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The 15 Minute Makeover: Photoshop Beauty

Retouchingjean miele | Software Techniques | Published Dec 8, 2011

A split image showing results both before and after my 15 minute makeover.

Skin needs to be retouched. Even beautiful skin with great makeup. The problem with most of the

Photoshop techniques I’ve experimented with over the years (burning & dodging individual pores,

Surface Blur filter, Dust and Scratches filter, etc.) is they take too long, aren’t very convincing, or - worst

of all - make the subject look like a victim of plastic surgery gone bad.

In this article I’m going to show you a combination of techniques I regularly use that results in beautiful,

smooth skin that still looks totally real. Best of all, it won’t take all day to accomplish. From start to finish,

an experienced Photoshop user should be able to do this in about 15 minutes.

of 11The 15 Minute Makeover: Photoshop Beauty Retouching: Digital Photography Review

12/12/2011http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7843682964/the-15-minute-makeover-photoshop-beau ...



Our workflow follows three basic stages.

1. Manually retouch big flaws and wrinkles via a separate retouching layer

2. Merge the retouching edits into the image layer

3. Use the Red channel of the merged layer to smooth the skin

Before we get started I want you to beware of and avoid what I call Photographer’s Tunnel Vision - that compulsive desire to do the fun stuff first . Making things perfect comes at the end, not the beginning, of

the retouching process. Keep your eye on the big picture (no pun intended).

The first tools we'll be reaching for are the Clone Stamp Tool and Spot Healing Brush. With these we can

retouch major blemishes, flyaway hairs, and any other texture/color irregularities.

Stage 1: Retouch Obvious Blemishes and Imperfections

Create a new, empty pixel layer above the Background layer to receive the retouching. The trick here will

be to choose the Sample All Layers option while using the Spot Healing Brush and the Current and Below

option for the Clone Stamp Tool. This ensures that your chosen tool will copy pixels from theBackground into the new layer above it.

Go to Layer>New>Layer and add a new, empty

pixel layer.

Start by retouching the most obvious problems

first. Then tackle progressively more subtle

issues.

Turn off the visibility of the Background layer to

see the edits of your retouching layer in isolation.

Here you see the appropriate sampling options for

the Clone Stamp Tool and the Spot Healing Brush.





Why not retouch right on the Background layer? If you make a mistake, and don’t notice right away, you

have to start all over again! Well, couldn't I just duplicate the Background layer, you may ask? That's

better than nothing, but it’s still not a great solution: any retouching you do this way is interwoven into

the image pixels, so mistakes can often be more complicated to correct.

By contrast, using a separate 'retouching layer' is elegant. It avoids destructive editing, keeps file sizes

small, and allows you to easily change your mind or correct mistakes. Since there’s nothing in the

retouching layer but retouching edits and transparency, mistakes are easily dealt with; just delete orerase problem areas without touching the rest of your work. Of course, if you like the adrenaline rush of

working without a safety net, be my guest. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Cloning and Healing

The Clone Stamp Tool (S) has been a standby for retouchers for many years. To use it, make sure the

Aligned Sample box is checked and set the sampling option to Current and Below, which allows you to

match tone, texture and color. Option/Alt+click to set the source from which to copy. Then click or brush

to remove the blemish.

The Spot Healing Brush (J) is a more recent addition to Photoshop that does a remarkable job of

automatically matching tone, texture and color. To use it, enable the Content-Aware and Sample All Layers options. There's no need to set a source point, just click or brush to remove the blemish. This tool

can often seem like magic, but it's not infallible. If your first stroke with the Spot Healing Brush isn’t

perfect, undo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z) and try stroking from a different direction. To be certain your work is

perfect, always view your file at 100% magnification when retouching. If texture, tone, or color do not

match, undo and try again. Our goal is for each brush stroke to be invisible - even to you.

With either tool, you will find that some blemishes call for a single click, while others are best removed

with a series of short brush strokes. Initially you may have to experiment to find which situations calls

for one or the other, but with practice, this will become second nature.

How do you know when you're ready to move on to the next stage? Retouch as I've described above until

you’re satisfied that no flaws bigger than a freckle are visible anymore.

Tip: You can use more than one retouching layer.

At left you can see I used three separate layers to

retouch this file; one for skin blemishes and such,

another to retouch the model’s hair and a third

for the area under her eyes.

For even finer control, you could make separate

retouching layers for working underneath each

eye, on the neck, or anywhere else.

Pay Attention to the Eyes

I always use a separate layer when working on the eyes because it allows me to adjust the opacity of the

retouching; striking a perfect balance point between enhanced and overdone. Allowing a bit of the





original image to show thorough keeps everything real. It’s up to you how much. If you’ve never done

this, you’ll be amazed at the control you can exercise by adjusting the overall opacity of an under-eye

retouching layer.

Yes, I know… You can achieve the same result by varying the opacity of the brushes. But with brushes

you have to get it exactly right the first time. There’s no experimenting. No changing your mind later. It’s

so much easier (and more powerful) to smooth away folds, bags, or dark circles under the eyes, and then

dial back the opacity until it looks believable. Take a close look at the examples below.

Here is the image with only skin retouches applied. The eyes could use a little help.





Here is the image with my 'retouching - under eyes' layer at an opacity of 100%. The result is far too

strong and looks fake, but this is actually by design. I've purposely overdone the retouching here,

knowing that I can always reduce the layer's opacity. Remember, you can always go below 100% but not

above it.





Here is the same retouching layer but at an opacity of 50%. Perfect!

Stage 2: Merge All of Your Layers Into a New Layer

Now we're ready to merge all of our working layers into a brand new layer. Why a new layer? Because in

a moment we’ll be using the Red channel as the basis for our skin smoothing, and we need that channel

to include all of the visible information: the original pixels and the retouching.

Furthermore, we don't want to lose access to the hard work we've done up to this point, so we want to

copy all of these layers into a new layer, rather than simply flattening the image! The Merge Visible

command is found in the fly-out menu at the upper right of the Layers Panel as well as in the main Layers

menu. But here's where a keyboard modifier is a must. Holding the option key when choosing this menu

item tells Photoshop to merge into a new layer. Otherwise, it's virtually the same as Flatten Image. The

keyboard shortcut for merging all visible layers into a new layer is Opt+Shift+Cmd+E (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+E

on Windows). This shortcut is affectionately known as 'The Claw'. Try it with one hand and you’ll

understand why!

Since the merged layer will appear above whichever layer is active at the time, highlight the top layer in

the stack before merging. Hold the option key when choosing this menu item, so Photoshop merges

everything visible into a brand new layer. The merged layer appears here (on the right) as Layer 1.

As you can easily find yourself with multiple retouching layers, now is a good time to get them organized

by using layer groups. Select your retouching layers in the Layers panel and choose New Group From

Layers in the panel's fly-out menu. Give the group a name, like oh, I don't know, 'Retouching' and hit OK.

This is a great way to keep your layers manageable and easily accessible.

Click here to go to page 2 of our beauty retouching tutorial...





Stage 3: Use the Red Channel From the Merged Layer to Smooth

the Skin

Now that the Background and all the major retouches have been merged into a single new layer, we get

to the fun part! To get started we need to copy the Red channel of the merged layer and paste it into the

file as a layer at the top of our layer stack.

To do this, make just the Red Channel in the Channels panel active by clicking on it. Then hit Cmd/Ctrl+C

to copy the channel to the clipboard. Next, click on the RGB composite channel and hit Cmd/Ctrl+V to

paste the channel as a new layer. With this task accomplished you can now delete the merged layer

(named Layer 1 by default) residing just beneath it. Look at the image below for an alternate way to

accomplish this task.

You can save some steps when copying the Red Channel to a layer by going to Image>Apply Image.

Select Merged in the Layer pull-down and set the Channel pull-down menu to Red. Make sure the

Blending Mode is set to Normal, as shown above. This method automatically replaces the merged layer

with the Red channel's contents. Bonus points if you can tell me a third way to do this, using a Channel-

Mixer Adjustment layer (reply in the Comments section at the end of the article).

Regardless of how you end up with a (monochrome) 'Red channel' layer at the top of your stack, themagic begins when we change the Blending Mode of this layer to Luminosity. Suddenly everything looks

lighter and more radiant – and the skin looks amazing.





Radiant Skin: Here we see the result of the Red Channel of the merged layer, with the Blending Mode set

to Luminosity.

Some Finishing Touches

The effect shown above works great for skin. If you look carefully, however, you can see that our

subject's eyes, hair, and lips do not respond so well to this kind of enhancement. That's often the case,and this effect doesn't work very well on clothing either, for that matter. No problem. Our next step is to

mask this layer so the change is applied only to areas of bare skin.





Almost there: The retouched image with and without Red-Channel-Luminosity-Blend-Mode-Smoothing.

A great way to do this is to first select the skin by going to Select>Color Range. With this tool you can

quickly select the skin tones, while leaving hair, eyes and lips unselected.





With the Color Range dialog open, click and Shift-click in the main image window on areas of skin to add

them to the selection. Option/Alt-click on non-skin areas to remove them from the selection. Adjust the

Fuzziness slider to expand or contract the selection parameters.

With our selection still active, we add the layer mask by going to Layer>Add Layer Mask>Reveal All. The

mask will automatically appear in the shape of the selected areas. Refine the mask as needed, using

brushes and, if necessary the (awesome) Refine Mask Edge feature in the Masks Panel.

You can see that our merged red channel layer is

now linked to a layer mask. Dial back the opacity

of this layer, to taste. Be conservative. Less is

more here.

Make a duplicate of the merged red channel layer

(shown at the top of the layer stack) and blur it by

going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Reduce the

opacity of this layer, also to taste.

In the example below, you can see a progression of the steps we've just undertaken. Once we fixed the

most obvious flaws via our retouching layer, we used a copy of the Red channel to make the skin

smoother and then applied a layer mask (as well as a duplicate) to restrict the smoothing to skin areas.

From Left to Right: A) Retouched Image with no smoothing. B) Red channel smoothing visible

everywhere. C) Soft-edged layer mask that restricts smoothing to the skin. D) Image with the layer mask

applied.

Your Layers panel may look a little crowded, but we've really only done about five or six basic edits – et

voilà! I think this is a remarkable result for the effort.





The final image shows just how productive those 15 minutes can be.

I hope you'll find this method a useful (and fun) addition to your arsenal of Photoshop techniques. Of

course you can build on these steps for even more control and flexibility. Sometimes I'll use multiple

smoothing layers, all placed in a layer group, with a single layer mask. On some images I'll even add a

Curves adjustment layer clipped to the smoothing layer(s) for the best results. And if you're a fan of

actions, this entire workflow can easily be recorded and later run automatically and interactively, saving

even more time on future projects.

Jean Miele has been digitally editing images for over 15 years. A working commercial photographer and

highly sought after Photoshop instructor, his fine art images and workshop schedule can be seen at

www.jeanmiele.com


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