Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

Remember, you adjust the Opacity of the Eraser just like a paint brush. Which will give you a littler touch. Once you get used to it. You find yourself way ahead then if you tired this in Light Room.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Of course I approve. I just said I think people here share generously. I only said if I had a REALLY special look that set me apart from everyone, that I would not share - not on forum like this. You would have to pay me!

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

Captain, that isn't the reason you wouldn't approve. The picture I sent him was on of a female that had some very bad facial features. An I also felt that they should be put on this forum. I sent him one before and the other treated with the brush as I described above. You were just my scape goat for not posting.
Sorry if you took it any other way.

aisajib Loc: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Yeah that would have been somewhat inappropriate.

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

Yes, but it is a great lean tool. I often work with photo's of this nature, just to try and improve my skills. Almost anyone can make a pretty girl look good. I agree with the captain and a few of the others, Most of those portrait programs, tend to remove to many of the imperfections in a persons face, making them look Plastic or to me, way over done in the make up department. But that is just my two cents worth.

PalePictures Loc: Traveling

I know how it was retouched(To get the effect without the exact workflow). As the Captain said. You would have to pay me. Even after I showed you and spent a week or two or ten. You still would not be able to do it. You would only be on a journey to learn how. That Journey is constantly evolving.

Why in the world would anyone who has spent years to learn and perfect a technique just give it away? The real answer is, they can't. It comes down to time spent. Sadly there is no substitute for this. I have spent literally thousands of dollars on retouching classes and videos (no the videos on Youtube just don't cut it). If you want to play you have to pay.....but it still takes time. What I have found is that people who have really unique styles are artist as much as photographers. They are as good with a brush(especially the ones that they make) as they are with managing color and light. From start to finish quality is there all the way through the process. Unfortunately(or fortunately) spending the time, money and paying the price is just not in the cards for everyone.

Look at yourself. You want someone to give you their secret. If you had the idea that you would pay any price cross any obstacle to become good then you wouldn't care. The chances are you will not pay. You will rationalize how your images are as good as anyones else's. This is the second flaw. Lying to yourself (in the end). This unfortunately is where many people are in their head.(Yes your images are as bad as you think they are before you have to ask what everyone else thinks.)
There is the sane bunch that just wants to share a snapshot to record a moment in time. At the moment I wish I was in that crowd. I am really a part of that insane crowd of wannabes. I have one leg up on you though. I am still willing to pay any price.

Going a little bit crazy at the moment.....

(I am breaking a rule here.....A portrait artist never shows his before image...This before image was without makeup.. and is part of a course I am developing and selling on Natural light images.) We all have to make a living.

Wether or not you like the after image is subjective.
I liked it. The model liked it and believed the final image looked just like her. In fact the image did look just like her with makeup. The girl was 22 year old.

The typical reaction to people seeing heavy retouched images is to get mad. They instantly go to "it's fake". This is why most all of the really good portrait artist do not show their before images. The camera image is no more real than the post processed one. I have never seen with my eyes the amount of flaws in a face that my camera exposes. On any given day blemishes and skin tones will be different. Curls will be in the hair one day that weren't there before. See the extra curl added in the photo below for symmetry?
A good portrait photographer is not selling reality. They are selling the acceptance of their view of reality.

One final note. One of the things that I have learned in this process is to become a world class portrait artist it helps to be good with color and tone. After you've mastered pose, light and all the other things necessary for good portraiture you will inevitably end up working on your color. I still struggle with color.....but I'm getting better everyday.

Note...No plugin was used in the image below. It's just not possible to retouch a photo in this manner with a plugin.

Best regards
Russ Elkins

Before


After

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Wonderful work! And you folks take notice - no stupid facial restructuring like Portrait Professional does. She has the exact same (albeit gorgeous) face.

photoninja1 Loc: Tampa Florida

Softening is done by blending a blurred version with the original, masking out anuthing (like eyes) that you want to remain sharp. To me, these look way overdone to the point that the model looks plastic. Anyhow, you can use PS or Portrait Pro or a number of other softwares to achieve the effect. The best edits are those which you don't notice and the skin looks real.

amehta Loc: Boston

I never keep the facial restructuring which Portrait Professional does. It would be nice if there was a preference to simply turn that off. I'll have to play with setting up presets more, it didn't work quite right the first time I tried it.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Yeah - you cannot turn it off, you have to run the slider for that all the way to the left every time.

I so use it occasionally for the mass-call headshot sessions I do for real estate firms. The images are for business card and web use and a light application this without the sculpting feature works pretty well. I prefer Portraiture from Imagenomic - much easier to get a natural look, IMO. For the 16x20 portraits, I do it manually.

MDoner Loc: Norman, OK.

I haven't used Photoshop in a while. I've been using Lightroom!
I googled "Adjusting clarity in Photoshop" and this is what I got. Looks like a lot of trouble! lol It also depends on the version of Photoshop you have.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100701042142AAxVm0O

The video search:
https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&q=adjusting+clarity+in+photoshop&tbm=vid

Best of luck!!

amehta Loc: Boston

With Portrait Pro 11, after it does it's initial processing, there are 8 categories which can be turned off with one click each. I usually turn 4-5 off immediately, generally only leaving skin smoothing, eyes, and nose/mouth.

I had not heard of Portraiture. I will check it out, thanks.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

For REAL retouching you need a pixel-level program, Photoshoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop, etc. Lightroom does a lot of great things- detailed retouching is not one of them.

MDoner Loc: Norman, OK.

I have come to realize that! When I bought it at Best Buy they said "oh yeah, you can do pretty much all the same stuff." They lied. lol Oh well it does what I need it to most of the time.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Best Buy drones are there to sell you stuff, not actually provide intelligent information.