How do they retouch photos?

[GiaCat]

Look at this picture. I know, its hard, just try

Notice how you can't see the texture of her skin? No blemishes, just smooth and perfect. How do they do this?

http://erosadultnudes.com/ean-blog-media/met-art_aspen_34_4.jpg

 

[Killswitch1]

Well starting with an 18 year old Scandinavian girl helps.



Photoshop hun. Filters, mapping, cloning, airbrushing, blurring, the list goes on.





Back in the day it was done with airbrushes to originals and many techniques like dodging, burning, shading etc in the printing process.

 

[nerfhearder]

You really don't understand Photoshop?

Plus she's young as hell.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

In Paintshop I have a blemish tool that will make a mole, scar, freckle disappear. What it actually does is takes the mole, etc. and replaces it with the part of the digital picture to each side of the blemish. Hard to do on your own, hence the tool.

 

[Super-Surprise]

http://www.hawtcelebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ariel-winter-in-tights-out-in-los-angeles-09-27-2016_1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nKhvheV.jpg

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

It's shot with nice diffused lighting from a distance
with a telephoto lens. The picture is also slightly
out of focus which obfuscates any noticeable
blemishes as well as skin texture. Here's a high-res
version of that pic to notice the blur.

Now if the pic was in tight focus, you could tweak
the raw file by pushing down the clarity slider a bit
which would soften those details. There are also
specific apps & photoshop plugins that do that kind
of stuff with a button press.

If she had any noticeable blemishes/moles/creases/etc,
you would either use the clone brush or healing brush.

http://s1d5.turboimg.net/sp/6179efd665aff8c81baad0f7b1a80bb5/MET-ART_EMS_34_0111.jpg

The pic below was probably shot with a prime lens
(like a 24mm or 50mm lens). You can see the details
like her pores. The f-stop was probably at 1.8.
Notice that her nose is out of focus a bit but her
eyes are in super-sharp focus. You can literally see
the photographer's reflection in her eyes. I love my
50mm prime lens for my Canon 70D.

Now the model probably has fantastic skin already
so there was probably minimal digital cleanup. The
photographer probably spent most of his time
tweaking the color/saturation/contrast/highlights/blacks
of the original raw file.

http://i.imgur.com/jRjXAOM.jpg

 

[Weird Harold]

Look at this picture. I know, its hard, just try

Notice how you can't see the texture of her skin? No blemishes, just smooth and perfect. How do they do this?

Depends on how old the original picture is. "Airbrushing" is easy with any number of modern digital image editing programs -- like Photoshop. But I had a friend in the 1970's who was a professional photo-retoucher. She worked with 35 mm negatives and/or slides, a magnifier, and a paintbrush. She used various dyes, solvents, and other chemicals to blend away defects or add features that weren't really there or removed things that were (like tattoos.)

She didn't use an actual airbrush, but many re-touchers did use literal airbrushes to retouch large format negatives, hence the generic term "airbrushing" for retouching photos to remove blemishes and accentuate positives.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Raster layers!

 

[GiaCat]

Well, I see you can do this with an individual picture. But what if you have 1000's of pix?

 

[Ms_Ann]

Well, I see you can do this with an individual picture. But what if you have 1000's of pix?

Many, many monks.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

Well, I see you can do this with an individual picture. But what if you have 1000's of pix?

You don't retouch every pic you shoot at a
photoshoot. You or your client chooses the best
ones and then you retouch those. I shoot between
1,000-2,000 pics when I do a wedding
photography job. It would be insanely time
prohibitive to retouch every single photo.

If a client was willing to pay to retouch every photo
on a shoot, then awesome.