Looking for Photoshop Tips for Nudes (Selective color, etc)

Hey all,

My girlfriend recently sent me some awesome pics of her self, some of which are pretty classy nudes. I've been photoshopping them (not retouching her, because I think retoucing is bullshit), but I've been editing the backgrounds, and doing selective color, etc.

I'm looking for tips on how to do selective color, especially on lace. I tried just copying the lace area I wanted colored and then making the rest grey-scale, but then the skin between the lace is obviously still peach-colored, and looks terrible with the lace. Any tips?

And no, I won't be posting pics of her. Sorry guys.


~JD

 

When you say selective colour you mean selective colouring am I right? Because Selective Colour is actually a feature in PS (Layers > Adjustment Layers > Selective Color or Image > Adjustments > Selective Color) but I think you're not using it here.

If I'm picturing what you're doing correctly, if you can't make a good selection using one of the automated tools then it usually does come down to laborious handwork unfortunately.

Retouching covers a whole raft of things, it's not all on the level of that "in this magazine cover we're gonna make it look like the celeb doesn't any human skin texture" bullshit Even global colour adjustments for colour temp or camera white balance issues are retouching (which IME >90% of photos need).

 

May be some help, in the vid they talk about black and white but i think it will work for any color

 

GUI, yes, I mean selective coloring. I didn't realize there was an honest-to-goodness Selective Color tool in photoshop! I've been using masks or the super-lazy method of copying what I want in color in a new layer, then just putting the entire first layer to grey-scale.

Maybe I'll get her permission to post some pics on here to show what I mean, with no face, so I can show you exactly what I mean, and get constructive criticism. lol

 

http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/

 

Awesome link, future!

On a side note, why does "Liking" a post now cause the page to jump to the top? -_- #PhunProblems

 

Does depend on the version of course.

It can work really well, particularly when stacked, but the more you use it the more you'll run up against things where it won't target only the colour you want meaning you end up having to do Layer Mask work, so it's good to have experience in using those even with this... and with so many other things too — I selectively mask sharpening, Curves, colour overlays, gradients, Lens Flare, the list goes on and on.

I was thinking initially you could crop down to show a small area of the lace, doesn't have to be revealing. Even a 300x300 piece might give enough of an idea of what you're facing.

Yeah been that way for a while now. Annoying or what?

 

I got permission to post a small pic with the restriction that it can't show much skin. She's seen this crop of the pic and approves of my posting it. Unfortunately, the pics I'm working with were taken with an NES cartridge, or possible they were taken using an ancient Kodak box camera...so they're pretty small to begin with, and cropping them obviously does nothing to increase size or detail. (They were taken on her ipod lol)



Chances are, this is the only pic I'll be posting. But it should give enough of an idea of the lace, and her freckles, which she has EVERYWHERE lol. I've managed to make images greyscale using the Channel Mixer feature, but the simple "Greyscale" option (such as Ctrl+Shift+U" to drop the Hue saturation to zero makes the image look horrible...

Any tips would be appreciated!

 

Deffo the best way to take an image to greyscale, I'd recommend you use this any time you want a good result.

This does often give the worst result! But changing the image from one of the colour modes directly to Greyscale can be even worse <blech>

If I'm understanding what you're aiming for you want a greyscale pic with selective colour on the knickers. I get that the skin colour also showing through the lace looks odd so I think the best way is just do a colour overlay over the entire area of underwear, it'll also colour the thin parts of the lace where the skin shows but the viewer shouldn't really be bothered by that.

If you do want to make the colour overlay a little more detailed though it's a good thing that they're purple as it's easy to do a selection based on their colour (Select > Color Range). A Fuzziness setting of 130 worked well for me.

Incidentally for the greyscale conversion in Channel Mixer, I got the best result to my eyes using minor tweaks to the sliders in the Orange Filter preset.

 

Sorry you feel that way, but I will agree with you that some retouchers don't do a very good job. Many a model, photographer and publication demand retouching, employing guys like me. If it's done well enough, the retoucher goes without notice and the model does not look like she has skin resembling a basketball or porcelain doll. With the best retouchers, as much care and concern in delivering details is just as important as those you are attempting in your color-select project.

Most of my color-select work has been "old school". I use a B&W overlay (or some variance), magnify as close as possible and erase the overlay where desired. It's labor intensive, especially with something like lace but, worth the effort in the end if you feel the photo will actually benefit from it or even allow it. Color "bleeding" onto the lace from the quality of the photo may determine whether you can achieve a flawless result.

 

I have nothing against retouchers, I just feel that it can be dishonest, and make people think fake things are real, or set unrealistic standards of beauty.

As for the lace, yeah, it proved to be a bitch I'm sure it would be easier with higher quality photos, but neither of us have a quality camera. She'll be buying a very nice DSLR camera for her Criminal Investigation classes...but I doubt she'll let me take nudes on it

 

When she has the camera buy a memorycard for privat use