How to Retouch Portrait: 2 Simplest Ways for Beginners
Whether it's a photo ornament or a social media avatar, a beautiful portrait photo is what everyone wants. Taking a photo is just the first step, you also need tools to retouch your portrait photos.
This article will introduce two ways to edit your portrait photos to make your personal photos stand out. One is to use the free online face editor - Fotor, and the other is to use Photoshop.
Table of Contents
- How to Retouch Portrait Photo with Fotor's Online Face Editor?
- How to Retouch Portrait Photo Photoshop?
How to Retouch Portrait Photo with Fotor's Online Face Editor?
1. Open the Tool
Open fotor.com and go to the photo retouching tool.
2. Upload Photos
Click "Open Image" to upload the image you want to edit, or drag and drop your photo directly to the editing area.
3. Use Editing Tools to Make Basic Adjustments to Your Photos
- Click the "Rotate & Flip" button to adjust the angle of your photo to make it suitable for viewing.
- Click the "Basic Adjust" button to adjust the contrast, brightness, etc. of the picture. Increase exposure, saturation, and contrast for brighter, more vivid pictures.
- Click the "Crop" button to crop the excess area and keep the part you want to show the most. At the same time, we also support shape images. Circle shape images, heart shape images, triangle shape images, etc are available.
4. Use Retouching Up Tools for Portrait Retouching
- Click "Wrinkle Remover" to remove the forehead lines, three-eight lines, etc. on the face.
- Click "Blemish Fix" to get rid of blemishes and pimples on the face.
- Click "Smoothing" to smooth your skin.
- Click "Reshape" to make your face and body thinner.
- Click "Red-eye Removal" to remove the red eye caused by taking pictures.
- Click "Teeth Whitening" to whiten your leaking teeth and make your smile more confident and beautiful.
- Click buttons like "Eye Shadow" "Eyeliner" and "Lip Tint" to add makeup to your selfies. Never worry about taking pictures without makeup. Our digital makeup tool solves this pain.
Note: All of the above tools can be adjusted to change the size and intensity of the application by adjusting the sliders below the tool.
5. Design Your Portrait Photo
- Click the "Background Remover" button to remove the background of your original photo. Add a new background to your photo by clicking "Change Background". It can be a solid color or a gradient color.
- Click "Effects" to add different filters to your portrait photos. We have hundreds of photo filters for you to choose from.
- Click "Text" to add bold text to your photo. We offer a variety of fonts and typefaces.
As a free online photo editor, Fotor has an intuitive interface and easy-to-use tools. These make retouching portrait photos easy. In addition, Fotor offers face editor apps that allow people to edit their photos on their phones.
How to Retouch Portrait Photo Photoshop?
Photoshop is a very useful drawing tool. Many magazine blockbusters are completed by ps. Using Photoshop to edit beautiful photos of yourself is great! Here we mainly introduce the use of ps for fine-tuning portraits.
Analyze photos
Determine the editing ideas according to the style. It needs to be considered from the theme, clothing, mood, light and shade (lighting), scene color matching, etc.
For example, sweet style portraits, and clothes are light-colored flowers. The overall light and shade need to be brighter, and the contrast can be stronger. If the color scheme of the scene is dominated by light colors, the saturation needs to be lower and the brightness higher.
According to the theme, confirm whether the elements on the screen are reasonable and whether there is any need to adjust.
8 Steps to Edit Portrait in Photoshop
1. Basic Settings
1) Lens Correction
Now camera shots are generally saved in Raw format. After opening with ACR or LR analysis, the first step is always to check the two ticks of lens correction. This can solve the distortion caused by different specifications of the lens when shooting.
2) Basic light effect processing
After the lens correction is completed, jump directly to the basic parameter adjustment options in ACR or LR.
- Adjust white balance
- Correct or recompose
- Black and white field
- Adjust contrast and sharpness according to style. For example, a hard style can moderately increase contrast and sharpness.
- Adjust individual color saturation/lightness/hue. For example, the skin of a character is dark and opaque, and the hue and saturation of specific colors can be adjusted to achieve the effect. Portrait skin color is usually adjusted to orange.
Note: Camera raw can do a lot more, including blemishes, spot adjustments, sharpening photos, etc. But don't expect to adjust the film in one shot in Camera raw.
2. Second Composition
The role of the second composition is to solve the problem of composition defects caused by the hasty capture time or insufficient preparation in the early stage of shooting. So be sure to do a second composition. Which makes the picture more harmonious and beautiful.
Generally, environmental portraits of large-format scenes are recomposed into a 16:9 ratio, which will be more magnificent.
If you don't know how to adjust the composition, then go back to the most basic composition mode. Putting the subject at the three-point line is no problem.
3. Remove Debris
- Photographers intruding
- Broken and imperfect backgrounds
- Stains, damage, and thread ends on clothing
- Spots on the face and body of the characters, thread ends in clothing, wearing lenses, etc. need to be removed.
4. Moderate Liquefaction
Liquify isn't just for thinness. It also adjusts any inconsistencies in the picture, such as clothing, earrings, buns, and more. They can all be rounded by liquefaction.
- Body: Adjust the body to make the character look thinner.
- Face Shape: Adjust the contour of the face.
- Limbs: Make the limbs more slender.
5. Refine the Skin
- Unify face and body and limb skin tone
- Reduce neck and other shadow noise caused by shooting
- Removal of skin yellowing due to makeup or other reasons
- Freckle removal, acne removal, mole spotting, lightening eye lines, lightening, lightening or removing neck lines, etc.
- Removal of potholes on the skin caused by light and shadow, or other reasons
- Enhance the transition of light and shadow
6. Adjust Skin Tone
- Adjust the brightness of the skin
- Adjust skin contrast
- Adjust skin tone (including shadows and highlights)
7. Global Lighting Effect Shaping and Unification
Because of shooting reasons and light reasons, the light of the characters' bodies and faces is often uneven. So it has to be adjusted. There are many ways to shape light and shadow, such as curves, levels, TKActions V7, etc.
Here are three common situations:
1) If the light and shadow in the picture are very flat, you can use two darkening curves and one brightening curve to get the global light and shadow. At the same time, neutral gray is used to get the light and shadow of the characters themselves.
2) If there is a light beam in the picture, all we need to do is to darken the surroundings with a curve, brighten the beam with a curve, and finally brighten the character with a curve. Then use neutral gray to shape the three-dimensional effect of the characters.
3) If you are a bright-toned portrait, and the picture itself is high-lit, then you should not use curves to darken the environment. Directly use neutral gray to shape the three-dimensional sense of the characters.
In short, different methods are used for different effects.
8. Closing
- Reunification of characters and backgrounds
- Local moderate sharpening
- Overall atmosphere adjustment
Summing Up
Portrait retouching is very important for both beauty lovers and professional photographers. We mainly introduce two methods, including using Fotor's face editor and Photoshop to retouch portraits. They are all very simple and easy to get started. Edit your portrait pictures now.
