matt-h2 wrote:
Thanks, all. I guess it's a trip to the interwebs to find out what all of the above means.

Another trip would be to hire someone who knows how to do it.

D&B = dodge (increase luminosity) and burn (decrease it)

Luminosity = the lightness of the pixel. In black and white white = 100% luminosity, black = 0%
Cromaticity = the color data, independent of luminosity (e.g. hue/saturation or a/b channels etc)

I hope that helps.

matt-h2 wrote:

Generally, local contrast would get you a lot of muscle definition considering if you plan on smoothing out the skin via micro dodge & burn or methods like frequency separation. Local contrast for example is like using clarity from the ACR and mask/brushing it in or using plugins like topaz/color efex.  You can pull more details, but of course you'll have to clean up the skin especially if your talent has many skin imperfections as this will possibly bring out some micro details.

You can also carve/sculpt the muscle definition with dodge & burn as everyone mentioned above. There are many ways of doing this, whether it's a 50% gray layer set to soft light/overlay or curve layers/regular brush on layer set to soft light.  This isn't the only way as there are many methods.  You'll be doing more local-global contrast if you don't want to mess with the skin details at all. Dodge & burn carving on a gray layer tends to not contrast on the micro details, it usually softens it if anything, hence why most images can end up looking more painterly if overdone.

Joe Diamond wrote:
perfect skin retouching first +  enhancements

I think Joe hit the nail on the head. And, unfortunately skin retouching on this image looks like it would take a great deal of time. I'd hire a pro.

Thach of FotoHouse wrote:

Generally, local contrast would get you a lot of muscle definition considering if you plan on smoothing out the skin via micro dodge & burn or methods like frequency separation. Local contrast for example is like using clarity from the ACR and mask/brushing it in or using plugins like topaz/color efex.  You can pull more details, but of course you'll have to clean up the skin especially if your talent has many skin imperfections as this will possibly bring out some micro details.

You can also carve/sculpt the muscle definition with dodge & burn as everyone mentioned above. There are many ways of doing this, whether it's a 50% gray layer set to soft light/overlay or curve layers/regular brush on layer set to soft light.  This isn't the only way as there are many methods.  You'll be doing more local-global contrast if you don't want to mess with the skin details at all. Dodge & burn carving on a gray layer tends to not contrast on the micro details, it usually softens it if anything, hence why most images can end up looking more painterly if overdone.

Thanks!

Toto Photo wrote:

I think Joe hit the nail on the head. And, unfortunately skin retouching on this image looks like it would take a great deal of time. I'd hire a pro.

Thanks. Budget is pretty much $0

anchev wrote:
Blotchy skin = contrast at small scale
Defining muscles = contrast at larger scale

So what you need is to reduce small scale contrast and increase it on large scale. And by contrast I also mean chromatic contrast, not only luminosity channel. There are different techniques to do this. If you are looking for quality - D&B can help for the luminosity part. For fixing color unevenness you can use hue/saturation masks, paint in a color mode layer, selectively blur a/b channels in LAB mode etc. In any case try not to destroy the image structure.

Once you have fixed the small scale contrast and you have smooth skin, you can increase contrast of elements you want using proper masks and curves adjustment. Again - you can separate color from luminosity for better control of the process.

What do you mean by small and large scale?

HammadsWorks wrote:
What do you mean by small and large scale?

small - e.g. skin spots
large - e.g. whole face or whole arm

matt-h2 wrote:
Thanks. Budget is pretty much $0

Well then DIY would be a very long time in D&B to get rid of splotches. Then begin sculpting.

Love the image.