post processing a black person

[sbug_adam]

I know this is very late but I am just now getting around to post processing photos from tracys woodlands workshop. Everyone remembers Diddy of course. So I've never photoshopped a black guy/girl and really am not sure how to go about it. I've seen a photo of Diddy that tracy shot and she looked smoother and lighter.. maybe it was the lighting but I dont know.. anyways here is the original






and diddy edited

[pressp]

Adam,

Here's an example of a formula I use to photoshop anyone. I adjusted the levels, smoothed the skin and dodged parts of the background, earring and foreground.

[daveb]

I couldn't resist ... The source image is a little small ... but this is my take on her.

This is pretty much my standard portrait post-processing ... I may smooth a tad more for a model shoot...

My goal is to keep texture in the skin. With darker skin tones you may have to bring up the accent colors a bit ... the gold under the eyes ... the burgandy in the cheeks.

[glworks]

Here's my take... copy layer, levels adjustment, clone stamp tool and healing tool for under eye circles and blemishes, curves to lighten, desaturate, high pass 1.0 (under filter>other), overlay, bring down opacity just a tad, merge down to original-background-locked layer, copy layer, gaussian blur, mask>invert, small brush with around 10% opacity to soften the skin - face and arms, curves lighten (lower opacity if it's too bright), curves linear contrast. I may have used the curves lighten about 3 times.