I'm really curious as to how you achieve such beautiful glowing skin as in these front page portrait shots. Is it all in the make up and lighting or is it mostly achieved in post processing?
I'm really curious as to how you achieve such beautiful glowing skin as in these front page portrait shots. Is it all in the make up and lighting or is it mostly achieved in post processing?
One way would be to Gaussian Blur the image for specular highlights, create a snapshot, undo the Gaussian Blur, then paint the blur back in with the history brush set to the snapshot alternating between low opacity lighten and darken modes.
Manny (Librodo) has stated in the past that he uses the Diffuse Glow filter. I can't guarantee that's what he used here, but it's worked well for him before and his style is so recognizable that he probably uses it regularly.
hmmm... I had never heard of anyone using the Diffuse Glow filter... so gave it a quick test - yikes it was a mess. Are we talking about the filter that comes stock with CS2? I set grainniness to 0 and played with the other two sliders... but as I said it was a mess. You guys must be combining some other tools with this filter (?). Or is it just simply a matter of really small opacity?
hmmm... I had never heard of anyone using the Diffuse Glow filter... so gave it a quick test - yikes it was a mess. Are we talking about the filter that comes stock with CS2? I set grainniness to 0 and played with the other two sliders... but as I said it was a mess. You guys must be combining some other tools with this filter (?). Or is it just simply a matter of really small opacity?
It takes practice. Of all filters, this is one I use very frequently, but not usually in a heavy-handed way.
hmmm... I had never heard of anyone using the Diffuse Glow filter... so gave it a quick test - yikes it was a mess. Are we talking about the filter that comes stock with CS2? I set grainniness to 0 and played with the other two sliders... but as I said it was a mess. You guys must be combining some other tools with this filter (?). Or is it just simply a matter of really small opacity?
Adjust your white/black background-foreground. I can't remember which one you want to be foreground (white or black) but choose the wrong one and, indeed, it is a mess. Choose the right one and Diffuse Glow will make the highlights glow.
Then, when I use it, I usually apply a gaussian blur to it and set the mode to soft light. (so obviously, this is done on a separate layer)
Anyway, play with it and you'll figure out where it is useful.
Thanks (once again) David. I didn't realize that the filter was working with the FG/BG palette. White has to be in the BG. It now produces an excellent effect. It is replicating something I was doing with paint and g-blur and layer settings... but is much quicker. Nice tip.
some of it has to do with lighting too. it's not all done in photoshop. Soft light is attributed to a soft light sorce, that is an opposite of a specular light source. the smaller the light source the more specular it is. think of the shadows a flashlight makes, that is specular. now think of the shadows that same flashlight would make if you put it in a white pillow case, that is soft light. There are few ways to get that soft light very easy;
1. a soft box over your studio strobe flash heads
2. the sun on a cloudy day, were the sun is back lighting the clouds.
there is some photoshop involved, but if you light things right there there isn't much
