The Most Important Skin Retouching Trick in Photoshop

hi there this is animation picks in perfect and today I'm going to show you one of the best skin retouching techniques in Photoshop whether it's discoloration tanning general distracting imperfections or even a little bit of skin sculpting we can deal with all of that with just one simple technique we have a ton of examples of real world scenarios so without any further ado let's get started [Music] this video is divided into sections so if you wanna go ahead and skip to any section that you like you can use these timestamps also you don't have to watch the complete video just learn the technique and here pretty much good to go but I highly insist that you do watch the example so that you can apply it to your own images so here we on Photoshop and this photo was submitted by Jim Smith from James for photography he's an awesome photographer if you are good and check out more of his work check it out right here now let's have a look at this image let me give you one tip alright hold the spacebar and the ctrl or command and drag the mouse to the right to make it bigger to zoom in check it to the left to make it smaller or zoom out so sue Minh quite a bit and have a close look at this image I do know that we need to correct the DEET there's a little bit of lipstick touch there but that's about that's for another tutorial and by the way you can go ahead and check out this tutorial on retouching teeth okay you can also clone it down that's very simple to do but for this tutorial have a look at the skin now if you look at this section let me just indicate that for you have a look at this section it's a little bit discolored right we need to add back in the color to that area how to do that here's what to do first of all create a new blank layer okay click on the new layer button and you can also go ahead and name this for example say paint I'll tell you why paint okay and then create one more new layer and press ctrl alt shift e we are creating a merged layer of everything that you see in the canvas right now and that is the answer to the question that you might have time and again where to apply this so if you have done a lot of retouching dodging and burning and removing the blemishes and you want to do after that you might want to do this you might want to press ctrl alt shift E otherwise if that's just one layer you would have copied it but if you go by this way you can do it any time that you like but make sure that you do it before applying the global effects like special effects and so on and so forth alright so ctrl alt shift e command option shift e if you're using a Mac now once you do that we are creating this layer for texture okay let's name it texture it's gonna be exciting now since this is texture we do not want any color on it right so press control-shift you that is the shortcut for desaturating control shift u or command shift you also you can go ahead go to image adjustments and inside of adjustments desaturate see the shortcut shift control you the same thing then as you have guessed it right let's apply a high-pass filter but before that convert this into a smart object so that we can change the value of high-pass later so to convert this go to filter convert for Smart Filters or which you can do right click on here and choose convert to smart object both do the same thing then simply go to filter other and then high-pass now look at the affected area look at the area that you want to correct take the value of radius all the way to zero point one and gradually increase it and stop just at the point where you begin to see the texture in that particular area which you want to correct for example this area is discolored for this example so I'm going to go ahead and increase it not much texture over there I think that would be a nice number eight point four that is fine it's okay and remember you can always change it now change the blend mode of this layer from normal to overlay now this will add some extra texture to the image why is that so well if you change the blend mode back to normal what high-pass does is that it doesn't let the low frequencies pass but the high frequencies pass so any apply the high pass filter it allows the high frequencies to pass and stops the low frequencies and paints it great what are the high frequencies well high frequencies are the frequencies where textures lie low frequencies are the frequencies where colors lie got that if you want to go more in-depth into that watch this video on frequency separation where I talk about all that science ok just for simplicity high frequencies texture low frequencies color right so for the low frequencies it turns it gray now overlays a blend mode which makes everything which is 50% gray invisible anything which is darker than 50% gray it makes that area darker anything brighter than 50 percent gray it makes that area brighter now if you just zoom in ctrl or command + look at the edge what it does is that it increases the contrast around the edge and that is what sharpening is sharpening is increasing the contrast around the edge so on the left hand side it has made it darker on the right hand side it has made it brighter so when you change the blend mode to overlay see have a look before after what is it doing it's increasing the contrast around the edge it is a fake sharpness now we don't want this texture on the image we just want the texture when we paint on this area and just limit it to that area and how do we do that simple create a clipping mask so how do we create a clipping mask hold the alt or option and click on the line between the texture and the paint this means that I'm limiting the texture to only the areas that I'm painting okay now this as of now is a blank layer right so hold the alt or option and click on the line between these two all right now as you can see the texture has gone all over the image texture is no more now let's zoom in and let's try to paint in this area with this color okay so that we fill in that so let's take the brush come back to the paint layer hold the alt or option with the right mouse button drag it to the right to make it bigger drag it to the left to make it smaller also at the same time if you're using a Mac that would be option + ctrl + the right mouse button so make it a little big and sample from this area now before you sample make sure sample all layers is ship select the eyedropper tool and make sure sample all layers is checked now let's get back to the brush and let's take a sample from this particular area make sure the flow is very low somewhere around probably 1% or 2 pans % I'm gonna go ahead with 2% that's fine smoothing we don't need smoothing decrease it to 0 take a sample from this how do we take a sample hold the alt or option and click on this area now you can also take an average sample of a larger area by going back to the eyedropper tool and instead of point sample let's choose 11 by 11 average or 31 by 31 so I'm gonna go ahead and choose 11 by 11 what it does is that it makes a square of levin by 11 and takes the average color of that area so you don't accidentally click on a noise and dig the sample of a noise color so we want to avoid that so 11 by 11 is pretty good for this image take the brush and let's take a sample of this area and gradually paint by holding the alt or option take the sample and gradually paint on this particular area there you go just like that and let's take a sample from here and then paint just ask yourself if you were actually painting this painting what color would you paint this area with so for this area I'm gonna sampled this and paint it in here just like that again sample from there and paint there samp from here and paint there so you can just take multiple samples and just simply just paint it as if you were creating a painting now let's have a look at their before and after so this is the before completely discolored this is the after now we have painted a little extra over here so simply take the eraser and make it a little bigger just erase this particular area and that's fine have a look before after this coloration gone now if you want to go forward and do more take a sample from here paint it over here take a sample from here paint it here another just keep on taking samples it's just like frequency separation okay and keep on painting like that and that's pretty much good I think I'm satisfied with that and we're gonna go ahead and erase the extra areas again take the eraser and let's just erase it now again hold the alt or option the right mouse button drag it up to make it soft drag it down to make it hard let's erase these areas with a soft brush and look at that before and after let's zoom out quite a bit by holding spacebar remember and control or kamat drag it to the left to zoom out okay let's have a look at the before so this is the before discolored area and this is the after if that wonderful now this brings us to a second example and in this example we will be talking about removing the imperfections on the face general imperfections here and there okay so have a look at this photo this photo looks pretty good let's zoom in quite a bit and look there is this area that we want to remove you can use the patch tool but if you want to protect the texture here's what we do we use the same technique first of all create a blank layer create Vann Mowlam I'm not gonna name it again ctrl alt shift e command option shift e then convert that into a smart object by going to filter convert for Smart Filters hit ok then high-pass so how do we apply high-pass go to filter other and high-pass now remember you can change the value of high-pass after the fact okay so for this example just look at this particular area that you're painting so I'm gonna choose somewhere around 15 or let's go for 13 and hit OK now change the blend mode of this one to overlay again clip it how do we clip it hold the alt or option click on the line between these two and come to layer 1 take the brush and simply paint on that area with the sampled color now just ask yourself what do you want that area to be colored like as if you were painting this in a canvas alright so we don't want this area to be colored dark we want it to be colored like this area like that area ok so let's take a sample and start painting on that particular area make sure the flow is low as easy as a pie and I think you have done a pretty good job over here now I'm going to show you one more tip which is essential sometimes we go a little overboard and for those times we can simply decrease the opacity so as you can see here's the before here's the after we have taken care of that very easily you can also decrease the opacity if you want that a little back a little naturality do that ok so I'm gonna go ahead and choose 85 that's fine now if you're not happy with the texture you can change the value of high pass real time after the fact so double on high-pass since this is a smart object we are able to do this okay so increase the texture if you want to if you increase the texture so much this area will come back so you don't want to go so far ahead into that I guess 44 36 is fine for this example as that area is a little blurred now there's something which we forgot what did we forget we forgot to desaturate it no problem we can desaturate it later as well so you can desaturate it in a ton of ways so you can go to image adjustments hue/saturation and inside a few saturation you can just decrease the saturation and hits okay now let's have a look at example number three and in this example it seems very good image seems pretty nice but if you zoom in it is pretty nice and you can get away with this but if you wanted to remove those eye bags if you want it to be a little lighter it's already light but if you want to make it a little more lighter here's what to do the same technique create a blank layer okay and then create one more layer ctrl alt shift E now desaturate it ctrl shift you command shift you if you are using a Mac then convert this into a smart object go to filter convert for Smart Filters hit OK and then high-pass filter other and then high-pass now just look at this particular area and decrease the radius all the way to 0.1 and gradually increase it just when you begin to see the texture if you go too far beyond the darkness in that area will show up and there will be no effect of painting that area will eventually be dark so you don't wanna get get so forward in into this just stop when the texture start coming so let's choose for for this example and hit okay then what do we need to do change the blend mode from normal to overlay then let's just skip it let's just limit that this particular layer the paint layer so hold the alt or option and click on the line between these two just like that and what happens there is let me show you some something explicitly alright so if we choose something like say orange let me show you this is just for demonstration purposes and if I just paint in here it orange have a look the texture is still there but you're changing the colors so that's what we are doing actually so let's take the brush and let's sample this color and decrease the flow to 2% if you have the flow to a low number then you get more chances to paint to get the intensity of the brush 200% for example let's say your flow is 50% you would have to paint very less amount of times at the same spot to get 100% intensity if your flow is 1% you would have to paint many times say 100 or 200 times at the same spot to get 100% intensity now these are not accurate values I'm just approximating for you to understand okay so let's set a low flow to 2% and then let's sample this area and we want that area to be of this color and that's why we sampled it okay so that sample this area and start painting just like that in the paint layer keep on sampling from different areas don't just stick to one area because if you do it's not gonna look good say you sample from this dark area you're painting here that's fine because that area is supposed to be dark but you cannot continue it to this area you have to sample from this area again okay select sample from this area and just paint on this particular area I know my table is a little wobbly just be here with that and as you can see the eye bags are going away very slowly do not worry about the eyelashes you know why because the eyelashes count as texture so no matter how much you paint over there it's gonna be dark just like that now let me give you one more tip you can also edit the texture but here's the thing if you want to edit the texture this doesn't have to be a smart object so you can rest wise that no problem right-click rasterize that however if you do rasterize you will not be able to change the high pass later so tradeoffs what are your priorities you choose all right let's rasterize this now once you rasterize that you can edit the texture by using the clone stamp tool or any tool that you like and make sure sample current layer is check we don't want a sample from other less so let's sample this texture right over there and simply paint on that area that way we just removed the texture very simple isn't it now let's make a group of both of these hold the ctrl or command select the other one press ctrl or command G have a look at the before and after before after before after now this is so very much let's decrease the opacity to say 47% let's choose 45 and you can do the same for the other eye and here is the final result before and after welcome to the third example and in this example we're gonna be using all the techniques that we learned in the first three examples and also you're gonna be talking about skin sculpting now there's a complete tutorial on skin softening and sculpting it can go ahead and check that out right there but you can also use this technique it's very easy to play with ctrl or command + to zoom in or spacebar and ctrl or command hold that and drag it to the right to zoom in now all the techniques have a look there's a little bit of discoloration over here we need to take care of that if you want to remove the IBEX you can also remove that but never ever remember this never ever remove the smile lines so she is smiling this is a part of her smile you should not remove it okay if you want to reduce it you can reduce it a little bit but that's really making her expressions much more exaggerated okay so let's create one more layer first of all one more control alt shift e command option shift e then ctrl shift you command shift you to desaturate that now let's convert this into a smart object by going to filter convert for Smart Filters it's okay because in this example I'm not gonna go ahead and change the texture so filter other high pass this time now what are the areas that you want to affect we want to work on the complete image so let's have a look at the overall image and stop just at the point where all of the texture starts showing up so decrease it zero point one so as you can see most of the textures start showing up at this point seven point four seven let's go for 7.5 and hit okay now change the blend mode of this one from normal to as we learned overlay and then limited how do we limit it by creating a clipping mask hold the alt or option click on the line between these two and then simply take the brush and start working on it so first of all let's take care of this discoloration so let's zoom in ctrl or command + and then take a sample of this area by holding the alt or option take a sample and we need to paint in this layer not in the texture layer select this length sample it and just simply start painting on this particular area and it will be gone very easy to work with this and by the way right now in the navigation bar you can see me but let me switch myself off for a little while this navigation bar is very useful because we want a zoomed out view of our image sometimes while we are working on it it looks pretty nice zoomed in but when we zoom out it looks pretty bad so simultaneously there's a zoomed out view okay that's one advantage of the navigation part so let me switch myself on back again alright simply just paint and have a look at the zoomed out area inside of that navigation bar keep a watch I should have said but you get the point right okay so as you can see let's have a look at the before and after before after before after that thing is gone worked pretty well now you can do the same in this one and I'm not gonna do it let's zoom in quite a bit ctrl or command + there's a couple bit of a couple of distractions right here so you can adjust soften it out you can adjust paint here color is a little not uniform you can just take samples just keep on taking samples do not go with just one color that's better than before have a look at that before and after before after before after now we did paint a little extra at the side so simply take the eraser and just erase this particular area okay just like that I accidentally pressed the windows button okay take the brush again and you can work on this you can take hours to work on this right here we don't want this dark area of the sample this area and paint over here just like that you can really go and depth into that and transform the image have a look before after before after that way we can just simply keep working on this as you can see right here let's zoom in there's again a lot of blotchiness we can just simply solve it let's take a sample of your choice and then start painting on these areas if you want to work faster you can increase the flow to four or five percent in the river too and choose 5% and just paint that way you don't have to paint so many times but you lose something and that is the softness of the brush now it is still soft but if you paint a couple times more to get the intensity of your choice you gain much more softness and it mixes better let's zoom out and have a look looks pretty good doesn't it before after before after so I just did a couple of areas so let me show you the final results so here is the before and this is the after so there you go one of the most versatile skin retouching tips in Photoshop now what is the concept concept is very simple first of all we have to bring out the texture why we need to bring out the texture because we're gonna paint in particular areas to cure it just like a painting and we want to add texture back into that area so how do we go about that create a blank layer above that create one more blank layer and fill it up with a merged layer how do we do that press ctrl alt shift E you can also make a copy of the background layer and you get the idea but the whole crux of the story is you have to get the final image before applying all those global effects at the top and just beneath that a blank layer then on that image on the top layer first of all desaturate it because we can convert that into texture and we don't want any color desaturate it and convert that into a smart object why smart object because you wanna change the value of high pass later after that apply some high pass to that now what is high pass it allows the high frequencies to pass and low frequencies it just paints it gray what are the high frequencies they are the texture the low frequencies are the color after applying high pass change the blend mode of the texture layer to overlay and clip it to the paint layer and then simply come back to the paint layer take a sample from a respective area of your choice and simply paint on the area that you want to correct and that's pretty much it hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us and I can also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bells that you want for until you miss the thing I'll see you guys in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creative [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 236,113

Keywords: skin retouching, remove eye bags, tanning photoshop, skin, discoloration, repair skin, skin softening, frequency separation, skin sculpting, skin texture, sampling and painting, retouch, high-end retouching, advanced retouching, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: Miyc3K8tspk

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2018