Do’s and Don’ts of Beauty Retouching
By Cyndi Caviedes www.viviendoenvenus.com | Do’s and don’ts of Beauty Retouching | 1
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Always shoot in RAW
One of the best things that have ever happened to me is shooting my images in RAW. I don’t shoot JPGs and when I do, it’s just because I know that I won’t be using them for anything really important. I know that this is not a technique to retouch photos but it is key to have the best possible material to work. When shooting in RAW you get the most out of your pictures, and you can recover information that otherwise you would have lost. For example if your best shoot was to dark, or you lost a little of your shadows, with a JPG well 16 you could have lost your best shot but if you shoot RAW you still have a lot of Bits information to work with.
Rocks!
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General
adjustments
First
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White balance, exposure, contrast, whites and blacks are the things that I change most of the times. When adjusting the exposure, look at your histogram. In Adobe Camera Raw you can press the corners of the graphic to see if you have any clipping. When you are all set up you can go ahead and begin.
Don’t start retouching
an image and then change the basics. You might spend 15 minutes getting rid of a bright spot on the skin, but if you change the whites at the beginning it could make it go away with just a click!
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Beautiful Skin
The spot healing tool is great for starting to retouch skin. Use a small brush to get rid of pimples, dark spots or impurities. To get rid of wrinkles and smooth the skin you can use a technique called Frequency Separation. Do not use any kind of blur to soften skin if you want texture. Quick Tip: make a copy of your image and apply the High Pass Filter.
Invert the layer and change it
to linear light. This will soften the skin without taking all the texture away. If you want, add a little bit of noise at the end. 4 | Do’s and don’ts of Beauty Retouching | www.viviendoenvenus.com
Details Matter
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Sometimes an image needs a little more work. I don’t have to use all these techniques, but I always think if I need to. Get rid of the little hairs on the eyes/face with the spot healing tool or the clone tool. Clone with a small brush around the lips to clean them a little.
be creative
Add some spark to the eyes.
Light up the eyes www.viviendoenvenus.com | Do’s and don’ts of Beauty Retouching | 5
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The Eyes
Time and time again I have seen how people abuse Photoshop when retouching eyes. People aren’t dolls! Eyes are the most beautiful feature of the human face. Animators have a lot of problems recreating them, so why do you want to distort them
?
Just like with the skin get rid of the red veins with a small brush. If the eyes are too red you can play with the blues in the curves and then mask the rest of the face. You can also play with the hue and the satura-
tion.
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Burn and Dodge
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I don’t use this technique a lot but It is pretty useful. I hated to use dodge and burn because I didn’t know how to work non destructive.
It’s so simple! Go to Layer > New > Layer, you will get a dialog.
try it!
Choose soft light, and fill with 50% gray. In this layer you can paint with white your highlights and with black the shadows. If you want to go back just paint with gray.
www.viviendoenvenus.com | Do’s and don’ts of Beauty Retouching | 7
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Liquify it!
Brace yourselves because, yes I do use liquify! And I know that this is the most abused tool BUT you can use it with moderation to improve your photos. The most important thing is to know when to stop! I use this tool to move hair, shoulders, chins, and noses ;)
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Close your eyes
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Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a break from the computer and come back later to continue the retouching. I tend to get carried away when retouching, so I close my photo, take a coffee break and then look at it again.
SCOOP
Retouched
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Be brave, make mistakes
I apologize to all the beginners if I didn’t make some things clear. There are a lot of tutorials on the Internet that will help you learn all the techniques that I describe here, but the most important thing is to be good with yourself.
You’re wonderful, and If you are reading this if because you really want to progress, be better. That’s great!
Don’t be afraid of doing it wrong, nobody was born knowing. love, Cyndi
Dream Big We are all made of stars! 10 | Do’s and don’ts of Beauty Retouching | www.viviendoenvenus.com