Michael C Pearson wrote:
You need to have an overall idea of the form you're going for. This will guide whether you dodge the dark spot or burn all the light skin around the dark spot. It's not always in the best interest of the image to just dodge a dark spot.

Completely agree, however I have to admit that I find it sometimes (jobs where the client has a tight budget/deadline) easier/faster to just 'smooth a gradient' when there's a lot of grunge, and carve later.
Generally though, I like to be as efficient possible (and Dodging something which you later are going to burn is really not) so that the carving is really a creative process for adding depth and enhance/change features and leave the 'smoothing' part to DnB.

To help seeing your changes, a nice help can be duplicating your window and set one on a zoomed out scale, while working more zoomed in on the other:



MP, I see you're using your full name now, the world better recognizes

nebulaoperator wrote:
...
following  Stecyk  and Lanenga animate gif conversion tips I made it but! if we want   to make sure that no website will ever use them in any way  how do we get gif file on here  without using external service ( link )?

You can't sad but true once it's on the net nothing you can do to stop peeps really if they want to steal it. The only way to not have your work stolen on the net is just not ever post your work on the net...

Peano wrote:
About opacity and flow ...

Peano, I've noticed that I get lots of step-chunks if I use brushes with any spacing, so i turn spacing off, and i get a much smoother stroke. It does, however, increase the flow significantly. Am I doing something dumb?

Mask Photo wrote:
Peano, I've noticed that I get lots of step-chunks if I use brushes with any spacing, so i turn spacing off, and i get a much smoother stroke. It does, however, increase the flow significantly. Am I doing something dumb?

I guess it depends on what job you're doing. If you're using a 100% hard brush and need to draw clean edges, you might need to drop the spacing. But with a 0% hard brush and the setting I used above, I got a smooth gradient with the brush left at the default 25% spacing.

Peano wrote:
About opacity and flow ...

Regarding high opacity and low flow, versus low opacity and high flow: A point I don't think has been made in the discussion above is about the difference in the quality of the gradient you get with each method.

Illustration:

- Pen pressure controls off (or just use a mouse)
- Color pure black
- Brush size 150 px
- Brush hardness 0%
- Repeated strokes to build up a dark center fading at the edges

Draw your own conclusions.

A lot of the early stuff i read around d&b retouching (correction or carving) suggested a low opacity rather than flow. I got quite frustrated at first trying to make this work, especially for carving. I found smooth gradients impossible to achieve. I decided to to ditch that method, stick opacity all the way up and use very low flow, and that's now my preferred technique. I usually use 1% flow for correction and between 1% and 3% for carving. For me this felt a lot more natural - more how i'd expect a felt tip to work, or something like that. I suppose to some extent it depends how your brain is wired.

Lanenga wrote:

Create 2 layers (make sure not of them are locked).
1 with the before
1 with the after

Open animation palette. Window > Animation
Both layers will show up on the timeline.

Drag corresponding timeline to start later than the other.

Optionally change overall durration by draggin main timeline.

File > Save for web

Change to GIF

Bottom right corner turn looping on.

Save

I have CS6 extended and there is no 'animation' in the window drop list...

Megan E Griscom wrote:
I have CS6 extended and there is no 'animation' in the window drop list...

He probably means 'Timeline' down at the bottom

Or Window > Workspace > Motion

Julian Marsalis wrote:
Ugh I could really use a class in this I think lol...

Natalia suggested to take drawing lessons once. Definitely some of the best advice I've taken.

Ruben Vasquez wrote:

Natalia suggested to take drawing lessons once. Definitely some of the best advice I've taken.

Yeah I use to draw tons years ago maybe time to take that back up...

Michael C Pearson wrote:

Grazian wrote:
as i see you have darkened more in orderer to blend the averall form better, looks clearer and more cleaned up now , now when i look at my 50% grey layers 1st atempt i have made the oposite ive lightened more

Much better! You're a quick learner. A mistake I see lots of dodge and burn newbies making is that they tend to dodge way more than burn.

Grazian wrote:
One thing MP i would like to ask you, when you do your carvings which brush settings do you prefer for the work like opacity and flow i think i need to get a bigger tablet im only using this super small version

I've fine-tuned these settings over the years and they are very specific but work amazingly well if you get it right.

• I use a large Intuos4 for the 2080 (something like that) levels of pressure sensitivity, but the large size is more for digital painting so you can draw with your arm rather than your wrist. A smaller tablet size is fine for retouching.
• I use a program called Tablet Pressure Curve tool which lets you have much more control over the pressure curve than the Wacom configuration tool allows (it allows you to reduce the amount of pressure needed to get to 100%). Here's a picture of the curve that works for me (Wacom's configurator doesn't let you work with the end points). It also has solved the Intuos 4's problem with quickly wearing nibs.

• I tweaked the settings until I got to a point where I can go from 0%-100% with comfort, meaning I don't have to press super hard. To test to see if your settings are good, on a white document get a black brush with only pressure set to sensitivity and opacity/flow set to 100%, make a small circular selection and fill it with black (for reference), then next to the black circle see if you can go to that same pure black in a single stroke without pressing too hard. If you can't, then you need the tool. I think it's PC only.
• I use a 100% soft brush with both opacity and flow set to pen pressure and spacing set to 5%
• In the option bar I use 50% opacity, 2% flow

With those settings I can lightly let my stylus drag over the tablet to apply a low opacity stroke (I barely have to apply any pressure at all) and without digging into the tablet's surface I can achieve 50% opacity if I need to (dedicating all 2080 pressure sensitivity levels to that 50% opacity stroke which allows an incredible degree of precision in how much opacity you want to paint with), then if I need more I just lift and apply the second 50% opacity stroke (and even a third as two 50% opacity strokes don't actually add up to a full 100% opacity stroke in Photoshop for some reason). It's very comfortable to dodge and burn like this and since I've gotten it all perfect it's improved the speed of my retouching by quite a bit.


I know! Isn't it beautiful?

Nice tool.

I missed that when it was first posted.

Ronald Nyein Zaw Tan wrote:
"Carving" to me is a specialized dodging and burning, where the retoucher is adding highlights and shadows.

This is part of it.

Ronald Nyein Zaw Tan wrote:
My take on carving is this: assuming you lit your image well, you just trace over the natural and preexisting highlights. At times, when a highlight abruptly ends, you can "extrapolate" and trace further, thus extending where the highlight should continue and end more properly.

This is another part of it.

I consider the third part (expanding on part of Michael Pearson’s post above) to be shading – darkening shadows and lightening highlights, for the most part.

Often I’ll darken a shadow – with more darkening closer to the edge of the face – and brighten specular highlights such as those that run lengthwise on a nose, an arm or leg.

Not just on skin. Sometimes I’ll do the same thing on leather – or even on a dress that forms natural pleats below the waist, to emphasize the shadows and highlights and, in some cases, texture. I’ve done the same thing on feathers, leaves or berries in headpieces. Even lips.

Since things that are lighter seem closer to the camera, and things that are darker seem farther from the camera, “shading” the shadows and highlights can enhance the 3-dimensional appearance of objects as well faces and bodies.

Sometimes I use darker and lighter curves adjustment layers for D and B. Occasionally I just use a brush to paint on a blank layer. Often I’ll multiple-process an image in ACR (maybe once for the face, one for arms and legs, once for the garment, once for the background, just as example) and just use an image that is darker or lighter than the base layer for D&B. With the latter method, instead of using black, you're always burning-in with a darker shade of the same color.

Kinda like this:

Jakov Markovic wrote:
Why would you enhance someone's nose and chin, and not eyes, jawline, cheekbones?

I'd do it the other way round.

How would you go about it? Any chance you could draft something up with the original image so that I would see the direction you have in mind?

cwwmbm wrote:
Okay, so a) this topic should not die
b) this is what I did yesterday after spending few hours reading this forum + with the generous help from member pellepiano who gave one of his PSD files.

This is nowhere near the level of some of the folks who participated in the thread, yet it's probably the best I've ever done in that area of retouching.

The back story is that she wanted a portrait that would show her personality - "fun, quirky, weird".

I would really appreciate the thoughts of y'all - what did I do wrong, how do I improve, etc?

Before:


After:

Jakov Markovic wrote:
I did a it a bit more.

please stop dont do other.