Knowledge for those who want it.

 

This is the original image, I will try to show you how to retouch photos, such as this one.

Let’s begin…

First of all you will want to remove all the pimples and other things which look bad on her face (like birth marks, hair…), you have to try to make the color of the skin look the same. This is fairly easy but time consuming, I suggest using the “Healing Brush Tool” while doing this.

So this is what I have, you can tweak it more if you want to, it’s all up to you.

Now I will play around with the colors a little bit, you can either use the Auto Levels, Auto Color, Auto Contrast

Or if you want to be more precise you can just click Levels. I usually do this:

Try to move the Black and White markers at the beginning of the curve, it will add more life to the picture.

The next step is fixing the shape of the face, mouth and eyes…

I selected the mouth area and lowered it a little bit because her smile wasn’t too good, mainly because of her weird upper lip. Just use Transform-> Warp, first duplicate the layer (CTRL + J), I also suggest making two copies of the layer which you first cleaned because you might need to go back to that one and re-edit it.

After you lower the lip just merge the two layers (CTRL+E) and use the “Healing Brush Tool” to make it look natural (don’t use the “Smudge” or “Liquify” tools because they will make the skin look unnatural).

You can also use the same procedure to modify the shape of the face, I’m not going to, but if you feel like the face should have a different shape just do it, it’s really up to you.

I will also modify her left eyebrow because I think it’s bigger than the right one.

Just do the same as before, use the “Healing Brush Tool” around the eyebrow after you finish modifying the shape.

After fixing the shapes you will notice that her skin is still not so good looking, this is the next step, fixing the skin. Duplicate the layer and use Filter->Blur->Surface Blur on it, the values depend on you, I used the following:

Add a layer mask to the blurred layer

Color the mask black, grab the “Brush Tool” and choose white as the brush color. Depending on your file size choose an appropriate brush size, I’ll use 65px; change the brush opacity to 20%.

We will now start coloring the layer mask where we want the skin to look smoother. You can remove facial hair, wrinkles, weird face color and many more. Try not to brush too close to the edges and try not to exaggerate with it, we don’t want her to look like a Barbie doll.

The next thing we want to take care of are her eyes, we need to enhance them a little. I have found a great deal of tutorials on eye enhancement, if you want more than I’ll show you here, you can always google “eye enhancement tutorials”. I will only be using the “Burn Tool” and the “Dodge Tool”.

Just take the “Dodge Tool” (set the exposure to 15%, you will find the exposure on the same bar where you changed the opacity of the “Brush Tool”) and use it on her pupils, try not to brush on the iris and don’t exaggerate with it either, we don’t want her eyes to be white. Now take the “Burn Tool”, set the exposure to 15% and brush on the circumference of the pupil and also on the iris.

The next step is make-up. You can either enhance the one she already has or change it. I’ll just enhance the one she has right now, I will use the “Burn Tool”. This one is simple, just use the tool on her makeup and try to make it stand out a little bit more (I’m talking out her eyes, we’ll add some lipstick a bit later).

Now let’s add some color to her lips also, you can either create a new layer and brush some color over the lips and then set that layer blending mode to “Overlay” or use the “Burn Tool” on her lips, more on the exterior, less on the interior, this will enhance the shape and color of the lips. I chose to use the “Burn Tool” again because I like the color of her lips.

Now let’s put some color in her hair too, I would generally use the “Burn Tool” again but probably you want to see something else, right? Just create a new layer, pick a color you like, I chose #DCAC48 because her hair is blondish, set the brush opacity to 20% and brush over her hair.

Then just change the layer blending mode to “Overlay”.

And now take a look at the “Before” and “After” pictures.

I will want to end this tutorial with a couple of words. You don’t have to follow this tutorial 100%, I encourage you to explore the wonders of Photoshop and if you have any tips, feel free to use the contact form to send them to me. Everyone is beautiful, I’d very much prefer the previous girl not because I’m an ugly slob and probably I’d have no chance on getting the enhanced one but because she is natural, everyone has bad days when zits show up, the lack of sleep causes wrinkles, make-up is messed up, hair doesn’t want to cooperate… Beauty is and will be in the eyes of the beholder, never forget that, you are beautiful! The picture I have just enhanced can be used in magazines but I wouldn’t consider it real beauty, keep that in mind please.

Have fun with Photoshop and send me the links to your works, I’ll be happy to post them here.