Editing Software Portraiture vs Portrait Professional PSE

KatieJo

Right now I use PSE for editing/revamping my photos, but I find touching up portraits super challenging. I've read a lot about it and I use portrait professional and layers. I am just wondering what the best tips are especially for splotchy newborn skin?

marketingman

I personally use Paint Shop Pro. It does most of what you would want to do.

As for splotchy skin, try the retouch or clone brush.
Either that or cover the kid in a blanket. : )

Vinylspider

If you don't have paintshop pro and don't want to fork out the cost, the Gimp has an equally useful clone/healing brush tool for matting out skin. There's pleanty of glamour touch-up tutorials for both Gimp and Photoshop and several ways to skin a cat.

Stalwartjah

I use Elements 7 and general touch ups are quite easy. Spot heal and clone take care of most of your dirty work. For general editing, I rarely use layers. I know most will... but it seems a wasted step to me. If all you are doing is contrast, sharpness, saturation and light/shadows... I won't layer.

That's not to mean I won't make a selection and edit it seperate (which is what layers are for) from the rest of the photo... I just make sure I do those edits last. After I've done my general edits. That way I get my desired settings over my selections without altering the entire image again.

Using layers would allow me to make several seperate selections and alter them individually and then combine them back as the one photo. It's great if you are using it for a nice project photo or have a lot of elements to change.

Like... if you wanted to bokeah a background and sharpen the foreground while adjusting the saturation. You could do those things on your main photo by using your wand selector. It's the tool that selects an area the size of your brush. Simply move it over your subject and get a general size... then hold the [ctrl] button down while you push the edges in place with the same tool. You may wish to reduce your brush size to get better control in tighter areas. Once you have your selection... you can make your changes as you normally would. Now... you can also right click the area you outlined and then select the inverse. That will highlight everything not in your current selection. For ex; I use it to give my skies more blue without giving my entire picture more blue.

Again... that's also what layers are for.