hey all. got inspired by NancyJ's tutorial. please critique.
p.s. thanx NancyJ for awsome tutorial and provided image.

Hi Cybercat,

I don't know the tutorial you are referring to, but a couple of comments from me:

I quite liked the girl's pouty expression that you have removed from the retouched image. Similarly the little line at the edge of her mouth gave her character I think. You might want to darken/tidy up her eyebrow - particularly as they are now a big contrast with her eyelashes.

I like the eye colour and makeup.

For some reason the nostrils and ear look a bit strange - like they have closed over - I think they have been smoothed/contrast has been dropped there a bit too much.

Hope these comments are helpful.

good job,

Three little things. First a personal preference: I prefer to use the liquify tool for changing the shape of the lips. Second the skin repair was a little overdone (easy to do), always remember that people's skin is not made of plastic. Last, I thought the eyes were a little too green.

These are things that are subjective, but I think they make the image look a little better.

A couple of examples with explainations: makeup and coloring (http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/3863/sort/1/cat/500/page/1) and skin repair (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=84898&postcount=5)

Hope that helps,

Michael

PS this usually takes an hour or two but this quick 15 minute job should show you what I'm talking about.

Caitlin, MBChamberlain thank you very much for compliments, comments and critiques. :)

I like your work up. The only thing that sticks out IMHO is the eyes. The whites are too white, but just a tad, maybe put in some shadow and the green is too metal looking. Almost like metal flake paint on a car.

The smoothed over skin and eye make up look good too.

Nice post.

Bujo thank you.

Cyber Cat-

I'd love to know how you enlarged the model's lips.

Can you tell me how you did that?

Thanks

rnbluvva sure...
make selection around the mouth. copy into a new layer (ctrl+j). free transform it (hold shift when u do) move transform around till it looks natural, after that drag transform handle down a bit. fix any patchy areas (if any)
zoom into the image, make sel. around the whole mouth. filter->liquify. use warp tool to even out line btw the lips. make selection inside of the lips. filter->distort->pinch . do the same thing for the upper lip only. copy some texture from lower lip to upper lip. rotate if needed.
feel free to ask if any questions.

Thank you Cyber Cat! I will try this later on :)

I thought I'd give it a try.

Played with the hair inspired by a tutorial I just read, also eyebrows.
Tried to smooth the skin per MBChamberlain.
Enlarged the upper lip per Cyber Cat.
Eyes per Johnson tutorial on this forum.

Just a copycat :)

Larry

I thought I'd give it a try.

Played with the hair inspired by a tutorial I just read, also eyebrows.
Tried to smooth the skin per MBChamberlain.
Enlarged the upper lip per Cyber Cat.
Eyes per Johnson tutorial on this forum.

Just a copycat :)

Larry

Larry,

I'd be interested in reading the hair and eyebrow tutorials you used to do this. I like what you have done with the image.

rnbluvva

The information for hair cloning is from a sample chapter of a book. There is much more covered and the chapter is quite extensive.

Beauty Retouching in Photoshop

* By Suzette Troche-Stapp.
* Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of New Riders

The online sample chapter is:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=101733&seqNum=6&rl=1

Hi!

Retouching is a very personal work. Depends on your point of view as a retoucher and the art directors view of his work.

I just took a look at your post. You did a nice job.

- I think you could work a bit more on her lips. I think you lost a bit of volume on the upper lip with the liquify.

- The skin job is nice. I think you could go a little easier on it though. i t tends to a plastic texture. You could also mask the nostril and the contours on the nose, chin and ear with a a very soft brush (about 20% pressure). This will solve the blurry feel of the skin treatment. Try and put some texture over the treatment as well to reduce the plastic feel.

- In my opinion i think you could go easy on the eye. the colour doesn't feel real and, as you compare with her right eye, although it is in shadow you notice that you didn't give it a similar treatment (respecting the shadow values of it).

Well, Like I said in the beginning, it is all very personal. You have done a good job. Congratulations.




Cheers!!

George Rutherford
www.seagullsfly.com
www.fotolog.net.rutherford

ok... let me start by saying thank you all very much for your input, comments, critiques!!!! :bow:
MBChamberlain thank you for your tutorials!!
rnbluvva u wlcm :) u did awesome job (see another thread) you just need to get a lil more familiar with liquify tool (im looking for some good tutorials for you, deff. let you know if i'll find any)
leuallen :bigthmb: on retouching. we all started by coping and trying to figure out how things are. so once again love your work!!
rutherford thank you very much. lip volume hmmm... there was none to begin with, so i know for sure i added some, but now im looking at it i think you right and i should add some more.(its just when you working on an image, and see before and after right there, you tend to loose it... meaning you can clearly see improvements you made, that is why its always a good idea to ask someone else's opinion). skin- note to myself* about realistic finish(thank you) funny thing tho i always add noise, maybe not enough. as of skin texture i always go for almost plastic finish (think Lancôme ads) unless i told not to. eyes -yeah i know dont look real, but i just liked look of it at that moment, still eye envy (wish i had eyes like that lol)
once again thank you all.

Revisited the lips. When I completed the lips, I was so happy with the result of the Liquify tool that I did not proceed further.

I now see that the top lip looks flat with no contour, not that the original had much to start out with. The Liquify tools reduces this even more, like stretching a colored ballon - the more it is stretched, the less intense the color becomes.

I felt that the problem is with shadows, there are none at the bottom of the top lip. This makes it look flat. I created a new layer, blending Overlay, and filled with 50% gray. Painting on this layer with black darkens, white lightens. Using a small soft brush with black at 5%, I created some shadowing at the base of the top lip. As with most operations done at high enlargement, we tend to overdo the effect we are working on. I zoomed the picture out to full size reduced the opacity of the shadow layer to a more natural setting.

But I am not sure that I like the result. The attachment shows the lips before and after the shadowing. What do you think. Am I on the right track?

Larry

well, like I've told you. retouching is a very personal kind of job.

george rutherford
www.seagullsfly.com
www.fotolog.net/rutherford

leuallen great job you r deff. on a right track. now try to add some texture to the upper lip from the lower.
here is what you do:
make selection around half of the lower lip ctrl+j
flip vertical, move on top of the upper lip reduce opacity to about 30%
turn of this layer
make selection inside of the lips on the main layer
turn texture layer back on
do select inverse (ctrl+shift+I)
hit backspace
do the same thing for another part of the upper lip.

...the green is too metal looking. Almost like metal flake paint on a car.

Actually, I was quite digging that metallic eye shadow.
Cyber Cat... how'd you do that? It looks coture cool!

rnbluvva hey :)
I think Bujo was talking about iris color, as of makeup:
Make wide selection around both eyes, ctrl+j (to copy selection to the new layer) name it “unsharp mask”.
Create a new layer set call it “eye shadow” and drag ur “unsharp mask” layer into it.
Filter-->sharpen-->unsharp mask (choose extremely high settings something like 110 for amount, ~5 –radius and ~0)
Hold down alt and bring up channel mixer adjustment layer (check ”group with previous window”, now move sliders till you have metallic effect.
Collapse the “eye shadow “ layer set. Apply an adjustment layer. Fill mask with black, and start painting ur “eye shadows” onto the eyelid.
Set mode to overlay.

Cyber Cat :)
Thanks for explaining how you did this. I think it looks rad.
I also see you showed how to give more texture for the lips... that is the issue I am working on now in the other thread. I will try to use the technique you refer to here.

Thanks

Larry- is that the Glitter Guru book? I think the chapter is called 'Fantasy Hair' or something like that? I saw that a few weeks ago. Will go back to it and give it a whirl.

rnbluvva

Yes that is the book, Glitter Guru. I don't have the book but think I'll get it. The link I gave gives the complete content of the chapter. You can learn a lot from it. It is what I used to base my hair mods.

Larry

Make wide selection around both eyes, ctrl+j (to copy selection to the new layer) name it “unsharp mask”.
Create a new layer set call it “eye shadow” and drag ur “unsharp mask” layer into it.
Filter-->sharpen-->unsharp mask (choose extremely high settings something like 110 for amount, ~5 –radius and ~0)
Hold down alt and bring up channel mixer adjustment layer (check ”group with previous window”, now move sliders till you have metallic effect.

Ok- you lost me here. Hold down ALT + the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer on the Layers Pallete while the "Unsharp Mask" Layer is selected?
When I do this I get a popup that says "New Layer" and the option it gives me is to "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask"
I'm using CS 2, if that helps any.
If I do this I get a Red Green and Blue Channel with the Output Channel Being Red.
What are good values to achieve the metallic look?

Collapse the “eye shadow “ layer set. Apply an adjustment layer. Fill mask with black, and start painting ur “eye shadows” onto the eyelid.
Set mode to overlay.

Ok.. so this is what I have so far... I just have racoon eyes! LOL
What am I doing wrong?

rnbluvva

Yes that is the book, Glitter Guru. I don't have the book but think I'll get it. The link I gave gives the complete content of the chapter. You can learn a lot from it. It is what I used to base my hair mods.

Larry


Yeah that book is on the top of my 'go get' list. It's pretty incredible! I've seen it used at Amazon lately. Good deal!

Hold down ALT + the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer on the Layers Pallete while the "Unsharp Mask" Layer is selected?When I do this I get a popup that says "New Layer" and the option it gives me is to "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask"

1. yes "Unsharp Mask" Layer is selected!
2. "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask" -yes, check that !
3. What am I doing wrong? you have to apply mask to the layer set, sorry if i wasnt clear enough.
got some pix for you. hope it helps
so... good luck :)

Cyber Cat!

Yeah! Thanks for explaining with those screen shots. I think I'm getting it now.
In fact, I found another digital eye shadow (http://www.artworld.si/artificial_make_up-tutorial-58.art) tutorial and layered the results of that one under the technique you gave me and I also used the metallic technique for the lips, and ended up with this result...

Thank you so much for explaining it to me!

PS... thanks to Phil and Zoe (http://www.pbase.com/mister_phillie/profile) for such a wonderful picture to practice this technique on! The eyelids and lips were perfect for practicing this technique.

all this talk of metal eyes and large lips inspired a joke in me, but the more i worked on it, the more i decided to curtail the joke and alter it into ... something.

my apologies to zoe if it offends, i mean no offense to such a beautiful woman.

Craig