Photoshop Tutorial: Perfecting Portraits like a Pro

Portraits are imperfect, even when professionals take them. Computer enhancement is necessary to keep up professionally or useful for private projects and hobby pictures. With this tutorial, you will learn to remove unsightly blemishes, digitally whiten teeth, color-correct your photo, and give your subject a glowing look of airbrushed perfection. These subtle touches will transform your photo from mediocre to magnificent.

Now, the first step is to acquire a photo. I don't have a picture from my own photography that I want to use, so I went over to stock.xchng, a free stock photo site, and downloaded one. This photo is shown below in Figure 1, compared to the final after editing.

First, we must set up our photo for editing. So, you want to zoom in first so that the head is large on your screen. Duplicate the background layer that holds your photo by right-clicking it on the Layer Palette and selecting "Duplicate Layer..." from the menu that pops up. This will allow you to delete the duplicate layer if you do not like your alterations without losing the original state.

Now our prep work is complete and we can get down to business. We will be removing a scar on our model's forehead, as well as excess freckles on her nose. This technique can be applied for removing blemishes from a face or anything from a normal photo. We are going to be using a fantastic tool for this called the Clone Stamp. This tool is located on the top left of the Tools bar, just above the Eraser tool. You want to use a small brush size for precision with soft edges. To use this tool, we first define a source area that the tool will copy over our blemishes. The area you define should be of the same color and lighting of the area you want to cover up so that it looks natural. Alt-Click to define your source area. Now, use the left mouse button to paint that source over the blemish area to make it disappear! Check Figure 2 to see my source areas and my brush strokes. In my example, the Clone Stamp copies part of her forehead over the scar. Figure 4 shows the model after the Clone Stamp work.

To whiten her teeth, we must first select them. Zoom in a carefully Magic Lasso the teeth, but not the lips or the dark area of the mouth where there are no teeth. Otherwise, her entire mouth and lips will glow like the Sun in the middle of her face. Not what I was going for. After you have them selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Brightness and Contrast. Slide the Brightness up to whiten her teeth. Be careful not to overdo it or you will see that your model's teeth look unnatural. Instead, brighten slightly and then go to Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation (with the teeth still selected) and slide the Saturation down to take out any yellow color. Voila, teeth a dentist would kill for. (Figure 3)

Before we do our secret airbrush technique to make our picture look absolutely breathtaking, let's adjust the color just slightly. This is an optional step and is only necessary if the colors of the entire photo are not where you want them to be. The tools you want for this are under that same Image>Adjustments...menu. The best and fastest tools are usually Auto Levels and Auto Color, which do all the work for you. If you want, you can manually adjust the Brightness and Contrast or the Hue and Saturation just like we did with the teeth. Don't overdo this unless you want a stylized look.

Finally, we put the icing on the cake. Remember how we duplicated the original layer and did all of our edits on the duplicate? Now we are going to Duplicate the duplicate (the top layer). After you have done this, you should have three layers, the top two exactly the same. Now, with the new top layer selected, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a low number, I used 2.9. Don't worry we won't leave it all blurry like this. Check Figure 4 to make sure you are this far. On the Layer Palette, select the blurred top layer and click the drop-down just above it that says "Normal." Change this to Soft Light, and reduce the Fill value until the effect looks natural. Pretty neat, huh? Check Figure 5 for help.

Thanks very much for your interest. If you want to see the overall effect, Figure 1 has a side by side comparison.