Facial retouching practice, what do you think?

[dlanter]

I was playing around with Portrait Porfessional today. It is an easy to use & powerful program, but it can easily go to far with the retouching and look fake. I think I have found a happy medium of the settings that I can use as a general preset, but wanted to see what you thought of the results.

Below are the before and after shots. This shot was cropped from a recent family portrait that I did.

Thanks for your opinions.

[12stones]

My first question would be to ask what happened to the background. After that her skin looks decent but you've lost detail in her eyes and hair. I think there could be some work done with the healing brush on her face as well.

Edit: here's what I did...

1) Healing brush to get rid of shiny spots
2) Curves for some contrast
3) Median noise mask for smooth skin
4) Sharpened and dodged eyes
5) Whitened teeth

Here's a final version and, if I can get it to work, an animation that shows the changes...

[12stones]

And, hopefully, the animation...

[dlanter]

Originally Posted by 12stones

My first question would be to ask what happened to the background. After that her skin looks decent but you've lost detail in her eyes and hair. I think there could be some work done with the healing brush on her face as well.
...

Ricky,

As far as the background, I assume you are talking about the vignette I applied to it. The way I cropped this shot I thought it had to much dead white space so I did a little vignette effect in Lightroom.

I thought I had the eyes looking pretty good by brightening them, but I like your version better. I definately agree with you about the hair. Her hair wasn't lit very well to begin with and I had a hard time trying to improve it.

Thanks for the help & advise. I am still trying to learn more about getting the shot right when taking it and I normally don't try to do this much retouching because I'm not very good at that either.

BTW, cool animation. I would ask how you did that, but I have enough to learn for now.

[12stones]

Originally Posted by dlanter

Ricky,

I am still trying to learn more about getting the shot right when taking it...

Me too, that's why I know how to retouch. I wish I didn't have to. I wasn't sure if it was a vignette as the color seemed to be a little off, like it might have happened when you did the processing.

I just used Adobe Imageready for the animation. Learned how to do it this morning so I could show the different steps. It's not too hard.

[Shane]

Dan, is it even the same photo? If so, look at the bottom teeth in the first photo . . . in the second the lip position changes and the bottom teeth are hidden? Is that part of the processing?

[dlanter]

Originally Posted by Shane

Dan, is it even the same photo? If so, look at the bottom teeth in the first photo . . . in the second the lip position changes and the bottom teeth are hidden? Is that part of the processing?

Yes, it is the same photo. If you switch back & forth between the 2 photos you will see that in the second one her face is thinner also. This is the result of the face sculpting function in Portrait Professional. I was just playing around with this shot practicing, but I think this ability could come in handy sometimes. After all, do you know any woman who doesn't think she needs to be thinner? Just kidding ladies.

[sandy_ruotolo]

Hi, I'm not sure if the retouched photo is the better photograph, but I am a realtive new commer, so my comments will be more questions than solutions.
1. why did you decide to retouch the photo?
2. I when I can shoot with a Olympus e-510, hopefully time off from work and school will allow me at least to shoot something around the 7th. They're having a mushroom festival (only in PA) where they will have a parade, antiqiue cars & fire engines, plus the town that holds the fesitval is rather interesting. I hopefully will get them posted.
My second question would be:
I sue the Olympus Style Master to edit my photos, but they don't have a lot of the features you said you applied to the photograph. Is this a commerical product for only professionals? If not who sells it?
I want to limit this post, but will have more quesitons.

[dlanter]

Sandra,
To answer your first question, it may be my personal preference more than anything. The shine on her cheeks, slight skin blemishes, her eyes were too dark, her cheeks looked too big when she smiles.
For your second question, you can find the program I used at http://www.portraitprofessional.com I don't remember how much the full version is but you can download a trial version to try it out.

[sandy_ruotolo]

Dan, thanks for your feedback and answering my questions. I may try it just to see how it works.

[luis_relampago]

This is a matter of personal taste, to ask if the image looks over done, it's up to the client to decide, some of them like them way over process some of them don't so it's finally up to the one who's paying.
I gave it a try with a couple of masks for color correction and highlight enhancement, I use the liquified tool to shape her face a bit, I also sharpen a bit the image for web purposes, and finally this is my interpretation of PP on this image, I hope you like it Dan.

[sandy_ruotolo]

Dan, now that I'm beginning to understand the "whys" and "hows" an individual choses, to use, the better I can appreciate the photo. Now that I understand the "why" and "how" I get a better understanding of photography. Thanks.

[dlanter]

Luis,
I like it, looks great. Be honest now, about how long did it take you to do this edit? I assume you are using CS3? This particular shot will not be shown to my client, I was just using it to practice my editting so I can do it on any other shot that does go to the client.

[luis_relampago]

Hey Dan this image took me about 2 minutes maybe less. Half a minute on her eyes and the rest on her skin, once you develop a technique is a lot faster. I try not to spend more than 3 minutes per image and I only retouch mostly large prints and important images. I get all my lighting, exposure and basic composition from my camera then I sharp and color enhancement on Photoshop and that's it.


God Bless!