My major portraiture project back in November had me exploring
different tools and techniques for clearing up some stuff. My best
results were actually staying within Lightroom. However, using other
tools for very specific tasks also helped a lot.
For example, using DFine2 was a great way of smoothing skin. A lot of
the skin texture can be minimized by doing a manual selection on a
portion of skin. It doesn't help the overall contrast issues, but the
smaller blemishes that look like "noise" will clear. With higher ISO,
this also helps erase a lot of the red and blue channel noise like
Moose's Clear example.
ColorEfexPro has "Dynamic Skin Softener". I like the results, but
doesn't handle noise well. I like to reduce some of the noise first.
This tool, unfortunately, is horrible with hair. It just turns hair
into stringy mush. It also tends to remove too much detail and color
of the lips and eyes. You can get a blank look very easily. This is a
tool best limited in scope and effect and instead combine it with
other tools. Also, with Dynamic Skin Softener, (not stool softener),
it's best to do two or three steps with it using very narrow color
selection. Do one for the brighter skin, and one for the skin in the
shadow. Sometimes a third if there is an issue with makeup. In
ColorEfexPro, just add additional processing with the plus button.
With the third one, it starts to get a little slow at first, but it'll
catch back up to you in 20 seconds or so.
Lightroom's Texture and Clarity sliders. This rock. -20 on Texture
will take 20 years off of a person. -10 on Clarity further smooths and
dewrinkles. (give or take on those levels). Combine this with a touch
of noise removal and you'll be only spotting a few scars. I have a
small scar from a tick bite on my leg from 25 years ago that always
requires cloning/healing. Every other spot will clear, but not that
one. The advantage of Texture and Clarity and Noise tools in Lightroom
is that they can be applied to the image as a whole, as well as
selections. You can select the skin, being careful to avoid the hair
and clothing, and apply the sliders to that selection. The selection
tool is quite good at not masking the eyes or mascara as well as the
lips. So the eyes and mouth keep their contrast and sharpness.
With Lightroom-only edits, I like to use the Texture/Clarity/Noise
sliders to soften the image JUST to the point where you see it affect
the image and back it off. Then do your skin selection and apply a
custom Texture/Clarity/Noise improvement to taste. You really do need
to do both because the overall adjustment will muck up the hair and
fabric too much, as well as causing halo issues where bright skin is
against something something dark. But if you only apply the
Texture/Clarity/Noise adjustment to just the skin, then it looks
"Photoshopped" and fake.
However, the most important thing for portraiture is to always get the
lighting right to begin with. Proper lighting and camera-subject
distance is vital to getting a solid base to work from. It also helps
if your subject is attractive, but that just means that not every
portrait session is going to result in a portfolio image for you.
AG (Not well adjusted) Schnozz
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