Beauty retouching is the most popular digital image processing done with Photoshop. This lesson is well suited for beginners, will be able to introduce them to the work of basic tools. It also clearly shows how you can correct errors when shooting.

retouching principles.

Good retouching is considered to be one on which interference from the graphic editor is not visible and the photo looks natural and clear. Main principle retouching - masking defects on the object being photographed and bringing it to an impeccable condition.
Here's what we'll be doing in this tutorial:

Step 1. Removal of wrinkles, dark spots and all kinds of flaws on the face of the model.
Open the selected image, create a copy of the layer, then turn off the visibility of the original.
Use the Healing Brush to remove moles, wrinkles and imperfections. Try to keep the brush size slightly larger than the area to be corrected. In order for the result to be better, enlarge the image as much as possible to work out difficult areas.

Step 2. Correction of the skin surface.
After you have corrected all the defects in the surface of the skin, we must even out the skin, while giving it a natural texture. Thus, our model should completely get rid of various flaws.

Duplicate the main layer, give the duplicate a name, for example "skin". Next apply Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Next, determine the settings that will be optimal for your image, in our case it looks like this:

Now let's add some noise, while creating a skin texture to avoid the effect of porcelain skin.
Go to Filter Noise - Add Noise. Adjust the settings for this filter.

Now that our skin is even and beautiful, it's time to designate the areas where it will be visible. To do this, we will use a layer mask, and with the help of a brush we mark the areas where it will be visible. Add a layer mask to the “Skin” layer (icon in the bottom layer panel). Next, change the layer mask to black. Thus, we will mark with a brush the places where the processed layer should be. To do this, go to the Image-Corejection-Invert menu. By creating a layer mask, we thereby completely close it, now with a brush, and with the selected white color, open the areas we need, avoiding the eyes, hair, mouth.

Step 3 Brighten up the eyes and teeth.
In this step, we will try to add glitter to the eye and mouth areas at the same time. Create another duplicate of the main layer. Change its Blending Mode to Screen from the drop down menu in the Layers Palette.

Just like in the previous step, we will use a layer mask. Add a mask to this layer, invert it to black. Use a soft brush with white to paint over. To make the result not very bright, set the layer transparency to 70% for example.
This is what the layers palette looks like:

Step 4 Brighten up the colors.
Using the same methods, we will brighten some areas of the face, namely the eyes, lips, eyebrows.
-Duplicate the main layer and name it "vibration".
-Change the layer's blend mode to "Soft Light"
-Add a layer mask to it, invert everything to black.
-Using a soft white brush to add brightness to the needed areas.
-Change the opacity of the layer to the desired level.

Step 5
In this step, we will create a merged copy of all the above results. Select the adjustment layers, then copy the merged data (Editing - Copy the merged data), then paste, just make sure that the new layer is above all previously created layers.
Apply the Unsharp filter to this layer, with these settings:

It is also necessary to apply this filter only to certain areas: hair, mouth, eyes, eyebrows. Let's repeat the steps described earlier:
- Add a layer mask to the layer, invert it to black.
-Using a soft white brush to paint the needed areas.
-leave the layer opacity at 100% without changing the layer's blend mode.
Here's what the end result should be!

Recently we spoke about being with the concept of beauty in today's society. The logical continuation of this topic is the question of the place of retouching in photography. The illusory nature of what is happening in the photo industry is obvious to its employees, but not to the majority of consumers of glossy (and not only) magazines. We asked Bespoke Pixel's retouchers to outline what everyone who starts a fashion magazine or website should know and keep in mind.

The pursuit of the perfect
picture

We wear compression stockings or drape in Rick Owens, push-up breast augmentation, simulate the effect of sun-bleached hair, give the skin a glow with reflective foundation and put on 14 cm heels (or their personal equivalent). In other words, we transform our appearance to broadcast to the environment a personal statement, position, views - or lack thereof. Where, then, does our individuality show through more: when, having taken a thousand micro-changes from the shape of nails to the shade of lipstick, we arrive at a gala party, or the next morning, when we wake up disheveled, without makeup and with traces of a hangover on our face? It would never occur to anyone to reproach a girl for using lengthening mascara and demand to take off her heels so as not to distort growth - this is a game accepted by society, the rules of which are well known to everyone. And where then is the ethical difference, is the pimple smeared with a foundation or a brush in a graphic editor?

In image processing, two adjacent stages can be distinguished: the first is the production necessity, often an integral part of the creation of a digital image, and the second is the delicate territory of aesthetic decisions. The fact is that nothing much has changed since the days of analog photography. A digital image needs development just as much as a film frame. Only to replace the analog photo lab with reagents came Adobe Photoshop and other graphic editors. At the stage of such a “digital development” (converting a RAW file into an image), you can adjust the brightness, contrast, tonality, saturation, sharpness and other image parameters. It must be understood that in this case the pixels that make up the image remain in place, and only their properties are adjusted. This does not affect the content of the image, although the play of light can also visually transform the picture. An eloquent example is the photograph of Paul Hansen, the winner of the World Press Photo - 2013, where not a single pixel was shifted, but the dramatic "development" of the image caused heated discussions about its admissibility.

Photo from Elle Ukraine (June 2013), retouched by Bespoke Pixel

History of retouching

The history of image manipulation is as old as photography itself. Back in the 1860s (photography at that time was about 25 years old), a discussion about retouching and its limits unfolded between the patriarch of Russian photography, Levitsky, and the president of the French photography society, Davanne. Davanne's point of view: the photographer can only "sketch" on the negative the general drawing of the subject, and the retouching artists finish the rest. Levitsky objected, allowing only technical retouching, fixing small dots and spots.

Initially, photography was a poor technical relative of painting, and all the techniques from there were automatically transferred to the pictures. The first photographers were often artists, and it was common practice to add the necessary details on top of the print with brushes; the photographs were hand-coloured and judged according to the same criteria as the paintings. When shooting portraits, retouching was a must. Nadar's legendary portrait studio in Paris employed 26 people, 6 of whom were retouchers. Franz Fiedler, a German portrait painter and photography theorist, wrote about the end of the 19th century, when photography was only forty years old, as follows: “Those photo studios that most diligently resorted to retouching were preferred. Wrinkles on the faces were smeared; freckled faces were entirely "cleansed" by retouching; grandmothers turned into young girls; the characteristic features of a person were completely erased. An empty, flat mask was regarded as a successful portrait. Bad taste knew no bounds, and its trade flourished. Below is a slideshow of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Robert Johnson, 1930, a guide to retouching negatives.
Calvert Richard Jones, Capuchin Friars in Malta, 1846
This is one of the first documented retouched photographs. Calvert was a painter and blacked out one of the monks spoiling his composition on the negative. He not only brought photographs from his trip to Malta, which he sold as postcards, but also added figures of people and details to some of them.
Charles Negre, 1850s. The fire of the candles was completed by hand, the technique of that time could not realize such a picture.
Henry Peach Robinson "Fading Away", 1858. One of the most high-profile staged composite photographs of the time, raising a number of ethical questions about the appropriateness of photographing certain topics ("nothing to shoot black!").
Ernest Eugene Appert, who directed and filmed the "crimes" of the Parisian Communards (actors in the photo). The photo appeared in the press, May 24, 1871. Perhaps not all photographs of conflicts from neighboring countries are equally true.
1905, the family "at Niagara Falls" (actually - in the studio).
No, in 1910 such corn did not grow, and it seems that we could make friends with George Cornish - we have a similar sense of humor.
Nikolai Antipov, Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov, Nikolai Shvernik and Nikolai Komarov at the Fifteenth Leningrad Regional Party Conference in Leningrad, 1926. Under Stalin, all important political photographs were retouched, redrawn, and his former associates, as they fell into disgrace and repression, were blacked out.
Nikolai Antipov, Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov and Nikolai Shvernik in the book “S. M. Kirov, 1886–1934” (Leningrad, 1936). Komarov was arrested and executed in 1937.
Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov and Nikolai Shvernik from History of the USSR, Part 3, Moscow, 1948. Antipov was arrested and shot in 1937.
Stalin and Kirov in Joseph Stalin: A Brief Biography. Moscow, 1949.
Klim Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, 1938.
This is the previous photo from 1938, published in 1940. The retoucher removed the "enemy of the people" Yezhov (on the far right), the former head of the NKVD, the organizer and executor of mass repressions, who was later shot "for attempting a coup."

What is
processing process

Covers of L "Officiel Ukraine, Elle Ukraine and Aeroflot Style, retouched in
Bespoke Pixel

Just as a chain of specialists works on the construction of a building - from an architect to an engineer and contractors - the published photo is the result of the work of a team of professionals: art director, stylist, makeup artist, model, photographer and others, where the retoucher is one of the modest functional links. Each specialist has his own competence: the model cannot act in whatever she pleases, and the retoucher does not “play” with the picture in his own way. Each shoot has its own style direction, and post-production should bring the team's idea to the maximum ("edits to your taste" or "make us beautiful" is usually the first red flag - most likely, the client does not know what he wants). In essence, the image processing process is an inextricable union of aesthetic choice and its technical implementation. That is, Photoshop is just a tool in the service of photography. Its technical capabilities allow you to perform almost unlimited manipulations with the image, changing the shape of objects, texture, color, and so on (there is an opinion that the usual order for retouchers looks like this). But, like any tool, it can be used both for good and for evil. So the critical moment is here - common sense. It should be understood that if the processing of a photo clearly pulls the blanket over itself, this is not a disaster, but then it is more appropriate to attribute the image to the field of graphic or technical design

A team of professionals work on fashion or beauty shooting even before the camera shutter clicks, in order to get closer to the perfect picture during the shooting process. Therefore, as a rule, quality work falls into our hands, where well-groomed woman model appearance with properly applied makeup, shot by an experienced photographer in a favorable light and with good optics. Next, we have to do what we couldn’t (or even impossible) achieve when taking photographs, adjust the image to a certain level, bring it closer to the author’s idea. A retoucher can make a wonderful photo perfect, a good photo very good, an average photo not bad, a bad photo acceptable. Making a qualitative leap in two steps is unreasonably expensive, unrealistic and simply inefficient (unless it is a leap in the opposite direction - mediocre processing can kill a talented photo). That is, ideally, the work of the retoucher is not aimed at correcting the image, but at improving it.

One of the most favorite edits of clients -
circle anything in the photo and caption: “What is this?”

A shot from a shoot with the leading Chanel makeup artist in Ukraine for Harper's Bazaar Ukraine,
Retouched Bespoke Pixel

Of course, each order is individual, but if we try to generalize our usual actions, we remove everything that distracts, interferes, and gets into the eyes. Add volume at the roots of the hair, if they are loose. We lengthen the neck, remove some horizontal wrinkles on it, clean the axillary folds and armpits, finish the nails, remove the cuticle, fix the makeup - the eyes, the lash line, sometimes finish them, smooth the moving eyelid, bring in the uniformity of color. We clean the eyes: remove blood vessels, redness, accentuate the pupil. We correct the eyebrows, removing excess hairs, aligning the color and density, editing the shape. Naturally, we work with pores, irregularities, spots on the face. We pay attention to the extra hairs in the hairstyle. We correct plasticity: body folds, waist contours, hips and back bending, we remove “goose bumps” on the legs, always clean the heels. The list is impressive, but it is very complex and usually each action takes no more than 15 minutes. Contrasting transformations excess weight in model parameters and, for example, rejuvenation by twenty years in our case remain one-time exceptions. We do not work as "photoshop wizards", but we are in the business of helping clients bring their images to match the style, brand, long-term strategy.

In our opinion, the main task of processing is not “to make the photo and the person on it better” - this phrase, due to subjectivity, does not mean anything at all. Retouching and post-processing are not elusive things, not Wilde's fox hunt, where the inexpressible pursues the inedible, but helping to realize the artistic intent of the photographer or art director. If the task set (to shoot a lookbook or an artistic photo session) is flawlessly implemented within the resources allocated to it, we can say that we have a “good” retouching. Unfortunately, there are options when unsuccessful aesthetic solutions are technically perfect, and vice versa - great intentions suffer due to poor implementation. Therefore, when we encounter an unsuccessful shot, we are in no hurry to blame the retoucher, perhaps “it was intended” by the art director of the shooting (or the person who bears his duties).

It is worth noting that our personal, as retouchers, aesthetic preferences may not coincide with the idea of ​​the author or the project of the team. When we receive another iteration with the requirement to “make the model’s legs even thinner”, we feel uncomfortable and always try to reason with the customer, but we understand that this is a situation about a cross and panties. Since at heart we are against over-processing and the “it'll do, fix it in post-production” approach, to the best of our ability, we try to dissuade photographers from making changes that are too unrealistic. True, in our memory no one went too far so that we refused to fulfill the order for moral reasons (but maybe we are just shameless bitches). And here the fun begins - what are the standards?

Standards and trends
in modern retouching

Nor the transformation of the heroine into a more perfect version of herself. Vogue always works as a window into another, "better" world, and not processing someone's photos means giving special preferences, putting them in different conditions. Lena herself reacted truthfully, gracefully shifting a number of her own previous statements, “A glossy magazine is a kind of beautiful fantasy. Vogue is not a place for realistic depictions of women, but for fine clothes, trendy places and escapism. So if the article reflects who I am, but I'm dressed in Prada and surrounded by beautiful men and dogs, what's the problem? If anyone wants to see what I look like in real life, let it include "Girls".

Ethics, professional deformation
and the value of natural beauty

Fragment of the Barber Shop project

Do we think we are setting unrealistic standards and complexes? On the one hand, yes, it is with our hands that the waist is pulled down and the eyelashes are lengthened. On the other hand, we cannot but agree with Lena Dunham - the glossy industry gives us a fairy tale, an illusion, a dream, which should be treated accordingly. And if you draw an ideal picture of the world, then we would be more willing to introduce a mandatory course on the nature of the digital image in secondary schools - only its understanding will save a person from complexes and make him appreciate his body. Banning photoshop will not solve the problem - even in real life there will always be someone with longer legs and a wider smile.

If we talk about personal preferences, we do not like photographs honed to perfection and symmetry, although we know how to do it. We prefer slight irregularities, uniqueness of curves, so we try to leave hairs, skin, pores, wrinkles on the fingers to the maximum - not to remake a person, but to emphasize his individuality. The fact that we are girls and know how to make up, are interested in cosmetics and know how everything works, in turn, helps a lot in our work. In most cases, we can distinguish the makeup artist's intent from the imperfection of the execution and make corrections where necessary without blurring the idea. And even if we don’t know what smoky is fashionable this season, they save us dear friends with beauty blogs and awareness in the fashion industry.

One day
the producer asked
lengthen the arms
his aspiring petite singer-songwriter

Beauty retouching is quite in demand. Many people are interested in how to correct skin imperfections, correct makeup and correct the overall black and white design of the picture. Consider all of the above with an example. We will work with the following photo:

First of all, we create 2 copies of the main layer of the file opened in Photoshop.

The top layer must fit in the group (Ctrl + G)

Let's consider the points:

• press Ctrl + J twice - 2 times
• press Ctrl+G once

It is better to give the layers names right away, so as not to get confused later.

• Call the middle layer "color" and the top group "texture"
• Apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the color layer.
• The degree of blur in each specific case will differ. The filter should hide all skin imperfections (pimples, wrinkles).

When blurring a layer, be sure to remember the number that indicates the radius of the blur.

In the example, this number is 14. Apply a color contrast filter to the layer in the "texture" group, in which we set the radius to 14.

Lighten up the texture a bit. To do this, add curves in an adjustment layer.

We set the values ​​​​for the left side to 64, and for the right - 192

Select the layer group and set the blending mode to "linear light"

The result should look something like a screenshot. Now let's process the texture. Processing will be done with a patch, a spot repair brush, and a stamp. It is most convenient to use a spot healing brush. By drawing zigzags it is very good to correct the image.

Getting rid of texture roughness. We remove all stains and irregularities.

Here's what should happen:

Now you can merge the layers. The original image must be in the background. Turn it off and right click on the middle layer and select Merge Visible. The background must remain unmerged so that you can compare the original version with the processing.

Now let's align the face and neck.

• Using the lasso, select the dark areas and copy to a new layer.
• to quickly call the lasso tool, you just need to press the "L" button
• dark areas can be circled not exactly, but a little with a margin.
• The dark layer needs to be lightened. You can do this either with curves (Ctrl+M) or levels (Ctrl+L).
• We make the areas lighter, bringing them closer to the complexion. If the hands are processed, they can be made a little darker.
• With a soft brush of large diameter, remove all unnecessary, making the edges of the treated area soft.
• Merge the brightened area with the main retouched photo (Ctrl + E).

• Once again we create two copies
• Putting the top layer back into the group
• Press Ctrl+J twice
• Press Ctrl+G once
• Apply a color contrast with a smaller radius to the top layer. The texture should be clearly visible.

• By using a smaller radius, the texture in the photo will be smaller.
• As before, reduce the visibility of the texture with an adjustment layer.
• We use the same settings.
• Make a copy of it and turn off visibility.
• Change the layer blending of the group to a linear light.
• Now go to the layer below the group.
• Apply the "Surface Blur" filter to it.

We set such settings /. to even out the colors, but not completely lose the details.

You will need another layer to soften the edges.

Make a copy of the "retouch" layer (Ctrl + J). Move it above the surface blur layer. Apply a "gaussian blur" to it, but in such a way as to leave the details.

Now with an elastic band or a mask we remove from this layer areas that should not become soft. It's eyes, lips, hair...

• Add some transparency to the layer.
• Now turn on the hidden adjustment layer and increase its opacity until we get enough softness.
• Now let's edit the eyes. Everyone will surely find their own way. Consider the method used in this lesson
• On a new transparent layer, paint the whites of the eyes with a white brush.
• With the help of a hard brush, remove all unnecessary
• Press Ctrl + L and make levels White color greyer.

• The eye that is further away is made even darker.
• Lower the opacity of the whites of the eyes.
• The pupils can be corrected now, but it is better to return to this when the lights and shadows are adjusted.
• At the very top, add two more layers.
• Make the fill dark blue and set the blending mode to "difference"
• Next, make it more transparent and use a mask to remove all unnecessary.
• Next we copy the blue channel and paste it on a new layer.
• How to do it?
• Go to the channels tab. Select the desired one and press Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C.
• Set selection to RGB and go to layers
• Ctrl+V
• Set the blending mode of this layer to "soft light" and add a mask
• You need to apply an outer channel to the mask

You can see the settings in the screenshot or experiment on your own.

Further processing can be done with chiaroscuro.

You can do it differently. Copy the blue from the channels. Levels make it softer and set the blending mode to "soft light". Transparency to taste

Making skin brighter is very easy.

• Let's go to the channels tab.
• With the Ctrl key pressed, click on the red channel and get a selection.
• Go to layers and press Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer.
• Lighten this layer in any way and that's it.

Here is the result of processing:

Based on materials from the site:

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