Innovators and philosophers like Elon Musk and Sam Harris have theorized what our world will look like once artificial intelligence completely takes over our daily lives. We’re not quite there, but if you’ve ever dreamed of a day where all your skin edits could be completed using AI and neural networks, the future is closer than you think. a lot of.
It seems that over the past few years, advances in photo manipulation and editing software have exploded at a rate not seen since the early days of Photoshop. Tasks that once seemed impossible, like convincingly replacing the sky or making perfect mask selections, are now becoming increasingly automated. Other retouching jobs like dodging and burning, skin cleansing and body shape manipulation are now also becoming more and more popular at the click of a button. It’s amazing to see this leap in technology, but it’s equally frustrating to see that many of the software solutions that deliver these new artificial intelligence tools are slow, unstable, and sometimes frustrating. error and instability. However, after playing with some Retouch4Me’s automatic editing toolsI’m pretty excited about what the future holds.
What is Retouch4Me?
As a full-time photographer who also runs a major photography website, I feel quite familiar with the big software players in the imaging world. So to be honest, I was a bit surprised and skeptical when we received several emails about Retouch4Me and their editing plugins. From my research online, Retouch4Me is a relatively new company based in Estonia and although their name sounds cheesy, their product is powerful.
Unlike other major software manufacturers that offer a single editing platform that can be purchased or rented for a set price, Retouch4me offers each plugin effect as a standalone software. Based website, right now, they have eight different effects, including background removal, skin retouching, face dodging and burning, globe dodging and burning portraits, and teeth whitening, … Each This plugin can be used in Photoshop and Lightroom or can be used as a standalone software. As far as I can tell, these plugins can’t be applied directly to an image without running each plugin individually, but if you create a custom action in Photoshop you can easily perform a custom action. automatically use each effect as needed.
My personal experience
I have been using some of these plugins for about a month now and I must say that the artificial intelligence used inside is quite impressive. You can watch the video above to see some of the images I worked on through Retouch4me’s plugins, but I’ll also post some of my favorites here below. My favorite plugins by far are Portrait Volumes, Skin Tone, Heal, and Dodge and Burn. Those tools work best, while I found the Clean Backdrop tool to do not at all. I haven’t tried the Eye Vessels, Eye Brilliance or Teeth Whitening plugins yet, but I’ll probably come back and buy them sometime.
Here are a few before and after examples of each plugin running on its own, and then, towards the bottom, I’ll show you a few stacked examples.
Dodge and Burn
The Dodge and Burn plugin seemed to have the most impact on most of the images I ran through the software. As you can see above, the AI effectively determines which skin areas should lighten and which areas should darken for a smoother, more pleasing effect. It works pretty well on both light and dark skin and is by far my favorite out of the five I’ve tested.
Set of portraits
I have to admit, Portrait Volumes is an unfamiliar name for a plugin, but what it essentially does is add more dramatic dodging and burning around the edges of your portrait. It quickly gives you the Martin Schoeller or Chris Knight effect that so many photographers love to emulate. This retouch filter can be a bit heavy-handed, so I find it best to drag the blend slider down to something like 100-130 for a more subtle but still noticeable effect. This plugin is my second favorite of them all.
Treatment
The Heal plugin is what most photographers think of when they need to retouch their skin. A lot of skin restoration plugins and effects, including Photoshop’s own neural skin retouch filter, suffer from severe skin blur and loss of detail that I find unusable. Handmade dodge and burn with frequency separation and cloning are my three favorite techniques for skin retouching, but depending on the subject’s complexion, using these three tools can take some time to achieve the desired results.
Retouch4me’s Heal plugin doesn’t suffer from the soft and fuzzy flaws of other software, but sometimes it also misses some big flaws that you might want to get rid of. In some ways it’s best to go for the more subtle side of blemish removal, but I do wish the tool could be a little heavier sometimes.
Fully Edited with Heal, Dodge and Burn, Skin Tone and Portrait Volumes
In my opinion, Retouch4me’s software shines when you apply multiple passes on a single image. In the selfie above, I ran the image through Heal, Skin Tone, Dodge and Burn, and Portrait Volumes in that order. What’s interesting about looking at the final image with the before and after sliders above is that the software doesn’t necessarily fix every little flaw or stray hair, but it doesn’t create any major ones either. This is extremely important to me as I have seen so many horrible mistakes in skin retouching from other software that I personally never feel comfortable using skin cleaning tools. their artificial intelligence without double-checking every image.
Retouch4Me’s plugins so far have been so good and bug-free that I can feel confident delivering an entire set of images through their software without worrying customers might find editing errors large on delivery. That’s huge and a complete game changer for this kind of work. Sure, the Heal tool can remove natural freckles here and there, which may not be desirable, but all skin retouching that takes place is not noticeable if not visible. before and after examples side by side.
Conclusion
After using some of Retouch4me’s tools over the past few weeks, I have to say I’m super excited about these new plugins for photographers. Skin retouching that can often lead down to this labor-intensive rabbit hole is only really appreciated by pixel peepers or those looking to print large prints. Personally, I’ve wasted so many hours, perhaps months, of my life, to be honest, this skin retouching I’m glad I did for this much needed ugliness has almost become a reality. a chore in the past. Every great skin retouching tool will tell you that there is real art in the craft, and any piece of software that claims to completely remove the artist from the equation may be narrowly overkill. However, Retouch4Me has raised the bar even further about what is possible with artificial intelligence and automation in the world of high-end photography.
Initially, I thought these plugins would make my life super easy when it comes to retouching my portrait work, but now I’ve had time to think about all of the different photography processes I use. myself, I think these tools are even more interesting. Retouching wedding work or any session work that includes 1,000 images is simply something I’m not interested in doing. However, as the software gets better and better, I can see how to sort through all my final picks from an event or wedding and run an entire directory through some of these tools. would be a complete change. Not only did I save hours, but I was able to improve the actual quality of the final product delivered to my customer. I’ve never taken a school portrait or many high-level portraits but being able to send proofreads home with basic skin retouching already applied to the images would definitely boost sales and make your work stand out from the competition.
Now, before I conclude that every photographer needs to go out and buy all eight of these plugins, these tools come at a cost. As mentioned above, instead of downloading a set with all these tools at your disposal, Retouch4Me created an à la carte menu with each plugin sold separately. The good news is that you only have to buy the editing tools you need or use regularly, but the bad news is that each of these tools costs between $124 and $149 each. Compared to other photo editing programs, this is incredibly expensive, especially for the extremely niche effects they offer. With that said, I have to admit that most of the tools I used for this video are best in class. No other software I’ve used comes close to the results I can achieve and the amount of time I’ll save in post-production is definitely worth $250 to $500 for myself.
Fortunately, after writing this article, I received the discount code FSTOPERSRETOUCHNOW, to save our readers 10% off their entire Retouch4Me order. It’s still a pretty expensive piece of software, but if you just try out the Dodge and Burn or Portrait Volumes plugin, I think you’ll find yourself wanting to add a few more plugins to your workflow.
