Editing portraits

[wayne_crider4]

<p>I need to upgrade my old software (PS7!) so I can better edit skin (lines especially) in portraits. Some of my shoots are of women in their 50's and 60's that don't want to look so wrinkly. Not totally without, but less harsh. I'm not sure if PS Elements will provide good enough capabilities so that I don't have to buy something like CS5, which I'll probably never use 75% of. If there is another product out there that is less expensive then CS5 I'd be interested. At the same time I'm looking at getting LR3 to manage my images and do simple corrections; I now use an old SE version of Elements for corrections. All in all a grand out of pocket at this time for CS5 and LR3 would be a little too much for the amount of work I do so I'm looking for alternatives. I'll be using whatever on a Pentium 4 with 3gb of memory which I'll be increasing. Thanks for your thoughts.</p>

[976photo]

<p>Try Portrait Professional</p>

<p><a href="http://www.portraitprofessional.com">www.portraitprofessional.com</a></p>

<p> </p>

[wayne_crider4]

<p>Pretty interesting program. It seems like a pretty fast resolution to lots of Photoshop work.</p>

[976photo]

<p>Yep, I tried the trial for two days then decided I had to buy it. Super simple and it works great, just be careful not to over do it, it's easy to push that slider a notch too far. You'll still want to do your color corrections and stuff in PS, but you can save a lot of time with that program.</p>

<p>I know I've seen a few others here mention that they use the program too, perhaps one of them will add their thoughts...</p>

[jacopo_brembati]

For Windows, PhotoResampling.

[charlessalomons]

You can stay with PSE. Dewrinkle by putting a layer on top of the portrait that has gaussian blur and then cut out features like the mouth, eyes, hair, etc. You should be able to find several tutorials on the web, or get one of Scott Kelby's books on PSE editing that has a detailed description in it.

[jacopo_brembati]

<p>Don't blur.<br>

Try PhotoResampling.</p>

[fred_wheeler]

<p>I'm no pro, that's for sure, but you could try something I do when I want to soften skin lines. In PS Elements, open a file as camera raw and adjust the clarity slider a little to the left.<br>

Fred</p>