Basic Portrait Retouching: Handling The Portrait With Care And Respect
Doing the basic portrait retouching should start with having a keen and careful eye and a lot of patience and time. It will be very difficult to get a good result from retouching if you are pressed with time or you are distracted and tired. One useful tip in basic portrait retouching is to allot time and care in doing the procedure.
Correcting Color and Contrast
Improving the skin's appearance in basic portrait retouching is simply covering a few blemishes and softening the entire picture. Skin tones can be even out without altering the texture of the skin. Darker tones under the mouth, next to the nose, and near the eyes should be removed to make the person in the portrait not appear bruised. Using Photoshop and other similar software, you can experiment on color and contrast correction to soften and smoothen skin. Creating a perfectly soft and even skin involves three basic steps that include the following:
Red-Eye Effect
Basic portrait retouching includes the removal of the red-eye effect. The portrait could have been picture perfect had it not been for the unsightly gleaming red eyes. What could have happened? When portraits are taken during the day or with high ambient light, the person's eye looks normal. But when they are taken with low ambient light wherein a flash is needed, the resulting portrait can have distinct redness in the eyes. This is because when flash from the camera strikes the eye, it goes through them and then is reflected back through the retina. The color reflected is red because of the red blood of the retina. In some instances, red eye is marked while in others, it is not. The state of the person's pupil matters in light reflection since dilated pupils tend to reflect more light from the retina and hence makes the eye appear redder. This situation may be prevented but if not, it can be effectively handled using the basic portrait retouching step.
Prevention and Removal of Red Eye
To prevent or at least reduce the red-eye effect, activate your camera's built-in feature on red-eye reduction. The principle is simple yet effective. The camera shoots pre-flash strobes in succession and one last strobe for finally taking the photo. The series of pre-flash strobes allows the pupil to condense so that when the portrait is actually taken, it is small enough to substantially reduce eye redness. However, if the red-eye effect could not really be prevented, then you are fortunate enough to have photo-processing software and Photoshop programs that make it easy to remove red eye from the portrait during the basic portrait retouching stage. Software is usually included in most digital cameras and although it does not eliminate red-eye effect from its source, it will give you a red-eye free photo.
Correcting Color and Contrast
Improving the skin's appearance in basic portrait retouching is simply covering a few blemishes and softening the entire picture. Skin tones can be even out without altering the texture of the skin. Darker tones under the mouth, next to the nose, and near the eyes should be removed to make the person in the portrait not appear bruised. Using Photoshop and other similar software, you can experiment on color and contrast correction to soften and smoothen skin. Creating a perfectly soft and even skin involves three basic steps that include the following:
- Remove noticeable blemishes
- Balance tones
- Minimize texture
Red-Eye Effect
Basic portrait retouching includes the removal of the red-eye effect. The portrait could have been picture perfect had it not been for the unsightly gleaming red eyes. What could have happened? When portraits are taken during the day or with high ambient light, the person's eye looks normal. But when they are taken with low ambient light wherein a flash is needed, the resulting portrait can have distinct redness in the eyes. This is because when flash from the camera strikes the eye, it goes through them and then is reflected back through the retina. The color reflected is red because of the red blood of the retina. In some instances, red eye is marked while in others, it is not. The state of the person's pupil matters in light reflection since dilated pupils tend to reflect more light from the retina and hence makes the eye appear redder. This situation may be prevented but if not, it can be effectively handled using the basic portrait retouching step.
Prevention and Removal of Red Eye
To prevent or at least reduce the red-eye effect, activate your camera's built-in feature on red-eye reduction. The principle is simple yet effective. The camera shoots pre-flash strobes in succession and one last strobe for finally taking the photo. The series of pre-flash strobes allows the pupil to condense so that when the portrait is actually taken, it is small enough to substantially reduce eye redness. However, if the red-eye effect could not really be prevented, then you are fortunate enough to have photo-processing software and Photoshop programs that make it easy to remove red eye from the portrait during the basic portrait retouching stage. Software is usually included in most digital cameras and although it does not eliminate red-eye effect from its source, it will give you a red-eye free photo.
Source...