Bad skin

[Alice Morrison]

We've all had this experience: photographing models whose skin is less than perfect (as in, most of us).

How do you minimize the effect of bad skin with your lighting? Is it purely a software issue with you now? Soft filters?

Frankly, I see value in using the "less sharp" lenses and cameras in the studio to give me a head start here.

[hartcons]

Can't you just dial back in-camera sharpness and/or avoid sharpening in post? Don't some folks like to put vaseline on their lens? My dentist has a microscope and my 5 o'clock shadow looks absolutely disgusting on that thing :-\

[photosbymorgan2]

Originally Posted by Alice Morrison

We've all had this experience: photographing models whose skin is less than perfect (as in, most of us).

How do you minimize the effect of bad skin with your lighting? Is it purely a software issue with you now? Soft filters?

Frankly, I see value in using the "less sharp" lenses and cameras in the studio to give me a head start here.

It all depends on how bad the skin on the person is. I usually use my soft box and feather the light so that the softer light is what hits their skin. I then go into photoshop, duplicate the layer, add gaussin blur and then dial the opacity until the skin looks pretty nice. Then I bring back the eyes and lips and merge the layers.

I find if I use a soft filter then I loose that sharpness in the eyes that makes them pop.

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Placing a softbox very nearby helps if you don't want to go the PS road.
Most of the time however I do a bit of PS work and some creative sharpening to get the eyes, clothing and hair sharp and the face not.

The best way is to find a way that suits your style and learn to use it as second nature, make some actions for example.

Some people use neatimage on the skins, it seems to work good for some people.

Greetings,
Frank

[Mark Thomas]

The very best way to fix bad skin is to have an excellent make-up person. They are worth their weight in gold - if your client can afford it use one.

Cheers

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Without a good makeup artist a shoot is a no go for me to be honest.
Sorry, never thought to mention that :-\

[Alice Morrison]

I hear you all about the makeup artist.

But how about softening tools (software) after the fact? Does anyone use any you'd care to recommend?

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Most of the time the skinsoften filters make the picture look unnatural, many spots (?)
You can use the blurring technique best and use a clone tool with a high opacity to clear away bad area's.

[bevilaquafoto]

While I agree that if the subjects skin is really bad only a great makeup artist and perhaps a little retouching will help, but there is a lighting technique that can help enormously with both bad skin, and aging. It's called beauty lighting or "butterfly" lighting. It involves a rather large chimera or soft box placed in front of and above the subjects face so the light fall flat on the subject rather than from the sides, and a strip light below the subject and about one stop less power than the top light.

Remember, the only reason we see lines, bumps, and three dimensional objects is because shadow accentuates them. If the light is even, and diffused, irregularities in the skin will not be as visible. If you overexpose the shot just enough you can clean up the skin quite well. You don't want to over-expose so much that you lose detail, but just enough that you lose any unwanted detail. Makeup can take you the rest of the way.

This is a technique that I and others have used for lighting actors, and television personalities that need a little help. I will dig up a picture to illustrate soon. Please forgive the long message.

[bevilaquafoto]

The woman in this shot has fairly good skin to start with, but the lighting helped to smooth away wrinkles, and de-emphasize any problems. I will try to find more examples.

[GaryPauley]

Alice, always use soft butterfly or flat lighting to minimize wrinkles.
Pancake, if grandma can handle it for a "glamour" shot. Na.....don't think they want that.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by Alice Morrison

How do you minimize the effect of bad skin with your lighting? Is it purely a software issue with you now? Soft filters?
Frankly, I see value in using the "less sharp" lenses and cameras in the studio to give me a head start here.

I try to make use of several options available in dealing with skin blemishes:

a) At the time of shooting, making sure the light is "soft" and is "de-emphasising" blemishes rather than emphasizing them. I do not make use of the "classical" methods like soft filters & "less sharp" lenses anymore because the same effects can be more effecitvely achieved in the "digital" darkroom. I prefer to start with "as much" as possible (in this case, skin details - good and bad ones) so that I am in control what will show up on the final picture or not.
b) In Photoshop, I emoving blemishes (wrinkles, pimples, hair etc.) with the "patch tool". I always work with "snapshots" so that I can compare the "before" and "after" results. It's very easy to loose track and correct too much. I find it extremly important that the removal of skin blemishes does not change the "character" of the face; certain features (lines, spots) are defining elements of a face and should not be removed.

For more extreme corrections ("glamour look"), I selectively apply "Noise Ninja". I am a vigurous opponent of "canned" softening actions and smiilar; they typically distroy much too much detail and result in a very artifical "rubber duck" look.

I have tried many techniques. My conclusion is that there is no way around using the "patch tool" to treat face / picture individually. "Good" skin fixes are very subtle. Nowadays, "canned" skin fix solutions come with every software and can even be downloaded for free on the Internet. Everybody can apply such actions, but not everybody can apply subtle but effective retouches that "enhance" a shot (versus "changing" it).

Kind regards,
Andy

[Jetsprinter]

Alice, I am veeeery new to this but I will tell you what I have used with mixed results.

In Photoshop.....
1: I select a portion of skin (say the legs) using the magic wand*
2: hit ctrl j for a new layer
3: Apply a 5.0 Gaussian Blur
4: In Layers I reduce the opacity of the blur layer until it looks good (usually down to between 30 & 50%)
5: Blend both layers

I have found that it isn't necessary to be too exact with the wand selection and you can experiment until you get as close as possible to the desired effect.
The purists out there might cringe at this method but for web quality shots it has helped me reduce the flaws in the skin. You have to be careful thought as if it is overdone the skin looks too false.