Photoshop : Tutorial - Removing Wrinkles and Keepin’ It Real!
Posted by Jennifer | July 10, 2007 | 9 Comments
Using the Healing Brush and Patch tools
The clone tool is one of the most often used tools when it comes to retouching in Photoshop. But two other tools that are often overlooked by people new to the sport are the Healing Brush and the Patch tools.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to remove some wrinkles from an elderly lady’s face. To ensure that we get a realistic result we’ll firstly duplicate the background layer and carry out all changes on this duplicate layer. On completion of retouching, we’ll use the two layers together to get a more natural look.
Retouching on a separate layer
One way to protect your original image is to do your retouching work on a duplicate layer of the original image. Then, you can retouch the duplicate layer. When you finish retouching, you can blend the two layers. This technique usually enhances the results, making your retouching work look more natural and realistic.
The Healing Brush tool uses sample pixels from an image to let you correct imperfections. The amazing thing about the Healing Brush is that it also matches the lighting, shading, texture and transparency of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed. It results in a very natural looking image.
1. Open up the image that you want to retouch. I’m working on a portrait photograph of an older lady.
2. In the Layers palette, click on the Background layer and then press Ctrl+J to create a duplicate layer. Double-click the new layer (called Layer 1), and rename it Repairs and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS). Leave this new layer selected (highlighted in blue).
4. In the toolbox, select the Healing Brush tool 
, which may be hidden under the Patch tool 
.
5. On the tool options bar, open the Brush pop-up palette and set the brush diameter to a suitable size – you need it to be big enough to cover wrinkle lines – I chose 12 pixels. Close the palette and select the Aligned check box. Leave the other settings at their defaults ( Normal selected as the Mode option and Sampled selected for Source).
Notice the two wrinkles running horizontally across the man’s forehead. (Zoom in if necessary.)
6. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click a smooth area of the forehead, on the left side of the image, to set the sample point. Then, drag the Healing Brush tool over the lower of the two forehead wrinkles.
As you drag, you’ll notice that the painted pixels don’t exactly match the subject’s natural skin tones. When you release the mouse button, however, the colours correct themselves so that the wrinkle is covered and the skin looks quite natural.
7. Continue painting with the Healing Brush tool to remove the upper forehead wrinkle and the furrow line between the eyebrows.
Patching and softening
The Patch tool combines the selection behavior of the Lasso tool with the colour-blending properties of the Healing Brush tool. With the Patch tool, you can select an area that you want to use as the source (area to be fixed) or destination (area used to do the fixing). Then, you drag the Patch tool marquee to another part of the image. When you release the mouse button, the Patch tool completes the job. Make sure that the Retouch layer is selected in the Layers palette before you continue.
1. In the toolbox, select the Patch tool (
), hidden under the Healing Brush tool (
).
2. Drag a marquee around the wrinkles under the eye.
Move the Patch tool inside the selected area and drag it to a smooth, similarly toned area on the forehead. Let go of the mouse key and voila! Wrinkles removed. You’ll notice that the marquee stays active over the repaired area, ready to be dragged again, either to another area that needs patching (if the Destination option is selected) or to another sampling site (if the Source option is selected).
3. Continue to use the same technique to erase the wrinkles under the other eye.
4. Continue to touch up other parts of the subject’s face with the Patch tool until most of the wrinkles are hidden, or at least softened.
It’s very important that cosmetic touchups on the human face look as natural as possible. To make sure that things are looking too smooth or plastic looking, we’re going to reduce the opacity on the repairs layer so that we can see a few of the wrinkles coming up from the bottom layer.
5. In the Layers palette, change the Opacity value of the Retouch layer to about 60%. Now, hints of the heaviest skin creases appear in the image – a bit more realism. The lady should have at least A FEW wrinkles!
6. Click the eye icon 
to toggle the Repairs layer on and off. You should see a fairly large difference between the original image and the retouched one.
Before (left) and After (right)
Classic Photoshop Action Of The Week
Posted by Jennifer | July 6, 2007 | 3 Comments
A bit of an oldie (by internet standards) but goodie from PanosFX - The B & Big picture.
This action can be applied to an image, with the result forming a superb collage that looks like it has been created using over 25 individual photographs. The photographs even look like they have been slightly tossed by the wind! It would take AGES to recreate all of these steps
The image below shows one of my illustrations with the action applied to it.
There are tons of great actions available for free and to buy from this website and it’s well worth having a look at if you haven’t seen these actions before.
Blurring Filters in Photoshop: A closer look at the Smart Blur and Lens Blur (Part 2)
Posted by Jennifer | July 5, 2007 | 7 Comments
Earlier in the week I wrote a post about the Smart Blur filter in Photoshop. Today I’m looking at the Lens Blur filter.
The Lens Blur re-creates many of the depth of field effects familiar to photographers. The dialog box is fairly complex with lots of sliders and buttons and knobs to play with! This filter works by adding blur to an image to give the effect that some objects in the image stay in focus and others areas are blurred. You decide which areas are blurred by making a selection.
To help you re-create in-camera depth of field effects the Lens Blur filter lets you load a depth map to help specify the points of the image that are near to the camera, and those that are further away. You can use alpha channels and layer masks to create depth maps; black areas in an alpha channel are treated as though they’re at the front of the photo, and white areas are treated as if they’re far in the distance. You can choose an iris shape and this will also determine how the blur appears. To get to this filter in Photoshop, choose Filter > Blur > Lens Blur.
Don’t be intimidated by Lens Blur filter dialog box. It is a bit scary-looking the first time you open it, but just click on the preview box and you will see your changes as you make them on the dialog box. If you don’t like the changes you’ve made then just cancel out of the dialog box and your image will not be affected.
So now, I’m going to show you a practical example of the lens blur in action. I’m going to use it in conjunction with the alpha channels to make a selection.
1. Open an image that you want to create some depth-of-field with. I’m using a picture I took of a statue in front of the Eiffel Tower.
In this image I want to keep the statue in focus while blurring out the Eiffel Tower.
2. In the channels palette click on the Create New Channel button at the bottom of the palette. This will create a black alpha channel (called Alpha Channel 1).
3. Click on the eye icon next to the RGB channel. Now you can see the image AND the red overlay representing the alpha channel.
4. Select the Paintbrush tool and with the foreground colour set to white, paint over the areas where you want the filter to be applied. If you make a mistake, change the foreground colour back to black and paint back over it.
In this case, I’m painting on the horse statue, but when I go into the Lens Blur filter, I’m going to invert the selection made in the alpha channel.
5. When you’re happy with the alpha channel, click on the RGB channel at the top to make the image itself the subject of the filter.
6. Choose Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. This opens up the big dialog box. BUT DO NOT BE AFRAID!!
7. Make sure the Preview box is checked so that you can see what you’re doing.
8. From the Depth Map, set the Source to be Alpha 1 (this is your alpha channel that you made earlier), and then adjust the Blur Focal Distance slider.
For my picture, I set the Blur Focal Distance to about 90, but importantly I also checked the Invert box. Otherwise, the horse statue would become blurred and the Eiffel Tower would stay sharp. You can drag this slider up and down depending on how blurred you want part of the image to become.
As you can see there are lots of other sliders to play with, including adding noise, specular highlights, lens iris configurations. The best thing I can suggest here is start dragging and see what happens.
9. When you’re happy with your preview image, click OK to apply the filter. And Voila!
Finally, here’s some tips for painting with alpha channels for use with the Lens Blur filter.
- The part of the image that you want to remain sharp (the subject) should always be painted black in the alpha channel.
- Anything at the same distance from the lens as the main subject should also be painted black.
- Areas farthest from the lens should be white.
- Try applying grey or a gradient between the areas of black and white.
Blurring Filters in Photoshop: A closer look at the Smart Blur and Lens Blur (Part 1)
Posted by Jennifer | July 3, 2007 | 3 Comments
For a lot of Photoshop users, blur tends to mean just one thing – that is Gaussian Blur. The other blur filters, “Blur” and “Blur More” have been part of Photoshop for a long time, but they generally require that you use the filter repeatedly before you start seeing the effects you’re after.
The Radial and Motion Radial Blurs have their uses when it comes to some special effects and like the Gaussian Blur filter, they have a preview window and a slider which allows you to control the strength of the blur. Even still, many of us rely heavily on the Gaussian Blur filter for our heavy-duty blurring.
However, there are two other blurring filters that are well worth taking a look at. They are the Smart Blur and the Lens Blur which have been added in more recent versions of Photoshop.
The Smart Blur blurs the image with great accuracy. Like some of the other blurs, you can stipulate a Radius which determines the degree of blurring applied. You can also specify the Threshold value. This stipulates how unalike the pixels must be before they are blurred. The third value that you can set is the Blur Quality. The choice here is low, medium or high quality. The final option available with Smart Blur is to set a mode for the entire selection ( Normal) or for the edges of color transitions (Edge Only and Overlay). This is where you can get some really interesting and perhaps somewhat unexpected effects for a blur tool. Where considerable contrast occurs between the edges, Edge Only applies black-and-white edges, and Overlay Edge applies white.
Open up an image in Photoshop and try this one out. To get to this filter, choose Filter > Blur > Smart Blur. Set the mode to Edge Only to get an effect like the one below.
There is, of course, much more to the Smart Blur than creating white outlines, but this is a good place to start playing. In the next part I’m going to take a look at the Lens Blur in Photoshop.
I will follow!
Posted by Jennifer | July 2, 2007 | 1 Comment
To paraphrase U2 - the well known Irish band with its financial base in the Netherlands …
“If you comment away, comment away, …I will follow.”
Have finally gotten my act together and installed the do-follow plugin for wordpress. I first came across the idea on Randa Clay’s site and have seen the movement’s logo around the web. What it means is that if someone comments on a blog with the do-follow plugin installed, then the commentator will receive some link love from that blog. So now I’m part of the club too!
Design Resources : Vintage images and postcards
Posted by Jennifer | July 2, 2007 | 4 Comments
I found this site over the weekend - http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/vintageresources.html - and it has some wonderful old photographs and postcards. I just love vintage stuff like this and the images are all free to use for personal work - great for collages.
I made the illustration below by creating a couple of brushes using the geishas girl postcards on the site, combined with a few modern brushes and a hefty dose of scanned stains.
Anyone else have some vintage image resources you’d like to share?
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About
Hi, my name is Jennifer Farley and I am a designer and design instructor based in Ireland. Read more about Laughing Lion Design .
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