Varis PhotoMedia Tutorials

2003, Lee Varis

Welcome
This tutorial has been prepared for the photographer who is striving to learn digital imag-
ing. I make an effort to supply current information about digital imaging techniques and
general information about computer technology that is pertinent for todays professional
photographer. This information is based on my personal experience down in the trenches
at the front lines of the digital revolution that is sweeping the photographic industry.
One thing is certain: all of the information contained herein will be obsolete in a fairly
short time - how short, I cant say. Be forewarned that things are changing very rapidly
and the only way to stay competitive is to keep learning. I devote a good percentage of my
time learning new things and I am attempting to share what I learn with you but this in-
formation will go out of date so you should be fexible and not take this tutorial to be the
ultimate statement on the subject.
I consider the knowledge contained in any of my tutorials to be public domain but the
form in which this knowledge is presented is copyrighted as are all the photographic im-
ages used as examples. Unless otherwise noted all imagery is copyrighted by Lee Varis and
any use of these images without permission is forbidden. You are permitted to use this
tutorial for your personal education - you are not permitted to sell or otherwise distribute
this material. Please contact me for any other use.
I maintain a web site where I post additional information, examples and tutorials. You are
invited to browse various portfolios as well as download free material and purchase addi-
tional tutorials at:
http://www.varis.com
I hope you fnd the information contained in this tutorial helpful. Please let me know if
you fnd any errors or omissions - Im always trying to improve these materials! You may
contact me via E-mail at:
varis@varis.com
best regards, Lee Varis 2003
Download Sample Files
Sample fles for this tutorial are available for download. All
images are copyrighted 2003 by Lee Varis unless otherwise
noted. Use of these fles is restricted to personal education in this
tutorial - no other use is permited. By clicking the download but-
ton below you are agreeing to these terms.
Download Files
These fles are compressed in a Binhex archive. To use these
fles you must frst extract them from the archive using a fle
compression utility. You can download the excellent free Stufft
Expander utility from Aladin Software by clicking below:
Stufft Expander
Choose your platform from the buttons at the top of the web
page - Mac, Windows and Unix
RGB Skin Tone
Natural Enhancement for Portraits
Photographers are most often called upon to portray their subjects
in a fattering light. In some cases, the subject can be artifcially
glamorized, rendered absolutely devoid of defects. Other situations
call for a more subtle naturalistic approach. Sometimes we are even
asked to create the fnal effect without retouching. Everybody re-
ally wants to believe that they look good without retouching and,
as a consequence, nobody wants to notice the retouching even if it
has been applied liberally.
The frst enhancement that can be applied without the dam-
aging the mystique of reality is color correction specifcally
skin color. Skin color is so important for the fattering portrait that
much time, energy and expense is spent on makeup. Bad make-
up can ruin a shot as easily as bad lighting or bad exposure! In
skilled hands, Photoshop can provide the enhancement normally
demanded of makeup. It can be applied secretly and it washes off
without a trace.
The following project showcases a naturalistic approach to skin
tone and texture enhancement in a promotional headshot. The
subject is a middle aged man who is not about to wear makeup
but we must still solve a problem that would commonly call for
makeup. In the process we will use profle manipulation, color cor-
rection, layer blend modes and flters but we will not touch the
Healing Brush or the Clone Tool!
The Demanding Subject
Here is the original digital capture I did of E.
Douglas Kihn. Dr. Doug is an Acupuncturist
and Chinese Herbalist. He runs the California
Longevity Center (http://www.calongevity.com/)
and he needs this photo for his web site and other
publishing materials. Dr. Doug would like to look
like the friendly, healthy, professional that he is.
The digital camera is delivering a fle in what
passes for Adobe 98 colorspace this image suf-
fers from a common malady of overly saturated
red tones that is primarily exhibited in the bright
pink skin tone seen here. Now, while Doug has a
naturally reddish skin color, he doesnt look quite
so cartoony in person. Very often, when a camera
manufacturer offers the option to save a captured
fle as Adobe 98, what they are really doing is sim-
ply assigning Adobe 98 as the profle. Mostly, the
natural colorspace for the camera fles is sRGB!
The frst thing you should do, when presented
with this sort of thing is to try assigning another
profle to see if it improves the overall color. This
is a no-penalty way of adjusting the image because
it doesnt involve changing the actual numbers
of the RGB fle...
Select: Image-> Mode-> Assign Profle... and
choose sRGB...
Click to Assign
sRGB
sRGB - sometimes its not so shitty RGB
sRGB has an undeserved reputation as a bad
colorspace. It is not good or bad in and of itself
- only when mis-applied. In this case, sRGB was
actually the correct colorspace for this image.
Not all cameras will cheat with colorspaces
but many do and its worth experimenting a bit to
fnd out what your particular camera is doing.
This only applies to fles delivered as Tiff or
Jpeg straight from the camera. If you save out
the Raw fle you can control the color render-
ing more fully in post processing. This particular
shot was primarily targeted for use on the Web
and shot as Jpeg just for convenience.
While this little Profle move has improved
the color there are still some problems to be ad-
dressed. Overall the skin color is a tad too Ma-
genta but the biggest problem is that now we can
see that there are some red blotchy areas around
the nose, mouth and chin. This is just the thing
that makeup would fx but alas, no makeup art-
ist was available and I doubt whether Doug would
have submitted to the indignation (makeup is not
a health practice he would endorse).
The solution is to equalize the skin tones us-
ing a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer...
Click Back to
Adobe 98
Click to
Final Version
Analyzing the Problem
Reading the Info Palette Numbers
We start by analyzing the color
numbers to get a idea about what
specifc color adjustment well need.
When dealing with skin color it is
most helpful to look at CMY numbers rather than RGB
numbers. Make sure you set up the info palette to display
CMYK Color as the Second Color Readout in the Info Pal-
ette Options. Do this by selecting Palette Options from the
fy out menu at the upper right of the Info Palette.
The RGB numbers reveal that both areas in question are
mostly red with a slight yellow bias - how red or yellow is
hard to determine from the numbers alone. The CMY num-
bers clearly reveal that the nose is more magenta than yel-
low while the side of the face is more yellow than magenta.
A good formula for skin color (in western European culture)
is roughly equal M and Y with yellow a few points high-
er. If magenta is higher you have a sunburn or acne, neither
of which is appropriate for our good doctor. We need to get
the side of the face to be a little more magenta and the red
blotchy areas to be less magenta and more yellow...
Hue/Saturation
Adjustment Layer
We will use a Hue/Saturation Layer to selec-
tively shift the red areas towards yellow and the
yellow areas towards red.
(1) Select: Hue/Saturation from the adjustment
layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.
(2) Set up the Hue/Saturation dialog to Edit
Reds by selecting Reds from the Edit Menu at
the top of the dialog.
You will notice that triangle sliders appear be-
tween the colored bars at the bottom of the dialog.
The gray region between these sliders represent
the color range that will be affected when we
move the Hue, Saturation or Lightness sliders in
the center of the dialog. The dark gray center bar is
the range that if fully affected and the lighter gray
bars to each side are the regions that ramp off
from fully affected to unaffected.
There are three eyedroppers - normal, plus and
minus. The normal one is selected by default as
soon as you select a color range from the Edit
menu. We will use this normal eyedropper to
select the specifc red color in the image that we
wish to shift...
1
2
Hue/Sat Range Sliders
1
2
(1) With the normal eyedropper selected, move it
into the image and click on a representative red skin
tone. The gray range bars will shift slightly to cen-
ter on the region containing that color. We can con-
strain this region by using the minus eyedropper to
subtract a color from the region.
(2) Select the minus eyedropper and click on the
yellower skin at the side of the face. Youll notice the
middle gray region gets smaller as the yellow-red gets
subtracted
You can also manually move the little white han-
dles at the ends of the gray bars to adjust the ramp
or the center gray regions. While the rainbow bars at
the bottom of the dialog give us some feedback for the
region were going to affect, we need to get a little bet-
ter preview of what parts in the image are going to be
affected...
Testing the Range
Slide the Hue slider full left to rotate the hue
180. The fully affected region will turn a bright
cyan with the ramped areas showing up as blue-
magenta areas. While you have the hue slider set
this way you can move the gray region sliders to
constrain your ultimate hue shift to just the re-
gions that need it.
Shifting the Hue
Once you have trimmed the range where
you like it return the Hue slider to zero - then
push the slider to the right, towards yellow, until
the red blotchy areas start to blend into the other
skin tone. Keep your eye on the info palette! The
ideal skin tone will have yellow and magenta
very close with yellow a few points higher. Cyan
should be between 1/4 and 1/3 of the magenta
value. If cyan is at 0 the color is too saturated!
A high cyan value means the skin is too gray.
Our shot of Dr. Doug has the opposite problem
the color is perhaps too Disneyesque. Move the
saturation slider to the left. The value of the skin
is fairly light so we will have to compromise a bit
on the level of cyan of course youre allowed to
look at the monitor as well. Just remember youre
looking for a good color for human skin not Barbi
Doll plastic!
Trim Range for Yellow
Now that weve taken care of the skin thats
too red we will address the skin thats a tad too
yellow. First we have to select another color range.
Go to the Edit menu and select: Yellows. The
range bars will move into the yellow region. Take
the eyedropper and click on the side of the face
where the skin color is more yellow. The range
bars will shift back a bit into the red region and
the Edit menu will probably change automati-
cally to: Reds 2 - this happens because, as far as
Photoshop is concerned, the skin color you clicked
on is more red than yellow.
Move the Hue slider back to the left, as before,
shifting the color of the affected areas to cyan.
Trim the region sliders until you have isolated the
affected area to just the side of the face. Now we
can fnish equalizing the skin color.
Equalizing the Skin Color
Once we have our color region in place we can
shift the Hue slider to the left just a bit towards
red. Again were aiming for Yellow and magenta
close with yellow a few points higher dont try to
hit an exact color; some color variation is natu-
ral and desirable. Equalizing the skin tone this
way is very much like using a makeup base color
to even out the skin and cover up blemishes. If you
handle this well it will be seem as if nothing were
done to the image and yet it has a huge impact!
Masking off the Adjustment
All this hue shifting has caused the teeth and
lips to look just a bit off. We need to mask the ef-
fect in this region. Make sure the layer mask for
the Hue/Saturation adjustment is active click
on the mask thumbnail in the Layers palette
so that the mask icon is visible next to the eye for
that Layer. Now take a brush with black and paint
over the area of the lips and teeth. You might want
to do this with a reduced opacity setting and grad-
ually remove the color shift, returning the lips to
a more natural pink color and the teeth to a more
natural yellow!
Final Skin Color
The fnal skin color looks a lot healthier and
it also minimizes the freckles and skin texture
without looking unnatural or painted.
To see how far weve come click on the Origi-
nal button below
Click to
Original
Original Color
Click to
Adjusted Color
The original image might not seem so bad if
we hadnt seen the corrected version. Analyzing
the color in the frst step was our frst clue and by
using the values in the info palette we were able
to remove all traces of red blotchy skin without
resorting to painting or cloning.
This technique can work miracles with teenage
acne, red veins in noses, puffy eyes, etc...
Click to
Final
Sharp? not for Skin
You may have noticed that this photo has not
been sharpened and so it has appeared to be a little
soft. When it comes time to print this image we
will need to apply some level of sharpening. Once
we do even a modest amount of unsharp mask
we encounter another problem. The skin that
we worked so hard on has now taken on a much
harsher texture though the sharpening works for
the sparkle in his eyes and teeth wed prefer not to
have so much detail in the skin texture.
Lets back up! We will frst apply a skin smooth-
ing technique that flls in most of the wrinkles
without an excessively retouched look!
Set Up Smoothing
1
2
Now were going to set up two smoothing
layers!
(1) Create a new empty layer at the top of the
Layers palette by clicking the new layer icon at
the bottom of the Layers palette.
(2) With this layer selected, hold down the
option/alt key and select: Merge Visible from
the layer options menu at the upper right of the
Layer palette. This will stamp the composite re-
sult of all the layers into this top most layer.
Median Filter
Now well blur this new layer. I always
do this sort of thing as a two step process.
First run the Median Filter select: Fil-
ter-> Noise-> Median... this flter is a special
type of blur that is normally used to smooth
out noise. The Median flter tries to pre-
serve sharpness at major edge transitions.
We get a good deal of texture smoothing
without totally obliterating image features.
This will be important once we blend this
blur over the regular layers.
The second step involves the Gaussian
Blur flter to take a little of the edge out of
the Median result...
Gaussian Blur
After running the Median flter, there is
some subtle banding visible in the smooth
areas - I like to kill this with a slight Gauss-
ian Blur. This is not strictly necessary for the
application we have in mind but I like to do
this as a matter of habit. Select: Filter-> Blur-
> Gaussian Blur... Use a small radius... just
enough to smooth out the micro bands left
over from the Median flter...
Set Up Light & Dark Layers
Next we will copy this blur layer drag the
layer thumbnail onto the new layer icon at the
bottom of the Layers palette. This will create a du-
plicate at the top of the layer stack. Re-name these
layers Darken and Lighten double click the
name next to the thumbnail to edit the text.
Now, change the Apply Mode to Lighten and
Darken to match up with the named layers se-
lect: Lighten from the apply modes menu just
below the Layers tab in the palette.
Once you do this, you will you will have two
smooth layers - one with a Darken apply mode
and the other with the Lighten apply mode. We
will use the interaction of these two apply modes
with the underlying layers to fll in the pores
and smaller wrinkles in the face.
Before proceeding, turn off the visibility of the
Lighten layer by clicking off the eye for that
layer...
Darken Apply Mode
The Median/Blurred layer applied over the
regular image in Darken mode creates a kind of
diffusion effect where the darker details remain
unaffected and show up as dark lines. The lighter
details in the skin texture are covered up with the
blurred layer. Darken applies only where it can
make the underlying layers darker. We can con-
trol how much or how little we cover up by some
subtle moves with Levels and blending options.
Open the Levels dialog directly on the Dark-
en layer: Image-> Adjustments-> Levels (cmd/
ctrl-L). To cover up more dark details move the
midpoint slider to the right, darkening the layer
slightly. Most of the skin texture we want to ob-
scure is dark so by darkening the Darken layer
more detail is covered by the smoothing.
Blending Options
This next step brings back some of the high-
lights: Select: Blending Options from the layer
options drop down menu. This opens the Layer
Styles dialog were only concerned with the
lower part of the dialog: Blend If Gray (as shown
below). Move the right triangle slider just a bit to
the left until the specular highlight in the eye
becomes visible. Now hold down the option/alt
key and split the slider, move the left
half over to the left until a few more high-
light details are visible.
At this point, youve achieved a fairly
subtle diffusion effect and for many imag-
es this may be all that is needed. You can
temper the effect by reducing the opacity
slider for this darken layer to reveal just
enough of the sharper image below. For
this particular project were going to com-
bine both Darken and Lighten layers for a
more controlled way to fll-in midtone
details and preserve only the highlight
and shadow details we want.
Change the layer opacity to 50% and
then turn off visibility for this Darken
layer so we can concentrate on the Light-
en layer...
Lighten Apply Mode
Select the Lighten layer and, as we did
before, run a levels command on the layer.
If we darken this layer we will show more of
the light details. For many images this might
be desirable but here all the little white lines
that show up are distracting. In this case, I
prefer to cover up a little bit more so we move
the midpoint slider to the left.
Now, we have two layers really doing the
work that one Normal layer could do af-
ter all, the normal apply would cover both
dark and light details and you could still use
Blending Options to adjust what gets cov-
ered and what gets exposed. In many cases
this would be a perfectly acceptable strat-
egy. However, having the lighten and darken
components separated allows for much fner
more subtle control for creating a look that
is completely natural and undetectable as re-
touching or diffusion.
Blending Options/Opacity
As before, select: Blending Options from
the layer options menu this time we will
blend into the shadows using the slider posi-
tions shown below.
If we use both layers at 50% the areas in
the image where we have full coverage in the
respective layers will be smoothed completely
with the combination of both layers. The blend
point between what shows and what doesnt
can be interactively controlled by adjusting the
blending options in each layer as well as the
opacity in each layer. You can favor lighten or
darken smoothing as fts the image. In the shot
of Dr. Doug well use a pretty even blend but I
encourage you to test out different variations
to see how this all works.
Change the opacity of the layer to 50%, turn
on the visibility of the Darken layer and now
link the two layers by clicking in the well
to the left of the Darken layer thumbnail. In
the next step we will turn these linked layers
into a Layer Set...
Layer Set- Two Layers into One
Now that the two smoothing layers
are in place, we have soothed out the of-
fensive skin texture but there are areas
that are too smooth where we want full
detail to show, like the eyes, lips and
teeth. In order to avoid having to du-
plicate any masking work we might do
in two layers we will combine both the
Lighten and Darken layers into a Layer
Set.
With the two Layers now linked, se-
lect: New Set From Linked in the lay-
er options drop down menu. Name the
set Smoothing and make a mask for
the set by clicking on the mask icon
at the bottom of the Layers palette.
We can now paint into this Layer
Mask to hide the smoothing effects in
the eyes, hair, teeth, lips anywhere we
might want full sharp focus.
Layer Mask for Control
Here we have begun to mask off the smoothing
in the eye and eyebrow as well as the teeth and
lips. You only need to have certain details sharp to
convince the viewer that the image is in focus. We
leave the skin soft when we apply unsharp mask
to the whole image the pre-softened skin wont
end up looking bad.
To properly set up a Sharpen
layer, frst create an empty layer
at the top of the layer stack, hold
down the option/alt key and
select: Merge Visible from
the layer options menu. Finally,
change the layer apply mode to
Luminosity by selecting from
the apply modes menu just under
the Layers tab.
Next we will apply unsharp
mask to this layer...
Click to
Original
Apply Unsharp Mask
By applying unsharp mask to a
Luminosity layer, we avoid creat-
ing colored halos that can make the
sharpening look unnatural. Usually we
only want to apply sharpening when
we know what kind of output we are
going to. However, I like to apply a very
narrow radius sharpen as a frst stage
sharpening even before I am certain of
the output.
If I think that I might scale the im-
age up in size I will use a fairly mod-
est amount, usually 200% or less. If I
think that I will use the image at the
same size or smaller I will sharpen at
350 - 400%.
In both cases I use very narrow,
sub-pixel Radius settings - with clean
digital captures like this one I set the
Threshold to 0
To see how far weve come from the
original click on the button under the
image to the right...
Click to
Original
Finished Version
Here is the full version as it appears on Dougs
web site. You can toggle between the original
sRGB version and this one by clicking the button.
At this size the smoothing is not apparent at all.
Even at full res on a print the viewer will not be
aware that any retouching was done. Most of the
natural wrinkles (what we like to call character
lines) show up but they dont look quite as deep
and the skin texture is a lot smoother. Of course
the red blotchiness is all gone. The good thing is
that Doug is not even aware that anything has
been done
Conclusion
Natural Enhancement for Portraits
This technique turns out to be quite useful in digital captures
of people. Most digital cameras tend to emphasize red skin tones as
a result of the infrared sensitivity of the CCD or CMOS chip. There
is a trade off between ISO sensitivity and infra-red cut-off many
cameras use a slightly less dense green infra-red flter on the chip
to gain better signal to noise sensitivity in shadow tones. Most often,
even custom camera profles fail to fully compensate for this in skin
tones. Unfortunate blemishes, veins and skin pores are rendered red-
der than normal. Working the Hue/Saturation adjustment ranges can
work miracles with problem skin tones.
The 2nd part of this technique overcomes the common problem
encountered when sharpening portraits skin texture in highly de-
tailed digital portraits can get overly harsh once appropriate sharp-
ening is applied for fnal output! The two layer smoothing gives you
very fne control over the amount of smoothing and where smoothing
kicks in.
Mastering these techniques will lend your images the subtle qual-
ity the separates a great image from a simply good image. The time
spent experimenting with these techniques will be well rewarded.
Varis PhotoMedia Tutorials
2003, Lee Varis
Thank you
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. The techniques outlined here represent just the tip of the
iceberg. Photoshop is a very deep application - a person could spend years studying it and
there will always be more to learn. If all this seems a little overwhelming, take a break, do
what you feel comfortable doing in Photoshop and return to this tutorial again later on.
Often, it takes several weeks for a particular technique to sink in so give it time.
I have other tutorials available online (navigate to the methods section), some are free and
some are available for a modest charge. See tutorials and some examples of my work at:
http://www.varis.com
There are many learning resourses available on the web - here are a few other sites with
good information:
http://www.russellbrown.com http://www.creativepro.com
http://luminous-landscape.com/ http://www.imaging-resource.com/HOWTO.HTM
http://www.photoworkshop.com/ http://www.adobe.com/misc/training.html
http://studio.adobe.com/expertcenter/photoshop/
main.html
http://www.ledet.com/margulis/articles.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/ http://www.photoshopuser.com/
http://www.handson.nu/ http://photoshopgurus.info/
These last two links are typical of the majority of Photoshop tutorial sites - they are fo-
cused on cool graphics effects not photography. You might want to look over this material
anyway - sometimes you can learn a lot about basic functions in Photoshop.
Im always trying to improve these materials and Im always open to your feedback. You
may contatct me via email at:
varis@varis.com
best regards, Lee Varis 2003