Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [193]
Beauty retouching
Beauty photographs usually require more intense retouching, where the objective is to produce an image in which the model's features and skin appear flawless. This can be done through a combination of healing and painting brush work.
Getting the balance right
The main thing I show on these pages is how to use the paint brush to smooth the skin tones. I happen to prefer using the manual painting approach (rather than relying on a blur filter). This is because the painting method offers more control over the retouching. An important issue here is ‘how much should you retouch?’ This is mostly down to personal taste. My own view is that it is better to fade any painting work that's done and let the natural skin texture show through – let there be a few wrinkles and flaws! It is possible to retouch to produce a clean-looking image, while still keeping the model looking vaguely human.
1.
The top photograph here shows the before version and, below that, how the same image looked after I had added a new empty layer and carried out some basic spotting work with the healing brush, where I cleaned up the spots and got rid of unwanted stray hairs.
2.
After that I used the command to create a merged copy layer at the top of the layer stack and worked with the paint brush on the merged layer. The trick here was to hold down the key to sample a skin tone color and gently paint using low opacity brush strokes with the blend mode set to ‘Lighten’. This meant the paint strokes only affected those colors that were darker than the sample color. Similarly, I switched to Darken mode when I wished to darken only those pixels lighter than the paint sample color. This selective method of painting can produce more controlled results compared with using the Normal blend mode.
3.
This shows the finished retouched version in which I faded the opacity of the painted layer to 33% and added a layer mask so that I could carefully mask the areas where the paint retouching had spilled over. I also added another merged layer on which to carry out some liquify work and, lastly, I added a Curves adjustment to lighten the photo slightly.
Liquify
The Liquify filter is designed to let you carry out freeform pixel distortions. When you choose Filter Liquify (or use the keyboard shortcut), you are presented with what is known as a modal dialog, which basically means you are working in a self-contained dialog with its own set of tools and keyboard shortcuts, etc. The Liquify filter therefore operates like a separate program within Photoshop. To use Liquify efficiently, I suggest you make a marquee selection first of the area you wish to manipulate before you select the filter, and once the dialog has opened, use the keyboard shortcut to enlarge the Liquify filter dialog to fit the screen.
Liquify tools
Warp tool (W)
Provides a basic warp distortion with which you can stretch the pixels in any direction you wish.
Reconstruct tool (R)
Used to make selective undos and restore the image to its undistorted state.
Twirl clockwise tool (C)
Twist the pixels in a clockwise direction (hold down the key to switch tool to twirl in a counterclockwise direction).
Pucker tool (S)
Shrinks the pixels and produces an effect similar to the Pinch filter.
Bloat tool (B)
Magnifies the pixels and produces an effect similar to the Bloat filter.
Push left tool (O)
Shifts the pixels at 90 ° to the left of the direction in which you are dragging.
Mirror tool (M)
Copies pixels from 90 ° to the direction you are dragging and therefore acts as an inverting lens.
Turbulence tool (T)
Produces