

When he’s not shooting, he contributes to Photoshop User magazine & writes for. He works for fashion, architectural, manufacturing and corporate clients. Great job Perfectly Clear! Kevin is a commercial photographer from Atlanta. That initial pixel by pixel analysis really works. The shadows open up instead of becoming darker. Look at her neck in the original then at the third version. On top of all that, somehow, someway, Perfectly clear does not darken smoothed areas as other softening filters do. Needless to say, I’ve saved hours of working on individual pores with the healing brush to get the smooth look I love. I removed the lines under Vanessa’s eyes, darkened her pupils, brightened her irises and teeth just a bit.
#PERFECTLY CLEAR 2.0 SKIN#
Perfectly Clear’s smoothing trifecta, Perfectly Smooth, Skin Tone and Light Diffusion applied over the base skin smoothing preset achieves the Softar glowing, creamy skin and sets up the photograph for the final retouching.
#PERFECTLY CLEAR 2.0 PLUS#
The Original preset plus three applications of Perfectly Smooth, Skin Tone and Light Diffusion.

Click on one of the photos to see what a difference this technique makes. The top three have only Perfectly Smooth, Skin Tone and Light Diffusion applied. It has all of the effects shown in the preset. That was the result I wanted.įilters on Smart Objects are stacked with the last one applied on top. I did this for the two other layers above that. This left Perfectly Smooth,Skin Tone and Light Diffusion active.

When it opened, I unchecked three of the settings: Teeth Whitening, Blemish Removal and Sharpening. I clicked on the second from the bottom Perfectly Clear. The added sharpening, blemish removal and teeth whitening made it look truly odd. I wanted more smoothing so I applied the filter three more times. I really liked the effect of the initial Perfectly Clear skin smoothing preset I’d made. Modify allows the current preset to be updated. Name the preset, add a description which is optional then click OK. A dialog opens asking for a name and a description. New presets are made by clicking the Create button below the adjustments. After seeing how well the Perfectly Smooth, Skin Tone and Light Diffusion got applied based on Perfectly Clear’s analysis, I made a preset to feature these settings. Best of all, it’s easy to create custom presets. It comes with well constructed presets that can be tweaked for individual photographs. It does one thing for landscapes and something else entirely for face. It analyzes every pixel in an image then applies the result selectively based on the subject matter. Notice that her hair isn’t as sharp as we are used to in digital capture. This photograph of Jennifer Harve shows the creamy skin created by the Softar. The skin glowed with that filter, yet there was a hint of detail in the texture of the skin. The long sought after result is the effect of a soft focus filter like Hasselblad’s Softar 2 did on film. The result was super plastic skin that looked truly fake. The favored method for skin smoothing digitally last millennium was to select the face then blur the heck out of it. In order to use Perfectly Clear as a skin smoothing filter the file has to be opened this way. This can be done in Lightroom if you prefer before choosing Edit In > Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. Then I used the Spot Removal tool (B) to quickly heal the very few distractions on her face.Ĭlicking a blemish with Camera Raw’s Spot Removal tool makes it go away. Blemish removal in Camera Rawīefore working with Perfectly Clear, I double clicked the camera original Smart Object in Photoshop’s Layers panel to open it in Camera Raw. The original photograph of Vanessa opened as a Smart Object in Photoshop. It’s the foundation for everything done later in post. Great make up is important as I’ve written before here on Photofocus. She’s been made up professionally by Kristin White. Here’s the original photograph I made of Vanessa in my studio. It occurred to me that some of the settings Perfectly Clear has for skin smoothing could be combined with standard Photoshop retouching techniques to achieve the effect of an old filter not used since days of shooting film… The Original It’s great for doing a quick pass on a set of portraits to reduce blemishes, soften skin and generally enhance a take so clients could select their “hero” for final retouching. I’ve been exploring Perfectly Clear 2.0 for proofing for a while now. Finally, a digital soft focus filter like Zeiss’ Softar 2
