Photo retouching in Photoshop ss. Removal of large defects. Why it works the same way as the three-layer technique

27.05.2019

When you mention retouching, people often think of the impossibly flawless haute couture models and cover girls they see in magazines. In photographs of this kind, there is no need to achieve realism. Instead, photographers try to make the impossible possible. Flawless leather is allowed, but at the same time, it should not look like plastic. Often the task is to create a similar effect on a person who is not even close to the ideal. You must know how to completely restore the skin, if the task at hand calls you to do so. Of course, today nothing is impossible.
In this example, we'll be working with a snapshot of this attractive woman in her fifties.

It's no wonder that in our youth-obsessed culture, photographers are being asked to strip three decades of writers, musicians, actors, and actresses off their faces. Because movies and television are still low-definition, people often can't tell how old their favorite idols are. I'm not going to expose anyone here, so we're just going to completely reconstruct this woman's skin.

Result:

Step 1. As usual, we start by creating a new layer. In this case, we will duplicate the background image by dragging it onto the thumbnail. creating a new layer (createnewlayer) in the layers palette. Our task is to blur this copy as a base for the new skin, so let's rename the layer (double click on the name of the copy of the layer) and name it Blur on the surface (Surface Blur).

Select Filter - Blur - Surface Blur (filter- Blur- Surface Blur).

Filter Surface blur (surfaceblur) appears in the version of Photoshop CS2, it is especially often used in such operations. This blur preserves the transitional edges, but at the same time controls the creation of a very smooth blur. Slider Radius (Radius) controls the intensity of the blur, and the slider Threshold (Threshold) sets how sharp the image should remain. Unlike other blur filters, high setting Threshold (Threshold) gives a greater blur effect. You need to adjust the sliders so that absolutely all wrinkles and skin texture are smoothed out, leaving the main elements untouched.

Note: users of CS versions can use the filter Median (Median) (Filter - Noise - Median (filter - noise - Median). This filter only has one slider, but you can get a similar result, although not as good a smoothing effect.

Step 2 We need to hide this blurry layer. layer mask (layermask). Press and hold the Option/Alt key and click on the icon Layer mask (layermask) at the bottom of the layers palette.

This action will create a black layer mask and hide the blurry layer, revealing the original image.
Now just paint layer mask (layermask) white to cover those areas of the skin that you want to smooth out.

The area you are working on may be barely visible if you paint over everything. You can turn off the visibility of the background layer to see if there are any gaps left. To do this, click on the eye icon next to the thumbnail of the background (background) layer in the layers palette.

Carefully bypass those areas that need to be preserved while painting over "bad" skin - eyes, lips, etc. At this point, you should have something that looks like the image below:

Step 3 Skin will be smooth, but colors and tones may appear patchy. To fix this, create a new layer, but to do this, hold down the Option / Alt key and click on the create icon new layer (newlayer), to bring up a dialog box with options new layer (newlayer).

Note. translator: if after the perfect manipulations you did not open a window, like the author, try to go the following way: Layer - New - Layer ( layer - New - layer )

Check the box next to Use the previous layer to create a clipping mask (Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask).

This will allow the previous layer's mask to control the new layer being painted.
Take a big soft brush and swatch the colors from the blurred skin (Option/Alt + click to turn the cursor into Pipette (eye dropper) and take a color sample) and paint very low opacity (opacity), to gradually smooth out colors and tones.

At this stage, you need to restore some hints of the old skin. Select the blurred layer by clicking on its thumbnail in the layers palette. Move Slider opacity (opacity) slightly to the left to reveal the old skin.

Step 4 Now we need to create layers Lightening (Dodge) and Darkening (Burn) and highlight any unattractive wrinkles on the left. Option/Alt + click on create icon new layer (newlayer) at the bottom of the layers palette. This action will open the create dialog new layer (newlayer).

Note. translator: if after the perfect manipulations you have not opened a window, like the author, try to go the following way: Layer - New - Layer ( layer - New - layer ) , now the necessary window should open in front of you.

Change mode (mode) on the Soft light (Softlight), and then mark Fill with a neutral color mode “Soft light” (Fill With Soft-Light-Neutral Color). This action will fill the new layer with 50% gray (50% gray). You must save the mask you created for the blurred layer. Use the tool Clarifier (Dodge) to lighten wrinkles. In the picture you can see how the highlight layer will look like if you change the mode from soft light (Softlight) on the Normal/Normal (Normal).

In this case, the woman's skin appeared to be very smooth with little bits of texture from the original skin. To save the image from the plastic effect, you need to add even more texture to the skin. I experimented with all kinds of different approaches. Although I'm not entirely happy with the technique presented, for the moment it worked for me to mimic the texture of the skin. I will keep experimenting until I find the best texture.

Step 5 So again create a new gray layer overlap (overlay). Option/Alt + click on create icon new layer (newlayer) at the bottom of the Layers Palette to open the New Layer dialog box. Check the box next to Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask, select overlap (overlay) from the drop down menu modes (mode) and mark Fill with a neutral color mode "Overlap" (Fill Withoverlay-Neutral Color)(50% gray (gray)).

The layers palette should look like the image below:

The last three layers have been adjusted opacity (opacity) and masklayer (layermask) blur layer. To have a clearer idea of how the Texture layer will affect some things, temporarily increase opacity (opacity) blurred layer at 100%. You won't see the original texture, but you will see the texture you are about to create. You will also see lightened lines where wrinkles have been lightened; you can temporarily turn off the visibility of this layer if it will distract you.

Step 6 Select layer Texture (Texture) in mode Overlap (Overlay) and go to the filter Noise (noise) (Filter - Noise - Add Noise (filter - noise - addnoise). Check boxes Uniform (uniform) and Monochrome (Monochromatic) and add enough noise to make it look like a 3D movie frame.

The ideal value for this filter depends on the size and resolution of the file. Basically, there are no hard and fast rules that apply to all images. Rely on your own judgment and occasionally test print to see subtle effects such as noise.
Many photographers would settle for this effect, but this noise is too harsh for our purposes. With the Texture layer selected in Overlay mode, go to the filter Blur (Blur) (Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur (filter - Blur - GaussianBlur)), use just a little blur to soften the noisy edges without completely smoothing them out.

Step 7 Sometimes this is enough to do what you need, but usually I create a more complex set of textures to mimic real skin. So go to filter Embossing (Emboss) (Filter - Styling - Embossing (filter - Style - Emboss)).

The texture still looks unattractive, so we need to tone it down a bit. You can correctly transform any filter after using the command Let loose (Fade). Go to menu Editing (Edit) (immediately after applying the filter) and select Editing - Loosen Emboss (Edit - FadeEmboss).

Go back to the blurry layer and scale it down opacity (opacity) up to about 70%. You should have something similar to the image below:

Compare it to skin that has not been retouched.

Step 8 For the final retouched work, I brightened up the eyes, applied some light eye shadow and darkened the edges a bit.

Since the entire retouching process was done on the layers controlled by the blur layer, you can reduce it a bit if you wish. opacity (opacity), to get a more realistic rendering.

Result:

Select Filter - Blur - Surface Blur (filter- Blur- Surface Blur).

Step 2 We need to hide this blurry layer. layer mask (layermask). Press and hold the Option/Alt key and click on the icon Layer mask (layermask) at the bottom of the layers palette.

Carefully bypass those areas that need to be preserved while painting over "bad" skin - eyes, lips, etc. At this point, you should have something that looks like the image below:

Note. translator: if after the perfect manipulations you did not open a window, like the author, try to go the following way: Layer - New - Layer ( layer - New - layer )

Check the box next to Use the previous layer to create a clipping mask (Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask).

The layers palette should look like the image below:

Go back to the blurry layer and scale it down opacity (opacity) up to about 70%. You should have something similar to the image below:

Compare it to skin that has not been retouched.

Step 8 For the final retouched work, I brightened up the eyes, applied some light eye shadow and darkened the edges a bit.

Since the entire retouching process was done on the layers controlled by the blur layer, you can reduce it a bit if you wish. opacity (opacity), to get a more realistic rendering.

In general, retouching involves the removal of unnecessary details, the elimination of defects, color correction, restoration and other work aimed at improving image quality.

Photoshop has an impressive arsenal of photo retouching tools, which I'll talk about now.

Filters

We have already talked about filters in this lesson. There are a lot of them in Photoshop, and some of them are specifically for retouching images.

For example, we have an old photo.

Defects spoil the picture too much, and the Dust and scratches filter will help to partially solve the problem as soon as possible. To use it, do the following.

Open the photo.
In the main menu of the program, run the command Filter -> Noise -> Dust and scratches.

The filter has only a couple of settings.

Radius. Specifies the size of the area in which the program will look for pixels that are not similar to each other. The higher the value, the more defects the filter will remove, but the less sharp the photo will end up being. In the case of the selected image, I settled on a value of 3.
Isohelium. Specifies the tone difference of the pixels to replace. Experiment with the setting. I set the value to 0.

Click OK and evaluate the result.

Some defects (especially on a dark background) have become less pronounced, but the image has become more blurry.

In order not to spoil the entire picture with a decrease in contrast, you can apply a filter to a specific area of the photo. For practice, let's try to remove a long horizontal scratch using the filter in question.

Select the Rectangular Marquee tool from the palette.
Highlight the defect.

Set up and apply a filter.

The scratch became less noticeable, while the quality of the rest of the photo was not affected. And although in this case the filter did not solve the problem completely and badly, nevertheless, like many other filters, it is a retouching tool. Let not perfect, but very fast.

The program has many more useful filters for retouching. In particular, the filters of the Sharpen group allow you to sharpen the details of the image, and the filters of the Noise group are needed to either mask defects that break the harmony of the picture, or, conversely, remove roughness that spoils the photo. Using the filters of the Blur group, you can smooth out secondary details and rid images of scanning defects.

In general, take a closer look at the filters, they are an extremely useful and very diverse category of tools.

The group of retouching tools, which opens by clicking on the icon, consists of five tools.

Spot Healing Brush. Allows you to correct some imperfections in images in a fully automatic mode. In the options bar, you can specify the diameter and type of the brush, as well as enable or disable certain retouch settings. For example, apply restoration using a texture, proximity match, or fill.

Suppose we need to remove the mole in the photo below.

Select the Spot Healing Brush tool.
Set its size and style.
Click on the element to be removed.

The birthmark has disappeared.

Restores areas of the photo according to the sample, taking pixels from the area you specify, matching and fitting them according to the characteristics in the area being retouched.

As an example, remove the freckles from the photo below.

Select the Healing Brush tool and set it up (specify type, diameter).
Hover over the location where the replacement pixels will be taken from (in our case, the location without freckles).
Press the Alt key (the pointer will change to a crosshair) and, while holding it down, click to select the sample area.
Now draw on the freckles, removing them. Pixels will begin to be replaced and retouching will work.

Patch. Allows you to close one part of the image with another, copying the pixels of the source area to the destination area, replacing them.

Remember, in one of the lessons we wrote a seagull in a seascape? Let's now remove it from there with the help of the Patch tool.

Open an image.

Select the Patch tool.
Outline the area to be erased (in our case, the seagull).
Using the mouse button pressed, move the area to where the program should take pixels for replacement (for us it is the sky).
Immediately after you release the mouse button, the picture will change: the seagull will be replaced by the pixels of the selected area.

Content-aware navigation. The tool can work in two modes (selected from the list on the options panel).

Move. With it, you can move objects, moving them away or bringing them closer to each other.
Expand. Allows you to clone objects and resize them.

As a simple example, let's clone a seagull using this tool.

Open an image.

On the Options Bar, from the Mode drop-down list, select Extend.
Carefully select the seagull.

Move the area to the place where the bird clone will be located.

In the main menu of Photoshop, run the command Selection -> Deselect and look: there are two seagulls.

In this example, the tool worked well, but often it is not very accurate.

The tool removes red-eye and flash artifacts.

Open a photo that has one of the imperfections removed by the function.

Select the Red Eyes tool from the palette.
Click on the pupils with the mouse button to remove the effect.

If the desired result is not achieved, adjust the pupil size and shading amount in the options bar.

Stamp

The group consists of just a couple of tools: Stamp and Pattern Stamp.

Stamp. A tool to copy pixels from one part of an image to another. Usually used to replace damaged areas - remove scratches, get rid of stains, dust and other defects.

Open the old photo that we tried to process with the filter at the beginning of the article.

Select the Stamp tool from the palette.
Move the mouse pointer over the place where you want to take pixels for replacement.
Hold down the Alt key and click to grab the pixels.
Release Alt and click on the damaged areas of the image, moving the selected pixels into them.
By repeating steps 3-5, remove defects in different parts of the photo, remembering to choose the right pixels for cloning.
Save the result.

Pattern stamp. Unlike the usual one, it works with textures, thanks to which it allows you to edit complex surfaces (water, human skin, etc.).

Eraser

The group includes three instruments.

Eraser. Like a real eraser, it erases what you have drawn. You can work with it like with a pencil or a brush: select the tool and, holding down the mouse button, just drag the pointer where you want to erase.

Background eraser. It differs from the usual one in that it separates objects from the background, leaving behind transparency instead of color.

Magic eraser. The most convenient tool. A hybrid of an ordinary eraser and a "magic wand" that allows you to clear the background of an image in one click.

Suppose we want to free a puppy from the background.

Open the image in Photoshop.

Set up the instrument. To work well in our example, it is enough to change the tolerance to 150 .

The following items are available on the Options Bar.

Tolerance. The value in this field determines how wide a range of pixels similar in tone will be considered by the editor as the background and removed. The higher the value, the more pixels the program will erase.
Smoothens the transition at the edges. If the button is pressed, then the transition between the remote and the remaining will be smooth.
Erases only adjacent pixels. A tool with this option, if there are dots of the same color in different parts of the picture, will only delete the area that you click on.
Opacity. The field specifies the percentage of background transparency to be erased. For example, if you set 50% here, then the erased part will become only half transparent.

Click on the background with the mouse button and see what happens. Gray-white squares represent transparency.

With this, the tour of retouching tools has come to an end, and I suggest moving on to the next lesson, from which you will learn about image correction tools.

So, I promised to make a small tutorial on Photoshop. There are no limits to what you can do with this program, and it's impossible to cover everything at once, so let's start from the beginning: skin, hair, eyes, and teeth. I say right away that I use these methods of retouching, and I do not insist on their correctness / convenience, etc. I work in Photoshop CS6.

1. Open the photo:

2. Immediately duplicate the base layer (Background) by pressing Ctrl+J:

3. Let's deal with pimples, bumps and wrinkles first. We take the tool Healing Brush Tool, select the size of the brush, copy a clean area of skin ( left mouse click on a clean area of skin + Alt), and close up everything that we want to hide.

Final result:

4. Now let's take care of the smoothness of the skin. Copy our layer where we removed the stains (Ctrl+J). Let's go to Filter – Other – High Pass. We choose the value of the radius at which our image will look something like this (the colors should disappear, but the outline of the image should remain):

I have this value turned out to be 21. Next, on the same layer, apply the filter Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur. We set the value of the blur radius three times less than in the previous filter. I got this value equal to 7 (21 divided by 3 is 7).

Invert the layer by clicking Ctrl+I. Choosing an overlay mode overlay. The image should become fuzzy.

Create a layer mask Alt + layer mask icon(highlighted in the photo). Is the image clear again? Excellent.

Now choose a brush brush tool, choose a white color and carefully pass it over the skin, without touching the hair, eyes, eyebrows, lips, mimic folds, etc., in order to maintain the overall clarity of the image. Be careful, for drawing, the layer mask must be active, and not the layer itself. You will see how the areas you painted over appear on the black square of the layer mask. If you made a mistake and painted over an unnecessary place, select the black color of the brush and remove the excess area with it. You can play a little with the transparency of the layer (Opacity), but in my example I left the Opacity at 100%.

Let's add some natural noise to the image. Create a new layer Layer - New - Layer, perform the operation Edit - Fill - 50% Gray.

Add noise to the layer: Filter - Noise - Add noise, select a small value, within 10. Select the overlay mode overlay. Adjust the transparency of the layer to your liking. In my example, the transparency is 50%.

In order for the noise to spread only to the face area, we will make a clipping mask: select the layer with noise, right-click, in the drop-down menu select Create Clipping Mask. It is important that the noise layer is directly above the layer where we painted over the skin, as the clipping mask is created only for the underlying layer.

So, smooth beautiful skin is ready!

5. Let's now take care of the hair.
In mode quick mask(the icon is shown in the photo below) select the hair (with a brush, paint over what should not fall into the selection).

Turn off the quick mask mode by clicking the icon again. Now we have hair selected.

Copy the selection to a new layer (Ctrl+J). Choosing a blend mode overlay. Create an adjustment layer Layer - New Adjastment Layer - Hue/Saturation.

Create a Clipping Mask for the Hair (Create clipping mask), and play with the color settings in the window Hue/Saturation(double click on the layer to open the settings window) to give the hair the desired shade (check the box next to colorize). Adjust the opacity of the layer, set it to such a level that the hair looks natural. You can also change the blend mode of the hair layer to Screen, this mode is more suitable for some photos.

I got this result, I did not change the color of the hair, I just gave it a slightly lighter shade:

6. Now let's change the color of the eyes. The principle is the same as with hair: highlight the eyes in quick mask mode(paint over everything except the pupils). Turn off the quick mask mode, copy the resulting selection to a new layer.

Apply an adjustment layer to the new layer, make a clipping mask (Create Clipping Mask), set the overlap mode overlay.

Change the settings in the window Hue/Saturation and select the desired color and shade (do not forget to check the box next to colorize). Adjust the layer's opacity to make the new eye color look natural.

7. Now let's get down to the teeth. We will bleach them. Highlighting the teeth quick mask mode.

Turn off the quick mask mode, copy the resulting selection to a new layer. Applying an adjustment layer Hue/Saturation (Layer – Add New Adjastment Layer – Hue/Saturation), make a clipping mask (Create Clipping Mask), leave the overlap mode Normal.
We go to the window Hue/Saturation, inside the window we change the mode from Master on the yellows and remove the value Saturation down to zero. Next, we go back to Master and there we adjust the value lightness up to the value at which the white shade of the teeth will look natural. Don't overdo it! You can also adjust the transparency of the layer.

Let's see the end result! To save a photo in JPEG format, you need to merge all the layers, for this we go to Layers - Merge Visible. Further as usual File-Save as. Good luck!

In this tutorial, I will show you how to do quick face retouching in Photoshop. Face retouching in Photoshop is a daily task for many photographers and designers. Since there are many photos to be processed, and processing tasks are typical, the least labor-intensive and most effective retouching method is required, which allows you to achieve acceptable results quickly.

The main task of face retouching is to hide visible defects in the skin of the face without losing its texture.

Earlier, we discussed with you the most simple retouching methods using the Clone Stamp (S) and the Healing Brush Tool (J). Today I will talk about an alternative method of retouching used by photographers.

I found a photo on the Internet with which I will work. The girl in the photo has problematic skin hidden under makeup, we will try to make it smoother and more uniform with a quick face retouch in Photoshop.

Getting Started

Open the photo - Ctrl + O.

Go to the layers palette - F7, duplicate the layer with the original photo CTRL + J, so that there is something to compare the result of the lesson with.

Color correction

Let's adjust the brightness and contrast a bit.

Go to the menu "Image - Adjustsments - Brightness / Contrast" (Image - Correction - Brightness / Contrast). I increased the brightness value to +40, and, on the contrary, lowered the contrast to 40.

Removal of large defects

We remove large irregularities in the old fashioned way with the Healing Brush Tool (J).

We take a sample of normal skin with the help of the Alt key, the cursor is filled with the texture of the taken sample, click on the pimples to smooth out large protrusions on the skin.

We take a sample of clean skin next to the fragment that we want to smooth, since the overlay takes into account the substrate, which means that the lighting of the edited area is taken into account.

Align the skin

After getting rid of large defects, go to the menu Filter - Blur -Gaussian blur.

We set the blur radius to such a level to smooth out the texture of the skin, hiding bumps and enlarged pores.

I set the blur radius to 23px.

Add a mask to the layer by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

A white mask will appear next to the layer in the layers palette.

Pay attention to the squares for choosing the main color and background color, they have become black and white.

The mask works in our case in this way: with a black brush we erase areas that we do not need, with white we restore what has been erased.

Switching between colors is done with the X key.

Take the Brush Tool (B) standard round brush with soft edges, choose black color.

We erase parts of the photo that should not be blurred: eyes, background, lips, nose, ear, hand (in general, everything except the skin).

If we made an inaccuracy somewhere, switch to white color (X) and restore the erased fragment.

It should look something like this:

Restoring the texture

Go to the first source layer (select it in the layers palette). Turn off the visibility of the second blurred layer by clicking on the eye next to the layer thumbnail.

Open the channels palette Window – Channels (Window – Channels).

We go to the "Channels" tab, turn on / turn off the channels in turn, Red, Green, Blue. We select the channel on which the skin texture is most clearly visible (one of three).

I chose the red channel.

Select the entire image - Ctrl + A and copy the selected channel - Ctrl + C.

Turn all channels back on (click on the top RGB channel).

Go to the layers tab - F7, paste the channel - press Ctrl + V.

The copied channel will appear above the source layer.

Move it to the very top of the layers palette, above the blurred layer.

Go to the menu Filter – Other – High pass (Filter – Other – Color Contrast).

I set the radius to 2.5px, you can set the value to your liking experimentally - move the slider and see how the image sharpness changes.

Change the blending mode of the last layer at the top of the layers palette to “Linear light” (Linear light), layer opacity (Opacity) set to 50%.

Take an eraser with soft edges Eraser Tool (E), erase the excess.

Finished with the skin.

In conclusion, I treated the red inflamed eyes a little.

I will tell you in detail about eye retouching in one of the following lessons.

That's all. My result:

Photo before processing:

In this tutorial, we looked at how quick face retouching is done in Photoshop. This method of retouching is not unique, but it allows you to relatively quickly get rid of visible defects on the face, make the skin smooth and, very importantly, preserve the texture of the skin.

I hope you enjoyed the lesson.