Girlfriend Before & After

[StanleyKing]

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[Tom Mann]

Nice, but it REALLY reminds me of one of the old Kabota actions, some of which now seem to be sold as part of OnOne's fx package.

T

 

[Tom Mann]

Clarification: Her skin reminds me of the old Kabota action, but the grass looks like one of the "curly" presets in Topaz Clean was used.

T

 

[chrisdesign]

Stanley, this image is really nice to look at, but it is not what I call "retouching". As Tom mentioned, it is a Topaz Clean filter.

 

[StanleyKing]

Nice, but it REALLY reminds me of one of the old Kabota actions, some of which now seem to be sold as part of OnOne's fx package.

T

thanks Tom!
im actually unfamiliar with Kabota and OnOne fx package.
maybe you could explain..
much appreciated!

 

[StanleyKing]

Clarification: Her skin reminds me of the old Kabota action, but the grass looks like one of the "curly" presets in Topaz Clean was used.

T

and yes you're right, Topaz Clean is a guilty pleasure of mine =/ =] lol
but, still Kabota action?

 

[StanleyKing]

Stanley, this image is really nice to look at, but it is not what I call "retouching". As Tom mentioned, it is a Topaz Clean filter.

yea bro, as i look back at it and take in the comment. you're right. to us designers its obvious what is used. but to those on the outside, they get ****ing WOW'd!
much appreciated guys!

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Stanley -

Kabota actions were THE THING maybe 5-10 years ago. To be honest, I thought they folded when they sold some of their products off to onOne software, but I just did a search and discovered that Kabota still exists and are open for business:
http://kubotaimagetools.com/collections/photoshop-products

Unfortunately, I don't have any of my old Kabota actions loaded on this computer, so I can't tell you exactly the names of the ones I was thinking of, but they had some (and used these in their advertising) that did an absolutely beautiful job on dark skinned women.

OnOne software's "Perfect Photo Suite" is a nice product (and I do have it loaded on this machine), but, IMHO, among the big plugin suits, it's in third place behind Topaz's and NIK's products:
http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/suite8/

Where it does shine is for studio photographers using relatively inexperienced staff to repeatedly tweak images in exactly the same way. IMHO, photographers shooting out in the wild need more fundamental / elemental tools to put together their own, highly customizable corrections and FX.

That being said, I did throw something together based on the "before" image that you posted. As I said, I used a couple of the onOne presets to get a nice chocolate skin tone, and used Topaz Clean on the grass.

I didn't spend the time (as you obviously did) doing manual work on the subject's face and edges of her hair. I just "pressed the button" a couple of times to get the colors and tonalities close to what you had -- even a bit more exaggerated to show the effects used.

T