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Skin Smoothing Actions & Plugins
I'm curious, do you use any Photoshop actions or plugins for skin retouching? What do you think about it? I know a lot of them, but maybe i'm missing some. I made some scripts for skin smoothing by myself (photoshopchef.com), so some tips and opinion from you coud help me do even better. Thanks! Dec 07 14 05:56 am Link I am just a photographer and not retoucher. For smaller images in the wedding book I use healing brush and NIK software. For all my more important images I send them to a professional retoucher. I'm not sure what he uses but he charges me $1 per image. On a wedding job with large frames I think I pay him about $45. It doesn't include the layout. I took a look at your site. It looks great. I think if I didn't already have NIK I would be more interested. Great looking product though. Dec 07 14 08:20 am Link Smart Object wrote: Nice work there!Your website is very polished and presents your product perfectly. If I was looking for a quick method for achieving good results...I would definitely give your "actions" a go. I don't take retouching to these levels,so for me,I'm content with my current methods and results. Kudos to you though for putting all that together.Looks great! Dec 07 14 09:00 am Link I will check it out. I don't have the refined skills some others have, so to get by I have been using Portraiture. I want to develop my skills at creating masks for skin and hair so I can work with each separately. If you have insights how do that efficiently then that might be a good place to concentrate. The 'easy' selection tools available now are just not good. Dec 07 14 10:47 am Link Smart Object, I am not much into the beauty skin stuff, but your script is excellent! Worth to have. Carl Herbert, The best way to mask skin/hair is with Topaz Remask. Dec 07 14 10:48 am Link Still Waiting for your Retouching Toolkit.. Just checked your site and its not up anymore why? Dec 07 14 10:53 am Link Pictus wrote: Thanks! I downloaded the Topaz trial and I will try it too. Dec 07 14 10:56 am Link Smart Object wrote: I don't really use plugins but I will take a look at yours, thanks for sharing Dec 07 14 10:58 am Link Bettelyoun wrote: Hello, I took down the Coming Soon.. image, but i'm still working on it.. hope it will be finished before the new year. Dec 07 14 11:29 am Link Pictus wrote: Dec 07 14 11:37 am Link Isn't the whole point of retouching to bring contrast and establish balance in tone and color? No plug in will ever do that, and smoothing is something that has to be done during DNB anyway, as noone draws that perfectly, you have to fine-tune it as you draw... and all of those plug ins require you to heal anyway... so the benefit is??? 1.You save time smoothing. But this smoothing is on the bottom, and you will have to spend time in DNB anyway, so DNB will not look smooth if you're not dedicated. 2.You save time healing? No. 3.You save time determining a "look"? Could be, but then there is always that one image that stands out, and no filter will make it look part of the group. I don't mind people using smoothing techniques for things like weddings, daily papers... as long as it's done in moderation, but in the world of commercial photography, it really has no place. Dec 07 14 12:43 pm Link CLICK retouch wrote: Thanks for reply. Yeah you are right at some point, but i think it can save some time on healing. Here is my script applied at 100% opacity. Except of some micro blemishes there is nothing to heal. Dec 07 14 01:45 pm Link I don't use any plug ins for skin retouching. A while back, I bought a Scott Kelby book on photoshopping models/skin and he has several different techniques that I have really enjoyed using. It may take a few extra minutes to do it manually, but I do it so often that it has become quick and automatic. I'm considering just making my favorite technique it into an action soon. Dec 07 14 06:38 pm Link Duck and cover! The D&B and Frequency Separation crowd will come soon and put you down, because you've done a very good job and threaten their existence. I've only played with the trial for a little while, but I'm impressed. The removal of large blemishes while still retaining fine texture is amazing. I've got Imagenomic Portraiture, and if you crank it up to attack larger blemishes, it destroys everything else. I always had to heal large blemishes by hand before running Portrature. In fact, this script appears to beat Portraiture overall. The "calculations" script does not work on my system (Win7, Photoshop CC 2014). Just returns "NaN" for the suggested radius, regardless of how much or how little area I select. So I tried radii of 25, 50, 100, 150, which helped demo the different results, which are significant. A couple things I noticed: It does not do a good job of removing small white spots. The kind you get from sweat beads, flaking makeup, or the popular glitter many young girls currently use. But strangely, it does remove a small white dot when it's the center of a large dark edged pimple. It affects tonality, sometimes a lot depending on radius. Shadows around creases (cheek lines), under the nose, under the eye get a lot lighter. Too light in most cases, so I found I had to mask those out and retouch manually if needed. The radius needed to preserve these shadows does not yield good results elsewhere. The script uses Smart Blur, which scared me at first. Smart Blur is notoriously slow on 16bit images. But the script is not too slow on 16bit images, even though the Smart Blur window that flashes by appears to be a pretty strong blur. Dec 08 14 12:39 am Link Redcrown wrote: Thanks. You are probably the first one who has a problem with the calculator script. What that script does is crop the photo with your selection and then ((width*height)^(1/2))/25 = radius. And yeah, the result depends entirely on radius... I will try to do something about the shadows and small white spots, thanks for feedback. And the Surface Blur, it actually runs in new window in 8bit mode... Dec 08 14 02:24 am Link Redcrown, Your Photoshop CC 2014 may be bad, mine was... First time I run the script the result was absolute weird and resetting Photoshop did no good, this Photoshop and plug-ins had too many updates, something may got bad. Well... Loaded a *clean* Windows 8.1 image and installed PS CC 2014... Scripts and mainly plug-ins is best to install new, but actions/tools settings can use from the old, they are at  so only had to install the scripts and plug-ins again... BINGO! Now the script works just fine!! BTW, people hates when I say "Format C: and install from scratch"... LoL But nothing beats a clean installation, it even got that "new car smell"... LoL Dec 08 14 02:36 am Link Some more playing with this leads to suggestions... 1. I quickly get tired of that final "info" window. Take it out of the main script, make it a separate step in the action so we can turn it off or delete once we have experience. 2. Increase the power of the "Contrast Fix" layer and set its default opacity to about 50%. As is we can only decrease contrast via opacity. Sometimes increasing contrast may be needed. Just duplicating that layer works well. 3. My radius calculation still does not work, but I don't think I care. Looking at your formula I don't see how that will work well. It seems from my testing that the optimum radius depends on the size and tonal range of the blemishes. A face with large, dark blemishes needs a different radius than a face with smaller, lighter blemishes. Even if the selection width and height of the faces are the same. And what if there are two faces in the image? If you select just one, you get a radius calculation that is much different than if you select both. And neither is likely the best. Some other Photoshop techniques have you to test with a Gaussian Blur, running the GB radius up to a point where the things you are targeting visibly disappear, cancelling that blur, then use that GB radius (or a fraction of it) on some subsequent step (like a High Pass). Maybe that works here? 4. Good luck with the "small white spots". I've seen many attempts at that, and have tried a few of my own, but never succeeded. The Photoshop dust and scratches filter does a good job, but destroys the rest of the image. So it has to be masked and each spot painted in with a small brush. Not much different or better than running around with a small spot healing brush. Dec 08 14 01:45 pm Link Redcrown wrote: Thanks for helpful tips, i will do something about it in next update. The calculator gives useable number only if you select only one face. It crops the image using the selection, then asks photoshop what are image dimensions and calculates the radius. It's basicaly just saying how big is the face. It's wierd it doesn't work in your photoshop... NaN means "not a number", maybe you could try to run this simple script: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/565 … nsions.zip Dec 08 14 03:54 pm Link SO, Both the calculate script and the other one you gave for test fail on my Photoshop CC and Photoshop CC 2014. Same "NaN" result. However, they both work on my old install of CS6. Same machine, same images of different sizes. Go figure. Again, if it's only me don't worry about it. I'll be picking the best radius some other way. Dec 08 14 10:08 pm Link I'm interested in buying your script, but why do I have to create an account to purchase it? Dec 09 14 03:43 am Link Photography by Sean wrote: You will be able to download updates from your account. Or you mean the paypal account? Thanks! Dec 09 14 07:29 am Link Redcrown, Update to 14.2.2 and Reset Photoshop after the update... Maybe the new update will fix your broken 14.2.1 Dec 10 14 06:56 am Link Pictus wrote: I tried that myself...no fix... Dec 10 14 10:47 am Link FlirtynFun Photography wrote: Are you saying your Calculations script does not work too? If so, what error msg (NaN?), what OS and what version of Photoshop? Pictus wrote: Where do you find version numbers, in the installed code and on the website? All I see is 2.0 in both places. Downloaded a new zip anyway. All the files were the same as my install. The smooth script file is dated Oct 2. So does not look like any recent updates. Dec 10 14 11:38 am Link It is a Photoshop update... Dec 10 14 12:31 pm Link Here's a sample of the most difficult skin I can find in my archives. Some observations: Delicious Skin (DS) script did a very good job removing major blemishes. It also maintained a good level of fine detail. Maybe a bit too smooth for some. At 100% view the texture looks nice. At smaller "web sized" versions, the DS version probably looks a bit too smooth and fake. The Portraiture version was made with the medium and large sliders at max 20, the fine slider at 0, and the portrait size at large. Even at that heavy amount, lots of blemishes were left behind, and there is total loss of detail in some areas. By changing the portrait size to medium, blemishes are further reduced, but much more area loses all detail and the images looks worse. The DS script gives some challenges in tonality, and is the main topic I struggle with. The base smoothing technique flattens out tones a lot and gives a low contrast image. The author attempts to restore tonality with the contrast layer. That works fairly well, but is very image dependent. On this low key image, tones were well maintained (within 2%). On another light skin, high key image some tones shifted up to 6%. http://kellyphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i- … pgWgfN.jpg  Here is a full sized tif version, with original, DS, and Portraiture layers, plus a face mask. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/621 … ndemo1.tif Dec 10 14 09:42 pm Link This is a great script. I just tried it on a model that has all kinds of skin problems (including largish dark moles that come out from the skin) Did a great job on the face. What little dark color their was left from the mole was easily removed with a quick healing brush. The skin looks really good. I did notice that on some light stretch marks that she had on her upper cleavage it didn't actually do much with that. The changes, even when viewed close, at full opacity and flow, are very subtle for that particular area of her body. (I can private send you a sample if you like) The lighter parts of the stretch marks are darkened every so slightly but not enough to truly remove them from view. This, like many other tools, makes a mess out of tattoos, so those will have to be masked around of course. I am also noticing some slight shadow oddness in the crease of her arms where they meet her body, etc. I'd say I'm probably going to buy a copy of this today, but if there is anyway to handle the stretch marks better, that would be ace (I don't only shoot young tight skinned models. Lots of varied bodies in my work) Dec 11 14 02:00 am Link Redcrown wrote: To remedy this problem I apply less in the good areas and also add some fake textures. Dec 11 14 02:41 am Link can you install the extension panel in CC? Dec 15 14 08:31 pm Link MC Seoul Photography wrote: That is a No. Only for CS6 if you want panel. Dec 15 14 08:35 pm Link MC Seoul Photography wrote: The panel is only for CS6 right now. I didn't yet figured out how to make panels for CC Dec 16 14 06:03 am Link It might just be me, but I feel like my photoshop runs "slower" with this installed. Could the extension panel be causing that? Dec 31 69 04:00 pm Link Closing the panel makes any difference? Anyway, try to reset Photoshop http://www.lancelhoff.com/how-to-reset- … -settings/ Dec 31 69 04:00 pm Link Smart Object wrote: very excited for when you do!!!! Dec 20 14 04:42 pm Link Pictus wrote: I''ll try that, can I back up the settings file to restore it if it doesn''t help? I''d hate to lose all my stuff for no reason. Closing it didn''t help. I may also try uninstalling just the panel to see if that helps. I''d been busy for awhile and hadn''t done much editing the last month, but now that I got this I''m all over it again, but something seems really clunky compared to a month ago. Dec 20 14 08:12 pm Link After the reset only need to reconfigure the Color Settings(SHIFT+CTRL+K) and the Preferences(CTRL+K), actions, plug-ins and ETC will stay. Dec 21 14 09:47 am Link Nvm..........sorry Dec 24 14 03:24 pm Link is this retouching using scrip ,i think u never gone learn nothing from it and all the time the example look fine and when u apply it to ur images maybe u even will get an result like promise ,what an waist of time why u show only 1 exampl Dec 24 14 03:52 pm Link I just tried the trial on an image to make sure it worked with CS5 and it looks great just on first glance. I like the slight texture it leaves as it even out skintones. I'll probably buy it just for beauty shots.. *There's no "panel", but the effect still works. Dec 25 14 03:33 pm Link I tried the trial and i must say, im impressed But this script does nothing that cant be done with a few clicks, some FQ seperation, and so on. But it does save time,and it's absolutely something for wedding photographers & other photographers that dont have time to retouch. It does have it flaws, but it'll work as a great starting point. Great job with the script man. Dec 26 14 02:49 am Link |
I'll probably have to find somebody who knows how to code it...
