Portrait colors and retouching, are two very common and time consuming tasks photographers face, when ever they need to work on portrait photos.
My good friend Gadi Ohad, sent me this studio portrait, for color develop and retouch (click on images to enlarge).
Products used in this Lightroom / Photoshop tutorial:
- Cross Camera Color Profiles
- PixelGear 2
This is how I did it:
Step #1 – Choose Develop Profile
Gadi wanted a “golden-royal” skin tone, for this portrait. He has a this sophisticated manner, every now and then…
This was the easiest step. I picked Leica M8 (part of Cross Camera Color Profiles):
To learn more about Cross Camera Color Profiles, see the free tutorial, or the free video tutorial.
Step #2 – Edit in Photoshop
Lightroom is a great program for managing your photos and processing your Raw files.
When it comes to retouching, Photoshop offers better tools and filters.
Step #3 – Basic Retouching
After the image opened in Photoshop, I duplicated the Background layer and removed some skin imperfections and stray hair, using Photoshop’s native tools – Clone Stamp, Spot Healing brush and Healing Brush. At this point, be patient. Zoom in to the face area, examine the surface carefully and work systematically. Part by part, hair by hair. There are no “magic shortcuts” here:
Step #4 – Skin Retouch with PixelGear 2 – SkinGear
To retouch her skin and reach a professional smooth look, I used PixelGear 2 – SkinGear.
The first step with this filter, is selecting the skin tone (using Color Range) and converting the selection to a mask.
This creates a new layer named Skin Gear. I smoothed the skin using these settings:
After creating the initial mask, you will need to remove the areas you don’t want to smooth such as, eyes. lips, hair etc.
To learn more about how to use SkinGear, see the free tutorial, or the free video tutorial.
Step #5 – Enhance Contrast with PixelGear 2 – ToneGear
To enhance shadow contrast and highlight contrast, I used PixelGear 2 – ToneGear.
This creates a new layer named Tone Gear. I used these settings:
To learn more about how to use SkinGear, see the free tutorial, or the free video tutorial.
Step #6 – Sharpen Edges with PixelGear 2 – EdgeGear
To sharpen the edges, I used PixelGear 2 – EdgeGear.
This creates a new layer named Edge Gear. I used these settings:
Note that EdgeGear uses SkinGear’s mask and inverts it. This makes sure that sharpening isn’t applied to previously smoothed areas.
To learn more about how to use SkinGear, see the free tutorial, or the free video tutorial.
Step #7 – Final Touch
To end this session, I brightened teeth and white eye areas.
The final Layers list, looked like this:
The final image:
Products used in this Lightroom / Photoshop tutorial:
- Cross Camera Color Profiles
- PixelGear 2