Touching Up on Touch-Ups

I have recently delved into the world of digital photo touch-up, and have been having quite a good time doing it. It’s always exciting, once I’m done, to quickly switch between the original photograph and the new-and-improved photograph, making note of all the little details that helped improve the picture overall.

I’ve not only been touching up my digital family photos, but also some of my photography, including my recent Wine Bottles on Rack photo, which I’ll probably discuss in a later article. For now, I’m going to concentrate on people pictures. So, without further ado, here are some quick tips on touching up your digital portraits.

What You Need

• A digital or scanned photograph that needs touching up.
• A graphics program. For this tutorial, I’m using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
• A basic understanding of your graphics program, especially layers, blend modes, and the brush, patch, and clone stamp tools.

The Original

Here it is folks. The original photograph. Taken in the early hours of Christmas morning 2002, this photo has plenty of room for improvement. There’s a yellowish tint that makes the two subjects, who already don’t look their best, appear to be a bit woozy; there are blemishes and what I’ll call “early morning complexion;” there are flyaway hairs (a.k.a. bed head); and overall, the picture isn’t very appealing. Let’s just say it’s not the type of photograph that you frame and put on the mantel, you know what I mean?

Anyways, I think it’s time for a touch-up. Let’s get started.

First Improvements

So, here’s the photograph after a bunch of preliminary touching up. Improvements include:

1. Auto Levels: Use this to up the blacks, down the whites, and get an overall more evenly contrasted photograph.
2. Auto Color: This does a great job of getting rid of the yellowish tint that I mentioned earlier.
3. Hue/Saturation: After auto coloring, the subjects’ skin looked too pale, so I simply opened up the Hue/Saturation window and increased the saturation to about 20. This adds color to their skin and results in two far healthier looking people.
4. Patch Tool: Grab this tool and go crazy! Erase wrinkles, blemishes, scars, and anything else that will improve the photo. Don’t go too wild, though, and erase every line you see in a face. A lot of lines, such as dimples and smile lines, are what make a face look natural. Get rid of them, and you’ll have a face-lift patient on your hands.
5. Clone Stamp Tool: For this photograph, I used the Clone Stamp Tool to get rid of flyaway hairs that make the subjects look like they just woke up (which they did, by the way.) Compare the two photographs and you’ll definitely see the change.
6. Burn Tool: For women especially, I like to add color to the subjects’ lips. It doesn’t have to be so extreme that it looks like lipstick, but enough that it enlivens the person’s face by giving color to their lips. Just grab the burn tool with about a 30-40% exposure, get a nice small brush, zoom in, and sweep over the lips until you have a nice, subtle effect.
7. Sponge Tool: Set to Desaturate and 100%, I use the sponge tool to whiten teeth until they look like new.

Be patient, and take your time on these steps. All of this is preparation for the next step. The better a job you do here, the better the next step will turn out.

Soft Touch

This step is by far the most dramatic and the one that really takes your photograph to the next level. As you’ll see, it’s also one of the easiest steps.

1. Duplicate the layer with your image by either dragging it to the “Create a new layer” button or by going to Layer > Duplicate Layer.
2. With the new layer selected, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The radius completely depends on the size of the picture. For this image, which has a width of 400 pixels, somewhere around 3-4 pixels works great. For larger images, you might need anywhere from 6-10 pixels. You basically want to blur away all detail, including fine lines, wrinkles, and even natural lines, such as smile lines or dimples.
3. A lot of tutorials say to use the “Soft Light” blend mode, but I much prefer keeping the Gaussian blurred layer set to “Normal.” Simply change the layer’s opacity to somewhere around 50%. The higher the opacity, the more extreme the soft touch, so don’t overdo it. Remeber, you don’t want peope to look at the photo and say “Wow, nice touch up job!” You want them to look at it and say “Wow, those people look really great in that picture!”
4. We’re not trying to replicate a scene from a soap opera; we only want the skin of our subjects to be soft touched. So, grab the eraser tool and, with the blurred layer selected, erase all of the background and the clothes. As you erase, you should see everything come back into normal focus. This is simply the original layer showing through.
5. With the eraser tool still selected, grab a small, soft brush. Set the brush opacity to about 65%, and erase the features on the subjects’ faces that should be in focus: their eyeballs, their eyebrows, just around their nostrils, and their lips and teeth.

Finishing Touches

Now that we have cleaned up and soft touched the photo, it’s time for some finishing details that will take this photograph from good to great. Make the subjects’ eyes sparkle, give them a little makeup, or maybe even change the color of something they’re wearing. Again, you don’t want people to look at the photo and know that it has been touched up, so be subtle and indistinct with your changes to the photograph.

Sparkling Eyes

1. Create a new layer and place it on top (above the other layers).
2. Duplicate the layer with the original photograph and now put it on top, above the previously created layer.
3. With this layer selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Use the default settings, and then repeat this step three more times.
4. Now go to Layer > Group with Previous (Ctrl+G).
5. Select the transparent layer. Grab a small, soft brush and set your foreground color to black.
6. Zoom in and paint only over the eyes. As you paint, you will see the shiny, sparkly eyes appear.
7. Often times this effect is too drastic at 100%, so change the opacity of the transparent layer to somewhere around 60%, or until you have the desired effect.

Rosy Cheeks

1. Create a new layer, and place it on top.
2. Set its blend mode to color.
3. Select a soft brush that is a little smaller than the size of one of your subjects’ cheeks.
4. To get a nice, natural pink, select the Eyedropper tool and then sample an area from your subjects’ cheeks. Then open the color picker, and make it just a little brighter or a little pinker. This step will ensure that the color you pick is not too over-the-top.
5. Making sure that the correct layer is selected, paint over the cheeks.
6. Grab the eraser tool and erase anywhere that you went off of their skin or beyond their cheeks. Make sure you use a big, soft brush to do this, or else you’ll end up with harsh lines.
7. Change the opacity of the layer until you’ve got just the right effect: subtle, but enough to make a difference.

The Final Product

Here it is: the final, touched up photograph! Notice how all of the details, from erasing the flyaway hairs to making the eyes sparkle, really add up to a beautiful, frame-worthy photo.

Have fun touching up, and always remember: you don’t want people to say “Nice touch up!” You want them to say “Nice photograph!”

Cheers!