Just about Photography

Long time not write my blog because I am busy doing my thesis. Anyway I already complete my thesis and now waiting my Professor back from Japan and China, boring to wait him I try to write my blog again hehe….

As usual I will give you comparison between original photo and my editing photo: (If you think the result is bad or not important, you can skip this tutorial)

Original photo in the left, and photo after my editing in the right side. You also can see this photo in my flickr. I need to mention that this photo isn’t captured by me – you can see original photo taken by Benson74 in here. About the girl, her name was Nikki (I like her big eyes and cute face) – you can see her original web here. Original photo is taken indoor, I think most of indoor photography needs light more – if the light isn’t sufficient the photo looked underexposure and flat. Anyway you can do post processing to fill the light, to make the photo looked better. I don’t want to talk about this basic post processing because in this tutorial I just want to write about retouching. Basic explanation (sorry if I am wrong) – retouching is process to make our photo become better, for example in your photo maybe the model skin isn’t good then you smooth the skin and it looks better – something like that. If you want to know more about retouching, you can find in google @@. In my tutorial I will limited retouching only for skin (smoothing skin), different people has different technique to edit the photo. It is not necessary to said which technique is the best because the technique without ability to use it – it means nothing (that’s what I said). Example: you have Canon 1Ds Mark III, but you don’t know how to take a photo….. it’s nothing, right?

My idea to retouch the skin is based on blurring the image. You need to have Photoshop CS 2 or CS 3 because my technique needs some filters in Photoshop CS 2 and CS 3. You need to know Smart Blur and Surface Blur, these blurs filter are a little bit different with Gaussian Blur. You can use these smart blur and surface blur combination to smooth the skin. You can try to change the input value in smart blur and surface blur then see the result. Because this method will blur the image totally – some parts maybe looked unrealistic / cartoon so you need to masking some parts. After you happy with the final result you can save the photo. I think use this effect faster than use conventional retouching method – but like I said before – the technique without ability to use it – means nothing. Sorry this tutorial not very clear – I just give the clue, if you still interesting using this kind of method you also can read this. His way a little bit different with me, but general idea is the same. You also can see my other retouching picture in here, hope you like it.