How to Use Photoshop to Retouch Facial Photos

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Co-authored by Joey Wallace

Last Updated: May 6, 2024

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This tutorial will outline how to retouch and enhance people's faces in Adobe Photoshop.

Steps

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The healing tool is designed with this in mind. Simply hold ALT and click a clean spot of skin (change the brush size first, if necessary) and then click the imperfection. Repeat on all undesired spots.
Select the teeth with one of the lasso tools and paste into a new layer. Masking helps if you select too much of the area and need to erase parts of the gums/lips. Use the selective color adjustment to remove yellow.

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Use the blur tool and paint over the skin, making sure not to go over prominent parts of the face, like the eyes or hair.
This will help get rid of unnatural skin tones. You can also boost the saturation of the entire photo to give it a more vivid look. Click ctrl-U (or command-U on a mac) to bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment dialog box.
Hair, eyes, noses etc often look better with added sharpness. However, do not use too much or it will look grainy. You can sharpen the image selectively using the sharpen tool and changing the brush size.
) helps even out features and gives the person a "softer" appearance. Run the filter and fade it to 40-50%. This will give it that soft glamor shot look.
Set the blending option (found in the upper-left-hand corner of the layers palette) of the desaturated layer to "overlay". Next experiment with the Gaussian blur filter (Filter>Blur>GaussianBlur...) as desired (A pixel-width of 3-5 should work). This will make most photos even softer look, while maintaining their sharpness.

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What's the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop?

Joey Wallace
Photographer
Joey Wallace is a Professional Photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia. Joey is the Creative Director and Lead Wedding Photographer at Joey Wallace Photography, providing photography and videography services. With over 10 years of experience, Joey has been honored as one of Atlanta’s Best Photographers for the past 5 years and has documented hundreds of weddings. Joey Wallace Photography has also been featured and recognized by publications including The Knot, WeddingWire, Brides Atlanta, and Featured on Zola.

Joey Wallace

Photographer

Expert Answer

So Lightroom and Photoshop differ in their focus and level of editing capabilities. Lightroom is a lighter version of Photoshop, primarily geared towards basic editing tasks like lighting adjustment, color, and enhancing skin tones. In Lightroom, you start by making fundamental adjustments to your photos, like fine-tuning exposure, contrast, and color balance. Also, Lightroom allows for non-destructive editing, meaning your original photo remains intact while edits are saved as metadata. Lightroom also features batch editing, enabling you to apply the same adjustments to multiple photos shot in similar conditions efficiently. On the other hand, Photoshop offers more extensive editing capabilities, including advanced retouching, compositing, and graphic design. It's more suitable for intricate edits focusing on individual photos rather than bulk editing tasks.

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How do I download Photoshop?

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Go to adobe.com; you'll find the latest version of Photoshop. It's free for the first month, then costs a price as a subscription.

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Which is better for photo editing - Photoshop CS3 or CS6?

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CS6 should be better, because it's the latest version.

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Warnings

Don't use too high of a pixel-width in the Gaussian Blur filter, or your glamour shot will end up looking like a mass of mixed colors!

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