Playing around with Portrait proffesional

Any good? c& c welcome

I always use portrait professional to clean up my headshots. If you want some real feedback it is better to post some photos that are cropped tighter so the details are more visible. Try using the sliders to pull back some of the effects especially in the skin smoothing areas.....I find that the program usually overdoes things to the point where the models look plastic....I usually scale back the face sculpting to almost zero since the end result will look much more like the actual person. If you don’t care and just want to get a totally beautiful look then leave the sculpting slider alone. Play around with the hair sliders especially the smoothing one to get some silky hair. Have fun!

I just enlarged what you posted and they aren’t bad...you still have decent detail in the skin but it might be a little overdone.

Thumbsup wrote in post #18945564
Any good? c& c welcome

When working on the skin area, you need to click on "view/edit skin area", reduce the zoom area to include all the exposed skin and then mark it as skin.
The faces have much different coloring than the rest of the skin in these images.

Edited to add: Forgot to mention that this is under "Skin Coloring Controls" and you also have to adjust the slider for "Correct Outside Face"

bob_r wrote in post #18945692
When working on the skin area, you need to click on "view/edit skin area", reduce the zoom area to include all the exposed skin and then mark it as skin.
The faces have much different coloring than the rest of the skin in these images.

Thank you for telling me about that!

Point-n-shoot-n wrote in post #18945648
I just enlarged what you posted and they aren’t bad...you still have decent detail in the skin but it might be a little overdone.

Thank you for the feedback!

Point-n-shoot-n wrote in post #18945644
c....I usually scale back the face sculpting to almost zero since the end result will look much more like the actual person. If you don’t care and just want to get a totally beautiful look then leave the sculpting slider alone.

I usually just turn that feature off (click on the green circle next to the question mark on my version (Portrait Pro 12)). IMHO, the results are too extreme.

Also, I pull the sliders way back when working with a young person. Most images of young people (under 30) need very little manipulation. They may have a zit or two, but those are better handled with the "touch up brush" than sliders.

I normally reduce the "smokey eyes" slider to zero or very near zero (this is under skin lighting controls). If a person had wanted that look, they would have applied it before the picture was taken.

Under "eye control", I always cut back on the "brighten iris" feature. It can make their eyes look artificial, almost like glass doll eyes.

I reduce the default settings on a lot of other sliders, but most depend on the person. I think most people benefit from a little help from the "Skin smooth controls - around the eyes) option. You don't want to overdo it, just improve that area a little. That's probably true for all the sliders. You still want the person to look like who they actually are, but their blemishes are just a little softer and less noticeable.