Could someone help me? (PS Effect)

[adamjava]

Hello everyone. I'm new here and there's something I've been wondering for a few days. I usually see a lot of pictures with one sort of effect and I really wanna learn how to apply the effect.


The effect makes the skin really smooth and adds a kinda glowy effect to the hair. People told me it was Gaussian Blur and the copy layer set as Soft Light. I tried it and didn't really work. Later, a friend said it was probably Gaussian Blur with Sharpness. I tried a few settings but I didn't get the result I wanted.


Here are some pictures of what I'm talking about (pay attention to the skin and the hair):


http://25.media.tumblr.com/6646914e07537e2b85305a74fe5813e9/tumblr_mj3ris5VXy1rxdnzao1_500.png


http://25.media.tumblr.com/4e7cc83d62bc45ef9c25d33de148edc5/tumblr_mixlmgRaU51qbyzjyo1_500.png


http://24.media.tumblr.com/873a483a3e247df965a1453e020e6e4e/tumblr_miems6EFgj1r54tyro1_500.png


http://25.media.tumblr.com/055a30a43ac704c72f3d89824a9a6db4/tumblr_miers1NaNL1qiviv2o3_500.png


http://24.media.tumblr.com/bfb84e729deb42f3bca74a724f13bb86/tumblr_miers1NaNL1qiviv2o4_500.png


http://25.media.tumblr.com/7e7e374abc96cda3de9024b2f106872c/tumblr_mirdqv0J3J1r54tyro1_500.png




I'm pretty sure it's the same effect on all the pictures above /\
I'll just link more so you can understand what I'm talking about, because I don't know if I'm being clear enough. But take those pictures are the base of it, because the ones I'll post below, I'm not 100% sure it's the same thing.


http://25.media.tumblr.com/3d3f1c5d6e811423bd821ede7ba6b82d/tumblr_mj22sxDW121qb0eteo2_250.gif


http://24.media.tumblr.com/7dbd214fb0ca6e569c0745677d031b2e/tumblr_mj22sxDW121qb0eteo1_250.gif


http://24.media.tumblr.com/3641a45babfefb511cec7467b430e358/tumblr_mita26EGU91r54tyro1_500.png


http://24.media.tumblr.com/8daedadf10b4abeb07bfed9fce026a77/tumblr_miom59vdlX1qhk3wvo1_500.png


I hope you were able to understand what I'm saying and I'd be really happy if you could help me here!


Thanks a lot.

 

[ALB68]

That skin smoothing effect looks like a PS plugin. I have a couple that are capable of that or something close. Professional Portrait for one and Topaz for another. There may be a method with PS but the plugins work good. The onOne Perfect Effects Portrait filter will work for smoothing also.

 

[ibclare]

Yes, could easily be a Topaz filter or similar.

It could be done in PS. Much of the effect is called "porcelain."You can google that for tutorials. There might be HDR effects. Your friends might well be right about the blend modes too. If you do this is PS, rather than using a plugin, it will take more than one simple step to achieve.

So to use something like soft light, more likely screen or several duplicated layers of soft light, you would duplicate the layer and set the top one to a blend mode and adjust opacity as needed. Looks like there are curve or levels adjustments to bring the highlights up, bring the darks up and adjust the gamma to achieve the sort of empty grey areas. In other words create a kind of washout. HDR filter in Photoshop can get you part way depending on how you manipulate the settings. Gaussian blurs might be used as well but these are not major to the result. Sometimes you combine blurs and sharpening in an image.

There's a;so a good chance that a judicious use of desaturated images, also used as a blended mode layer to give some of the lowered color. Or just applied to the main layer for that matter.

I think it is a good idea to try to achieve these kind of effects the long way first. That way you'll understand better what goes into the filters that can accomplish this.

Look into the porcelain effect and also into tutorials about using the HDR filter in Photoshop. That will give you a better starting point. Just using blend modes and blurs are only part of the process. But what is worth the result if it doesn't have the work and the learning required to get there. It's a journey. Enjoy it.

 

[ibclare]

Here's a very quick adjustment. I used, 2 layers above the original. I made a curves adjustment as I suggested above, place to screen at 50% opacity. Made another duplicate of original and desaturated it and increased the light slider also. Set that to screen and placed a gaussian blur. This is not a very great effort, but it is almost the kind of effect as in some of the photos.

Incidentally, in the first batch you created, I don't think they all use the same exact effect.



another version



Original Image

 

[blogfreakz]

mostly I used only manual editing in Photoshop but sometimes lots of work needed to be done in that case I use Topaz plugins.

 

[Tom Mann]

As usual, in PS, there are many different ways to get skin to look they way you want. One of the first things to study very carefully is whether the effect you desire involves smoothing (ie, the new value for each pixel depends on the values of the neighboring pixels), or simply a re-distribution of tonal values without reference to the adjacent pixels (eg, brighten darker pixels without as much brightening of the brightest pixels).

For example, in the image Clare used for her example, the skin of the model was already quite smooth, so more smoothing is not all that essential. To illustrate this, I took her starting image and applied a "Selective Color" adjustment layer to the skin areas using the settings shown in the attached screen grab. Actually, one application of this adjustment layer was not enough, so I duplicated it. The result is shown in the next attachment.

Finally, one can not make changes to the subject without paying attention to what is going on in the background. In this case, there were some very bright areas in the background, that, if tamed, would likely show off the subject better. The third and final attachment shows the result of using the shadows/highlights tool on the background with essentially the same treatment of the subject used in the previous image.

The bottom line is that a single "Selective Color" adjustment layer gets one most of the way there.


Tom M

PS - Also, as Clare pointed out, somewhat different efx are used in the images cited by the OP, so, depending on the degree of faithfulness desired to each of the cited images, you need to modify your treatment of you own images.

 

[ibclare]

Nice approach and quick easy fix Tom. As I said, I would have dealt differently with the entire image if I were doing it seriously. Many ways. I don't use selective color very often. Guess it's one of those tools to try out more often. Goood yob.