High end skin retouching
 

I did a shoot over the weekend and started editing some of the photos. I thought I'd enlighten those of you not familiar with the modern high end skin retouching techniques. Back in the good old days, nice skin retouching equates to gausian blur + glow giving a 'perfect' look. This had a problem because it made the skin look plastic and unreal. Then it became the age of clone + heal. This wasn't too ideal as it made the skin look blotchy and didnt have as much control. So now, the hype is all about perfection while maintaining that realism. Soooo.... it comes down to this, take a black/white brush and paint every single imperfect/blemish/hair PORE level. Yes thats right, every hair folicle has a bright and dark side from light so you dodge the shadow side and burn the highlight side... for every single pore... It might be VERY tedious but i have to say, the final result is far beyond any gausian blur/clone method. This one took me 6 hours. Lol. No cloning, just dodge + burn and a few more headache-causing things for the hair. Ok, and a custom brush for the eyelashes. I dont recommend doing this for your facebook photo, but if you are ever in the situation of retouching a headshot for a L'Oreal cosmetic spread, now you know how it's done.

http://www.jacksonzhao.com/images/Other/IMG_9323.jpg

There's a slider in Capture One Pro 5.1 that does in 20 seconds what it took you 6 hours to do, and the results are close.

PS.... did you use a MF back for that shot? I got to shoot with a Phase One 64+ today with those new Hartblei/Zeiss lenses...holy fucking shit they're amazing!

fuk really? I've never used capture one haha. I'll have to mess around with it someday. I used 5dmk2 + 24-70L I wish i had a phase one! lol

Very nice.

I'm sure CS5 will have something that will do this too ;)

you'll also be able to make her chinese too!

and then use the content aware tool and create her family!

I'm willing to bet no. They're totally different technologies - Capture One Pro can do things that would take hours to do in Photoshop. In a nutshell, Photoshop is based on a pixel level edit, whereas Capture One Pro works on the underlying algorithms. Lightroom is a similar concept.

I'd use it to create the rest of her nude body! :p

lol perv. she's only 18. u can be her grand dad.

But CS5 seems to be adding a bunch of algorithms that make certain tasks obsolete/easier

I'd like to see examples please.. I don't believe!

I recently went through a Gnome DVD that outlined everything Jackson mentioned. She was a working professional photographer with an amazing client list under her belt.

Great edit btw J

18 is legal. ;) Fuck you , I'm not THAT old! I could be her dad, if my gf in highschool at the time let me have my way with her. Haha..

We'll see in 4 days. :) There are limitations with the way PS handles image files.

I just had a training session with the Phase One reps yesterday outlining the new features of Capture One Pro 5...it's really amazing stuff. It's certainly not as thorough as spending hours going over every pore, but 20 seconds vs. 6 hours can mean something. I'll show you next time.

How does Capture One handle files different from Photoshop? All images are just bitmaps anyway...

Photoshop adjusts the images at the PIXEL level, Capture One actually works on the underlying math, then renders the pixels. It's actually the oldest method of image editing, but it's also the most complicated.

So I am guessing it can't handle lossy compression well (if at all) correct? Since the 'underlying math' is literally deleted

No, the algorithms are still there, even in a JPEG. Capture One actually handles JPEG's like RAW files, so it is better than Photohsop in that regard.

No offense, but it sounds like you are buying into corporate spiel ;)

Either that or you're not explaining it very well to me

Call it 'pixel level' or 'underlying math' it's all the same. If you open a JPG in Photoshop, you are just working on a bitmap that has to be compressed again when you save it.

No, it's not corporate spiel, and it's not the same. They explained technical things that were way over my head in many parts. I wish I could explain it better...I'm a photographic geek, not a computer geek. Photoshop works on the pixels, the image that you see on the screen by re-arranging them, changing colour, etc. Capture One & Lightroom work on the level below the pixels. The image you see on the screen while working in Capture One or Lightroom is not the final image - its a rendering of the math that they are working with. When you save the image as a PSD, TIFF, JPEG, etc, then it renders the math into pixels. Capture One and Lightroom are far superior to Photoshop regarding colour management due to the way they work on the image. You can do things in seconds that would take hours in Photoshop - I'd have to show you. On the flipside, Capture One and Lightroom can't do the higher level edits like utilizing layers. I use Lightroom for digital asset management and low level edits & colour management, Capture One Pro 5 for more intense colour management & edits that would simply take too long to do in Photoshop, and Photoshop for high level editing that neither Capture One and Lightroom can do. I find that Lightroom is good enough for wedding photography work, but fashion and commercial images will frequently need the functions found in Capture One and Photohshop. None of the programs are meant to replace each other - you just get the ones you need for your particular line of work, although Capture One is one of the best RAW converters on the market.

A bit off topic, but if you want fast RAW conversions, Photo Mechanic can't be beat. It's by far the fastest RAW conversion software and the most comprehensive metadata tagging program on the market.

I was listening to a podcast and they were interviewing a pro photographer, I believe it was Chase Jarvis, and he uses Photo Mechanic. I'm going to have to take a look into that

Also referred by another pro photographer. Just need to find sometime to play with it

You guys can play with mine.


....that didn't sound right.....:o

Is photo mechanic kind of like a better version of breeze browser?

:gay::twirleye:

Not really. Photo Mechanic is purely a RAW converter with very basic editing limited to crop, exposure & rotation. It does have extensive metedata tagging features and ftp support. I can't see the regular consumer using this, as it's pretty much only useful to photojournalists in the field.