That blending mode trick I ignored for months actually saved my skin tones

I kept fighting with muddy shadows on my portraits for like 6 months. Finally tried using a soft light layer at 30% opacity over a grey base and suddenly the colors just clicked. Worked way better than all the color picking and manual shading I was doing. Anyone else have a simple feature they avoided forever that ended up being the answer?

2 comments

2 Comments

oliver_morgan14d ago

My first portrait teacher back in 2012 woulda killed me for using soft light like that. He was old school, taught us to build up color with opaque layers and a lot of patience. I get why people like the shortcut though. For me, that grey base approach always left a weird fake look on the skin, like the person was lit from inside a fridge. I still stick to hard brushes at low opacity and manual color picking because it forces me to understand the light source better. Does your method hold up when you zoom in to 200% or does it get muddy at the edges?

the_laura14d ago

yeah I gotta ask about that zoom test thing cause I've noticed the same issue but from the other side. when you do the hard brush low opacity thing, do you ever get that weird texture where the strokes are super obvious at 200%? like you can see every little brush wiggle and it breaks the illusion of skin. I switched to soft light specifically cause I got sick of seeing my own brush marks at full res, but maybe I just suck at blending lol.