Beauty Retouching with Dennis Dunbar

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Los Angeles American Photographic Artists March 26th: Beauty Retouching APA LA Upcoming Event Schedule

Photo by Jeremy Cowart March 26th High End Beauty Retouching with Dennis Dunbar Join us on Saturday, March 26th when Dennis Dunbar will be teaching a workshop on High End Beauty Retouching. In this workshop Dennis will cover his Beauty Retouching Workflow, and will go into detail describing his techniques for getting perfect skin, Color Correcting, and Sharpening. He’ll also discuss working on hair, enhancing makeup, adding a “Healthy Skin Glow” and using Adjustment Layers to enhance the lighting. Users of all levels are welcome as this workshop promises to be an informative and interesting event where Dennis will share tips and tricks that will help both the beginner as well as the advanced user. For more information or to register click here Dennis Dunbar is a Digital Artist with extensive experience in digital issues. He began compositing images in the darkroom under the tutelage of William Warren, a noted Stock Shooter. After seeing the advantages of working digitally Dennis jumped in with both feet, setting up his own studio in 1991 and soon was working extensively creating finished artwork for movie posters as well as commercial ads. Dennis’ drive to stay on top of the various issues involved in the digital imaging world led him to also focus on Color Management and to offer consulting services to his clients in this area as well. In the summer of 2002 Dennis was named to the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Chapter of the Advertising Photographers of America where he serves as head of the Digital Committee. His work with the APA led him to concentrate on working with groups that are focused in the area of creating standards for the Digital Imaging.

Jeremy Cowart and Taylor Swift

As a digital artist/retoucher I love collaborating with photographers producing beautiful images like this one of Taylor Swift, shot by Jeremy Cowart. This image called for careful retouching and subtle techniques to enhance her natural beauty.



In working on Beauty shots like this one my standard workflow is to first go through the image cleaning up any out of place bits, then I carefully worked on her skin using a combination of the Heal Brush, the Clone Tool and a little paint here and there balancing just the right amount of texture with an overall smoothness to make sure her skin looked perfect. Then I removed the stray hairs that always seem to show up in closely cropped shots like this.

After the basic cleanup was done I then focused on bringing just the right sense of light to her eye with a gentle Curves adjustment. Keeping in mind that the viewer's eye tends to go to the sharpest part of the image I always like add just a little more sharpness in the eyes. For this part I usually make use of the HiPass sharpening technique combined with a layer mask to limit the effect to just the eyes.

After applying the sharpening to her eyes I then added a subtle Glow to her skin by manipulating a copy of the Blue Channel to create a selection I could add the Glow through. The next step was to add a couple of "Bling" highlights on her earrings. And finally the lighting was enhanced with a Curves Adjustment Layer that added just the right sense of drama.

Here's a closer look: