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Skin Smoothing Techniques


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Stacy

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I'm currently researching and trying to learn about skin smoothing and am having some success with blurring and masking.
After reading some more articles it seems as though this is a technique which many people don't approve of, however they don't mention any other techniques which they DO think are worthy of knowing.

Would you mind telling me the names of some of these techniques so I can do some more research into how these work and maybe make some of my own comparisons?

Thanks
Stacy
 
No that's exactly what I was looking for!
Just needed the name of the technique so I could go looking, unfortunately although people weren't happy about the blurring technique I've been trying they wouldn't say which ones they did like!
So thanks again!
 
The people who advised you against blur-based techniques are right on the mark. There are lots and lots of variants of blur-based methods, but IMHO, they *never* give good results. Either you get plastic looking skin or not enough smoothing.

In fact, that is the biggest problem with almost all automated skin retouching techniques.

Probably the most important factor in pro-level retouching is patience and being willing to manually spot each and every small blemish, clogged pore, etc.; manually patch larger areas (bags under the eyes), minimize oily reflections (that should have been dealt with at the makeup stage), selectively brighten and darken areas by painting grays on a layer set to soft lighting mode (that should have been dealt with by correct lighting), tidy up the hair, etc. Even a technique like frequency separation helps with only one aspect of the overall problem.

There is A LOT to high quality skin retouching. It is very, very different from automatically getting rid of pimples from 3000 shots of graduating high school seniors. ;-)

More later,

Tom

PS - BTW, just a few days ago, there was a very nice thread by ChrisDesign that illustrated some beautiful retouching that he had done. For laughs, I responded with what the latest version of Portrait Pro could do. It was no match for Chris' manual approach. It should be easy to find that thread.

PPS - Hopefully, Chris will see this thread and give you some words of wisdom from a pro in this area.
 
PS #3 - BTW, I don't know Chris' workflow, but I tend to use frequency separation only after I have done many/most of the manual retouching steps mentioned above.
 
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Thank you both Tom and Chris, that was exactly what I was looking for.
I'll do some reading up and playing and then post what I have for some tips.
Looks like I'm going to have some fun with this as I like things I can really get my teeth into !
 
Gedstar - It turns out that mathematically, the method you like is very, very closely related to the method described in the link provided by Chris. In fact, a major part of Chris's article (ie, the section titled, "High Pass Filter Setup") deal with your variant, albeit, applied a bit differently than in your article.

In fact, there are many, many other ways to achieve separation of spatial frequencies in an image. These include Fourier Transform methods, the "Details" plugin by Topaz, etc. Everyone has their own favorite.

I happen to prefer an approach based on the Topaz plugin because it separates the image into three, not just two spatial frequency bands, and also further separates each band into high and low contrast sub-classes. ...but that's just me, LOL.

Cheers,

Tom M
 
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to this thread I've been really practising the techniques given.
I've done a few for friends who I managed to pull in for a couple of photos. I've done a beauty set and some of my friend's foster children.
Unfortunately I'm not able to show the images because of their content but I am very pleased with the results even though I know there is a LOT more practise needed.
Just wanted to say a huge thank you to the posters here and let you know that your advise has been taken and is working a treat!
:)
 
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