Blemish Removal – Skin Retouching Photoshop Tutorial

Learn blemish removal when skin retouching in photoshop. In his photoshop tutorial, you will learn how and when to use the 3 photoshop tools used for blemish removal. When skin retouching in photoshop learn to select the best tool to use to get the results you want. Skin retouching photoshop tutorial.

Blemish Removal – Skin Retouching Photoshop Tutorial

Hello, my name is Charles. Have you ever wondered what the best tool is to remove Blemishes? In this tutorial, I’m gonna show you how to remove Blemishes while retouching skin in Photoshop and help you to decide what is the best tool to use. Let’s get started. Let’s start off by opening our practice image in Photoshop. If you are opening up a raw image, you’ll see that Adobe Camera Raw opens up first. You can do all your work in Lightroom if that’s what you use.

Down here at the bottom I wanna point out this link. If you click on it, this check box right here. I usually have this checked because it says Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects. Reason being it’s a good practice to have your Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects so that you can go back and do work. Like in this case with Adobe Camera Raw Here in Adobe Camera Raw you should try and get your Exposure and Contrast and adjustments like that right first before you take it into Photoshop. So I’m gonna adjust the Exposure slightly, bring down some highlights, and just kinda look overall at the image and just try and dial in with some of these basic adjustments here in Adobe Camera Raw first. You can see that it says Open Object. When I click on that, it opens our practice image in Photoshop as a Smart Object. I’m leaving a link in the description to this photo here if you wanna follow along or work on it later.

So if you’re gonna do a lot of retouching and use Frequency Separation, a good idea would be to remove some of the light Blemishes here at this step. And so, I’m gonna go over the Healing Brush, the Spot Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp tools. Of course, if you’re not gonna go any further with any retouching, and just you need to remove Blemishes, this is the place to do it all. So the first thing I’m gonna do is come down here in Create a New Layer, a New Blank Layer, and now I’m going to group this layer with it self Command G and I’m gonna call it Blemish Removal

So I’m gonna start off with the Spot Healing Brush. And when I come up here to the menu on the left, you could see that Photoshop gives you a little movie here of how to use this Spot Healing Brush., and you can see there’s an icon for it and appear at the top Menu Bar. Make sure that you’re setting say Content-Aware and that Sample All Layers is checked. That is because you’re working on a Blank Layer here. So in general, when you’re working to remove Blemishes, you remove things that are distracting. And these are things that are not permanent like red spots, pimples veins in the eye. Usually, you don’t remove things like moles or birthmarks. And it’s a good idea to ask your client the level of retouching they want. They’re gonna say, “Well, you know, I like my birthmark or my mole, please don’t remove it.” So first shortcut you might wanna use because you’re gonna be zooming in and out a lot is you hold Command or Control and spacebar down. You see that the cursor turns to a plus and you can zoom in, get in there real close. You just drag your cursor to the right or left to zoom in from the particular spot. Like I’m right on her eye right there. And I can zoom in, so you’re gonna be zooming in and out of the image a lot. So just a couple of shortcuts. That’ll help you again, Command or Control, hold down the spacebar and drag right or left to zoom in or out. So with the Spot Healing Brush, let’s try that first. I’m gonna zoom in a little bit, get out of my Spot Healing Brush. I’m gonna use my left and right brackets to make my brush bigger or smaller. And you just basically paint. So the Spot Healing Brush is gonna feel in a Blemish. As you paint with texture, you wanna look for how this is working sometimes like you might see that that area I just painted in there’s a texture issue. So of course, when you’re zoomed in like that, that’s because the Spot Healing Brush tries to take care of this area with skin texture, things should go there. So it’s not always the best tool to use in this case. So that’s okay cause we’ve got other tools. I’m gonna undo this couple undos there. So to better make sure the Blemish is replaced by skin texture and as similar to what is around it. Let’s try the regular Healing Brush tool and the regular Healing Brush tool is up here in the Menu on the left and similar, you’re gonna work on a Blank Layer. Your sample should be set to current and below. So I’m gonna zoom in here a little bit, make my brush a little bit bigger, hold the Alt or Option and sample right around where I wanna get a Blemish. And as you can see, I’ve sampled texture and just click over it like that. The Healing Brush is gonna sample that skin texture, and you can paint right over like that. And that looks a lot better. You sample, and click like that, sample and click like that, sample click like that.

So Healing Brush does a lot better than the Spot Healing Brush in some instances. So the next tool is the Clone Stamp tool. The Clone Stamp tool works really well, where there are edges of an image. If you were to use the Healing Brush tool or Spot Healing Brush tool, the edges will look kind of fuzzy.

So the Clone Stamp tool uses the shortcut key S the Clone Stamp tool was up here. And again, we’re using a Blank Layer here. So you want the sample current and below, and you would have the opacity and flow at 100%. And again, I’m gonna zoom in here. And so the Clone Stamp, if you hit Alt Option and sample, and you can see there is a direct copy is doing.

So, the Clone Stamp tool won’t try and do any blending with say color, it will do a direct copy, but you wanna select the skin texture next to the area that you wanna replace. You don’t wanna select an area way up here and then try and make a correction to some skin down here, because now you have this dark spot right here. So again, you wanna sample close to an area. You want to sample skin close to an area and click to correct. You wanna sample this again, close to an area, and paint over that area.

So the fastest way to approach using these three tools is the Spot Healing Brush should be first because it’s faster. But if it doesn’t give you the results you want move to the regular Healing Brush. So remember the regular Healing Brush is gonna help you with texture. Then, if you have edges that you wanna work with, or you need texture copying use the Clone Stamp. Let me know in the comments what your favorite tool is to remove Blemishes.

Planning Layer – Skin Retouching Photoshop Tutorial

So one good practice is to create a planning layer. I’m gonna call this Blemish Planning and group it with itself planning layers planning group, and just kind of go over the image. However you would like to mark up, use the brush tool and select color, just to give yourself an idea of the areas that you’re going to work with. And, just mark up. Maybe there’s some areas that we see where there’s light here, and it’s darker on this other side, that type of a Blemish you may want to save for Frequency Separation. But just kinda come around here and mark the areas that you’re gonna concentrate on. Give yourself kind of a roadmap areas that you want to take care of. Something like that doesn’t have to be extreme. Just give yourself an idea. So another way to determine which tool to use is the amount you are zoomed in, for wedding photography, and some portrait photography, you can use the Spot Healing Brush or Healing Brush tool for beauty retouching, and you are really zoomed in. It’s better to use the Clone Stamp tool because of blending. So it’s best ask the client what level of retouching they want. Hey, if you’re getting value out of this so far hit that like button.

Using the Clone Stamp Tool – Skin Retouching Photoshop Tutorial

So we can try each tool just to see how it works. But again, because we are so zoomed in, I’m going to use the Clone Stamp tool. So that’s S for the Clone Stamp tool, and I’m going to have my opacity to 100%, flow at 100%. And my sample set to current and below. So remember to sample the skin as close to the Blemish as possible. So skin texture and skin color match. So here, I’m just working my way around the image. You see areas like this, these two Blemishes, you may want to wait, if you’re gonna use Frequency Separation, wait till later, because there may be some issues with color that you might wanna take care of in that sense. But again, sample in the areas where, like areas you’re sampling and skin textures are the same. You can zoom in further and take care of these Blemishes here. Don’t be afraid to change your brush size and also move around the image, hold the spacebar down. And your cursor turns into a hand tool and you can pin around. So one tip is to go through the image, not so much concentrating on one area. So move around, use your spacebar to pan around to different areas. That way, if you don’t do too much in one area, you won’t change the shape of the face. So I’m just kind of moving around here, hitting things as I see and I make a mistake you can just undo it at the watched the areas where there’s color and you wanna sample, but it’s a good time to turn on the music, relax, go through it take your time. Find areas where you like the skin texture sample and paint over the Blemishes. Now, since we’re zoomed in here, I’m going for more of a beauty retouch, and this can take a while, take your time. And so the more you take care of these Blemishes, it’s going to give the impression that you’re smoothing the skin. It is gonna look smoother.

So you can just go through, find the texture near the area that you want to remove the Blemish and you’re looking for areas that stand out let’s try this over here, okay. Let’s move around the image. If you make a mistake, just undo. You can always come back to it later in Frequency Separation if you’re going to do that. Of course, the more you zoom in, the more you’re gonna see you make a mistake, you can use the Eraser tool E for the eraser tool. And I took out her eyebrow, right there didn’t mean to ask for the Clone Stamp tool. And you can even use this to get hairs in the eyebrow stray hairs here and there. And so you just go through the image, looking for areas that you can improve on. And like I said, make sure that when your sample you’re sampling light areas and not across dark areas, trying to make the light match is what I’m saying. So I’m gonna go through this image and take my time and come back to you. And when you can already see when you zoom out and you do before and after you can see some change, but as you zoom in, you’re gonna see more of what you’ve been working on. So I’m gonna go through this image and come back to you when I’m done.

Okay so after working on this little while, and this is the before, and this is the after. You can see that it’s not zoomed in right now, so you don’t see too much, but then when you zoom in, you start to see all the small details that were worked on. And some tips here but the more you zoom in, the more detail you’re gonna see in more areas that you might wanna fix. And if you are doing work, that is for a client and they want like a beauty retouch really, really close, then you’re gonna zoom in, don’t forget to hold your spacebar down. And as you’re working around the image, move it around, do different areas at a time, zoom in, even closer. If you are supposed to be doing a retouch at that level, again, if you’re using this, the Clone Stamp tool, as for the Clone Stamp tool, all our option to sample an area, sample an area with the texture you want and the color. So those are matching and then paint over the area. But you wanna be zooming out and zooming in every once in a while, just to make sure that your image is looking the way you want it, and you haven’t done anything that you might need to go back and correct.

So what I would do right now, I would go further into Frequency Separation, and I’m gonna refine some of these details, some of these areas here where there are light and dark transitions and actually some of the Blemish areas, I’ll blend that and more. Also, you can create as many Blank Layers as you want for Blemish removal if you want to work on a particular area and you want to have that on its own layer, you can do that too. If you wanna know more about Photoshop, click on the playlist here, if you haven’t already subscribed and like this video. And remember, it’s never too late to learn. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video. Skin retouching photoshop tutorial.

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