The Secrets of the Human Face and Skin

It's the human face and the texture of the skin that has always fascinated me. Not only as a photographer but also as a retoucher I have been a lover of human faces and skin for 13 years. Sometimes I know the person better than perhaps I know myself. The tiny scars and scars on the Skin all tell their own story of life, moods, traumas, joys, age etc... You can see if someone is afraid or likes to laugh - you can see if someone can be trusted or be careful around this one!

Introduction

To make portrait retouching more interesting, you must learn about human face. Do you know about why everyone has a different skin? There are many secrets that have never been revealed. Discover them. Beauty is more than just makeup; it is also hidden on your face. So today I’d like to talk with you a little bit about human faces and skins. The number one priority for portrait retouching is to keep skin looking natural, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can learn from analyzing it at a deeper level. Understanding how light interacts with all its different properties can help us tweak our portrait retouching workflow for optimal results.

Shoulder and neck area

A popular example of shoulder retouching includes removing bags under eyes, spot removal and hair removal. Hair removal can be done with either clone stamp tool or healing brush. This kind of retouching should be subtle, if you go overboard then it will look unnatural. Another important area is neck skin retouching, it's a common problem area that's quite noticeable in any photograph and more so in close-up portraits. In fact when you see celebrities without makeup on TV they often have bad neck skin. The same techniques apply to both shoulders and necks but just take extra care when working around these areas.

Forehead

Now, on to your forehead. The trick is to do nothing at all—you’re actually just going to create a blank layer above your image, which will allow you to correct it without affecting anything else in your retouching. There are two ways to do that. If you’re using Photoshop, press Shift-Ctrl-N; if you’re using Photoshop Elements, press Shift-Ctrl-Alt-N. After I did my retouching work, I used Dodge and Burn tools to bring out some details.

Eyes

When retouching eyes, it's important to leave some depth and contrast in both eyes. If you are going for a glass look on your subject, then remove every hint of blood vessel detail. However, if you're looking to keep some realism in your image, then try and keep some detail around small veins and especially around large vessels that can really help add depth. It's also worth noting that you should never sharpen skin near an eye; too much sharpening will make these blood vessels become too noticeable.

Lower eyelids

The lower eyelids are one of my favorite places to start. If a person is too thin or has too much excess skin on their eyelids, it makes it almost impossible to truly capture an image without looking flat. To fix that, I usually apply both hollowing and smoothing to fix those problems. The first thing I do is identify any areas where I need to remove skin using masks or manual retouching tools like healing brushes and airbrushes.

Mouth Area

Retouching Mouth Area After retouching a face or an image, you probably will wonder about changing something in its mouth area. In photo retouching, one important thing to pay attention to is that whether your previous work is consistent or not. You may have already noticed that many beginners are likely to blur out large areas at once when they erase parts; but if you do that, it is quite likely that your whole piece of art will look blurry, which will make people feel uncomfortable. This can also result in losing much detail at once. The solution lies in using soft brush instead of eraser and adjusting its size according to how small you want to make it.

Chin area

Retouching needs a great deal of skill, especially for women. Our chin area is extremely important to us, after all. The skin on our chin is often thinner than on other parts of our face, so it can look wrinkled if not retouched properly. Luckily it's easy to fix these wrinkles! First, I select an area with similar colors (in my case I am using my quick selection tool) from an image with perfect skin so that Photoshop will fill in those areas instead of making new ones while retouching.

Ears

One of the most popular questions I receive is how to retouch ears. It's not because they're big (they aren't) or that people have a lot to hide (most don't), but because most people are uncomfortable with them being so prominent in photos. Like other parts of your face, ears have muscles, pores, veins, hairs and shadows. With a few easy tips you can reduce or eliminate any redness, veins or imperfections on your earlobes and keep it looking natural when you post it online for all to see.

Mouth corners

The mouth corners or corners of the mouth (the commissures) can be very sexy. They tell a lot about a person: if they are happy, sad, scared or even evil. That's why it is so important to retouching them correctly. In order to avoid later problems, it is also useful to create in advance special versions of photos that you would like to print for personal use only.

Nose area

The nose area is one of a human face that needs extra attention during retouching. It has all sorts of irregular shapes with different tones. With some basic techniques you can get it right, even if it requires some extra time on your part. In order to keep track there are three areas: bridge, nostrils, outside edge.

Cheeks – Like Restoring Old Photographs Section: Eyebrows – Attention To Detail Makes All The Difference! Section: How To Go About Retouching Aging Women Section: How to go about retouching Older Men Section

Eyelashes and Lips – New Vistas For Retouching Section: How to go about retouching Acne Scars on Women Section: How to go about retouching Acne Scars on Men Section: How To Go About Retouching Weathered Faces Section: The Art Of Light And Dark Hairs And Eyebrows In Retouching Portraits Section: Facial Hair – My Style of Dealing With Beards And Mustaches. A Photographer’s View.