Teenage Skin Retouch

Cheerdad

I took this picture of a young man who couldn't afford to have formal senior portraits taken by a professional photographer. I did what I could with the lighting to soften his face, which has a lot of blemishes and, as you can see, is rather "splotchy."

http://cheerdad.smugmug.com/gallery/1409972/1/67094510

I tried to smooth-out alot of the acne without over processing, but his skin is a frustratingly deep shade of red which is accentuated with yellow skin tones all over the place.

I have tried select color range and then filling in with a color sampled from an area with tone that looks to be good, but it still comes out looking fake.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! :dunno

P.S
Is his face still too red? I have a notorious problem with red images!

USAIR

CD I would try this and see how it looks
The link comes from the bar above under "How To"
I sure others will chime in

Oh also welcome to Dgrin

Fred

leuallen

I don't know your abillities with Photoshop but here is a method which works well. It may be a little advanced - actually it is simple, just takes time and steady hand. Best done with a Wacom and pen. Mouse is possible but much harder.

Create a layer above the image. Fill with 50% gray (optional). Set mode to overlay.

Using the brush with low opacity. I use 50% opacity with 10% fill. Small soft - just larger than the details you are working on. I ranged fromm 3 to 6 pixels

Paint over dark areas with a white brush.
Light areas with a black brush.

Since you have a low opacity, it takes several strokes to bring the detail to the tone you want.

I worked on the red blemish areas lightening them until they were approximately the tone of the normal surrounding skin. Then the black brush to darken any areas that were too light. I generally worked at 200%. Did a whole section with the white brush, then switched to black. Then touched up with white again, and finally black.

I did not need to do anything to the red areas. Lighening them to blend the density brought the color into a pleasing range.

If you feel you need to still get rid of some of the red, try this:

Add a layer above the dodge and burn layer. Set the mode to color.

You can do two things on this layer - neutralize a color, that is take color out or add color.

To neutralize, set your brush to Hue and color to white. Try 20% and go over the area you want to neutralize. I did this to the teeth. Note the yellow cast is gone. This works for the whites of the eyes also.

To add color change the mode to color and pick a color. The color should be in the mid range - the closer to white or black and it will tend to neutralize rather than color. There was an area on the young mans left cheek (camera) that was greenish/yellow. I picked a strong skin color and brushed over the area at 20% a couple of times and the color blended in nicely.

I tried the color trick without dodging and burning and it did not work. It works best on a fairly uniform tone.

One other thing when working with the color layer. If the original color is fairly strong, neutralize it first before adding color.

The color layer with neutralize works well for reducing red areas on the skin. But it has to be carefully, low opacity and building up the effect.

Neutralize is the same as the desaturate tool execept with much more control. If you overdo an area you can erase the effect from the color layer or throw the layer away and start with a new one. You can also overdo the color, and then lower the opacity of the color layer until you get a nice blend.

Larry

Cheerdad

Wow! What Can I Say?!?

leuallen wrote:

I don't know your abillities with Photoshop but here is a method which works well. It may be a little advanced - actually it is simple, just takes time and steady hand. Best done with a Wacom and pen. Mouse is possible but much harder.

Create a layer above the image. Fill with 50% gray (optional). Set mode to overlay.

Using the brush with low opacity. I use 50% opacity with 10% fill. Small soft - just larger than the details you are working on. I ranged fromm 3 to 6 pixels

Paint over dark areas with a white brush.
Light areas with a black brush.

Since you have a low opacity, it takes several strokes to bring the detail to the tone you want.

I worked on the red blemish areas lightening them until they were approximately the tone of the normal surrounding skin. Then the black brush to darken any areas that were too light. I generally worked at 200%. Did a whole section with the white brush, then switched to black. Then touched up with white again, and finally black.

I did not need to do anything to the red areas. Lighening them to blend the density brought the color into a pleasing range.

If you feel you need to still get rid of some of the red, try this:

Add a layer above the dodge and burn layer. Set the mode to color.

You can do two things on this layer - neutralize a color, that is take color out or add color.

To neutralize, set your brush to Hue and color to white. Try 20% and go over the area you want to neutralize. I did this to the teeth. Note the yellow cast is gone. This works for the whites of the eyes also.

To add color change the mode to color and pick a color. The color should be in the mid range - the closer to white or black and it will tend to neutralize rather than color. There was an area on the young mans left cheek (camera) that was greenish/yellow. I picked a strong skin color and brushed over the area at 20% a couple of times and the color blended in nicely.

I tried the color trick without dodging and burning and it did not work. It works best on a fairly uniform tone.

One other thing when working with the color layer. If the original color is fairly strong, neutralize it first before adding color.

The color layer with neutralize works well for reducing red areas on the skin. But it has to be carefully, low opacity and building up the effect.

Neutralize is the same as the desaturate tool execept with much more control. If you overdo an area you can erase the effect from the color layer or throw the layer away and start with a new one. You can also overdo the color, and then lower the opacity of the color layer until you get a nice blend.

Larry

Larry,

I am speechless! Thank you so much for the effort in to helping fix this young man's image! I would consider myself an advanced beginner to beginning intermediate when it comes to Photoshop...my challenge is having the time to do the different things you outline in your response.

I tried to prevent this from happeing with proper lighting, but quality control was a challenge for several reasons. The other portraits I took of the girls at my daughters cheerleading gym did not suffer the same problems...mainly because most took their portraits in full competition "war paint," which covers us alot of skin problems.

Thank you for taking the time to put some effort into making me a more sane person. This was the most intense challenge I have had to deal with since I changed to digital over a year ago.

Regards,



Clint Edwards - a.k.a "Cheerdad"
"Doing the Best I Can With the Equipment I Got"

edgework

Cheerdad wrote:

I took this picture of a young man who couldn't afford to have formal senior portraits taken by a professional photographer. I did what I could with the lighting to soften his face, which has a lot of blemishes and, as you can see, is rather "splotchy."

http://cheerdad.smugmug.com/gallery/1409972/1/67094510

I tried to smooth-out alot of the acne without over processing, but his skin is a frustratingly deep shade of red which is accentuated with yellow skin tones all over the place.

I have tried select color range and then filling in with a color sampled from an area with tone that looks to be good, but it still comes out looking fake.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

P.S
Is his face still too red? I have a notorious problem with red images!

This image is a perfect candidate for a technique that was kicked around a bit in Dan Margulis' Lab Book Discussion. The bright reds suggest that the a channel (with contrast properly enhanced) might make a good mask for attacking the various color imperfections.

Using the mask below, the image had a quick curve applied to the a channel, desaturating the reds, then, back in RGB, a selective color move adding a bit of cyan to the reds and polling some magenta out. There's more to be done, obviously, but about a minute of effort creates a much better starting point for further work. The red that remains is subdued enough that the healing brush could make quick work of it, whereas in the original, the healing brush would have turned everything to mud.