[Greenneck]

So I was at the zoo today with a friend and noticed how amazing her eyes were, Theyre like a cool blue with gold veins. I took this trying to capture how amazing they looked in the sun light. I never learned how to take a decent portrait much less how to edit one.
Any helps, critique or tips would be greatly appreciated .

Im including where I gave up in editing because I was unable to blend her skin tones well as well as the raw file I started with. Any good video tutorials would be great too. Im not sure If I just took a bad image to attempt this with or just need to learn how to edit skin.

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Last edited by Greenneck; 10-15-2016 at 09:46 AM.

[pete-tarmigan]

So I was at the zoo today with a friend and noticed how amazing her eyes were, Theyre like a cool blue with gold veins. I took this trying to capture how amazing they looked in the sun light. I never learned how to take a decent portrait much less how to edit one.
Any helps, critique or tips would be greatly appreciated .

Im including where I gave up in editing because I was unable to blend her skin tones well as well as the raw file I started with. Any good video tutorials would be great too. Im not sure If I just took a bad image to attempt this with or just need to learn how to edit skin.

I've noticed that direct, bright sidelight really highlights eye colour, especially in light eye colours.

[davidreilly3207]

Bumping up the iso and closing down the aperature would have brought both eyes into focus.

[dave1479]

I agree that stopping down a bit would have been one way to handle this, you also could have gone more of a head on instead of sideways shot.


As to the question of skin it appears you just used a Gaussian blur on a lot of the skin?


I typically use frequency separation, which sounds more complicated than it really is. Using frequency separation breaks the picture down into two basic components 1. Skin Color 2. Skin texture once that is done we can tackle color problems and texture problems separately. This is fairly easy to do in Photoshop.


There are a lot of good tutorials on this if you google for it. If you have more detailed questions feel free to ask.

[Prakticant]

Bumping up the iso ruins the skin most of the time

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Bumping up the iso and closing down the aperature would have brought both eyes into focus.

[Greenneck]

I agree that stopping down a bit would have been one way to handle this, you also could have gone more of a head on instead of sideways shot.


As to the question of skin it appears you just used a Gaussian blur on a lot of the skin?


I typically use frequency separation, which sounds more complicated than it really is. Using frequency separation breaks the picture down into two basic components 1. Skin Color 2. Skin texture once that is done we can tackle color problems and texture problems separately. This is fairly easy to do in Photoshop.


There are a lot of good tutorials on this if you google for it. If you have more detailed questions feel free to ask.

I honestly dont know how to edit skin so I just used the soften skin brush a lot to try and smooth out her pores and then realized quickly her skin tone was even less balanced than when I started
Second attempt Im a lot more happy with my second edit of another picture. I wasnt able to take the glare off her nose or make it look less like wax I guess. It also still has some pink to it I was trying to balance out.

[dave1479]

I honestly dont know how to edit skin so I just used the soften skin brush a lot to try and smooth out her pores and then realized quickly her skin tone was even less balanced than when I started
Second attempt Im a lot more happy with my second edit of another picture. I wasnt able to take the glare off her nose or make it look less like wax I guess. It also still has some pink to it I was trying to balance out.

personally I am not a fan of the soften skin brush in lightroom. I do all of my skin editing in photoshop, if you don't have photoshop then the soften skin may be the best you can do.

If you have photoshop it is not difficult and I can show you how to recover small blown out areas in a way that looks fairly natural.

Do you have photoshop? if so I can send you a simple action I created and tell you how to use it.

[Greenneck]

personally I am not a fan of the soften skin brush in lightroom. I do all of my skin editing in photoshop, if you don't have photoshop then the soften skin may be the best you can do.

If you have photoshop it is not difficult and I can show you how to recover small blown out areas in a way that looks fairly natural.

Do you have photoshop? if so I can send you a simple action I created and tell you how to use it.

I have it, i bought the cloud with both I just havent used it in probably 5 years

[dave1479]

you can download my photoshop action here, its fairly simple.

http://davecsmith.com/Dave.atn

open your file in photoshop and run the action.

It will create 2 new layers one named color, and one named texture.

typically I hide the texture layer and work on the color first.

In general you can use the lasso select tool with a feather value of 8-16 (play with this a bit, it depends some on the size of your image) and pick large areas of like colored skin and Gaussian blur them.

If there are particularly bad blemishes you can clone or heal them out first.

Once that is done un-hide the texture layer and and use the clone tool to clone out bumps/pimples etc from the texture.

This will leave you with some skin texture pores / etc but the appearance of a very clean face.

---------- Post added 03-15-15 at 03:38 PM ----------

you can download my photoshop action here, its fairly simple.

http://davecsmith.com/Dave.atn

open your file in photoshop and run the action.

It will create 2 new layers one named color, and one named texture.

typically I hide the texture layer and work on the color first.

In general you can use the lasso select tool with a feather value of 8-16 (play with this a bit, it depends some on the size of your image) and pick large areas of like colored skin and Gaussian blur them.

If there are particularly bad blemishes you can clone or heal them out first.

Once that is done un-hide the texture layer and and use the clone tool to clone out bumps/pimples etc from the texture.

This will leave you with some skin texture pores / etc but the appearance of a very clean face.

Using this method you can also recover blown out areas if they are particularly bad you can add an empty layer between the color and texture layer, then use the color picker tool to get the color of some nearby skin.

then using a soft brush paint over the blown out area...you could also do this directly on the color layer, but I like to try to keep things non-destructive and using the extra layer makes it easier to revert if you mess it up.

once that is done play with the fill and opacity of the painted layer until it looks natural. If it is particularly bad you may also have to clone some skin texture from a nearby area over the blown out spot using the texture layer.

[Greenneck]

you can download my photoshop action here, its fairly simple.

http://davecsmith.com/Dave.atn

open your file in photoshop and run the action.

It will create 2 new layers one named color, and one named texture.

typically I hide the texture layer and work on the color first.

In general you can use the lasso select tool with a feather value of 8-16 (play with this a bit, it depends some on the size of your image) and pick large areas of like colored skin and Gaussian blur them.

If there are particularly bad blemishes you can clone or heal them out first.

Once that is done un-hide the texture layer and and use the clone tool to clone out bumps/pimples etc from the texture.

This will leave you with some skin texture pores / etc but the appearance of a very clean face.

---------- Post added 03-15-15 at 03:38 PM ----------


Using this method you can also recover blown out areas if they are particularly bad you can add an empty layer between the color and texture layer, then use the color picker tool to get the color of some nearby skin.

then using a soft brush paint over the blown out area...you could also do this directly on the color layer, but I like to try to keep things non-destructive and using the extra layer makes it easier to revert if you mess it up.

once that is done play with the fill and opacity of the painted layer until it looks natural. If it is particularly bad you may also have to clone some skin texture from a nearby area over the blown out spot using the texture layer.

I appreciate it Ill have to give your action a try soon.

[jawsy]

Having the eyes close to square with the lens (even if the head is tilted) and looking up slightly into the lens tends to naturally highlight the eyes whilst keeping both in focus. If needed, a small prop like an open book, flower or even a brochure can be used to conceal bits that you don't want to appear in the image.

[Wired]

the eyes look awesome, I really like it. I would have loved to see the other eye, but that's okay. this works still.

I'd highly suggest frequency separation. Aaron Nace's tutorial on Phlearn.com is probably the best one I've seen and my god has it transformed how I edit. It takes a bit to get used to, but I LOVE it. I assume by balancing skin tones you want to get rid of the rosy cheeks?

[Winder]

Eyes and light look good. You have already mentioned the over smoothed skin. The only thing I would recommend, and it might not be an option, is shooting this with a longer focal length. 35mm at that distance distorts the face. This would be a good shot for a 100mm macro. I'm pretty sure her nose/eye size is being exaggerated by the focal length and subject distance.