- Whenever we're retouching skin
we really want to make sure
that we can remove those big inconsistencies in color
and tone while protecting the skin texture and detail.
That is the hallmark of good skin retouching.
All right?
And that's what I want to teach you.
Now, with the integration of the Select Subject Command
and being able to intersect that Select Subject Command
with a mask constriction by color
we're able to create the best looking skin possible
in Lightroom without going into Photoshop and doing it all
in a fraction of the time that it used to take.
So let me show you what I'm talking about.
- So for our section on smoothing skin
we're going to start a little bit differently
than we have in the last couple of sections.
And to do that, we're going to just hit the Add New Mask
but we're going to choose the Select Subject Command because
of course, skin resides on an actual subject in our image.
We're going to go ahead and give that command.
And then that's going to select our subject very well
in my opinion.
And we're going to be able to start working from here.
The first thing that I'll do is just rename this.
Let's call it skin.
Because even though we've started with Select Subject,
we are going to add an intersect
to this or a mask constriction.
Let's hold down Option or Alt
and preview the intersect button.
So we're going to go ahead and hit Intersect
and we're going to choose Color Range
because we only want the skin smoothing to be applied
to the skin colors.
So I'm going to go ahead with my eyedropper active.
I'm going to click once on the forehead and maybe I'll hold
down Shift and another eyedropper point to just
encompass my entire mask.
So now our skin mask is pretty well off
and it's looking really, really good.
There are some areas that we are going to need to clean up
maybe erase from, but that's fine.
We can do that easily by hitting the Subtract button,
choosing our brush tool to use for our subtract method.
And then I'll just go ahead and paint.
And make sure that is not included in our skin mask.
But as you can see
just straight off the bat, it's an extremely intricate
well placed mask, just by hitting a couple of buttons.
So we started with the select subject and then we said
we want to constrict by the skin tones.
And then we also just wanted to go ahead
and remove those specific areas from our mask.
And then up here, our skin mask is the hybrid
that we've created using the tools underneath.
Now it's time to change our sliders.
So when it comes to skin smoothing
I do a little bit of both.
I'm going to decrease.
Let me go ahead and zoom in my image here.
I'm going to go ahead and decrease the texture slightly
to maybe about negative 10.
And I'm going to go ahead
and decrease the clarity a little bit more.
So we're going to pull that down to negative 47.
But then I do make some other adjustments
that may not have necessarily crossed your mind.
The next thing I want to to do is increase
the sharpness all the way up to a hundred.
And that allows me to take the clarity even further down,
giving a really nice illusion on the skin,
even though my sharpness is all the way up,
my clarity is down.
My texture is down.
So I'm able to get the illusion of skin and skin texture
while still keeping the skin looking soft and really nice.
The other thing that I do to try and accentuate
the skin texture is I'll take my noise reduction slider
right here and I'm going to pull it all the way
to negative 100.
Which is going to give the illusion of texture over the skin.
So here is our before and our after on the skin.
You can see that we still are able to see the skin pores
and the skin texture.
And that's what I really, really want.
I would like to make one more modification to this.
I want to use the brush tool
and let's turn on the show overlay for this
because as we start to smooth skin, I really want to make sure
that none of this skin smoothing is anywhere
near the eyes or the eyebrows.
I don't want those to be smoothed at all.
Or the nostrils or the creases of the nose, right?
That stuff doesn't need any skin smoothing
and it actually starts to make the skin smoothing look fake
if those areas are over smoothed.
And we definitely want to take the skin smoothing
off the lips.
So again, I'm just doing this with my subtract
with my brush tool.
So I'm just removing this skin smoothing effect
from the areas where I don't want it to be visible.
Okay, that looks good.
I'm going to turn show overlay off.
You can either do that by hitting the check box here
or you can hit O on your keyboard
which will take your mask overlay off.
And then the visibility on and off
for our skin smoothing made so much easier.
Given the new masking features and the new constrictions,
using intersect to kind of Venn diagram
or like mix and match your masking options together
to really create a really nice, realistic skin smoothing
look for you.