In this tutorial we'll introduce you to the Portrait Filters that are new in MTTC 2.0 and show you how to use these to increase your productivity when enhancing portrait shots. We'll go over how to use these filters to enhance eyes, lips, hair, teeth and skin and reshape facial features.
Step One - Open an Image
In this tutorial we'll work with a studio portraiture. Open a similarly styled photo to work with as you follow along with this tutorial.
Step Two - Select the Smooth Skin Filter
Go under the Select Effects menu and choose the Smooth Skin filter under the Portrait Filters category. You will need to adjust the Tonal Range (1) controls to fit the skin type you're retouching. Move the slider on the left more to the left to increase the range where it will apply to darker skin areas such as pores and blemishes. Move the slider to the right to close the range to restrict it ... you can adjust this at anytime and the change will affect all areas you've brushed over.
Adjust the Opacity (A) on the Brush Palette to add more or less smoothing for the next stroke you make. If you're about to stroke over a heavily wrinkled area we suggest you reduce the brush Size (A) and Opacity (A).
Use lots of short strokes with a higher opacity and a smaller brush for deep wrinkles. Use a larger brush with a lower opacity for big areas such as to cover the cheeks / chin and forehead of the subject. Once you find the ideal Opacity setting the work goes quickly. If you need to start over use the Brush Palette > Clear Brush Strokes button to remove all strokes so you start from scratch.
Use the Undo command if you make a mistake and need to undo the last brush stroke you've made. In the example above we've used a larger brush with a setting of 200 and a lower opacity between 10 - 15 to smooth the majority of the larger skin areas. We've used a smaller brush (A) with a setting of 115 and an opacity between 15 and 30 for deep wrinkles around the eyes.
Step Three - Add the Skin Color Filter
Under the Select Effect menu go to the Skin Color filter located under the Portrait Filter category. Adjust the Active Color (A) as needed - this does not have to be a precise match to the skin color as it will work automatically to blend and fill in the colors if you are close. Adjust the Size (B) of the brush larger to cover bigger areas of skin. Reduce the Opacity a bit to control the next stroke you do.
Brush over areas of the skin that have problems with oil, blemishes or need to be evened out (C). After you've brushed over your photo you can control the areas the skin color blends into by expanding or contracting the Tonal Range slider (1). Move the left slider to the left to fill in more dark areas. Move the left slider to the right to restrict the changes to lighter areas.
We ran the Skin Color brush over all the skin on the face (see example below) to give it a healthy and natural color. Notice how the oily, shiney spots are now reduced - and you can also see how the skin tone is even while still retaining minute pore and fine lines and shading.
Step Four - Add the Enhance Eyes Filter
Now let's quickly brighten the natural eye color while infusing a tiny bit of green cast to the iris area. First we'll adjust the Lighten setting (1) to 80 - this will bring out the natural eye color and help brighten the color of the iris (A) and (B) without altering the pupil. We'll also brighten the sclera (whites) of the eyes.
Use a small brush size - the default Size (50) is typically good. Opacity of 100 is also a good setting to start with. Stroke over the iris on both eye by making small circles around the iris only. Typically it takes a couple of strokes to build up the eye color. Very dark eyes sometimes will simply not brighten as there is insufficient color detail to bring out.
Next let's bring out the natural white around the iris. Reduce the Brush Opacity on the Brush Palette to 25 then stroke a few times over the whites. Remember you can undo a brush stroke if you need to reduce the opacity further and try again.
In the example above we've added a bit of green to the iris. We reduced the Brush Opacity (1) on the effect control to 30 and then we selected a green color for the Active Color. We changed the Active Color setting to 20 and then brushed over each iris (A) and (B) one time. This infused just enough green to look natural. Higher Brush Opacity and Active Color settings can seem unnatural so we recommend keeping these settings in the 20 - 30 range for most color jobs.
While we're brightening and enhancing the eyes - let's cheat a bit and touch up the teeth. The same algorithms that make the eyes brighter and whiter can also help yellow and aged teeth look naturally white. Make sure to reduce the Active Color to 0 as we don't want green teeth. Using a lower opacity of around 15 and a medium sized brush - around 60, stroke over the teeth one or two times until satisfied.
Step Five - Enhance Hair
The hair in this shot is pretty good but let's show you how to add a bit of natural color to it anyway. Under the Select Effects menu choose the Enhance Hair filter from the Portrait Filters category. Let's add a bit of golden color to the blonde. To fit our photo we used an amber gold color with a Brush Opacity (A) of 60 and an Active Color (A) of 50. We also wanted to soften up the hair where we brushed so we changed the Softness (B) to 20.
You can see the results in the example below. By adjusting the Tonal Range slider we can restrict or expand the color to the tonal values in the shot.
Step Six - Make the Eyes Larger
Natural Pupillary response to flash photography is dilation which can ruin a great shot. To further complicate studio shots people tend to squint when they're flash shy and afraid of the POP from the lights. This step in the tutorial will show you how to naturally correct this problem.
Go to the Select Effect menu and choose the Enlarge / Reduce filter from the Portrait Filter category.
First we're going to show you how to adjust the pupil to make it slightly larger to compensate for dilation.
Carefully adjust the Brush Size (A) to around 20% larger than the pupil you will adjust (B) (see example below). Reduce the Opacity to 30% or lower (this controls how much enlargement is applied).
Center the brush on the Iris and click it ONE time - don't drag or hold down on the mouse button - just click once and quickly let up on the button. The iris will grow larger in circumfrence. Repeat this step for the other eye.
Now adjust the Brush Size (A) around 130% larger than the iris. You'll want to get this where it is outside the iris (B) and covers a small bit of the eyelid and no more (see example below). Hold the mouse very still and quickly click it ONE time. Use undo if you need to try again. Reduce the Opacity on the brush palette to reduce the expansion.
You can see from the example below how natural the results are.
Step Seven - Enhance Smile and Make Lips Fuller
As you know many people get camera shy and don't smile their brightest. In this step we'll learn how to use the Reshape filter to fix this problem.
Go to the Select Effect menu and choose Reshape from the Portrait Filters category. In our example image we're going to click and drag on the corners of the mouth (A) and (B) to reshape the smile and then we're going to click and drag several times in an upward direction to make the upper lip fuller (C).
As you can see from the results below the smile is friendlier and the upper lip looks better.
Finishing Touch
Compare the original against the final image and you can see how dramatic the results are and how we've taken a problematic photo and turned it into an image the client will be very pleased with.
The portrait filters in MTTC 2.0 give you a powerful set of tools to enhance portrait photos. You can stack and apply different filter combinations together to perfect aspects of the shot. We suggest you save presets as you work in case you want to roll-back to an earlier version.
