Portrait enhancements - worth doing?

gilbouk

gilbouk

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Gil
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Just looking at some of the tools available to improve portraits and discovered Lightroom has Portrait enhancement tools. Also received an email from Luminar talking about their portrait enhancement software. Mainly using Capture One and Affinity at the moment, I haven't really dabbled in enhancing portraits other than maybe a little frequency separation which can often look a little unnatural depending on how far you go.

What are people's experiences with portrait enhancement - do you use it? Do you use it for models in a studio environment, or for photos of couples for example in a Wedding setting? Keen to hear people's take on this subject and maybe some examples of before and after :)
 
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Hi Gil,

I use PortraitPro Studio by Anthropics Technology. Here's recent pic of my girlfriend in the garden.

Took about 2 minutes to process this. You can download a free trial. I love it for quick enhancements.

Dougie.
p.s. She wanted the make up slapped on lol

Before :-
Lockdown-Sun-PrePP by Dougie Lindsay, on Flickr

After :-
Lockdown-Sun by Dougie Lindsay, on Flickr
 
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gilbouk said:
Just looking at some of the tools available to improve portraits and discovered Lightroom has Portrait enhancement tools. Also received an email from Luminar talking about their portrait enhancement software. Mainly using Capture One and Affinity at the moment, I haven't really dabbled in enhancing portraits other than maybe a little frequency separation which can often look a little natural depending on how far you go.

What are people's experiences with portrait enhancement - do you use it? Do you use it for models in a studio environment, or for photos of couples for example in a Wedding setting? Keen to hear people's take on this subject and maybe some examples of before and after :)
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On1 comes with built-in portrait tools, but TBH by the time I've lined up eyes, lips, skin etc and then adjusted settings to keep it natural I could do just the same with the brush and a couple of home-made masks in LR.
 
I find for some Portrait Pro is a slippery slope. What I mean by this is that people see ok results and then, because it’s so easy, never bother to do their own PP.

In reality it CAN be a good tool if used properly and wound down however - why bother? Just take the time to learn to do it with photoshop and you’ll get a much better result in the end.
 
Image by Dino said:
I find for some Portrait Pro is a slippery slope. What I mean by this is that people see ok results and then, because it’s so easy, never bother to do their own PP.

In reality it CAN be a good tool if used properly and wound down however - why bother? Just take the time to learn to do it with photoshop and you’ll get a much better result in the end.
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Hi Dean,

I'm not really agreeing with this. I done a presentation of 7 packages to my camera club last week via Zoom . (Topaz and Anthropics products).

I'll trim the section to my Portrait Pro 10 min demo tomorrow and share a wetransfer link.

A lot more to the package than anything Photoshop can do.

Dougie.
 
I’m up to verse with the inpainting tool, healing brush abs frequency separation in Affinity but keen to learn about slight adjustments to eye alignment and size and also subtle slimming. Would be interested to see your demo too @Snapper67
 
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gilbouk said:
I’m up to verse with the inpainting tool, healing brush abs frequency separation in Affinity but keen to learn about slight adjustments to eye alignment and size and also subtle slimming. Would be interested to see your demo too @Snapper67
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Hi,

I've uploaded my presentation via WeTransfer so link available for 7 days. File is about 870MB.

The Anthropics Products (Portrait Pro Studio, Body, Landscape Pro etc are all from 1 hour onwards).

I demo the Topaz Products (Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI and Gigapixel AI) in the first hour.

Hope this helps.

https://we.tl/t-zkRTFZkibx

Dougie.
 
Well it is important not to go too far. I used to attend a regular studio portrait session. I do have a copy of Portrait Pro but rarely use it. I now find I am happy to just may a few changes manually and only apply the minimum. A little sharpening around the eyes and removing any obvious temporary blemishes. Transforming and image to look more like a cartoon character is not what I want.

I recall the comments of a professional portrait photographer in my club. He was retired from a very successful career. He tried portrait pro and said he might have used it for a quick look at some portraits but would have always edited the final versions manually. He recalled a lesson from earlier in his career when he photographed a mature lady who wanted a portrait to hang on her wall. He thought her skin was well worn and wrinkled so produced a softened version thinking it would flatter the lady and please her as it had with other customers. She was not happy and said the photograph did not look like her. She explained that she has spent many years walking in the Himalayas and even walking much of the length of South America. Thus she had been exposed to sun and weather over many years and naturally now had a weathered look. But this is how her friends and family see her. My Photographer friend apologized and reprinted the portrait with no editing; satisfied customer.

Dave
 
The first image is by far superior to the second edited one. Looks like she’s gone to town with concealer and looks completely unnatural imo.
 
TCR4x4 said:
The first image is by far superior to the second edited one. Looks like she’s gone to town with concealer and looks completely unnatural imo.
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She was happy with it, got her hair dyed the lot etc. Was a lockdown pic for her social media, deliberately overdone.

It's my girlfriend, she was sitting with me while i done it.
 
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