MFDB skin retouch

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would say that later versions of C1 have improved in areas that are important to me…

I have upgraded my Mac OS X to later versions and it got worse with each update. Tomorrow I will switch to Windows 10 (*). So I guess you have my sympathy on OS X.

Best regards
Erik

(*) I decided to ditch my MacBook as a travel alternative, so I get a Windows 10 alternative, arriving tomorrow. If it works out well I will ditch Mac OS X entirely, if it does not, I don't know.

Joakim

Thank you for the tips. Will grab the webinar and have a look.
Still working with C1 v7 due to refusal to upgrade OSX..

Edit: Now I remember. I tried few times but I missed the layer part - I did work on the image itself, which kind of constrained the selection and made it nearly impossible to get it right (hands not growing from right place..)

Though, I didn't find masks in C1 to be very accurate. In the webinar it is said that you don't have to be too accurate, but I found the edges to be extremely pronounced when I added selective colour corrections in Photoshop to finalise the look. Either that or mask spill was too unacceptable for me..

I think I need to sit down and re-try several times to build some form of skill...

 

[Krosavcheg]

I don't really know what to say... but I wish you good luck in trying to not update your software anymore.

In past I always stayed up to date, that inevitably saw me upgrading hardware about once a year...plus hair pulling frustrations when new updates introduced more bugs
I just can't be bothered or/and allocate funds for that. It's really a fighting a losing battle, but I just don't have need in resource heavy upgrades of functions I don't really use.

 

[Krosavcheg]

Hi,

I would say that later versions of C1 have improved in areas that are important to me…

I have upgraded my Mac OS X to later versions and it got worse with each update. Tomorrow I will switch to Windows 10 (*). So I guess you have my sympathy on OS X.

Best regards
Erik

(*) I decided to ditch my MacBook as a travel alternative, so I get a Windows 10 alternative, arriving tomorrow. If it works out well I will ditch Mac OS X entirely, if it does not, I don't know.

C1's colour editor for toning shadows, highlights and midtones is very good, also the colour editor overall has improved. I assume as you shoot landscape, it's of more benefit for you to skip Photoshop and be able to process photos in one software only.

I can relate to that. It's pretty much the reason I decided to avoid any updates. Additionally, the inconsistency in OSX releases is mind boggling.
Incidentally, this was the reason I originally switched from Windows to OSX, is that at the end of the day, I spent more time baby sitting the OS than actually doing something. BSOD, UAC, administrative templates, virus scanning, file system permissions, folders permissions, registry, corrupt .dll, drivers - you name it.

Hopefully Windows 10 fixes this, but then again: a person who burns himself on a hot milk, will keep blowing on the cold water.. so facing it at work is good enough for me...

 

[DB5]

IMO, the answer is not retouching. It is accepting the human skin for what it is, or getting better makeup.

 

[MGrayson]

It depends on the client. I could see this happening:

IMO, the answer is not retouching. It is accepting the human skin for what it is, or getting better makeup.

Art Director: "Hahahahhaha. You're fired."

I've watched a celebrity portrait photog work on the skin for hours after a shoot made with the best makeup available. The before/after comparison reminds us that magazine covers don't show real humans.

I agree with you in principle, but the job isn't always amenable.

Best,

Matt

 

[DB5]

It depends on the client. I could see this happening:



Art Director: "Hahahahhaha. You're fired."

I've watched a celebrity portrait photog work on the skin for hours after a shoot made with the best makeup available. The before/after comparison reminds us that magazine covers don't show real humans.

I agree with you in principle, but the job isn't always amenable.

Best,

Matt

maybe a decade ago...

 

[MrSmith]

I actually do some retouching for a global beauty brand both people and product.
They have a no retouch policy (for skin) so I only get to do a minimal colour balance.
But we are serving people in the business of selling, they get what they want which is what they think their customers want.

And as for not upgrading to Adobe CC, the healing brush is a huge improvement over 5/6 if it's part of your workflow I would suggest you try it out on another machine if you can.

 

[takomaru]

I actually do some retouching for a global beauty brand both people and product.
They have a no retouch policy (for skin) so I only get to do a minimal colour balance.
But we are serving people in the business of selling, they get what they want which is what they think their customers want.

And as for not upgrading to Adobe CC, the healing brush is a huge improvement over 5/6 if it's part of your workflow I would suggest you try it out on another machine if you can.

The brushes from PS CC are miles ahead from CS6, I also retouch using the LUMENZIA Luminosity panels and the Beauty Retouch Panels, very time consuming but perfect. http://retouchingacademy.com/product/beauty-retouch-panel/

 

[Krosavcheg]

I trust your professional judgement, but each version claims an improvement that still works like total w*nk and software gets more and more bloated.
I personally don't see any difference between CS2 and CS5 in healing brush or any other tools for that matter. Perhaps less "unknown error" messages.

I have tried skin tool in C1 and it looks like a right disaster:

As per PhaseONE webinar: "You don't have to be very careful when masking" :ROTFL:

Now I remember why I stopped using masks in C1!

ED:

 

[MrSmith]

I personally don't see any difference between CS2 and CS5 in healing brush or any other tools for that matter. Perhaps less "unknown error" messages.

i guess the subject must have a bearing on this, on hard objects or patterns and edges its very advanced and seems to know how a surface/pattern or texture will continue. for my product and watch retouching i can rely on the healing brush instead of the clone stamp a lot more which saves me a significant amount of time. maybe on skin its not so significant.

(i’m talking about the differences between PS6 and PS CC. i still keep 6.0 because after every apple update everything slows to a crawl and i have to revert to 6.0 until CC and OSX play nicely together)

 

[Krosavcheg]

i guess the subject must have a bearing on this, on hard objects or patterns and edges its very advanced and seems to know how a surface/pattern or texture will continue. for my product and watch retouching i can rely on the healing brush instead of the clone stamp a lot more which saves me a significant amount of time. maybe on skin its not so significant.

(i’m talking about the differences between PS6 and PS CC. i still keep 6.0 because after every apple update everything slows to a crawl and i have to revert to 6.0 until CC and OSX play nicely together)

Fair play. I generally use clone stamp only on hair (darken/lighten modes) and low pass skin layer to eliminate undesired spots.
I assume in product retouch it would smudge a lot of tonal transitions of a surface (well, it does it on skin as well) and make it look like a hack job?!
Healing brush advance would be when you can drag it randomly over the image which has multiple intersecting lines and patterns and it can leave them intact. If CC can manage it - it's great..

The issue you are experiencing has been a massive annoyance for me on Windows, and ironically one of the things that drove me to Mac. Little did I know that Apple was even worse in terms of planned obsolescence and OS inconsistency...

 

[MrSmith]

i think a lot of the issues are down to Adobe though. apples own software (final cut-x) runs very efficiently on their hardware but CS just doesn't seem to be optimised to apple hardware. i have just upgraded to a new MBP with the 4gb graphics in the hope of actually being able to use the select and mask tool or clone tool without having to have all the adjustment layers turned off to stop the brush lag.

and yes the healing brush does a great job of guessing what the dust/imperfection is and retaining the desired underlying surface, its not perfect but its very good.

 

[Krosavcheg]

To be honest, Adobe has always been doing a sloppy job. They outsourced the development to India, where programmers get paid per line of code, so obviously it will get bloated.
I had a friend who worked for Adobe about 15-20 years ago or so. One of the managers there told him that they welcomed piracy of their products, since they could hook more users with "first shot is free" tactics. And as it turns now, they are reaping the benefit of that strategy with subscription model.

I looked in CS evolution and really, nothing really changes - only few more bells and whistles....content aware fill/scale, some watercolour plug in that either get added or removed (akin Apple's "Save As")...and that's it really.
You still can't change the size of the brush while drawing, you can't easily switch between burn/dodge tools (right..configure pen options which allows only one configuration), the mode drop down menu of a tool is scrolling - meaning that if you chose "Lighten", to change to "Darken" you have to scroll up and look for it - not too much to ask since modes are limited, really...plug-ins are using USB as scratch disks so when you use "Liquify" it works at 1 frame per hour...even in 64Bit CS5 they couldn't be arsed to make Lighting Effects 64bit!!!...if you use wacom pen, you can't use MBP touch pad after and have to restart PS....
It's just a fiasco to be honest.

And Apple is purposely sloppy with OSX since they want to sell more hardware and force people to spend - it does hurt the business to release something that will last long time..

 

[Steve Hendrix]

I trust your professional judgement, but each version claims an improvement that still works like total w*nk and software gets more and more bloated.
I personally don't see any difference between CS2 and CS5 in healing brush or any other tools for that matter. Perhaps less "unknown error" messages.

I have tried skin tool in C1 and it looks like a right disaster:

As per PhaseONE webinar: "You don't have to be very careful when masking" :ROTFL:

Now I remember why I stopped using masks in C1!

ED:

I'm not sure what you did with the Skin Tone Tool in this example, but the result looks like nothing I've ever seen, at least in my use. I find the Color Editor (including the Skin Tone Tab) to be a pretty amazing tool for many reasons. I agree that we can all look forward to more advancement in mask precision from C1 Pro.


Steve Hendrix/CI

 

[Krosavcheg]

I'm not sure what you did with the Skin Tone Tool in this example, but the result looks like nothing I've ever seen, at least in my use. I find the Color Editor (including the Skin Tone Tab) to be a pretty amazing tool for many reasons. I agree that we can all look forward to more advancement in mask precision from C1 Pro.


Steve Hendrix/CI

Steve

Quite straight forward - mask the skin, then select a colour range and apply tweaks (I generally use only uniformity and smoothness).
Pretty much as it was done in C1 tutorial videos.
I must say that I struggle with colour ranges on the colour wheel. Though, as mentioned in C1 video - once mask is applied you can pretty much expand the range as only masked area will be affected, so I did expand it somewhat after initial selection.

I also recall in past some exported images had grey patches all over when "show only selected colours" option has been enabled...