but that might just be the resolution. Are you shooting in jpeg or raw? Raw has a great deal more forgiveness for things like exposure, contrast, color temp. Best of luck to you.