Retouching Portraits

I have spent a bulk of my time behind a camera photographing sporting goods, nature and pets. when it came to photographing people I have always taken a candid approach. Take a lot of pictures, crop the best ones and be done with it. Recently though I had the pleasure of getting a visit from my beautiful niece. We were out driving around and decided to visit a local park nearby for some pictures. The conditions were bad. It was a bright noon summer sun. I had the Nikon D810 and no external flash. I had about a 20 minute window to work before our next engagement. I knew the pictures would be a challenge but had no choice. I don’t get an opportunity like this often. We hit two locations and took about 100 pictures and called it a day. Upon review I had mixed feelings with the results. We had some great pictures with a couple of repeating common flaws. The first being her eyes. Not that here eyes are a problem, quite the opposite, they are big brown and beautiful. The problem was without proper lighting they appear mostly black. The next problem was her iPhone. That little bugger found its way into several of the best pictures. I knew I could get rid of the iPhone and any other unwanted details with the Adobe Photoshop “Spot Healing Brush Tool”. The eyes though that was another story. I wasn’t really sure how to tackle those so I hit the internet. That search lead me to all kinds of multimedia tutorials, book and software suggestions for retouching portraits. This page will serve as an index for the information I have found. As I hone in on what works for me I will write separate posts.

Books

If you do nothing else from this page check out this book from Scott Kelby Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop. It’s written by a photographer for photographers. I bought the Kindle Edition and am very pleased.

Software

PortraitPro – This is the software that gives portraits that almost unreal, spray painted over look that’s all the rage today. It recognizes faces and automates a lot of the tasks but still requires some simple human intervention. Other software including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom will do the same thing with a lot more work. “PortraitPro is new portrait airbrushing software that has been “trained” in human beauty. Exceptionally fast and easy to use, and capable of the highest quality touch up, it lets you improve your photos instantly, just by moving sliders. With this easy photo editing software, it’s incredibly fast for any photographer to enhance the face and hair of the subject.”
Digital Anarchy Beauty Box – Apply Digital Makeup to your photos! Beauty Box Photo allows you to quickly and easily erase skin blemishes and wrinkles, even out skin tones, and reduce shine â achieving a consistently professional result. The plugin uses advanced skin smoothing techniques that enhance the work of photographers at all levels in Adobe Photoshop and Aperture.
One Software Perfect Photo Suite