How to Shape Faces using Photoshop
Several months ago I was listening to a podcast with Amy Dresser, who by the way is an amazing Photo Retoucher, and wrote a small tip down about her retouching technique.
Which led me to how I Shape Faces using Photoshop.
Anyway, several months after I listened to her tip, I went back and found it in my journal, and much to my surprise, I was doing it wrong.
Can you believe it?
The funny thing about all of this is, the entire premise of my “Creative Portraits” is based around this lapse in memory.
That’s because the “Illustration” element of my work is as a result of doing it wrong.
In the podcast, Amy mentioned she “shaped faces on a separate layer with a Black & White paintbrush set to 100% Opacity and 1% Flow.”
She went on to reveal she used a “Blend mode of Overlay”.
The thing is…
I completely forgot about the Blend mode of Overlay, and simply went with using a Black & White paintbrush to shape my face.
Now I know why my Opacity and Flow never worked the way she mentioned.
Anyway, once I figured out my mistake, I set out to correct it and went through a full edit using only the shaping technique she described.
Which resulted in a look nothing like my Photillustrator style.
Today, I use primarily my way of Shaping the Face, while finalizing my work with Amy Dresser’s burn and dodge technique with using an Overlay layer.
