smoothing out skin tones and blemishes

[Spike Baumann]

Hi,
Does anyone have a technique for smoothing out skin in post to get rid of blemishes like on face cream or make up commercials that doesn't make the footage look blurred? I have some close ups on a music video and they are complaining that they can see too many blemishes. I have tried in after effects with chroma blurs and noise reductions but it starts to make the footage look muddy that way.

Spike

 

[Charles Angus]

A trick I use sometimes is to do a pick on the skin tone, blur the key slightly, then desaturate the skin, and push "skin tone" colour back into it. Doesn't fix everything, but it goes a good way often.

Combining this with a little judicious blurring on just the face can fix many problems.

After that, if you still have problems, I think you'd be looking towards getting a VFX guy to come in and track some paint work onto the face.

Just my two cents.

 

[Shane Kelly]

Lynda.com has a good tutorial on this. I'm still learning color but the basics of it are: pulling a key on the skin tones, blurring the key and alpha blend to put it back together.
I think that you may be able to purchase just this lesson (if you have color).
Shane.

 

[Spike Baumann]

Thanks. I will look into this. Hopefully razor bumps are not too big to hide with this technique.

 

[Olivia Coupe]

Which editing software are you using? I just edited a project in Avid symphony nitris and I used a dft glow - by viewing the selection and playing around with range/position/blur levels you can smooth skin while avoiding features you want sharp like eyes etc. A very handy little tool.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

razor bumps, razor rash... Hmmm... You can hide them, but too much smoothing in post is going to be noticeable, even more so for HD resolutions and above.

IMO, it pays to have good makeup before the camera even starts rolling. If you can see lines, cake layers, etc.. in the makeup, then that's not good makeup. Good filtering helps too. A black promist can be a lifesaver when "she looks like hell". So can gold diffusion, netting the lens, etc.. I have a fair bit of VFX and post experience and when I shoot, I try to get as close to my intended image as I possibly can through practical means. "Fix it in post" is rarely a good solution if it can be avoided. That said, for close-ups and leading lady, diva shots, you can usually expect a bit of touching up in post. How crazy you get with that will depend on the amount of time you want to spend on it and what what you are starting with.

Be careful with roto masks or skin-tone keys and blurring. They do work, but it's easy to get carried away. Be very careful of your edges with this technique for moving images, you can create some unsightly motion artifacts. This is one of the primary techniques for retouching still photos as well and, IMO is used a bit too liberally these days. I think half or more of all the "glamour shots" I see these days leave the ladies looking like a pretty decent airbrush painting and not a real photo. Same can be said with some of the cosmetics commercials. For a :15 or :30 spot no one thinks much of it, but study it for longer and it's a whole different deal.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Use older lenses like Cooke SII/III, that was the technique for the close ups of Mr & Mrs Smith, wides were Cooke S4's. Shooting wide open on the older Cooke 20-100 is another option

 

[Peter Karlsson]

Degrain, with manual sample points (be sure to really select the skin, or the degrainer will go bezerk) in After effects, and a softmask around the area you want to fix usually works. You don't want to degrain the whole footage, so you need to mask out the areas you really want to fix.

Keying the skin can work to if the face is evenly lit. But how often does that happen?

 

[Permendez Rego]

www.videocopilot.net has a totorial on blemish removal. I haven't checked it out but I know they do have some awesome free tutorials.

 

[Shane Kelly]

There's a couple of plugins on this page http://sheffieldsoftworks.com/ and you can try before you buy.

 

[jon erwin]

Tiffen makes some great filters for Final Cut / After Effects. I use the Black Pro mist filter and it softens out the skin tones nicely and takes the edge off the image. Works well for female artists.