Portrait Actions

[JohnReid]

Hi everyone, I've been searching the web and reading alot of matarial related to getting the best out of portraits. So far I've been able to create actions that whiten teeth, whiten eyes, air brush skin and soften the skin tones but I know there is still plenty to learn.



Anyone wish to share there actions/steps over here?

[slipe]

I haven't had much luck with actions for portraits. Each seems a little different.

I often like what noise reduction plug-ins do for portraits. I make a layer, select the face with feathering and mess with the noise reduction settings. Then erase the eyes and mouth back to the original. I usually select the whites in the eyes and teeth and use levels, curves or sometimes even white airbrush with some transparency or reduced flow.

Increasing the pupil and/or iris a tad can make the portrait nicer, but you have to be very subtle with the iris or it can look artificial. If I take red-eye from the pupil I always put the reflection back or it doesn't look right.

But I haven't found anything I can do with actions other than my standard PTLens and defogging. And portraits are usually at a focal length where PTLens doesn't really do anything. I usually shoot with minimum sharpening and contrast and get the contrast back with selective color in portraits. But selective color isn't something you can shotgun with an action either IMO.