I took a picture of my friend from uni and he'd like to turn it into something that can be more presentable for job applications/interviews or any time someone needs to see his face. He'd like to thin out the face, chin and cheeks (that's a lot to ask but...), lighten up the skin, smooth out the wrinkles, change his shirt, etc. In other words, the works. I'm really a tyro when it comes to doing this kind of thing. Where does one start changing this many things?

Is there any way you can reshoot his photo? A full face photo is really unflattering, no matter how slim your face is! A 3/4 portrait would do better. And a simple background.

I will work on it today and see what I can do....

~Amber~

umm, i'll answer some of your questions in a minute. first, if your friend is going to be using this for job interviews, resumes and that sort of thing, the first thing i'd do is take another photo. this particular shot looks angry, menacing, etc... so, unless he's applying for a bouncer or a wrestler or something along those lines, i'd get another shot, preferably with a bit of a smile on it. doesnt have to be a wide grin, but the tiniest of smiles would do wonders.

now, to your questions, do you want to simulate the things you're after, or actually change them? things like light and shadow can narrow and widen a look without actually doing 'plastic surgery' on the picture.

but, in this picture, i dont think you're going to be able to change much with just lighting. so, for plastic surgery, your tools are things like 'clone', 'push', 'smudge', 'warp', 'liquify' and along those lines. others like 'skew', 'pinch', and 'punch' might even work a bit if used judiciously.

attached are the before and after. i didnt try to clean this up very much. i just wanted to give you an idea of possibilities. i used mostly warp to narrow the cheeks and jaw, and then some clone and push to reduce the wrinkles and straighten a few lines.

also, i did a tiny bit of reducing his 5 o'clock shadow, but much more would be appropriate.

Craig

I completely agree with Craig on this one. It's definatly not for interviews, and it looks more like a mug shot than a portrait. But I like what you did craig! I'm still working on it. Been up since 6:30 this morning, so it might take a while- I'm exhausted! Will try again in a while...

~Amber~

thanks, amber :)

and i agree: A 3/4 portrait would do better. And a simple background.

btw, you can see where i warped; the background shows it up. so, you'd want to clean things like that up too.

Craig

Totally agree with what has already been said ... Take another photo encompassing both head and shoulders ... Get your friend to show at least the perception that he is happy ... :happy:

Doesn't need to be a belly laugh ... but first impressions when looking at photos of people can be picked up in a millisecond ... body language is a science in its self ....

You asked what you should do first ...? Get another friend ...!!!! : :tongue:

Just kidding ...!!! I'm sure you can get a very "personable" photo of your friend which in reality will not need any work from the masters here on the forum ...

As an employer, the last person to get hired is the first one to give me a photo of themselves that doesn't look like them. What is he trying to hide is the first thing that comes to mind, if he is so dishonest as to try to pass himself off as something he is not, what else would he do?

Maybe that sounds kind of harsh, but if you want to impress a possiable employer, this is not the way to do it. I would retake the photo and produce something a lot more better rather than waste any time trying to pass this off.

Mike

Sorry Mike, I must respectfully disagree. Honesty only comes into play when discussing credentials or competence. Even babies gravitate to the more attractive face. We're not talking about submitting a nicely retouched photo of Brad Pitt and claiming to look like him. We're talking about taking an average human face and enhancing it. Here's what I've done so far with my limited knowledge of photoshop.

well, you're on the right track. the trick, of course, is to get it to look natural. i dont have photoshop and i know they have some better tools for this than paint shop pro. but i did get the chance to play with photoshop a bit and i recall that 'liquify' and 'warp' were definitely tools i would use for what you're doing.

i've also tried other programs for this sort of thing. i think 'Face Filter Studio' was one of them. and there is an online one called 'Rubber Faces' that i think you can purchase and use offline. you can sort of demo rubber faces online with pre-existing images. attached is one i did or a Nixon face. the link to rubber faces is www.rubberfaces.com .

Craig

Sorry Mike, I must respectfully disagree. Honesty only comes into play when discussing credentials or competence. Even babies gravitate to the more attractive face. We're not talking about submitting a nicely retouched photo of Brad Pitt and claiming to look like him. We're talking about taking an average human face and enhancing it. Here's what I've done so far with my limited knowledge of photoshop.You really should take some of the advice given in this thread so far to heart. There is no point trying to manipulate what is a bad photo to begin with, particularly if you are not an expert retoucher. All you will end out with is something, to be frank, that looks worse, and unnatural as well. You might as well submit Brad Pitt's photo. Get you friend to pose again, get him to smile, shave, and frame the shot better. If you can shoot from slightly above to minimise the double chin do that too.

Sorry Mike, I must respectfully disagree. Honesty only comes into play when discussing credentials or competence. Even babies gravitate to the more attractive face. We're not talking about submitting a nicely retouched photo of Brad Pitt and claiming to look like him. We're talking about taking an average human face and enhancing it. Here's what I've done so far with my limited knowledge of photoshop.

Thats really a narrow look at honesty. I look for honesty when an employee calls in late, calls in sick, whatever, and really would like the employees to be honest when they are handling the company funds! My employees would like me to be honest with them as well. Unless I am looking for a model for a job, usually the person's looks do not count for a whole bunch. What we look for is the "total package", meaning credentials, competence, ability to get along with the crew, the list goes on and last but not least do we percieve the the person as being honest. And thats my whole point, if the photo that is submitted is not really the person who shows up for the interview, then they already have some strikes against them before they can even say anything.

Altho one can do a great deal of correction work in PS, most consider that PS works much better for enhancing a photograph than it does for rebuilding bad photographs.

Mike

Mike,
You are correct. Looks alone don't tell the tale of the man (or woman). Unfortunately, not all employers are as enlightened as you. Fixing bad photgraphs (more than enhancing decent photos) is the real power of PS and the people on this site. Just one look at some of the other work on this site, especially the challenges, should convince most people of this.

Anyone else here starting to suspect 'lensbreaker' is a troll?

lensbreaker,

here's a much simpler way to get at least part of what you want. first, i resized the picture to 565 x 800. this was so we could see it easier here on the forums. next, i unchecked the 'maintain aspect ratio' in the resize tool and dropped the image to 500 x 800. this reduces the width of the picture making everything within narrower. it's a very short, easy method for 'thinning'.

the next thing i did was set my color picking to 'pattern' and picked a nice sort of cloth looking texture and then used the fill tool to fill the shirt on each side. oh, before that, i made a selection of the whole image just slightly smaller than the whole of the original to get rid of the white framing so that my fill wouldnt spill all over the place. the fill, with about a 40 tolerance on 'lightness' then fill his shirt with the color and pattern i selected earlier. much easier than hand painting.

Craig

the pattern i picked is a bit too ordered, but you could find and pick a better one, something with a bit less severely straight lines.

Thanks Craig,
Your idea really helped quite a bit. Now I've been trying the liquify function (puckering) on the bottom and expanding (bloating) on the forehead and here's what I have so far. Just a quick question but why can't I see what I'm liquifying on the layer, why must I use the main image to liquify (hope that makes sense).

lensbreaker,

What is the problem with taking another picture?

If he is a friend of yours, why not just do a reshoot?

Most of the people that are giving you advice here are pros, and semi-pros at photography. If they are telling you to do a reshoot, you might want to consider it.

After looking at your picture very close, I realized what office supply store you took this in. What I am wondering is, why would you take a picture in an office supply store to begin with?

(I am not going to say the name of the store, and hurt its reputation.)

If this is a picture of a customer, that you are doing a job for, rather than a friend, I think you should stop offering services that you are incapable of.

If I am way off about this, then I would post another picture of your friend if I was you.

Thanks Craig,
Your idea really helped quite a bit. Now I've been trying the liquify function (puckering) on the bottom and expanding (bloating) on the forehead and here's what I have so far. Just a quick question but why can't I see what I'm liquifying on the layer, why must I use the main image to liquify (hope that makes sense).

Its because you are working on a blank layer. You can't liquify stuff thats not there. So you need to copy the main image to a new layer. Click on the main image and drag it over the layer icon and drop it. Bang! Duplicate image in new layer.

This photo really does need to be tossed and re shot. At least a "portrait" style photo. This looks like a drivers lisence/mug shot photo.

Pete Janak

Thanks Craig,
Your idea really helped quite a bit. Now I've been trying the liquify function (puckering) on the bottom and expanding (bloating) on the forehead and here's what I have so far. Just a quick question but why can't I see what I'm liquifying on the layer, why must I use the main image to liquify (hope that makes sense).
yeah, that's lookin better. i think you can see what i mean about using a pattern on the shirt, though. it doesnt look like someone is wearing a shirt. it's a step in the right direction, but doesnt quite look right.... too ordered...too straight. some pattern that is a bit more loose and wavy maybe. you could also break it up a bit with lighting and shadows or even warp it a tiny bit, or clone or push it into something more natural looking.

to the rest of the folks commenting here, lensbreaker is trying to do something. for whatever reason, he's trying to go in the direction he's trying to go in. good, bad, or whatever, he's obviously NOT taking a new shot; at least not now. maybe he will, or maybe he wont, but CURRENTLY he's trying to do what he's trying to do, which is alter THIS picture. that we all agree he'd be better off with a different one, well, that point has been made. so, if you wish to help him out with THIS task, why great! he's trying to learn something here; give him a hand! ya know?

Craig

Good point Craig.

If I sounded a little harsh in my post, that wasen't my intention. I was just trying to give some advice on what I seen here.

As others have said, this photo might not be the best choice to paste to a resume, but if this is all he has to work with, then we should give him a hand.

I will give this a shot, and see what I can come up with.

Here is what I have.

I don't have time to explain. If you want to know details of what I did, let me know.

I tried to make him look as much like himself, but not to over do it.

I would actually like to know what you did. I'm learning quite a bit actually. Each time someone tries something different, I pick up some more ideas. I think that I'm getting the hang of this.

thanks fats :) and nice job. very natural looking.

i also just had another thought... since the concensus is that this shot is too close, why not make a smaller image, but a bigger canvas and fill in his shoulders, put in a better background and really touch this up. think of it as a challenge :) in fact, this would make an excellent challenge pic, or even a contest pic.

Craig

Here goes.

1. Sence there was true black and white in the photo, I used the b&w eye droppers, in levels, to set b&w points.

2. I used curves to add cyan to his skin, and remove the red overcast in the picture.

3. I used the forward wrap in liquify tool to raise the corners of his mouth.

4. I used the clone tool, and healing brush to remove the dust, and spots from the picture.

5. I selected the dark areas around his eyes, but not the eyes themselfs, and created an alpha channel with the selection. I blured the channel with a 9 pixel gaussian blur, and then loaded the channel as a selection.

I created a curves adjustment layer, and reduced the dark areas around the eyes, while trying to keep it looking like his real skin color.

6. I used the clone stamp tool, to reduce the bags under the eyes.

7. I used neat image plugin, to remove some noise from the picture.

8. Added another curves adjustment layer to add contrast.

9. Added a hue - sat layer to reduce sat a little.

10. I then added a merged visible layer to the top of the layer stack, and set to soft light. I then ran the high pass filter with a setting of 3 pixels to the layer, and set the opacity to 60% to help sharpen the image.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.