Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

Here is a before and after picture of one of the Senior Portraits I did over the weekend.

She had a fair amount of acne and other blemishes as you can see if you download the pictures.

I have it down to about 20 minutes a picture to crop, set exposure and the deal with the blemishes ........ yeah :D

(Download)


(Download)

superpijak Loc: Middle TN

Gotta love it, fine work BTW... :thumbup:

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

Thanks Ted 8-)

gym Loc: Athens, Georgia

Nice job Jerry!

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

Nice work, looks really good. What PP tool did you use to get this results so fast.

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

Thanks

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

I use both LR and PS

Actually I timed it over 33 pictures yesterday ........ 15 minutes per picture. They didn't look bad after simple crop and exposure setting but I wanted to do the facial work which included acne removal, skin softening, lip high lights, teeth whitening, eye/iris and eye brows.

jrushphoto Loc: Flint, MI

Very nice work, Beercat. I'm in almost the same vein as you, full time job and my photography is a rewarding side business. Have you ever looked into Portrait Professional? It is a FANTASTIC pp tool and it cut my retouching time by, I'd say, conservatively, at least 75 percent. Check it out if you haven't already, you won't regret it. VERY easy to use, you can create your own custom settings if you want to and I would bet money you would cut that 15 minutes down to 5 or even less!

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Love the skin tone Jerry! Very nice, and not overdone.

Jrush, sorry, but you touched on a nerve with Portrait professional. I apologize to you, but I honestly think it is the worst PP program out there.

Of course, only my opinion. Everything that is bad about people up in arms about "photoshopping" in magazines, is done to the extreme in that program.

Yes, some do like the Barbie doll look, but it is really "out of fashion" now (thankfully)

I'm just an old fart, that used to hand brush out blemishes with a fine paintbrush on prints back in the day, worked in a Pro Color lab correcting other people's portraits (blemish removal, etc.) Skin smoothing just makes my skin crawl. That's why I really like frequency separation now. It keeps the texture of the skin, but you can really fix the blemishes without people looking like dolls.

Really sorry for disagreeing with you, and it isn't a personal attack, I just have to jump in, whenever someone talks about how wonderful that program is. I think it is a disservice to great photographers everywhere.

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

The PP time was long because of the all skin blemishes this high school senior had, much acne and I painfully removed all the acne, probably about 100 spots on every picture. If there wasn't acne the PP would of been around 5 min per picture.

I intentionally back off of the skin softening so it's believable, this is true of the other facial brushes, I use about half of what some others will do, again making it believable 8-)

jrushphoto Loc: Flint, MI

No offense taken whatsoever, bk, I greatly respect your opinion. You are one of the few on this forum who can agree to disagree without being belittleing or condescending in any way. I, too, being 60 years old, come from the days of brush retouching, blemish dodging in the darkroom, and so on and I agree with you completely about the "baby doll" look, I didn't like it when it was in fashion. I much prefer as natural a look as possible for people. That is why I indicated that you could create you own "actions" if you will as a preset within the program to suit any individual tastes. I think it would be very wrong to rely on the programs preset "recipies" alone (as they are a bit extreme for my taste), but there are variable controls with all of the effects that allow you to fine tune any of the adjustments from 0 to 100 percent. Portrait Pro is no different from LR (which some people hate as you well know from other threads on UHH), PS, onOne, Topaz, Nik, or any other of the myriad of PP programs in that it is simply a tool that should always be used with some degree of common sense and only as much as necessary to achieve the desired goal. I don't believe it is a disservice to any photographer, great or not, to let them know about a possible tool that may be of value to them. It would be a disservice to think that they could not evaluate it and decide for themselves if it would be useful within their own workflow.

Thank you for your continued insight and advice, I always read your posts completely ( there are many on UHH that I have discovered can't offer an opinion without a cup of poisin attached). You always provide valuable information.

Jim

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

:thumbup: