Basic Skin Retouching

For quick skin retouching, you will only need to use a couple of tools! This is a quick and easy process which can easily be applied to create smooth, blemish free skin.

- Spot healing tool
- Soften

This photograph is a good example of one that may require a little skin retouching; in general the photograph is well balanced, with good contrast, so it doesn't need any other fixing up!

Every photograph you see in a magazine will probably have had varying levels of this kind of retouching done before it is published - don't be fooled!

The first thing you will be using are the Healing Tools - the little plaster icons:

Spot Healing Tool



Healing Tool


(To switch between the two, left mouse click on the icon and hold it down for a few seconds, and select from the little menu that will pop out to the side)

The only difference between the two, is that with with Spot Healing Tool, you just need to click on the blemish and it will automatically remove the blemish. Easy peasy!

With the Healing tool, you must first choose a 'clear' area, from which the picture information will be taken in order to heal the blemish. To select an area, pick a part of the skin which is a similar colour, but with no blemish, and holding down ALT, click the left mouse button. You will need to adjust the brush size to ensure this works properly.

I am using a brush sizes between 15-30 pixels.

You can play around with this to get a clear idea of which is most suitable for the job, its just down to trying and testing essentially :)

I have 'healed' the blemishes, and am left with this:

As you can see, a lot of the visible acne from before has vanished! However, some of the skin is still a little uneven, which is where the Soften tool comes in.

Although it is down to you which size brush you use, and the opacity, I usually use a soft edged brush, at 50% opacity. Also, make sure the brush mode is set to 'Normal' as you can see here.

Now you can just brush over the 'bumpy' areas, to smooth out the appearance of the skin. Make sure you don't go too over the top with this as the image may end up looking unrealistic, and never go over any of the facial features: eyes, nose, mouth etc!

As you can see, our subject now has blemish free, smooth skin!

You can repeat the above steps as much or as little as you want, until you are happy with how the image looks! This just goes to show how you don't have to be an industry expert to be able to airbrush your photographs :)

Good luck!

Using Layers

In this tutorial you will learn:
- Layers
- Move Object tool
- Eraser
- Text insertion
- Saving you image in the right format

Although it might not seem like it to begin with, layers are probably the most useful tool you'll find on Photoshop. Whilst they may take a little getting used to, once you get the hang of them you'll wonder how you ever edited anything without them!

It is important that you are able to use layers in oirder to progress onto the other tutorials I will be posting!

So what are they for?

There are endless uses for layers, to give you an idea here are a few common examples:

- Selecting specific parts of the image you would like to edit.
- Making copies of the original image, which you can adjust rather than messing with the original image. If you make a mistake, or don't like the outcome, you can simply delete the layer and you're back to the unchanged version.
- Overlay images onto your existing one(s), be it text or other graphics, you can move them around on top of the image and select where you would like them to go.
- Colour a photograph or graphic differently using fill effects and other such things.

When using layers, I find it helps to look at them as if they are over head projection sheets; they can be overlapped to create different images, take one away or add one, and you have something completely different, and something that can be easily modified and moved around if you aren't happy with it.

Practise...

I am starting off with this image:
(You can use this one or your own - completely up to you!)

The easiest way to put an image into Photoshop, is to Save to your desktop, then when you have opened Photoshop, File > Open and choose the image from the list.

To create a new layer, you simply click this button in the Layers Palette on the right hand side of your screen.

You can draw on this layer, paste in images, or create text... whatever you want! I'm going to be pasting in this Chanel logo. To paste in an image, you can drag and drop it in directly from the Internet Explorer/Firefox/Safari page, or save to desktop then Open it in from there!

Remember:
Copy = Ctrl + C (PC) Command + C (Mac)
Paste = Ctrl + P (PC) Command + P (Mac)

I can then use this tool to move it around on my image, and place it accordingly.

(I also resized the logo along the way, if anyone does not know how to do this leave a comment and I will add this step in.)

Remember, there is no limit on the amount of layers you can create.

I will now add some text.

When you are happy with the text, double click the mouse to confirm what you have done. This will get rid of the underlines you can see in the above image. ^

Once you are satisfied with the image as a whole, you can then go to Layer > Flatten Image.

To save: File > Save
Remember, when saving to save as JPEG/PNG or PSD - JPEG/PNG will 'flatten' the image, so layers cannot be edited; saving as PSD will allow you to carry on editing layers next session.

Finished image:

Ta da! Practise and experiment with layers as much as you like until you are happy using them, and everything else will be easy :) If you have any questions regarding layers, please leave a comment on this post and I will do my best to answer!