Natural Light

I have a technical question maybe one of you might be able to help me

with. The person I use as my main practice model has light freckles,

and with light make up on you'd be hard pressed to see the freckles

with the naked eye. Now, make-up or no, when I shoot her in natural

light (and sometimes other lighting) her freckles seem to "explode"

thus making her look like she has a major case of freckles. I have

positioned the light from just about every angle and still her skin

looks freckle blemished. Short of cleaning the photos up in

Photoshop7 or caking on a ton of make-up, is there any other way to

cure this effect?

Try a light soft focus filter, Kodak Portra NC, in open shade.

Freckles rock. Why "cure" them?

Stephen,

take another look at all girls on the magazines as you go through the line in the grocery store. Notice anything? Well..unfortunately they all look the SAME! How boring is that?

I think photoshop has reached its peak and people are getting tired of looking at clear skin, no blemishes, no lines, and basically they don't even look real.

Leave her freckles in the picture since that is what will really make a unique, interesting, and great photo, unlike all the photoshop garbage on the shelf.

I cured my daughter's teenage 'zits' bouncing window light off a large sheet of foamcore.

I was thinking, maybe a warming filter would balance her pale skin tone a bit better? Comments?

a dark red filter will reduce or eliminate them. It will also make lips the same tone as the skin unless you use blue lipstick. Try infrared.<p> But I agree with Mike, freckles are cool... t

Stephen-- First of all, film sees things differently than our eyes do. It is often sensitive to wavelengths that do not affect our eyes, and that has an effect on if those freckles will show up.

 

The problem could be:

 

1. Sunlight or strobe or flourescents could be putting out enough UV to cause certain aspects of her face to flouresce and certain other aspects not to flouresce. (not makeup specific) The film can see a difference but your eye can't. Check out the makeup under a UV light.

 

2. The makeup can be causing the problem by allowing UV to pass through and blocking visible light. (makeup specific)

 

3. As mentioned in the first para, the film may be sensitive to UV wavelengths that your eye can't see. These wavelenghts may be penetrating the makeup on the way out (subtle difference between this an the first two).

 

Try a UV filter, different film, or different makeup. Contact a makeup artist who is an expert at styling for film about the problem (the only one I knew on-line has moved and changed email addresses, or I'd give you hers).

 

Also, what is the effect with NO makeup? -BC-

The effects are the same with and without the makeup. Also I am using film and digital cameras, the effects are also the same with either medium. I'm begining to think I should find a stronger UV filter. It's my understanding the UV rays here in Florida can be rather strong.

Lesseing Freckles or Facial Acne with Photoshop...

 

STEP ONE:

Open the photo that you need to retouch.

 

STEP TWO:

Go under the filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. When the Gaussian Blur dialog appears, drag the slider all the way to the left, and then drag it slowly to the right until yo see the acne blurred away. The photo should look very blurry, but we'll fix that in just a minute, so don't let that throw you off--make sure it's blurry enough that the acne is no longer visible.

 

STEP THREE:

Go under the window menu and choose History to bring up the History palette. This palette keeps track of the last 20 things you've done in Photoshop. If you look in the list of steps (called "History States"), you should see two States: the first will read "Open" (this is when you opened the document), and the second will read "Gaussian Blur" (this is where you added the blur).

 

STEP FOUR:

Click on the Open State to retur your photo to what it lookd like when you originally opened it. The History palette also works in conjunction with a tool in the Toolbox, called the History Brush. When you paint with it, by default it paints back to what the photo looked like whe you opened it. It's like "Undo on a brush". That can be very handy, but the real power of the History Brush is that you can have it paint from a different State. You'll see what I mean in the next step.

 

STEP FIVE:

In the History palette, click in the first column next to the the State named "Gaussian Blur." If you painted with the History Brush now, it wold paint in what the photo looked like after you blurred it (which would do us no good), but we're about to fix that.

 

STEP SIX:

To keep from simply painting in a blurry version of our photo, go up to the Options Bar and change the History brush's Blend mode to Lighten. Now when you paint, it will affect only the pixels that are darker than the blurred state. Ahhh do you see where this is going?

 

STEP SEVEN:

Now you can take the History Brush and paint over the acne areas, and as you paint you'll see them diminish quite a bit. If the diminish too much, and the person looks "too clean" undo you History brush strokes, the go up to the Options Bar and lower the Opacity of the brush to 50% and try again.

 

 

Using this technique you can avoid the costs of buying a filter and is quick & easy... enjoy!!