How to smooth skin underneath the eyes & remove dark circles while maintaining a natural look

 

 

Dark circles around eyes are often something portrait subjects want removed, or at least lessened, in portraits. It can be a tricky issue to address without making the subject look fake or unnatural. However, using Photoshop and a frequency separation technique, we can remove dark circles in a natural and realistic way.

This technique comes to us from Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect. As he discusses early in the video below, we don’t want to completely change the look underneath a person’s eyes, particularly if they are smiling. When you smile sincerely, it’s often the case that there will be some wrinkles underneath the eyes. What we want to do is keep the expression natural, smooth out skin tones and perhaps reduce some wrinkles without making the smile look fake or forced. We need to strike a balance between smoothness and sincerity. To achieve this, we will utilize frequency separation. If you’d like to learn more about frequency separation, you can see Dinda’s video on the topic by clicking here. Without further ado, let’s see how to touch up the skin around eyes without making a portrait look unnatural.

(Via PiXimperfect)