Add Freckles To Your Next Portrait

We featured Elena Jasic on here last month, and this month she is back with this awesome tutorial on how to add freckles in post to your photos. Elena is a young and upcoming fashion and beauty photographer from Philadelphia. The photo in this tutorial is from Chris Zupo. You can also find the brush used in this tutorial here. If you guys try this technique out, share a link to it with us in the comments on this post!


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35 Comments

This is the best!

Lovely tutorial Elena!

TRON love.

Arata mai pe placerea falusului

Very good tutorial but the result is too much for me. After 2 layers, it was yet very good.

 I think it's good though that she went ahead showed how far it could be
taken. As with any tutorial it is to be taken and used in your own way.

Where are you going people.. What means the results? A proof how you can spray faces with paint? Ugly work..

ha ha !!  what a joke !

yikes.  pattern paint bucket?

Me no like.

Yuck. And I love freckles.

overfreckled :)

 Like any tutorial, you can apply this to your work in whatever portions you see fit.

Is that a joke?

Thank you Elena for making a fantastic tutorial. I am obsessed with adding freckles to a portrait and now I know how, thanks to you and Fstoppers! You guys are awesome :)

Am I on the Onion.com?

Nope, you are on Fstoppers.com

But if you fancy trolling like a jerk you can head to Onion.com, I promise you won't be missed.

Could probably just skip the brushes and do the real freckle overlay and it would look a whole less crowded. The results in this Tutorial may be a little over done, but the technique is whats important. I can see this being useful in the future. Thanks.

 I'm glad that someone can see the bigger picture.

yeah the freckles are obviously painted over the highlighted areas of the skin. While freckles are nice they can not defy the laws of illumination. 

 If you look, the freckles on the highlighted areas of skin are lighter than the freckles in the darker areas. Seems like everything is still in compliance to me.

Seriously, it looks like she has the measles.

The consensus has spoken: fstoppers needs to contribute something better than "Photoshop for Dummies" tutorials.

 We post photo series and people complain they want more behind the scenes and tutorials, we post behind the scenes and tutorials and people complain more. The nature of the internet is if you have something negative to say you apparently have every right to say it. While I think the freckles in this tutorial might be a little more than I would do, the emphasis is on the technique. You can take this technique and use it however you like. Over dramatic, or just a little bit extra for your photo.

Perhaps you could just find a person with freckles pre-made next time?

God gave us Photoshop, to be sure, but sometimes the old fashioned way is still the best.

 Perhaps you could, but then what kind of fun would photoshop be?

Photoshop is LOTS of fun, enhancing my photos that I've already taken pains to light correctly, compose correctly, make sure hair/makeup/clothing all look great, etc. Granted there's a steep never-ending learning curve, but hopefully fstoppers can commit to higher caliber contributions than a Photoshop tut that looks fake and makes the model look worse than the original.

What is next? "How to ADD zits, scars and other 'embellishments' to a perfect skin"?

Here's where they got the texture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4p6IlK0Sw8

if i want to get Freckles i rather get a model with Freckles.. if i want to waste time i will photoshop freckles.  

...and now you know a technique if you decide to "waste time"

One of the most useless tutorial I've ever seen... c'mon FStopper.... what is happening to you??? -.-

Can someone turn down the opacity on those freckles?

 Yes you can. This is a tutorial, and it is showing how far you can take the technique. Like any and all tutorials, the idea is to show you a method, and to allow you to use it in your own work however you see fit.

I feel like she just looks dirty. There are areas on the face that freckles aren't. Like under and above the eyes.  The shoulder looks great, but the face is to much.

Great tutorial, thanks for sharing!