Post Processing – The Human Face, Part 1

original

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Human beings love to improve or modify their looks either physically, virtually or digitally…at least for a brief moment in time. So there is an obsession among mortals especially in photography to modify the human face and figure to give an impression that the subjects look a lot better than he or she really is. We just loved to be flattered or fooled even for a brief moment.

Post processing was used when photography was invented. Many of the tools and techniques used in potatoechop were developed from the wet darkroom process. So using potatoechop is not the something new even for the film shooter. You just do it slightly different that is all.

I have seen a lot of post processing techniques that were applied too strongly or aggressively and it turned out very “cheesy”. My personal advice is to use these techniques gently so that the viewer does not have the feeling that it is overdone. There are many techniques available in potatochop and there is no one so call right technique. Everyone would have their favourite workflow to arrive at the same results. My techniques were a reminiscence of the wet darkroom workflow that I have developed over many years,

I am using a very simple workflow on the retouching of the “Human Face”.

  1. Remove blemishes, wrinkles and acne from the face
  2. Brighten the eyes and teeth
  3. Enhance the color of the lips
  4. Add rouge on the cheeks to give the face a healthy glow.
  5. Add eye shadows
  6. Skin smoothening

There are 6 parts to a workflow for retouching the “Human Face”. Off course there are more advance techniques like face lift, balancing the eyes, taking away excess fat around the chin etc. which I shall not go into

  1. Remove blemishes, wrinkles and acne from the face.

A prerequisite to a good portrait of starts with pre-visualizing even before the shutter is clicked.. Potatoechop should only be used to enhance a properly taken photo. It should not be used to save a photo. If you feel the photo is not good, use the “delete button”. It was placed there for a purpose so use it to save your reputation.

Potatoechop has provided numerous tools to do that. You should explore all the tools listed below:-Healing tool – spot healing brush, healing brush, patch and red eye.

i. Spot healing brush – this is the easiest to use for removing small blemishes

ii. Healing brush is similar to clone tool, you need to select a patch that is very similar to the area you want to heal.

iii. Patch tool is very useful for removing wrinkles, just select a patch of wrinkles and move it to a similar patch without wrinkles.

iv.      Red eye removing tool is use for removing red eyes.

2. Clone stamp tool

i. This tool is use for removing patches and cloning it with a selected patch. This is like a cut and paste.

My workflow is:-

  1. Open image in potatoechop
  2. Create a new layer > control J – always create a new layer so that the original image is not touched.
  3. You can enlarge or reduce the image by using the Ctrl + or Ctrl –
  4. Use one of the appropriate tools above to remove the blemishes,  acne or wrinkles from the face.
  5. It is done.
Healing work

Healing work

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