Disclaimer 
This thoughts are to try to explain how we can make texture work from one image to another.
This is not meant to say you should remove skin texture when retouching beauty and then reapply it.
The guidelines are still the same for Beauty and Fashion Work: Don’t lose texture to begin with.
But since you’re not always given an image with texture to begin with, this could be useful. If you’re gonna do it, do it right!
————————–
—————————————————
Texture
A lot of ppl often question about adding textures to different surfaces.
The important thing to remember is that “texture” is a really relative terminology.
First we need to determine what texture is
For example… in a close up beauty image we can agree that texture would be pores, hairs, fur
But if we are talking about a fashion/glamour image where the model is placed far in the BG then the pores are not longer the *texture* of the image. The texture in that case would be tonal variation in the skin/clothes.
Having said that we can go even further when relativizing the term and say: there’s different kinds of texture within one.
Lets go back to the beauty image of the first sample.
IMO – The skin texture is a summary between small radius tone/light graduations – the pores/hair/fur – and pixel dust (three different radius of detail joined together to create the visual illusion of “skin” – I’m saying illusion because you could fake what it’s there, in a beauty image, by default)
Now.. going away from the Beauty example we could say the same thing about ANY texture in ANY image.
Texture in clothing of an old image: small radius tone/light graduations – fabric material – grain
So… now that we understand that texture is not just ONE radius of information we can say that to move texture from on place to another you need to separate that texture into the different radius of information.
Using HP for this (specially the apply image based HP or -50 legacy contrast based HP for accuracy) you create one HP of each radius you *think* adds up to create the final illusion. You place one over the other into the area you need to texturize and then use different contrast based blending modes (Linear light/Overlay) to make them work together.
Then, if applying this correctly you can create the illusion of any kind of texture in any kind of surface.
Posted on July 16, 2010
0