# Abbie



## DGMPhotography (Apr 17, 2017)

The first from my shoot with Abbie. C&C appreciated.


 

Are the flyaway hairs okay? I normally like to get rid of them, but I'm trying to make myself not over-edit.

And here's a wider cropped version (sized for Instagram).


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

Attractive young lady, and overall nice image. Commenting on personal opinions and not as a professional, I find the hair a mess (nothing you did) this might be her style but you'd spend hours trying to clone out all the fly away hair. If you shoot her again, you might suggest a less frizzy hair style. I'd also like a little more detail on the upper part of the eye. The eye brow/forehead is shading some pretty eyes. Lastly on a slightly technical note, I find the multiple skin tone/textures putting my OCD on alert. You have one tone/texture on the forehead, another on the cheeks and chin, and yet another on the chest area. I'd think smoothing all or none would be a better approach in her case.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> Attractive young lady, and overall nice image. Commenting on personal opinions and not as a professional, I find the hair a mess (nothing you did) this might be her style but you'd spend hours trying to clone out all the fly away hair. If you shoot her again, you might suggest a less frizzy hair style. I'd also like a little more detail on the upper part of the eye. The eye brow/forehead is shading some pretty eyes. Lastly on a slightly technical note, I find the multiple skin tone/textures putting my OCD on alert. You have one tone/texture on the forehead, another on the cheeks and chin, and yet another on the chest area. I'd think smoothing all or none would be a better approach in her case.



Thanks for the feedback. She said she got her sunken eye sockets from her dad haha. It was a bit of a challenge in that area. 

As for the skin, the only real smoothing I did was on her forehead, and that was only because she had a lot of acne up there. I'm gonna have to figure something out to make it all more consistent.


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


> I'm gonna have to figure something out to make it all more consistent.



When you do, please re-post along with directions, because I'd like to know how you handle it. I've done some smoothing on orchids to get a creamy smooth look with the Smudge Tool, but I've always struggled with skin.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> DGMPhotography said:
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> > I'm gonna have to figure something out to make it all more consistent.
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Well with skin it's a lot of healing brush and clone tool, and a technique called frequency separation (though I use that sparingly). I think it would just be a matter of me smoothing everything else a little more, and bringing a little more texture back in the forehead.


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


> Well with skin it's a lot of healing brush and clone tool, and a technique called frequency separation (though I use that sparingly).



Familiar with and used all of these. In the case of Orchid petals I mentioned, even frequency separation wasn't cutting it. Tried playing around with the smudge tool out of frustration, and surprised at well it worked. With really rough surfaces, the smudge tool moves pixels around slightly to even out the highs and lows, without totally demolishing the texture. In PS duplicate a layer, apply the smudge, then adjust your transparency to suit.  Here's a snip of the flower I talked about after the smudge/color/transparency adjustment. Just a thought.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> DGMPhotography said:
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> > Well with skin it's a lot of healing brush and clone tool, and a technique called frequency separation (though I use that sparingly).
> ...



Not a bad idea!


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## DanOstergren (Apr 17, 2017)

I don't feel like the light is very flattering to her eyes. A white reflector from below would help fill the eye sockets in, and make her brow less overbearing. The skin is a bit weird looking; there's texture everywhere but her forehead, which looks very noticeably edited. I agree withe smoke; you can't just edit one area and expect it to blend in with the rest. Just like with good makeup technique, it all has to have a natural blend with the rest of the face and body.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 17, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> I don't feel like the light is very flattering to her eyes. A white reflector from below would help fill the eye sockets in, and make her brow less overbearing. The skin is a bit weird looking; there's texture everywhere but her forehead, which looks very noticeably edited. I agree withe smoke; you can't just edit one area and expect it to blend in with the rest. Just like with good makeup technique, it all has to have a natural blend with the rest of the face and body.



White reflector... not a bad idea.


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


> Not a bad idea



Took the liberty of trying the smudge tool out of curiosity, on the JPEG of your model. I think it will work better on the raw file, but even on the JPEG it was pretty radical. I'm anxious to try it on my next serious portrait touch up.  The first snip is an enlarged section from her right cheek, untouched. 


 

The second was an enlarged snip from the left cheek after using the smudge tool on a new layer with 50% opacity.  At 50% you still get some of the underlying texture of the skin, so it doesn't look painted on.



 

The thing I like about the smudge tool vs frequency separations is when there's radical softening required it seemed like I was getting a little halo with FS. With the smudge tool, adjust your brush to a very soft edge when you work the lines and transitions.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> DGMPhotography said:
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I think you would get better results with dodging and burning. You retain more detail because you aren't blurring anything.


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> I think you would get better results with dodging and burning. You retain more detail



It would be hard to argue with any of your technical skills, your work is fantastic. Just found the Smudge tool to be helpful for me in leveling out surfaces that have a lot of uneven Imperfections (pores, acne, wrinkles) things that would catch shadows. By appling on a new layer, then using opacity slider you can retain as much or little of the surface detail as you want.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> DanOstergren said:
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> > I think you would get better results with dodging and burning. You retain more detail
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There's a hundred ways to do the same thing is PS. Always do what works best for you, and always use non-destructive methods.


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## smoke665 (Apr 17, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> There's a hundred ways to do the same thing is PS. Always do what works best for you, and always use non-destructive methods.



Yup, I use LR more than PS, but when more manipulation is required PS still holds a lot of tools.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> DanOstergren said:
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> > There's a hundred ways to do the same thing is PS. Always do what works best for you, and always use non-destructive methods.
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I almost never use lightroom. I only use it for making image proofs for clients. ACR and Photoshop are what I use 99% of the time.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 19, 2017)

Alright, here's the version I'm going with. I evened out the skin, so it's a bit more consistent, and cleaned up some of the stray hairs.


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## smoke665 (Apr 19, 2017)

Much better, what method did you finally use to even out the skin????


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## DanOstergren (Apr 19, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


> Alright, here's the version I'm going with. I evened out the skin, so it's a bit more consistent, and cleaned up some of the stray hairs.
> 
> View attachment 138347


It looks better, but the skin still has a look that makes it very easy to tell it's been retouched. It's one thing to retain pore and skin texture detail, but when the tones are so perfectly blended it tends to give skin a very plastic look. This is why I prefer subtle dodging and burning over frequency separation.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 19, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> Much better, what method did you finally use to even out the skin????



Just copied the layer, and used frequency separation, and a slight gaussian blur. Then lowered the layer opacity.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 19, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> DGMPhotography said:
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> > Alright, here's the version I'm going with. I evened out the skin, so it's a bit more consistent, and cleaned up some of the stray hairs.
> ...



I've never understood dodging and burning to correct skin. Do you have any before and afters I could see?


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## Derrel (Apr 19, 2017)

It looks too heavily smoothed to me, and the four-fingered right hand looks a bit odd to me, and her other hand's back looks a bit veiny. She;'s an attracrtive person, no doubt, but this picture has a bit too much of an airbrushed look to it for a pubby.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 19, 2017)

Derrel said:


> It looks too heavily smoothed to me, and the four-fingered right hand looks a bit odd to me, and her other hand's back looks a bit veiny. She;'s an attracrtive person, no doubt, but this picture has a bit too much of an airbrushed look to it for a pubby.



Ugh.. the eternal struggle.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 20, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


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I use dodging and burning to blend skin tones together. If there is a strong gradient between the highlights and shadows, I blend them together so that it's not such a noticeable gradient, but I still leave details and imperfections in order to retain a believable and relatable look. The majority of my retouching is dodging, and it's used to blend skin tones together. You yourself have to figure out where to draw the line in regards to what's too much.


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## smoke665 (Apr 20, 2017)

@DanOstergren I went back and studied a post you did Monday on Portrait Contouring, paying particular attention to the diagram of the face. Then using a copy of Daryl's OP. I used a combination of dodging highlights, and burning midtones to add those sculpted features to the cheeks. While it definitely helped,  and is something I'll remember for the future, I still couldn't remove enough of the skin blemishes in the worst areas. Another layer using the smudge tool set to 37% made short work of them, then lowered the opacity of the layer to just under 50%. The result was a realistic skin without the air brushed look, and was quite fast.  @DGMPhotography no disrespect intended, I've followed your work and you are quite good, the skin challenge was a tough one, because it explores the question "how far should you go" in retouching. I've learned something from your post, thank you for posting this.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 20, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> @DanOstergren I went back and studied a post you did Monday on Portrait Contouring, paying particular attention to the diagram of the face. Then using a copy of Daryl's OP. I used a combination of dodging highlights, and burning midtones to add those sculpted features to the cheeks. While it definitely helped,  and is something I'll remember for the future, I still couldn't remove enough of the skin blemishes in the worst areas. Another layer using the smudge tool set to 37% made short work of them, then lowered the opacity of the layer to just under 50%. The result was a realistic skin without the air brushed look, and was quite fast.  @DGMPhotography no disrespect intended, I've followed your work and you are quite good, the skin challenge was a tough one, because it explores the question "how far should you go" in retouching. I've learned something from your post, thank you for posting this.


I tend to do it a little differently. I prefer to let the light do the contouring, and rarely anymore do I attempt to enhance the contour using dodge and burn. I don't do my dodging and burning on the original layer either, I use a gray layer set to soft light blending mode, with a 50% soft light gray fill. I tend to have around 5 of these layers, one for dodging the face, one for burning on the face, one for eyes, one for hair, and if needed I have dodge/burn layers for the clothes and the body as well. These layers are always above my background and background copy layers, and beneath my adjustment layers and masks.




On these layers I use the dodge tool with a feathered brush at various brush sizes depending on the area I'm working on, set to "midtones" range for the majority of the skin, at around 5% exposure. I use the dodge tool with these settings to then blend skin tones, just as one might do with makeup. If you're going to enhance or add highlights, set the range to "highlights" before you start dodging. If you're dodging within shadowed areas, set the range to "shadows" before dodging. The same principle for burning. Again, I don't tend to use these tools to enhance the contour (if I do, it's VERY subtle); I use it to blend the skin tones. It takes a bit more work with skin that is very rough, but is very doable and effective for realistic results. I also use a Wacom pen tablet, which makes dodging and burning much easier and more effective. I don't recommend doing it with a mouse or touch pad. I'm working on making a quick video tutorial this week that will add visuals to explain the technique, as it's difficult to explain in words without visual reference. Also keep in mind that this is a technique that I've been perfecting for 5 years, and I wasn't always good at it. It takes some practice to be effective with it.

I made a time saving action for myself that I plan to give out with my first video tutorial. It's meant to be used as the first step when you start editing your photo in Photoshop. It duplicates your background layer, creates six dodge and burn layers for your dodging and burning convenience, a masked "hue/saturation" adjustment layer for selectively reducing saturation (backlit ears, neon red noses, etc), a curves adjustment layer, an additional curves adjustment layer set to luminosity blending mode, and a selective color adjustment layer for "color grading". Feel free to play with it. My inbox is open for questions and suggestions. 
Dan Ostergren Retouch Action


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## JonA_CT (Apr 20, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> smoke665 said:
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> 
> > @DanOstergren I went back and studied a post you did Monday on Portrait Contouring, paying particular attention to the diagram of the face. Then using a copy of Daryl's OP. I used a combination of dodging highlights, and burning midtones to add those sculpted features to the cheeks. While it definitely helped,  and is something I'll remember for the future, I still couldn't remove enough of the skin blemishes in the worst areas. Another layer using the smudge tool set to 37% made short work of them, then lowered the opacity of the layer to just under 50%. The result was a realistic skin without the air brushed look, and was quite fast.  @DGMPhotography no disrespect intended, I've followed your work and you are quite good, the skin challenge was a tough one, because it explores the question "how far should you go" in retouching. I've learned something from your post, thank you for posting this.
> ...




Super useful. Thank you for sharing your before and afters, too -- It's going to give me a lot of ideas for how to approach retouching in the future.


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## DanOstergren (Apr 20, 2017)

JonA_CT said:


> DanOstergren said:
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I'm glad to help. My inbox is always open for questions or feedback, I just can't always guarantee a swift response.


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## smoke665 (Apr 20, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> I'm working on making a quick video tutorial this week that will add visuals to explain the technique, as it's difficult to explain in words without visual reference.



Very useful stuff, will be watching for the video!!!!!


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 20, 2017)

Hmm, those photos do look pretty good. How do you handle blemishes? Surely dodge and burn doesn't take care of that too?


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## DanOstergren (Apr 22, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


> Hmm, those photos do look pretty good. How do you handle blemishes? Surely dodge and burn doesn't take care of that too?


I get rid of blemishes with the spot healing brush, then blend the skin around the blemish in by dodging and burning on one of the separate gray layers.


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## DGMPhotography (Apr 22, 2017)

DanOstergren said:


> DGMPhotography said:
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> > Hmm, those photos do look pretty good. How do you handle blemishes? Surely dodge and burn doesn't take care of that too?
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Hmm... see, that was my problem with the forehead. She had a TON of blemishes.


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## smoke665 (Apr 22, 2017)

Regardless of the methods you use to retouch the skin, you are  going to need multiple layers, so that you have the flexibility of addressing areas individually. The key is to not remove everything so the skin looks plastic perfect, blemishes, pores, etc., are an important aspect of the individual, you just need to blend and adjust where they aren't as noticeable. Whether you use the smudge tool, or Dan's dodge and burn, adjusting the opacity of the individual layers allows you to fine tune the adjustments you made on that layer. Learning how blend mode of the layers works is another key to fine tuning your adjustments Blending modes in Adobe Photoshop


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## DanOstergren (Apr 22, 2017)

DGMPhotography said:


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Good retouching takes some extra time, especially in cases where the skin is rough. It's worth the extra time in my opinion though. Quality work is never automated and takes a good deal of effort and practice.


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