The book that I got up here it is elements five retouching and restoration. However, find anything about elements is that it is very, very similar to Photoshop so all of the retouching techniques I doing in it. Work inside Photoshop so instead of showing an elements I have got some retouching things for Photoshop and I call it the five minute portrait retouch because I hope it takes five minutes. So will start of here and here we have a photo of Eliza. First, thing I usually do is start of with the eyes. So there are some really simple things you can do. Zoom into the eyes here. Create yourself a brand new layer and it sounds kind of silly if we want to white in the eyes. I am actually going to paint with white and I warned you know it looks bad when I start.
But it looks better when I finished, there is one key step to it. So it looks bad at first but it looks better in the end here. Will take the brush tool, really small and just paint inside the whites of the eyes. You can use your left and right bracket keys and you can resize your brushes. You should not get all of it, just the larger parts there. Just do the same thing on the other side. If you happen to go too far like I just did, I just grab the eraser tool. I will just press the letter “e” and just erase a way any of those areas at the bottom there. Now I told you it looks really bad when start of, before after not good.
But if you change the layer blend mode from normal, go down to soft light. It blends the white end with the original texture that is back behind the eye and then if it is too much just drops your opacity down to about 50% and you get the best the both forums. So before—after very subtle but it is does things that draw you right into those eyes. Now just to make things easier after I do this, I usually know I am not going to go back and change it. So I am working myself out of a job by telling you to flattened. I just press command or control+A and I flattened but that is what I do. I flattened it. I do not save the layer because I know I am not going to go back change and change it. If you find yourself going back and changing it, you will probably want to save that layer.
Next thing will do here, enhance the actual color of the eyes so I make two very simple selections. One circle, hold down the shift key, make another circle and I am going to press command “j” on the mock control “j” on the pc and that puts the eyes unto their on layer. So what will do here is we want to bring some sparkle to the eye, bring a little bit more color. Change the layer button mode for normal and go down to, I say color dodge. All right, now forget about the fact that the circles around the eye look bad what it does to the eyes is actually pretty cool. So I can hide all that and I do it by adding a layer mask and if I just click the layer mask icon it adds in a white. And then I have to go in and paint with black to remove things.
But if I alt or option click it adds in black and then I can just paint with white so I grab my brush. Switch to white and just paint in the eyes, if it is too much drop the opacity down. What is also cool is that we did add the layer mask so now any changes we make on this layer are only going to be made to the eyes, right. So if I go to hue saturation and I can change the hue, I can increase the saturation. We can add a little bit more of that green color that she has their. So will settle again by zooming here before-after a very, very settle but we get a nice little color change in their and then just like before command “e” to merge down and flattened.
All right, next thing will do eyebrows duplicate that layer. Command “j” and this one easy, I just grab the burn tool at a very, very low exposure. So take my exposure down to 10% or 15% and I will zoom in on the eyes and all I do is just give a couple quick swipes right over the eyebrows. Just like that, okay and now before-after. Again settle, if it is ever is too much we did the work on a separate layers so you can just drop the opacity. All right, so let us just merged out one down. Next thing will work on here just a little bit on the nose because when Eliza looks at here photo we want Eliza to realize that, that is herself. We do not want to be somebody else.
But you can do very settle things here so I grab the lasso tool and make a very simple selection around the nose. There is that fine edge dialogue up here if I click on it and I can feather my selection. What that does soften the edges so it is not a real harsh edge. Click okay and we are going to use filter just door hinge. All right, this one kind of funny to watch if I click on the preview you see. So do not go to high here, you can obviously go very far something in the 20% to 30% range, it looks pretty well. That is before and that is after. Again very settle, it might even move up just a little bit and click okay. So that is the nose.
The mouth a couple quick things you can do to it. You may or may not want to do you can see after the technique but I take the selection tool my lasso just lasso the mouth very quickly. Command “j” put it up on to its own layer and then you tell me if you like it if change the blend mode to multiply. See it darkens the lips. However, it make everything else look bad. So what we do is add that layer mask again option click, it hides the whole effect and then I take my brush tool. A very low opacity brush and just paint a little bit more color back end. Not only does it add to the red color that is on the lips. But you can see it also brings out a little bit of the highlights that are on the lips. I almost make it—to look a bit sharper.
Again, it is on its own layer and we use that low opacity brush so we can paint to a couple of times. It looks a little bit too much to me so I just drop the opacity down. All right, and we will merge out that one down. Last thing we will work on here is the skin so we will duplicate the layer and what I want to do is blur the skin. All right, this helps me to easy. Helps me remove blemishes and also helps me soften any of the texture and any wrinkles that are on there. So we go to filter, blur and I love the surface blur. Two reasons one it just seems to do is smoother blur, then like a gaussian blur will do. But the other thing I like about it is it lives me less work later on. Because what surface blur, see what lives your details some what sharp where gaussian blur just blurs the heck out of everything. Surface blur leaves everything fairly sharp.
So when got to go back later and get those details back it is easy. So I will click okay and then you can pretty guess, what I am going to do next is the same thing that we have been doing. Add a layer mask and then just paint out the areas that I do not want. So let us add that layer mask. What I do not want to do is blur any of the key feature so eyes are big no, no, no. So we would paint with a black brush and bring back all the detail on the eyes. The same thing with the eyebrows, bring back our detail right there. Down here on the nose we need to bring back a little bit of the detail that gives just the definition to the face and then the lips. Bring back our detail there and then anything else if you want to bring back some detail up top, the hair is going to be a big one. See what it did to the hair?
So again, I can use a larger brush. I am just heading that right bracket kit and bring back all of our detail there and the last thing that I would do is, if I zoom in, let us go a 100%. I am not a huge fan to that porcelain look so we can just drop the opacity down. 50% and bring back some of the original texture. All right, next merge it down and let just sharp in, duplicate the layer. Filter, sharp in, smart sharp in and let us go with about 115 and if you click it is kind of cool if you click on the preview, it shows that before and then when let go your mouse button it shows you after. So before-after, probably go a little higher and will click okay and same thing. Add the layer mask and let us paint the way the areas that look bad so if you look at the skin textures see what we did? See how we sharp in all the skin texture and that is what you do now want to do. So if we add our layer mask here and just paint with black on any skin texture areas. Will bring back that smoother skin that was underneath and then what it look really nice is if we get the hair to. Do not paint the way the sharpening from the hair. Now I zoom in just take a look the before and after. So that is before sharpening and that is after.
All right, now I flattened and let us just take a look where we came from and where we at now so I am going to duplicate that. This is before and that is after so Eliza is still Eliza, she is not a different person but we just took some of the distractions away. So once again before and after.
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