Finally got the lighting right on a portrait after three days of trying

I was working on a digital portrait for a friend and the skin tones kept looking flat and wrong. After two days of messing with layer modes, I watched a short tutorial on subsurface scattering. I tried a new method with a soft brush on a low-opacity layer, and it clicked. The face suddenly looked alive and real. Has anyone else found a simple trick that fixed a lighting problem you were stuck on?

3 comments

3 Comments

jade6471mo ago

Actually, I've had the opposite experience with those tutorials sometimes. They make it sound like one brush setting will fix everything, but skin has so much variation. For me, the real fix was going back to basics and looking at real faces in different light. That soft brush trick can make everything look waxy if you're not careful with the color choices.

gray5571mo ago

Honestly @jade647 you're so right about the waxy look.

mary23919d ago

Read an article once that said we forget skin isn't just one color, it's a bunch of colors mixed together. That waxy look happens when you use just pink or peach. You have to add some greens and blues in the shadows, really subtle like. It sounds weird but it makes a huge difference. The tutorial might give you the tool, but you still have to pick the right colors to paint with.