Intro to Portrait Retouching

Basic Portrait Retouching **be sure to zoom in to 100% or 200%

We work from the bottom layer up. Each time you add a new layer, it should get added to the top of the layer stack. It's important to work in this order and add new layers to the top of the layers stack as you move along. 

1.) Retouching Layer/Blemishes: Duplicate background layer by dragging it down to the little icon at the bottom of the layers palette that looks like a page with the corner folded. This duplicate layer is where you should do your blemish and spot removal using a combination of healing brush, clone stamp and patch tool.

2.) Decreasing Wrinkles: Make a new empty layer (click icon at the bottom of the layers palette that looks like a page with the corner folded). Using the healing brush, option click a "good" source area and heal over the wrinkles. Make sure "all layers" is selected from the drop down menu at the top (otherwise it won't work to heal on an empty layer). The advantage of healing on an empty layer is that it won't increase your files size too much. The advantage to working on wrinkles on a separate layer is that you can decrease the layer opacity without affecting other retouches.

3.) Stray Hair Removal: On a new empty layer (see how-to above), use a combination of healing and stamp tool. Remember that stamp tool makes a direct copy of any texture that may be in the background, whereas healing tool blends a little. So depending on the texture of your background, you may want to use stamp tool so you don't see little blurry spots.

4.) Decrease Redness: You may need to selectively decrease redness in certain parts of the face. To do this, make a new "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer from your adjustments palette. Change "Master" to "Reds" and move the slider to the left on the Properties panel. Invert the mask that has been created for you on the layers palette (command i for a Mac/ control i -PC). Paint with a big, soft white brush (B) on the mask to reveal the change (and decrease reds in certain areas).

5.) Brightening with Curves. This is great for brightening under eyes, brightening shadow areas and adding highlights to hair. Make a new curves layer, push the curve slightly from the middle to the top left corner (see below), invert (command i) the mask and paint with a soft white brush on the areas you want to become brighter. You can always decrease the opacity of the layer if the effect is too strong.

6.) Teeth: you can take some yellow-ness out of teeth and brighten them up a little using a Hue Saturation layer. See step #4, except change "Master" to "Yellows". And move the "Lightness" slider to the right to make the teeth brighter. (*note: you can select the teeth first using the lasso tool, or you can simply paint over the teeth on the mask)

Here's an overview of the final layers palette:

image source: Lynda.com