Welcome back to Instagram vs. Reality, the segment on the channel where we call out bad
photoshop practices and impossible beauty standards with science, or just basic common
sense, really.
As always, these videos are intended to be informative and are not aimed to target or
slander anyone’s brand.
This week’s submissions are from r/instagramreality.
We're going to start with a picture of Olivia Munn.
Here you can see in this picture that there is no skin texture at all and her freckles
are gone.
There are ways to remove freckles by the means of:
* Laser treatment * Cryosurgery
* Chemical peels * Natural remedies
We know that she didn't have any procedures done to remove the freckles, judging by her
recent social media posts and public appearances.
So, it's definitely the editor removed her freckles along with the other little imperfections.
To get the texture back we're going to use the same technique we have used in our previous
videos, whic h is to add a new layer with a 50% gray, changing the blend mode to overlay/soft
light and adding a texturizer filter and using the sandstone texture to mimic the skin texture
and choose the direction of light which in this case is coming from the right side.
Then we can adjust the scale according to the size of the pores (depending on the distance
of the subject from the camera).
Finally mask out the rest or just invert the mask and paint in the texture where we need
it and remove it from the highlights by using the blend-if slider.
Immediately you can see the difference between the before and after.
Now we can also add the freckles back in by using a custom brush, blurring it a little
bit and lowering the opacity.
This is the first thing that retouchers should keep in mind, that they do not get rid of
any characteristic features like moles, freckles, any scars or birthmarks, as the final output
tends to look like an entirely different person.
Personally, I’ve been guilty of this in the past and it depends on the image’s final
use.
If it’s for a social media post where it’s easy to compare old vs new then it’s a dead
giveaway, if it’s for a modelling editorial, then it’s a different story.
The second example is similar to the first one because the skin texture has been retouched
into oblivion, but credit where credit is due they have left the colour untouched.
As you can see there are clear highlights, shadows and midtones throughout, but there's
no texture at all.
They have left some details, like these two pimples and what looks like a mole, but that's
not gonna help since the skin is buttery smooth.
It seems to be the most common retouching mistake made by almost everyone, everywhere.
and to be honest, it's making me miss those horrible liquify jobs from previous episodes.
To fix the issue, we're going to again use the same technique of using a 50% gray layer,
setting the blending mode to overlay or soft light, adding the Sandstone texture from the
filter gallery and painting in the texture.
The final result is much more realistic but there are some blurry points that we simply
cannot restore due to the resolution of the provided image.
The third example is again the same kind and I have no idea how all of these pictures get
posted because it's very clear in this picture that her skin is silky smooth.
You also have a reference here because you can see that there is a lot of texture on
her hand.
There are creases, pores and color variation but in her face, it's completely gone.
She may have also altered her facial proportions such as the eyes or shape of her nose but
that’s dubious.
She has definitely had fillers applied to her lips, to be more accurate, her upper lip
since its showing the beginnings of what’s known as overfilling syndrome where the lips
become everted (curled upwards) due to too much vermillion mass.
The only redeeming quality about this retouching job is that the retoucher kept the mole near
her lip and judging by the amount of editing that has been done on this picture it seems
like he/she fought with all his/her might to keep the mole untouched.
Also they've taken into account the colors and maintained the variation between the shadows,
highlights and midtones so that's a plus.
Now, again we're going to use the same technique used in our previous examples and videos by
using a 50% gray layer, adding a sandstone texture and masking in the parts we need and
finally remove it from the highlights using the blend-if slider.
I’ve shown you three examples of the same technique to emphasise its versatility in
adding texture specifically to human skin.
Our next example, has two things missing * Texture
* Colour variation In her defence, she could be that pale, but
even in pale skin people there's a lot of variation as we've mentioned in our previous
video.
That's because there's a lot of things going on in our faces like the temperature and that
causes warmer tints (reddish or orange tints) and colder tints (cool bluish shades).
Here, none of those things are present.
The only thing that's there is just the highlight on her nose.
You can tell that this picture is retouched because she or her editor has retouched her
eyebrows too and that resulted in the eyebrows becoming much more lighter than they were
supposed to be.
So to fix this one, we can just either use a new layer with soft light blending mode
and paint with a darker coloror we can just use a curves adjustment layer and bring the
mid-point down.
Then use an inverted mask and paint in the shadows on her face.
Similarly for the highlights, we can bring the mid-tones up and paint the highlights
in.
For the color variation, we can use a color balance adjustment layer and increase the
reds in the highlights and the midtones because those are really lacking in her face.
Then bring the opacity down and now you can see it looks a bit less lifeless than the
original.
Finally, for the texture we can use the same technique, but here I don't think it's really
needed because it's a low quality JPEG and it's not a close-up shot so you wouldn't really
see much of the texture anyway.
This photo can never be realistic because of her warped facial proportions.
The next example marks the return of our channel's favourite family and this time we're talking
about Kris Jenner and Gordon Ramsay.
Clearly this picture has been heavily edited, and I remember vaguely at the time it was
news of the tabloids as Gordon Ramsey posted an unedited version and Kris posted a touched
up one.
Here, they did leave those forehead lines to be generous but the rest of the face just
looks like Madame Tussauds Wax sculpture.
In case of Kris' better retouched example, you can see the creases and the texture.
They have only removed the blemishes and fixed the colour inconsistencies which you can see
here.
It's amazing how these things get overlooked by the teams of photo editors and social media
managers these celebrities have.
For non-celebrities, it makes sense because they don't have an army of employees working
for them to prevent such things from happening, but in the case of celebrities, it’s not
necessarily negligence but rather inexperience in knowing what to look for.
In this example, there is no texture whatsoever.
Again, they have kept the forehead lines but that is not enough.
Those lines are iconic in their own right and should be there but also, what should
be there is the skin texture.
To create the texture from scratch, we're again going to use the same technique of using
a 50% gray layer, applying the same sandstone texture on top of it and inverting the mask
and revealing it in the parts we need.
Also we need to keep in mind the scale of the texture, as you can see the size is too
large for this picture.
So I'm just going to bring the scale down a little bit.
Since this picture is of a low quality and way too smooth, it is not going to be enough.
What we can do to make it look more believable is sharpen the picture only in the face area
by using the high pass filter and using a smaller radius of less than 1 pixel.
Then use linear light, hard light or overlay blending mode.
It still looks a bit off because there's not a lot of information in this picture and that's
why professional editors prefer to work with raw image formats because they are of far
more superior quality than your usual JPEG.
This leaves room for a lot of adjustments that we can do without losing any quality
or it looking fake.
The next example we have is yet another monotone picture with just one color throughout the
skin.
Now, that could be her base color, so if i were to average all of the tones in her face
it would result in this one tone.
Often when doing spot correction on blemishes they work by sampling the area around the
blemish and so by overusing it you sample more and more sections and make an increasingly
average skin tone.
Here we can just use the similar techniques of using a color slightly darker than her
skin tone picked from her skin.
You can see that there's only one color applied throughout her skin because her lips are very
pale too.
Now that could be because of a shade of lipstick she's using but again, it is unlikely because
her eyebrows are also faded.
Here you don't need to worry about texture here because it's not a close-up shot and
you wouldn't really see it anyway.
But, if you wanted to do that you can just use the same technique we used in our previous
examples.
To fix the colour issue, we can again pick a dark colour from her skin, paint the shadows
in, blur the layer and change the blending mode to soft light.
Similarly for the highlights we can just use a lighter color and repeat the process.
The next picture,again reminds of, well this.
What's surprising is that he's actually pointing towards his teeth.
So maybe he actually did have his teeth whitened and it ended up being too much for him.
Then again, you can see that this picture is retouched because there is no skin texture
at all.
Here you have a reference and see the difference between his chest and his face.
To accurately match the lighting on his teeth with the rest of the image, we can use a check
layer (black and white adjustment layer) A check layer is a layer that helps in visualising
areas of imperfection that you might have otherwise missed when looking at your image
normally You can see that his teeth are as bright as
the clouds in the sky and that should not be the case because his teeth are being illuminated
by the sky and not actually producing its own light, so it should be slightly less darker.
To bring the brightness down we can just use a levels/curves adjustment layer and bring
the white point down and mask in the parts that we need.
For the skin texture, the same old technique of using a sandstone filter on top and masking
in the parts where we need the texture and removing it from the highlights using the
blend-if slider.
The next example is a bit strange and not as bad as the others, it’s just a simple
misuse of the liquify tool.
He has used the pucker tool on his belly and held it down till he shrank his whole belly
up along with the dials on the dashboard and the stars on his boxers.
The pucker tool shrinks the pixels towards the center of the brush
To fix this we can simply use the opposite of the pucker tool, which is the bloat tool,
as the name implies, it bloats pixels back upto proportion.
The next example is from a store that sells artificial nails and what they've done here
is just apply this sparkly diamond texture on the nails without any shading and that
obviously makes it look fake.
To prove that we will be using a different check layer, which is a threshold adjustment
layer where you can find the darkest and the lightest point of your picture.
Here, as you go from the black to the white point the first thing that shows up(in white)
are the nails and that shouldn't be because the surroundings should be much more brighter
than the nails themselves.
So again, we can use a curves or a levels adjustment layer to bring the white Point
down and check it again if the nails show up at the same time the other or the rest
of the nails show up, to match it perfectly.
Then we can add two more curves adjustment layers to darken one side up and brighten
the other side up.
Finally, we add a little shadow under the nails to make it look like the nails are actually
there and it's not just a texture slapped on top of the nails.
We're gonna end with the double thumbs of Khloe Kardashian.
We're only focused on the thumb in this example since it's sticking out….like a "sore thumb"
and the rest of the picture is edited very well.
As she has two thumbs on her left hand, it could have been due to the clone stamp tool
which makes a copy of a selected region or its a feature of double exposure photography
where sudden movements during the shot can create a ghost image . I wouldn’t know what
they were clone stamping there as there is no need to use it on your fingers, but we
can simply fix this by duplicating the thumb onto a new layer and removing it using the
content aware fill tool so we have more background to work with.
Using the clone stamp tool to fix the seams or the crease that she has in the middle of
finger and shape the nail to look more like an actual thumbnail.Then you can slim the
excess using the clone tool to get a nice shapely thumb.
Alright, that brings another episode to a close.
Hopefully you learnt something about Photoshop and why most things on Instagram are edited.
We’ve covered everything here in a previous video somewhere along in the series.
I really recommend following our Instagram page as the before and afters of the photos
from this series and many more are posted there with a more indepth explanation.
As always, if you’re enjoying the content, you can support the channel by subscribing
and click the notification bell to catch future episodes.