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Retouching Contouring Wrinkles

Lesson 31 from: Skin 101: Lighting, Retouching and Understanding Skin

Lindsay Adler

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Lesson Info

31. Retouching Contouring Wrinkles

Lesson Info

Retouching Contouring Wrinkles

let's take a look at adorable grandma oh and take a final look at the before after we had for her and uh and I deleted some of my highlights and shadows so it looks much much better and if I were paying a lot of attention to it I would say that that full retouch I think it would take me about a half hour if I wanted it perfect and we're giving it my attention versus like talking and yeah I listened to a lot of podcasts and creative live while doing this all right let's go over to light rail let's find grandma uh there she is ok thiss is using a soft box as I suggested so with wrinkles what you want to do is you want to use a more diffused light source of soft boxes great you want it to be lower as well the higher up you raise that soft boxing more defined the wrinkles you also want to use reflectors I recommend white because they're more subtle to pump in some light into the shadows in this instance the light is or less centered it's a little bit high for maybe for photographing her bu...

t maybe she has a cute little cheeks like says she has like the definition or cheeks there and it wanted to be flattened out so what we would have done is then put it centered had a little bit higher and add the reflector but maybe you didn't or maybe the the shadows of the wrinkles are just a little bit too harsh we can soften that all up in photo shop and that's what I would like to show you now and you can do it subtly or if there's maybe a a woman that really doesn't want her wrinkles to show you can go a little bit more pronounced on the reduction of wrinkles so I opened up the photo of grandma rose here and we're going to hit play so watch before if you want to see what I just did if you're just tuning in otherwise actions on the blogged on doing the sixteen bit all right let's take a look I'm going to use my target to select her cheek and let's see how much any templar so those air the individual pours and I lose him like there I think they kind of blur out maybe two point two ish two point oh head okay runs the rest of it I'm ready to retouch when a duplicate that lola and that lola is the color and tone and normally what I'm doing isn't even now even ng out blotchy nous so if the face is a little bit read here I take the correct tone and I paced it clone it over for her what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a lighter tone skin and clone it to fill in the shadows of the darker tones when you fill in shadows it reduces the appearance of dimension of the wrinkles which makes them look more subtle you are basically being the white reflector which is pretty cool alright blooming in grab my clone stamp you can do lighten if you want if you wantto and the reason I might recommend this is if I just do normal clone and she has this much wrinkles I might actually grab from the shadows from the wrinkles like there's not really much wayto avoid it so if I'm grabbing from apart with wrinkles and I'm trying to fill in wrinkles it might grab some of that shadow so instead I might just use lightning because then is on ly going to fill in and lighten up areas I'm going to test out my capacity I usually start a little bit higher like maybe fifty percent and test it out and see if it works and that's kind of work from there it's not really a set guideline so I'm grabbing brighter areas and feeling in the shadows of it and I'm going to do this maybe a little bit heavy and then we come back off if it later I just want to make sure you can see I could come over here to her cheek I'm going to select this lighter area of her cheek and start just pumping in the shadows a little bit and what I want to make sure is that I don't get that like if you want it too much it's like there's texture but there's no matching shadow and doesn't quite make sense you don't want to go too overboard it wont look right especially for someone who clearly has defined wrinkles filling under here a little bit come over to this side of her face and around here maybe soften that up a bit and around her chin cool definitely here I want to soften that up suspicions does not like really defining feature of her face so that in I also do this and a lot of photos I tried to clone a more even highlight on the nose if you see a lot of textures and pours I just go over that a few times to try to fill in some of those pores and give you just a little bit more even of a highlight tiny bit and then up here these are things I would want to not totally get rid of just soften a little bit all right clicking around good let me do one more fill it in over here so let's take a look at where we got so far and so I'm just getting rid of some of the depths she definitely still has the wrinkles but they're not as heavy or not as defined and people always say how far do you go well that's I mean that's kind of you what do you what's the point of the photograph I would probably do something around there may be a little bit more write down around here something like that okay so that is definitely what I would do on I was asked the question the other day about would I contour someone who's older and I would I'm just kind of careful that it makes sense still to the face let us I'm going to group all that again night is group those and uh it's called its frequency separation okay and let's add a contour so I'm going to add a contour color neutral I'm using my action at the contour so let us paint in some highlights and shadows it's a black mask by default which means that the highlight areas hidden is black so you're going to grab your white brush to paint on that highlight and I'm going to start painting and a little bit of highlights here and I can always build so I just do it a little bit I can come back and revisit it so we got the highlight on the chin highlight on the uh right above her nose I would make the highlight a little bit more to find at the top of her nose hai lai around here that looks good I can I think I can go a little more on the top of her cheeks all right now it's through their shadows same thing we're not painting in shadows were revealing that shadow curves adjustment we had that's pain in shadows and what I'm looking for for her face is she already has that contour you can see it so I'm matching that instead of making it up whereas if somebody actually had a flatter lit face like the previous person previous woman I just made up where I thought it should go and do a little bit of contouring on the news great darken down around here a little bit and so let's take a look at grandma so you could do something like that and I don't know how far do you want to take it so what do you guys think further less you know kind of depends what's nice for the frequency separation too I can always go and went a little too far let's bring it back a little bit or you can always add a lair mask paint black to hide that if I went too far so let's say I think I went a little bit too far right here so I can kind of bring that area back by adding a lair mass down here the rectangle of the circle innit painting black to hide that effect how is questions here or there are questions here I think they're overwhelmed I love it I love it everyone is very excited with what you're doing there just sharing how much time you're saving them and how much they love it got a couple of questions about like options different ways to do things of course angela gs would be even greater to use dodge and like many shadows for what you're doing now would that work selecting using dodge and in selecting its menu shadows for doing what you're doing now um uh if you do it correctly with the right blend modes it's the exact same thing so whatever you're happy way noticed the readiness like right underneath her eyes there you could do the same technique as we did in the beginning where you went in and he selected that particular tone of red and then shifted it just a little bit drag around the hue so that it's not as red it might change the lip a little bit and that's okay you just mask it out so I would I would do that as well actually test re touched her this morning on I played with that a little bit that's cool because love and photography had said any tips for giving clarity the eyes without going too far especially from a chair subject was with readiness or yellow in the white so a couple things that I would do with that I'm going to give you a frequency separation caution somethingto watch out for is when you're working with frequency separation like I have here right now my texture and my tone is separated if I go ahead and try to do things like liquefy changing the shape of her face so what I mean I don't need to for her but if you did it's going to mess it up because they're not talking to each other so you have texture over here in the color that doesn't match in a different place so what you need to dio is you need teo click on that top that top lor of the frequency separation and you would hold this is the one shortcut that I use that's like a little complicated ready basically push everything command option shift e command option shifty ok what it does is it clicked on that top that top hi lair it takes everything below it swishes it together and puts it on another layer but it doesn't flatten the layers below so if you need to go back you can still grab it so command option shifty and now we've got one group it okay so now this this file I could go ahead and I can start liquefying and what not the reason I did that is going to show you something real quick with their eyes that if I were so in frequency separation the color and the textures difference would start method up what I would do for eyes is always test this on everybody sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't I could go ahead and do two things first of all if she has really really yellow eyes which means she kind of does it's not that bad I could do that same thing I showed you in the beginning where I went in I selected that yellow and I shifted it but sometimes people they're like a little dull they lack from sparkle eso all select the eyes or this works for deep sunken eyes which is related to scan if someone just has really deep sunken eyes or you didn't let it cry quite right and they're a little bit too dark or your outside an overcast day and I just they have no life to them seem flick the eyes and I hit command j which all that does is it copies and hide it it copies those eyes into a new layer that's a command j does it take your selection copies and I always try this it doesn't always work but I do image adjustments shadows highlights and what shadows highlights does it's kind of like in the old old camera raw like fill light kind of britain's everything up fills in the shadows a little bit on so if someone has kind of dollar eyes or deep sunken it helps but it also brings out a little bit more color you can also in this case change the blend mode because did you see before when I did that too before after so the skin got a little bit more saturated so it's kind of obvious especially if you have that person their eyes weren't lit correctly you duplicate those eyes and then you do the shadows highlight it brightens it up but now it doesn't match the rest of the skin and you're like okay well I got to make a match the rest of skinner it's obvious well what you khun dio is you're telling photoshopped no no no that's not meant to be a color change that just meant to be a changin exposure its luminosity that go up and change my blend motel luminosity and now it just lightens it up instead of changing the color brendan j and deep both want to know are there any instances where you work on the high texture layer yes I'll work on the high texture there if there's a texture I don't like what that would be would be really dry flaky skin I don't I don't like that and I will go in and you just try toe clone it out or spot healing it out or if there's a large blemish and you did frequency separation you got rid of the color of the blemish but you can actually look at the photo and you can still see the outline of where it was you've got to get rid of that on the highlighter or you will be able to see it most people won't notice it unless it's a huge print and you're looking up close but it's still your you know you know it's there on so I would go in and get rid of that for her I mean I would only do it if I was trying to get rid of specific wrinkles and I'm not going to do that with her a defining feature of her face so probably not in this particular instance

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Makeup Contour Reference
Retouching Checklist
Frequency Separation
Retouching Files
Keynote 1
Keynote 2
Gear Guide
Skin Retouching Action File

Ratings and Reviews

Aliah Husain
 

Lindsay is an INCREDIBLE photographer and teacher, and also seems like a wonderful person! This class is great for beginners and more advanced photographers, as well. She goes into tons of detail on all the technical stuff like lighting and editing, and it is fascinating to see her interact with and shoot her models, work with her equipment, and photoshop like a pro. Huge amounts of information for what you pay for. If you are looking to improve your skills in photographing and retouching people, purchase this class!!

Kirsi Todd
 

Lindsay is probably my favourite instructor (and that is saying a lot, as there are many incredible instructors). She is so clear in her teaching and she also seems like such a nice and humble person despite her incredible success. This course is one of the best courses I have ever seen. Thank you Lindsay and Creative Live!

Andrew Lederman
 

Great course. Lindsay Adler is one of the best instructors for any creative live classes that I have seen. Simple and easy to understand, clear workflow, very friendly and non condescending like some other instructors. Could you put a link (maybe I just didn't see it) to where to download the actions used in this tutorial?

Student Work

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