Touch up a portrait using Pixlr Video Lecture | Pixlr Tutorial: Master Image Editing - Professional Skills

welcome to another Pixlr tutorial and
this tutorial accompanies lessons 17 of
my Pixlr tutorial series and in this
tutorial going to retouch a portrait
that's just open the image 90 years
and that is the image and we're going to
use the following tool so it's the spot
heal tool the client stamp tool of
course the brush tool and then some of
the adjustments color imbalance and
brightness contrast and the Gaussian
blur filter
so let's get started what I want to look
at is removing the imperfections from
the face so this it's freckles there's
moles is some rough skin or both are on
this side and then look at smoothing
that skin and doing some highlighting
and color balance to the whole photo
finally resizing it cuz it's quite large
photo first we need to duplicate the
layer preserve the original and then
using the spot heal tool first
that to remove some of those
imperfections now you've got the the
size up here that you can adjust and two
options here blending nearby for me
seems to work the the best because it is
taking pixels from around that area and
blending them any can make the brush
bigger but the bigger you make the brush
that's not a little bit and I wanted to
remove some of the area here it's going
to look quite out of place
depending on sort of what's around
and it's sort of to me that area it
needs the clone stamp tool to try get a
an area of better skin to clone over
here so that smaller the brush just to
go over the freckles and the moles using
the hi the navigator to so you means
they can really get in close and see
where areas you need to adjust and it
can take some time to work on a portrait
to really remove the areas and get it to
where you want it
now the other tool is the clone stamp
tool so in using this one you've got to
select with the command key on a Mac or
the ctrl key on a Windows machine hold
that down with the left mouse button it
becomes like a target this is the area
of the base that I want to clone so I
want to work on this section over here
on the right on a zoom in abyss and
holding the command key cloning that
area and just start to
work on this area and it's going to take
some time you don't want to go too far
like in this area here is too light
and because the the portraits got some
sad makeup on and it's gonna be hard to
match it
so the area here I'm going to look for
some skin around this area that can
possibly be cloned because it's closer
to that color I'm going to keep
resampling it
all the time to keep holding that
command key ctrl key to resample and the
longer you work on it the better it will
become so they keep working on that and
then I'll come back and show you where I
am at this point so this is my attempt
at smoothing out the imperfections using
the clone stamp tool and the Spot
Healing tool this is the original it's
what we started with and we've them side
by side you can see there is a
difference there so that's the first
stage that's closely what you want to
look at now is how to smooth the skin
when I duplicate this layer
and rename it to add the filter and go
to add the Gaussian blur filter to
smooth out the skin so on filter select
Gaussian blur and it's going to blur the
whole image right then we'll use some
opacity and reduce the opacity to make
the other features become visible so I'm
going to do about 150
and okay then toggle the layer settings
and reduce the opacity down to about
fifty which makes a considerable
difference to the skin now the rest of
the image is not too blurry but what
would be useful is to erase any of the
blur from the eyes and the mouth so
using the eraser tool you can just see
that the eyes of whitening a little bit
there some of that blur is coming off
comparing the left eye to the right eye
and do the same with the math as we move
some of the blur from those features
and then I would save that this stage
just sort of saved drafts of each step
in case something goes wrong you can
come back later and
just load the image from that point so
for example we're going to save this
image and call it portrait retouched
after filter and save that as a JPEG at
the hundred percent just in case
something goes wrong so I won't do that
the moment so just before we look at the
contrast and the brightness it's time to
flatten the image we've built up the
image using a number of layers I'll make
that bigger
and so it would make sense to flatten it
merge all those layers together and
start with the new image with just one
layer it wouldn't be very useful to save
your image once you've flattened it
because if you have to bring it back in
because you've made a mistake you're not
going to have all the different layers
to go back and adjust so this is the
point to save it as a draft but to
flatten it I'm going to layer and
flattening it you need see it's just one
layout now we can look at working on the
contrast and the brightness so I'm going
to again duplicate the layer
I'll trust
and going into adjustments brightness
and contrast and then have a little play
around settings here to you get
something that you are happy with so
I've just brighten that and adjusted
that to something I'm happy with
then we look at adjusting the color
balance so you've got the red green and
blue offsets to play with too you can
get the cart to what you want it to be
it's a little fiddle a little experiment
and I'll show you what I've done in a
second
so this is the image after I've adjusted
the color the color balance and the
brightness and contrast and again it's
time to flatten the image so layout
flatten image probably save it again at
this point as well and then the last
step is to do a bit of resizing and some
cropping it's quite a large image and
it's at 39% at this point so I'm going
to start with cropping it so select the
crop tool and you can you can crop by
changing the different constraint so I
could change it to particular size that
I wanted if I wanted a 640 by 480 image
put those characteristics into the crop
tool and then crop it now you only get
that much if you wanted a 640 by 480
picture that's the size of the crop that
you can be able to do which is a bit
difficult to fit everything in it have
to really resize the picture to get bit
or whole face in so really we'll do that
later
change the size I don't apply those
changes so I'm going to have no mystery
I'll just a cheating aspect ratio and
crop because I really don't need the
handy too much
well it's going to be difficult to not
have it in
so perhaps there pick the area that you
want to include and double click to crop
it hasn't changed the size that much
it's still 12 44 by 12 44 so pure square
at the moment because it's 1 2 1 s bit
ratio then go to the fruit transform
holding the shift' key just like it a
bit smaller
is to apply the changes and then save
that one
so this is the portrait retouched final
as a JPEG full strength
let's find the image and the desktop and
that's the final in each find the
original so here's the original and
there's the one on the left that would
be that has been retouched the
imperfections remove the skin smooth
adjusting the carton the contrast the
brightness resizing it and saving it
that's all for now