This lovely girl has chapped lips, can someone help her out? Not sure if it's as noticable in the lo-res version. I saw a tutorial here the other day, it was something about glamour retouch without the plastic look..can't find it agian. Anyway, it had something in it about adding gloss to lips. Even though I'm not really looking for gloss, it might point me in the right direction.

Also, how's my color? I've been trying to get a handle on color correction since I tend to get blue color casts alot. I made a CMYK duplicate to correct skin tones by lowering the cyan. After the fact, the cyan still didn't seem low enough, but if I lower it much more she starts to look red.

Hi inskip - you're right, the chapped lips don't show up in the attachment at that size. Maybe you can also post another attachment just of a closeup of the lip detail, and people can try some techniques to fix them up.

yes, the image is a bit small, but, if i'm reading this right, a simple push brush starting on the redder parts of the lips and dragging it across onto the 'chapped' parts shld work.

the coloring looks pretty good, but you might try a mask/selection on the face and other skin and brighten it up a bit or use a luminosity blend on those areas. that shld tend to reduce the red a bit.

Craig

The lips aren't too bad, they just need a little moisture IMO. So, here they are. What's a "push brush", I didn't see anything like that? When you say use a luminosity blend on the face mask, are you talking about a blend mode? Sorry, Photo retouching is still pretty new to me... :o:

Does the color NEED further tweeking? BTW she had a nice tan...don't know if that makes any difference.

Does it look like it needs some noise reduction? It was shot at a higher ISO than I normally would select, but I forgot to change my ISO.

To me, the picture looks pretty good, but then I don't have a very trained eye...

the push brush is a brush in paint shop pro. it falls in same category as clone and smudge. it's like a very hard smudge.

and yes, i meant the blending mode for luminosity, or luminosity legacy might work also.

your blow-up of the lips looks pretty good. i think i'd still add just a touch more color, but at this point i think it's preference thing.

Craig

Thanks. BTW I found the tutorial, it was by NancyJ. It's a great tutorial but don't think it's what I need for this. It says to add a new 50% gray layer set to soft light and paint w/ white brush. The gray layer seemed to change the contrast of the image though. Anyway, I'll work at it...

i decided to do this one.

first thing i did was to crop the image. then i doubled the image size.

i ran the push brush over the lips to add a bit more red.

i ran the fast fix filter plugin over the whole to brighten it up and added a touch of saturation and red at the same time. also a bit of contrast.

i added an adjustment layer for contrast/brightness to fine tune this a bit more.

i flattened it all and sharpen more'd the whole thing.

because the sharpen tends to add noise, i ran the soften brush over higher noise areas to smooth them out, but not the eyes or lips.

i made some minor smudge passes here and there in the shadows to reduce and smooth them a bit also.

Craig

Thanks. BTW I found the tutorial, it was by NancyJ. It's a great tutorial but don't think it's what I need for this. It says to add a new 50% gray layer set to soft light and paint w/ white brush. The gray layer seemed to change the contrast of the image though. Anyway, I'll work at it...

The grey layer shouldnt affect the contrast if it is truely 50% grey (rgb 127/127/127) if it does try changing from soft light to overlay.

I had a go at the close up of the mouth though I didnt have too much time...
I've tried to smooth out the dark lines in her lips and add a little moisture. I also used the healing brush on the skin under the right side of her mouth then improved the colour. Children tend to have much redder lips than adults, when they're healthy.

Looks great! Did you use the same technique from your tutorial?
You're right, I probably didn't have a true 50% gray.
I'll give it another go...thanks..

First I tried to lighten up the darker cracks with the clone tool set to a low opacity. Then I masked in a noise->median 15px layer on 50% opacity. Then I painted colour onto the lips on a new layer at a fairly low opacity. Then I used a 50% grey overlay to paint in the shine and to darken the edges of the lips slightly to make them look a little fuller and rounder. In the original photo they looked stretched flat.

Can someone post a link to the Nancy J tutorial that is referenced in this post.

Thanks :)