making the skin look flawless?????

[alain_martinez]

Hello all,

 

I was looking at some of the pictures in this website, and some of

the nude pictures have models with perfect skin. Not just in the

face, but perfect body skin too. I was wondering if anyone is aware

of some kind of make up that can be applied to the whole body to

make the skin look flawless, and healthy. I know that lighting, and

quality of the picture have a lot to do with it too, but you can

tell that some pictures a little more was added.

 

photoshop is also used a lot to re-touch pictures as the example

below.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html

 

Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial to learn how to do this.

any help?

Thanks<div></div>

[chris_ladoulis]

Almost all of these images will have minor (or major) retouching in PS to remove skin blemishes. You should look at tutorials on how to do this with PS yourself - with the clone tool and selective gaussian blur, you can achieve most of what you seek.

 

Skin will generally look better 'warm,' so also look into warming filters or CTO gels on your strobes to enhance the color of the light hitting your models' skin.

 

Oh, and try to find models with perfect skin, too. :-)

[wickedmartini]

Give this a shot...

 

Michael D. D'Avignon

[igord]

I hate this picture from attachment (first mail). It is just a piece of plastic. This is of course just my opinion. I see no point in doing so much retouching.

[kevin_hundsnurscher]

In all the shoots I've done, nude or semi nude, even the girls with the most flawless skin needed to have some touching up in post production. Even if they didn't have any blemishes, there would be issues of tight clothing leaving skin indentations or redness where they would lean their body against something.<br>

Picture ads such as the Victoria's Secret ads, or pictures in FHM have had some photoshop retouching, it's just the retouching has been done so clever that you have a hard time spotting it.<br>

You can definitely minimize it by employing a good makeup artist and some warm lighting, but it'll still be an issue.

[yance_marti]

Use the smart blur in photoshop. It smoothes just about any imperfections. Just lasso the body parts you want smoothed.

[hans_beckert]

Airbrushing.

[jkantor]

Professionals use the best models and best makeup artists available (and that does include body makeup), as well as lighting designed to flatter. But that still only leaves the basic image. Retouching is mandatory for the final image. Every photographer needs to know how to do some retouching. However, good retouching takes a lot of time and skill. Only an expert will be able to do what the before/after sample shows. The other sample is very heavy-handed. No one should settle for that.

[jkantor]

By the way, the retoucher's links give you the best advice on how to learn. Or just save up your pennies and hire him.

[back alley]

wouldn't infrared film add a glow also?

[james_oneill]

I shoot a lot of B&W and most blemishes are red or pink in colour, so if you put a red filter in the camera it can't distinguish between the (pale pink) skin and (red) blemish - IR takes this a step further - and does give a sort of a glow. If you click through to my portfolio there are some IR nudes in the Zoe and Red Lilly II folders. When I reduce digitial to B&W I often do it it by splitting to Red, Green and Blue channels and work with the red one. You can see some examples of that in those two folders as well.

[igord]

Try to use frost filter on your lamp.

[fotografz]

Most of these example techniques are brutally obvious looking and feature laborious

work flow paths.

 

PhotoShop has much more subtile and speedier methods to naturally enhance skin

tones without turning the subject into a blow-up doll or mannequin.

 

Example: >Select > Color Range > (select skin tone in dialog box with eye-dropper

and use "fuzziness" slider to refine the selection) > OK > Select > Feather > 15 to 20

pixels >OK.

 

Now key in Command/C then Command/V which creates a layer of the selected/

feathered skin tone (which you can see by clicking on > Window > Layers).

 

Now go to > Filters > Noise > Dust and Scratches > use sliders equally while you

watch the effect in real time on skin areas of the image. Final adjustments can be

made by selecting the new Layer and fading the layer overlay (opacity) until the

original image below slightly shows through.

 

Looks long here, but takes about 1 minute to perform. I do this to many images in my

wedding work. Makes the ladies look a lot better without making them look plastic.

 

In the example shown, this bride had extensive fine wrinkles, freckles on her chest

and goose flesh. I retained some of the freckling so it would look like her, but the

goose flesh and leathery shin was mostly eliminated using the above work path.<div></div>

[luke_pederson]

I tried the steps in PS7 from the above photographer with the bride. I am really impressed. This is a great and eays way to smooth out the skin. It is not an all or nothing thing eaither. You can really very the effect by the opacity of the masked layer. Try it. It really works great. I went from from smoothing out some wrinkles and bumps to total airbrushed look just by moving the opacity slider. Thanks for the tip!

 

Luke

[arniemilowsky]

Nice method Marc; it works real well!

[fotografz]

Thanks guys. Processing a zillion wedding images forces you to learn faster, easier

and more subtile techniques in PS. I learned this one from a Russian portrait

photographer. So I thought it only fair to pass it on to any who wished to try it.

[fotografz]

Oh, BTW, if some of the detail around the eyes, eyelashes, nose, lips or hairline gets

blurred a bit during the selection/feathering process, just use the eraser tool set to

20% opacity or so to erase the overlay layer to reveal the detail in the original lower

layer.

[mark newcombe www.mcnphoto]

Thays a pic of sara alvarado a make up artist for play boy you do math.

 

RETOUCH

 

Mark

[ligiu_uiorean]

Usually filtering noise (neat image) with the noise sample taken from the skin does a good job. Combined with a litle softening can make geat results. I'll bost a before and after.<div></div>

[ligiu_uiorean]

Please notice that the background was affected. There is no problem fixing that (another layer with the original image and erase).<div></div>

[ligiu_uiorean]

I worked a bit on Marc's image, I hope he dosen't mind. Method described above.<div></div>

[karsten_mikaelsen]

Hi Ligiu Uiorean

 

Could you please elaborate a little on the process in Photoshop. Your picture

looks very good and I tried to do a as you explain but my end result is not

nearly as convincing as yours..

[ligiu_uiorean]

Hi Karsten,

 

So, using a noise removal software involves indicating a sample of nois to the software (usualy portion of sky or a wall, or other are with no detail). If you take that sample from the skin (i chose forehead or chest, maybe back) the algorithm will identify any imperfection in the skin as noise and will remove it from any skin are AND areas with similar colors as skin (look at the wall example). It works without any further modifications in most of the cases however some fine tuning (like indicating the noise frequency you are looking for, maybe some softening and so on) can yield fantastic results. Please mind that some imperfections (like occasional acne) can not be removed using this method and still require manual intervention but the general aspect of skin can be greatly improved.

 

You may contact me on email if you wish to work with me on a few examples.

[jason_friedlander]

Have a look at this site http://www.nyphotographics.com look at both his retouching section and also check out his retouching challenge under resourses, not sure if its still going but he had some samples and descriptions of how he does it there. Also to see his newest work and get a feel for the level of retouching check out http://www.photographerportfolio.com/stephen thats his new work. Some very nice retouching on everything.

 

Jason

[m3rdpwr]

Michael D. D'Avignon

 

Thanks for that link!

 

I wish my magic wand worked as well as hers did... hehe

 

-Mario