In addition to the defects of the integument itself, such as spots, bumps, enlarged pores, circles under the eyes or freckles, skin retouching helps to deal with photographer’s mistakes, such as a shadow on the face or overexposed areas.
Professional photographers used the methods of skin retouching long before the advent of special programs and computers, although the mechanisms were different then, but the principles remained the same. The retouching process, regardless of the chosen technique, is a rather complicated and painstaking task, it requires diligence and certain skills. But if you try, you can gradually learn this art, the main thing is patience, desire and the availability of necessary funds.
The main tool used in modern photography for retouching is Photoshop. More precisely, several techniques and tools that work within the framework of this program. To do professional skin retouching in the photo, you need to master not so many tricks, but you can hone your skills then for a long time. That is, technically there is nothing special in this process, the main difficulties are in skills and a sense of proportion.
The tools with which professional skin retouching is carried out today are lightening and darkening, color correction and smoothing. But there are many tricks: someone adjusts the existing layers in the photo in manual mode, while someone creates a new layer and “pulls” it onto the existing contours according to the mask principle. But in the first and second case, it will take more than one hour to get a good result, and it may take more than one day for a beginner to retouch the skin.
The World Wide Web is full of various tips, lessons and other information on how to properly carry out skin retouching. Photoshop is used in almost all materials. So with this program, desire and time, any beginner can master this difficult, quite interesting technology.
When processing photos in order to hide flaws, it is important not to overdo it. This applies to all stages, including general light and color correction, skin retouching, as well as other processing steps. If you overdo it, the people in the photo may look like dolls or mannequins - with unnaturally smooth and glossy skin. Perhaps for some magazines this option is suitable, but for a family album - definitely not. Too smooth skin is a typical retouching mistake. In addition, quite often a face turns out to be an unnatural shade (greenish, yellow or pink), which also most often indicates excessive efforts.
In order to achieve the optimal balance between the ideal and natural condition of the skin of people in the photo, training is necessary. With the accumulation of experience and the acquisition of personal skills, it will be easier to navigate in which situation which technique is better to use and what to do if the result does not meet expectations.
It turns out that in theory, retouching faces in Photoshop is very simple - a dozen mouse movements, 3-4 tools - and you're done. But in practice, everything is somewhat more complicated, because the computer and the human eye perceive the image a little differently. So what to do on a PC so that the result shakes human vision, this is not work, but art.