Portrait w/ PS Work

I posted this in dpreview and thought I'd throw it in here as well...

I was just goofing off in my apartment with my 300D / 50 1.8 II when I took this shot (no flash.) It was past midnight and Monica had had a long day, far from "looking her best" as she put it. Anyway I decided to see if I could "Max Factor" this photo and practice my PS techniques a little. I removed the blemishes (all this was supervised by Monica, of course. I'm not stupid, you know,) whitened the tired eyes, "glamorized" the skin and sharpened everything else.

Here's before:

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wow! thanks great. maybe you could post the details in steps of how you did it in PS

I pretty much followed Scott Kelby's instructructions to the letter. His book, "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers," is a must read. It's not for Photoshop newbies though. So long as you have some experience with PS it will serve you well.

That's really impressive. She must have been happy with the results.

A rough outline of your steps would be nice, can't afford the book right now just having bought a new 70-200L

abbarr wrote:
That's really impressive. She must have been happy with the results.

A rough outline of your steps would be nice, can't afford the book right now just having bought a new 70-200L

Thanks!

Here's a rough outline of what I did:

I first used the healing brush to remove some of the blemishes. I also did a curves screen layer trick to whiten the eyes but I don't remember the exact procedure for that. Then I duplicated the layer and applied a gaussian blur to it (around 5% but you should vary it and check your results.) I set the opacity to 50% but, again, play with it to see what looks good. This will obviously blur the entire image so I hid the background image and, using a soft-edge eraser, I erased everything in the blurred image except the skin. Afterward you have a nice, sharp picture and a separate layer to mess with skin "glamorizing." That pretty much sums it up.

Here's an example where I lowered the blurred layer opacity from 50% to 30%. This gives it a more "natural-but-still-made-up" look:

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How about a slightly softer look?

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karusel wrote:
How about a slightly softer look?

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I certainly gives it a more surreal look. I personally like to keep the eyes, hair, etc., sharp but it does depend on what kind of mood one is trying to set. What adjustments did you make?

Mashuri wrote:

I certainly gives it a more surreal look. I personally like to keep the eyes, hair, etc., sharp but it does depend on what kind of mood one is trying to set. What adjustments did you make?

What I did? Hmm... lemme try to remember... I don't use a strict recipe...

Duplicated layer, set blend mode to 'screen', applied about 4,0 gauss blur that's pretty much it. If you want more, darken the background layer and perhaps brighten the copy, reduce opacity until you see what you like. Oh and now I remembered one more thing, if you like sharp eyes and stuff just use about 20% opacity eraser and brush those parts of that second layer which you want sharp.

Nice PS-work, but there is still some stuff to do:
- lady seems to tilt backwards, might have to rotrate the pic
- there are 2 mickey mouse ears behing her; some cloning?
- get rid of other disturbing elements in the background.

I usually erase first and then apply gaussian blur. Some claim it gives better results. But, may be, it's not a big difference.

Erasing first then blurring would create more of a "halo" or "glow" effect on the skin. Both can look good. It all depends on what floats your boat and I do it both ways.