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Have you ever wonder how to create close up portraits with beautiful skin texture like the ones in magazines? In this Photoshop tutorial, we will show you the industry-secret technique the top pro photographers use to make skin textures sharp. Click to find out how you can make your photos look magazine quality.

Skin Texture Sharpening Photoshop Tutorial

Photographing Detailed Skin Texture

This technique will only work on photos with good skin texture. Most portrait shots do not show enough skin texture. Before you begin the Photoshop tutorial, read the tips below to learn how to photograph a sharp portrait with good skin texture.

• Use quality lens and camera. Many point and shoot cameras will not be able to capture fine skin details due to their small lens and sensor. For the best skin texture detail, use a digital SLR camera with sharp lens. The sharpest lenses are usually prime lenses but many high quality zoom lenses are sharp enough to record skin texture. The number of megapixels will affect the appearance of the skin texture. The camera should be at least 4 megapixels for good skin texture.
• Take a close up picture. Try to fill the frame with the head instead of doing a half or full body shot. This will ensure that you record enough pixels to show skin texture.
• Focus properly. Ensure that you focus on the eyes instead of the other body parts. You can do this easily on many digital SLR cameras by activating one focus point and pointing that focus point at the eyes. Also, change the focusing mode to AI Focus or AI Servo instead of One Shot. The AI focus modes will refocus if your camera or the model moves (ex. photographer breathing or model moving his/her head).
• Use a small aperture (higher aperture number; ex. F8). If you use an aperture that is too large (ex. F1.8), you may have enough depth of field to focus on the entire face; especially if the face is not facing straight on the camera. Also, many lens produce the sharpest results at around the F8 range but this can vary from lens to lens. Find out the optimal aperture (The aperture that will produce the sharpest results) for your lens and try to use that setting. A good website to learn more about your lens including the optimal aperture is Photozone.
• Avoid teleconverters or macro filters. These add-on lens tend to reduce image sharpness. If possible, avoid using teleconverters or macro filters. If you need to focus at a closer distance, use extension tubes or a macro lens. You can keep the UV filter on because they do not affect the sharpness of an image by any significant amount. There have been many tests done and they all conclude that UV filters do not affect sharpness noticeably.