Enhancing Skin tones
As landscape photographers we are all very grateful for the detail our cameras are capable of holding on to, The unsharp mask is a tool regularly used to enhance the final image, just before we upload our masterpiece onto the Web. This detail however is not so good when dealing with portraits of real people, especially if your subject happens to be a lady. When I was a professional portrait photographer, too many years ago now, softening the effects of age was done with a soft focus filter over the lens, or by using stage makeup on the model or, as a last resort, retouching the final print, retouching the negative was really drastic as the cost was out of this world.
Today, thanks to the digital age, we have another tool, or to be more accurate several tools, at our disposal on our computers. Mine is called PHOTOSHOP but other image manipulation tools have similar tools. This tutorial is quite extensive and requires a great deal of patience but the final result is worth investing the time and effort. Your model, whether it be a young person, or your elderly Mother, will not be disappointed by the results. One word of advice, the techniques I am about to demonstrate are capable of making a 60 year old look 30, this is not always a wise move.
So, there is a special tool you will not find in PhotoShop, or any other image software package that I will ask you to use throughout the tutorial. It is called the MODERATION TOOL, This tool is in your head but I will quite frequently tell you to use the tool. When you see MODERATION TOOL in the tutorial, it means I am probably about to go "over the top" with a particular technique but you should apply your own intelligence and judgment to just how far you take it on your own images. Some of the lines on a face are there for a reason, they help to form the character of the person you are photographing and if you go too far you may destroy the personality embedded in the face. I can only show you how to do it, each portrait however has its own personality and only you can decide what should go and what should stay. Look out for the MODERATION TOOL instructions. Having said that, I hope you enjoy the tutorial and find some, if not all, the techniques useful next time you take a portrait.
The image I have decided to use is a straight forward head and shoulders portrait, almost a passport type shot. Nothing adventurous or creative. You may want to use your own image but the original TIFF file of this portrait is available at the bottom of the page as a zip file. I have darkened the background from the original so you will see the image as below.
Having opened your image the first thing we need to address is any unwanted blemishes on the skin. Sods law states that the day you agree to photograph someone spots will appear from nowhere so if that is the case we need to get rid of them. A this stage we are not going to touch any lines or wrinkles. My subject is quite young and although there are very few unwanted lines we will at some stage look at getting rid of a few. The tool we use for this is the healing brush tool, 
which you will find in the left tool bar and is one of the best tools in your tool box. It has a few options available and if you right click on the tool in Photoshop you will see them
We are going to use the second one ( healing brush tool). By default you will be presented with a soft circle but I am going to suggest you change the properties before using it. I learned this from Scott Kelby, in his book The Photoshop CS book for digital photographers, as he explains in the book, he discovered it from someone else so it has been handed down a few times. If you don't have the book I strongly suggest you check it out. You will find a link to Amazon at the bottom of the page.
| When you have selected the tool go the the options in the top menu |
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Click on the down arrow to the right of the brush thumbnail and change the options as follows: Set the hardness to 100% and the spacing to 25% and change the angle to -49 and the roundness to 16% as shown below. The diameter will be governed by the size of the image you are working on. Yes, I know it looks an odd shape but believe me it works better than any other style I have used.
Now we need to zoom in close to the area we are going to work on. First we need to tell the healing brush where to take information from, we do this by choosing an area of smooth skin, hold you healing brush over the area, hold down the Alt key and click once on the area. Now comes the magic part. The healing brush works a little like the clone tool but with a major difference. When you rub or click on a spot or blemish the healing brush will remove the spot and replace it with an area of the same texture as the sampled are, unlike the clone tool it will not chang the colour or density of the surrounding area, in other words only the spot will be removed. Also, unlike the clone tool, the sampled area will not move so you are replace all the spots with an area of smooth skin. As Scott Kelby rightly says, this tool rocks
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This part takes a little patience but is well worth the effort
(Sorry did I mention it takes loads of patience).
Once we are happy with the unwanted blemishes we now turn to the lines, but before we do, we are going to add some softening to the whole face. We are going to do this before the lines because by adding the softening overall we will reduce the effect of the lines and therefore may feel no need to remove all of them. The soft look will be added by using gaussian blur, but I have found by just adding blur the image loses some of its contrast, so the technique is a little more involved than just adding gaussian blur.
First we must make two copies of the original background layer. We do this by simply holding down the Ctrl key and pressing j twice and you should end up with the same as below in (Fig. 1) showing in your layers palette, if your layers palette is not showing go to the top menu, click on window and then layers. Now hide the top layer by clicking once on the little eye to the left of the thumbnail (Fig. 2). Click once on Layer 1 to highlight it (Fig. 3)Go to the layers palette and change the blend mode to darken (Fig. 4)
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Fig. 1 |
Fig. 2 |
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Fig. 3 |
Fig. 4 |
Now go to the top menu and click on filter and chose Blur - Gaussian Blur and chose 40 pix in the radius box, click OK
The image will look rather odd but don't worry at this stage, it will be rectified later. Now hide the middle layer using the eye on the left and click once on the top layer to highlight it. Change the blend mode on this layer to Lighten then add blur to the layer but use 60% Radius. After you have applied the blur Lower the opacity of the layer to 40% (Fig. 5)
Now make the middle layer visible and hide the background (bottom) layer (Fig.6). Now create a new layer by clicking on the Create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette (Fig. 7) Make sure the layer is at the top, if not just drag it up above the others. This is the difficult bit because you need lots of finger...... hold down Alt+Ctrl+Shift and the press E, This will merger Layer 1 and layer1 copy into Layer 2. (clever). (Fig 
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Now make the Background layer visible again and hide the two middle layers ( Layer 1 and Layer 1 copy) Now click on the top layer (Layer two) and reduce its opacity to about 30-35% depending on how soft you want it. Now this will leave you with an overall softened image, which is fine if that's what you want. However, there are some parts of the image that are better left untouched. So, making sure the top layer is visible, go the the tools menu and chose the eraser tool. Using a soft brush erase all the parts you want left sharp. Basically this will be everything except the skin. i.e. the eyes, eyebrows, lips, hair etc. Once you are happy, go to Layers (top menu) and leaving the middle two layers hidden, flatten the image, you will be asked if you want to discard the hidden layers, click yes. Now we have a softened image, which may need a tweak on the curves or levels to increase the contrast, using the Moderation Tool as well.
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Original + Healing of blemishes |
After Softening applied + levels |
You may feel at this stage it has gone far enough, if you think it can be improved by removing some other unwanted lines on the forehead then using the healing brush again take out what you want. I have just removed a few lines.
FINAL IMAGE
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