I'm in the process of doing some portraits of couple of 14-year-olds to go on invitations to their confirmations.
Unfortunately, as is typical of many 14-year-olds, there is a fair amount of skin problems.
This chap in particular. I have already used the spot pen as much as possible - see the before and after photos, but does anyone have any tips how I could get rid of the rest of the blemishes? I have PSE6 and CS3.
before
(http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/2554/gh70015761.jpg)
after the spot pen
(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/8981/gh70015762.jpg)
I'm not sure if I want to use this actual photo, but whatever I decide on, he's still got the bad skin.
Hope you don't mind, and I can obviously delete it at any time, I've had a quick go myself.
I used the spot healing brush, then on the resultant composite, did a median blur, masked the areas I didn't want affected, added a bit of noise, with the same mask in place, then a very small amount of high pass sharpening.
Beat me to it :D
Also to get rid of the shiny bits on forehead and nose, sample colour with eyedropper 51x51 on adjacent skin tone. use soft brush and set it to Color. Set Opacity to 30% or less and brush over higlights.
Seems so much simpler in Lightroom!
There is also the software, portrait professional which if I remember correctly had a free trial download.
Trouble with portrait professional download is that you cannot save the result and even if you do a screen grab at low level it has TRIAL stamped on it. Great programme though. I`ve just bought it and trying it out as I was so impressed with the trial. I was doing a portriat job and they asked me if i coudl do amything by way of softening / improving features and I said I could for extra money to cover processing. Thus they funded my purchase :)
Only thing is the cheaper version I bought does not have all the functionality of the trial - but nearly. Works on TIFFs and jpegs but not raws. Extra detail too. You pay another £40 for the better version but I probably won`t go that way. I`ll have a quick go with it and email you a version to see what the software can do Carol.
The version I had did not leave any watermarks or such.
Perhaps I got it elswhere - lol
Quote from: picsfor on February 27, 2010, 12:56:25 PM
Seems so much simpler in Lightroom!
If you tell me exactly what to do, I could give it a go. I have LR, but an older version and don't actually use it. For the basic RAW conversion and tweaks I use Capture NX2 nowadays. PSE/CS only comes out when real manipulation is required. As is the case here.
Mark - was that PSE or CS ? Maybe a daft question, but I still don't know all the possibilities of PSE, also have to translate as my SW is in German :)
Sorry, I should have said - it was CS4 actually - but I don't believe anything was done that can't be done in either elements or CS3. Except perhaps masks in PSE - unless you have the add-in!
In Lightroom i just used the brush tool to paint over the affected area (the forehead and the left of the nose) and just slid the clarity slide to the left a bit along with the saturation slider.
Also tweaked the brightness and exposure sliders and ended up with a simple make over done in a few seconds.
Maybe not quite as effective as Marks, but not far off...
You're all soooo helpful !
Thanks for all the replies !
Philipp is actually undergoing treatment with the doctor, and I do in fact have a week or two before I have to finalise the photos. I think I shall hang on a bit, and then get him to wear a bit of make-up if necessary. He's a smashing lad and isn't at all self-conscious about his spots.
I might also try for a photo where the face isn't so close.
He lives next door, so I have plenty of opportunity.
I'll let you know how we get on :)