Post Your Best Portrait Shots!

[Rob Gardner]

OK, let's get this party started!


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[Steve U]

Really nice series rob, like the grittiness of the first and the casual feel to the last one, must have taken some setting up.


Beautiful pic Gian, has everyone got perfect skin where you are? LOL.


Very inspiring submissions on this page.


Steve

[Gian Luca]

Thank you Steve. They have good skin but I have my way to clean the skin maintaining a natural touch, not too clean as with most filters.

[Steve U]

I like whatever process you are doing with the skin tones, very complimentary. And the lighting is pefect in these studio shots, well done.

[Gian Luca]

My system with the skinis very simple and pretty standard, it takes less than 5 minutes. I use CS5 but can work also with CS3 and CS4


1) Remove pimple a marks with Spot Healing Brush tool
2) I duplicate the layer with the new result and I apply a surface blur quite aggressive, to eliminate any imperfection. This looks very artificial, but it is just the base for the final result.
3) Now I create a layer mask and I pass with a black brush all area that must have the maximum definition like eyes, eyebrow, lips and hair.
4) At this point I duplicate this layer with the surface blur + layer mask; I call one layer Lighten (generally the top one) and the other layer Darken
5) I change the fusion method in Lighten for the layer called lighten and Darken for the layer called darken (this is an important part as it allow to give different values of blur for dark problems and clear problems)
6) At this point I change the opacity of the "Lighten" and "Darken" layers, typically Lighten require a value between 50-65% and Darken between 40-55% (these are just indicative values but it is easy to adapt them looking at the photo)


I hope this help.

[Steve U]

Very generous and helpful Gian, I look forward to giving this a go.


Cheers,


Steve

[Raid]

Gian these are very beautiful shots


Now I know this is a lot to ask but would you consider posting the before version (none of us will tell the models

[Kayaker72]

My daughter, she is just 3 years old but she likes to pose.


Canon 1Ds MKIII + 70-200L f2.8 ISII at 165mm, ISO 100 f5.0 1/320 sec +580EX in High Sync mode


High resolution version available at:[url="http://www.juzaphoto.com/index2.php?l=it&pg=profile2&mode=viewgalle rie&idutente=1156&gal=749]http://www.juzaphoto.com/index2.php?l=it&pg=profile2&mode=viewgalle rie&idutente=1156&gal=749[/url]



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Thank you Gian for the description of your work flow. I just book marked this page so I can refer to it in the future.


BTW, I know the pictures with the model are amazing, but I have to say, this one of your daughter is my favorite. Simply beautiful.

[Gian Luca]

Raid I can do it for another shot, I was discussing the same technique with some friends so I have some examples:



Picture 2 Photo after hard surface blur
Picture 3 Example of layer mask
Picture 4 Final Result. The final result is after duplicating the blur level+layer mask and playing with one layer in Lighten mode + opacity and the other layer in Darken mode + opacity.


I will not leave these photo for a long time. I have no secrets, but it is a respect for the model








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[Raid]

Thanks Gian


Please forgive the pun, but she doesn