Originally Posted by Amy Dresser
For the record, I get asked about my methods pretty regularly. I'm not opposed to sharing my them, but i think most are underwhelmed by my approach. They expect me to say "blippity blap layer at whatever mode= voilà!" When in reality, i don't have much for short cuts. The images i work on is purely labor over.
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There's nothing cool about clients showing me a blurry raw image and saying "make this look like THAT" while pointing to a photo that has completely different lighting and shot with a super high-end camera. My approach is far from beeline, and much more touchy-feely and gradual. Unfortunately, the more a photographer gets used to the idea of retouching, the lazier some of them get. The example I'm sharing was a fantastic photo to start with, so it didn't need any damage control-- just the fun stuff.
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Before i do any retouching... I adjust the overall color of a photo (no point in retouching anything that will be blown out or hidden in shadows in the end). Most of my color adjustments are through curves (i adjust the individual channels) and an occasional hue/sat layer--- just personal taste. typically desaturate the reds a bit... as most peoples' flaws are reddish in nature, this diminishes some the areas vs. actual bumps. Also, i'm a bigger fan of desaturated images vs. saturated ones... i think i can control the shape of things better when i don't have to worry about weird saturation drop-offs.I usually work an image up in an all over and gradual manner... kind of general to specific. I refine color as i go along, carve features and remove blemishes sort of all at the same time. This way, if don't spend as much time as i'd like, the image should be fairly presentable if the deadline is sooner rather than later.
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Here are the general things i do:Rubber stamp out major stuff (on a copy of the original layer of course) at 100% on normal mode. I make sure that all the cloning i do is completely unnoticeable. No big blur blobs all over the place or step-marks. Not a fan of the healing brush either. Dodge and burn small light and dark spots and areas... anything that distracts and jumps out at me-- always set on midtones at about 3-4% with the fuzziest brush you got with "other dynamics" selected so the pen pressure is in effect. This is where i spend the bulk of my time. To speed this up, i have programmed the 2 buttons on my pen to be the short cuts for decrease brush size and increase brush size. Even out the skin tones to be basically the same hue, saturation through out a figure/face/image. i'll use the lasso with a fat amount feathering on it and circle/trace areas that i want to adjust. Again, i favor curves. These typically will be very subtle in nature... with the middle of a channel's curve just pulled up or down a notch or 2.
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Carving and painting highlights:
I refer to already existing highlights and exaggerate and/or simplify them. This is one of those things that will come naturally if you've done a lot of figure drawing, otherwise, it just takes practice. I have a few methods of doing this and sometimes i use one... sometimes more.
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1 » more dodging and burning! I almost always do some amount of carving directly on the retouched image by dodging and burning– pure and simple. 0% hardness brush, still at about 3%. It's a good idea to do this on a second copy of the retouched layer just in case i get carried away and something starts to look weird. In case the client says "woah, too much!"-- it's easy to lightly mask out what's overkill.
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2 » make 2 curves layers... one curve pulled down, the other pulled up. I fill both masks black and then paint in areas on the individual layers that i want to carve down or up (0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow). This is method make a low-impact on your file size, but i dislike it because i have to switch back and forth between layers.
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3 » make a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set that layer to "overlay" and paint black or white (again, 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow) to carve down or up. This method sometimes adds more saturation to the carved shadows than i would prefer.
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4 » plain old painting white on an empty layer set to "normal"-- 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow, "other dynamics" selected. I do this to every image i work on.
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5 » this may possibly be my only "trick." This has to be done as a final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select > Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit.
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And that's it.
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