Hey I just got in and gave portraiture a spin. By a spin I mean I tried the default settings and clicked ok and then compared its result on the same girl with an image i retouched 'manually'
by just the default settings it seems to be like a well calibrated surface blur. Like the kind of surface blur that retouchers WOULD use.
now, my retouch had a surface blur layer, an unsharp mask, layer masks, and a gradient map among other things
but is there something useful about Portraiture? Like a constructive way to use it, I HAVEN'T PLAYED WITH IT, but can anyone tell me if its like Surface Blur on crack? (like if surface blur came with 20 other sliders)
I dunno if it's like surface blur much. I definitely see distinct pores when I run it. It will pick up skin tones with one click, which is pretty handy. (not perfect but very good). I seldom use just the presets and I always run it on a separate layer and reduce the opacity a good bit. But I am not an expert so take this all with a grain of salt!
Ravendrive Productions wrote: by just the default settings it seems to be like a well calibrated surface blur. Like the kind of surface blur that retouchers WOULD use.
a retoucher wouldn't use any sort of blur to correct skin. never, for any reason.
nor would they use a skin blurring plug-in. i've played with portraiture because i can see that about half the photographers here use it. it's obvious, it makes skin look patchy and fake, and like blur, no retoucher would really use it.
consider it a band-aid rather than a shortcut. there is no quick way to do things correctly, and skin should still look like skin when you're done--rather than porous plastic.
a retoucher wouldn't use any sort of blur to correct skin. never, for any reason.
nor would they use a skin blurring plug-in. i've played with portraiture because i can see that about half the photographers here use it. it's obvious, it makes skin look patchy and fake, and like blur, no retoucher would really use it.
Surface Blur can be handy in the workflow, you might be a person that would be surprised when you saw how many sharp images used it.
It doesn't replace healing, but it can be used constructively.
Lynn Helms Photography wrote: I dunno if it's like surface blur much. I definitely see distinct pores when I run it. It will pick up skin tones with one click, which is pretty handy. (not perfect but very good). I seldom use just the presets and I always run it on a separate layer and reduce the opacity a good bit. But I am not an expert so take this all with a grain of salt!
I'm still playing with it now. I always mask things out that are too intense in one area. I'm trying to see if it can have a place in my workflow, so far I can imagine never having to use the selection tools to isolate the skin before I do any post on it. Thats a time saver
edit: the GLAMOUR preset is so PLASTICKY AHAHAHAHA
a retoucher wouldn't use any sort of blur to correct skin. never, for any reason.
nor would they use a skin blurring plug-in. i've played with portraiture because i can see that about half the photographers here use it. it's obvious, it makes skin look patchy and fake, and like blur, no retoucher would really use it.
consider it a band-aid rather than a shortcut. there is no quick way to do things correctly, and skin should still look like skin when you're done--rather than porous plastic.
Brian Ziff wrote: a retoucher wouldn't use any sort of blur to correct skin. never, for any reason.
That's not exactly true. There are blur-based techniques that respected retouchers use, but you don't apply blur directly to the skin.
Even if you do want to be lazy and use surface blur or the median filter to correct skin blemishes, there are much better ways to do it. Portraiture is for husbands correcting vacation photos.
That's not exactly true. There are blur-based techniques that respected retouchers use, but you don't apply blur directly to the skin.
Even if you do want to be lazy and use surface blur or the median filter to correct skin blemishes, there are much better ways to do it. Portraiture is for husbands correcting vacation photos.
haha, I wonder if this thing responds to photoshop actions well. I might make one and see how it goes.
a retoucher wouldn't use any sort of blur to correct skin. never, for any reason.
nor would they use a skin blurring plug-in. i've played with portraiture because i can see that about half the photographers here use it. it's obvious, it makes skin look patchy and fake, and like blur, no retoucher would really use it.
consider it a band-aid rather than a shortcut. there is no quick way to do things correctly, and skin should still look like skin when you're done--rather than porous plastic.
You do beautiful retouching.. what then would you suggest.. without giving away your secret sauce.. is there a book, tutorial, technique that you would suggest for doing high end beauty retouching that keeps the skin texture, but takes it to that high fashion level?
OH WOW this thing can automatically make mask layers for you if you tell it too. This is much better than trying to select a color range with the selection tool - which WAS the lazy way of doing it lol.
I can see this thing teaching people how they SHOULD be managing their layers at least.
I'm using Portraiture for Photoshop, I wonder how it works in Lightroom and Aperture, it would be a tough time doing layers there.
Patrick Shipstad wrote: You do beautiful retouching.. what then would you suggest.. without giving away your secret sauce.. is there a book, tutorial, technique that you would suggest for doing high end beauty retouching that keeps the skin texture, but takes it to that high fashion level?
It'd be pretty cool if he mentioned it, although I use clone/heal and gradient maps before I would use surface blur and unsharp masks.
There are so many fun things and methods you can try retouching
You do beautiful retouching.. what then would you suggest.. without giving away your secret sauce.. is there a book, tutorial, technique that you would suggest for doing high end beauty retouching that keeps the skin texture, but takes it to that high fashion level?
Mostly clone stamp, a little healing brush, and a lot of carving.
Amy Dresser uses only clone stamp for skin and says that professionals shouldn't use the healing brush, but I can't fathom how I'd get through a photo without it. I guess I'm not at that level yet.
I have no idea what Pascal Dangin does, but his look is what I aim for when I do fashion work. Amy's is what I try to emulate when I do commercial stuff.
There are photos where the skin is so bad that I wipe it out almost completely with the healing brush and then resample it in from an external good skin source...and I guess in situations like this, a plugin would be a time saver, but for all my twiddling a tweaking, I still haven't been able to make it look like real skin.
I see a lot of retouching on this site that is obvious, and celebrated for being obvious. Most of it is the Portraiture plug-in, and obviously taste is subjective, but I think retouchers should be like spies--effective only when their work is unnoticed.
Brian Ziff wrote: I guess I'm not at that level yet.
Its good to have goals. Just realize what they do is not a hard fast rule.
Brian Ziff wrote: There are photos where the skin is so bad that I wipe it out almost completely with the healing brush and then resample it in from an external good skin source...
I used to do that.
One point I experimented with using manipulated orange peel textures from photos I took of oranges. I got the idea because on retouchpro there used to be a thread about how to get the "orange peel" look.
then a light clicked in my head, why try to emulate it when I might as well just retouch an orange first! lol
There are also skin brush kits you can download for free online that are essentially the pores from good skin samples. With the right blending mode and a lot of tweaking, you can sort of recover areas of skin that need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Portraiture is phenomenal for smoothing out the low frequencies of a frequency separated image. Make sure your initial separation radius is very high or it you'll lose depth.
I cloned a few obvious blemishes on the HF layer, but everything else is portraiture.
Dodge and burn to change the form of the face. Dodge brings things out while burn carves things in. I've always heard it used to describe things like bringing out cheekbones, slimming the face with shadows, changing the shape of the nose, ect. I've never heard describing detail dodge and burn before.
I tend not to use it for anything less than full body (or occasionally waist up), as there are better ways to get better results, without losing much time. It does work wonders, and quickly, on legs, arms and backs, but I don't trust anything "automatic" for portraits (oh, the irony).
I generally run it at much less than default settings, mask it and paint it back in where necessary.
Brian, I've always found you to be a reasonable sort. I think if you tried moving a few sliders to the left, you'd find some use for it. It's basically the Junior My First Frequency Separation Retouch Kit. That may sound like damning it with faint praise, but it's still only a plugin. A damn handy, convenient and amazing plugin though, as far from Surface Blur as Photoshop is from MS Paint.
I used to sell guitars and guitar gear. Every couple of months, a new gadget would come out. We'd plug it in, and the quickest way to test it out was to run through the presets. No matter what, $79.99 or $799.99, the presets sounded like a Boston cover band. A traditional rock and roller would get the impression that there was nothing useful or even usable invented in the last 20 years (not far from the truth, but not totally true). My point is, that's what Roland/Boss, Yamaha, Digitech, Line 6, etc. etc. imagined would "move units".
Is it any surprise that Imagenomic feels that plastic skin will be their best selling point? If I'd looked at the samples on their site before I tried it, I'd never have bothered downloading it. As it is, it's absolutely paid for itself.
I'm always struggling to find the balance between two truths: "the good is the enemy of the best" and "the difference that makes no difference is no difference". It doesn't matter how you get there, just get there.
Ravendrive Productions wrote: but is there something useful about Portraiture? Like a constructive way to use it, I HAVEN'T PLAYED WITH IT, but can anyone tell me if its like Surface Blur on crack? (like if surface blur came with 20 other sliders)
I find it useful, and it isn't at all like surface blur once you learn how to use it.
Note the preserved skin texture in this example. You couldn't get that result with surface blur.
I played with it until I found settings that seemed to do a fairly good skin smoothing without loosing all detail.
Then I created an Action that creates a duplicate layer of the original image, then runs Portraiture(with my standard settings), then creates a layer mask.
Then I can subtract the effect with a soft round brush wherever I find it was a might too strong or in areas where it may soften things a bit that shouldn't be softened i.e. eyes, hair, etc.
-krphoto- wrote: As far as not using Surface Blur, are we talking about just Surface Blur by itself without any other technique to retain the texture?
I imagine that person was, my original post mentioned quite a bit about my workflow, and how that particular retouch had a surface blur layer and the portraiture one click test reminded me of what that layer looked like.
Portraiture is interesting because of the automatic masking for skin tones. Because of the masking, you would be able to use it on video footage very easily, without having to paint every frame manually.
Eros Studios wrote: I played with it until I found settings that seemed to do a fairly good skin smoothing without loosing all detail.
Then I created an Action that creates a duplicate layer of the original image, then runs Portraiture(with my standard settings), then creates a layer mask.
Then I can subtract the effect with a soft round brush wherever I find it was a might too strong or in areas where it may soften things a bit that shouldn't be softened i.e. eyes, hair, etc.
I did the same, but my action creates a layer mask filled with black. I have trust issues with plugins.
-krphoto- wrote: As far as not using Surface Blur, are we talking about just Surface Blur by itself without any other technique to retain the texture?
The purists think all blurring is verboten when retouching skin. I don't agree. This technique uses Gaussian blur -- not to remove skin texture but to restore it.
Natalia_Taffarel wrote: I think your retouching didn't enhance the image, also IMO that's not a good example of how blur can help an image.
And no, I don't agree with you, surface blur is never absolutely called for.
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I am going to have to disagree with you Natalia on this one... I know you walk on Retouch Water, and I know I am not a retoucher of your caliber, but to say that my retouching did NOT enhance the photo is way of the mark IMO, however, you are entitled to your opinion.
What I tend to do (and this varies from image to image) is first use clone stamp and healing brush where needed to get the major pimples and blemishes removed from the face. What I found that portraiture does, is that it will allow me to even out the skin tone. Then after I would lower the opacity to my taste where the original pores would show through as well as those that may be created with portraiture itself.
I also like portraiture for its use of brightness and contrast, warmth and sharpness which focuses directly on the skin and no where else. This saves time if you dont want to do a manual selection of the skin because you can always bring that threshold all the way to 0 so there is no skin smoothing involved in the process.
I have seen so many constructive uses for portraiture in this thread! Thanks. I have to learn more about the particular "frequencies" that being mentioned here. Funny because I use high pass all the time.
Okay, using the mask for retouching video, that is a GREAT idea. I just fired all my MUAs.
I am going to have to disagree with you Natalia on this one... I know you walk on Retouch Water, and I know I am not a retoucher of your caliber, but to say that my retouching did NOT enhance the photo is way of the mark IMO, however, you are entitled to your opinion.
Is not off the mark because you chose to use your own image to probe a point in this thread, point I think u failed to probe in my opinion.
Davepit wrote: Portraiture is interesting because of the automatic masking for skin tones. Because of the masking, you would be able to use it on video footage very easily, without having to paint every frame manually.
Ravendrive Productions wrote: Okay, using the mask for retouching video, that is a GREAT idea. I just fired all my MUAs.
ezpkns wrote:
That's the money soundbite for me too. I'm only concerned that it might not be consistent enough to avoid "flickering".
Whoever tests it first, report back here?
A lot of the upper-end video cams already do this in-camera; I would expect it'll make its way down to consumer bodies before long, particularly with the increase in competition for the prosumer markets.
Greg Cobb Photography wrote: I like it, but use it in moderation for the most part. For me not being a retoucher I think I do pretty good with and without it.
Same, I like what I see. I'm started to feel like I need to know more about "frequencies" to really make constructive use out of it.
But on the basic, I can see that normal people (ie clients) will be impressed with the results if i just added portraiture default to an action in photoshop
