Help I have a portrait of an older couple. She wants her neck made to look less fat. If anyone could point me to some good tutorials on this I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks Vicki

Vicki,

I recommend Katrin Eismanns book Restoration & Retouching, she has a wonderful tutorial on Reducing Double Chins. I'll play with it and see what I can do.

~Amber~

Ok Vicki, Here's what I got with Photoshop 7.

First thing, Duplicate your background layer. On the duplicate layer, I used the patch tool and the healing brush to cover the wrinkles on her neck. If you lasso the areas that you are working on then you are less likely to blend into her shirt and her necklace. If the patching looks too artificial, adjust the opacity of the layer to let the original skin show through. I felt like her shoulder on the right side was just a tad too high so I generously lasso'ed the right shoulder with the blue background- copy and paste then moved the selection down to cover the original shoulder. That's just about it! It didn't take but maybe 5 minutes. It takes longer to write the description and save the project! I hope that helps some, if you have any questions at all, just ask.

~Amber~

Hi Vicky,

Just did a quick clone job to give you some idea.

Getting below the 100k limit here means I couldn't post the full size without compromising quality even more than it's already been.

i used the warp brush to adjust and iron out some of the wrinkles and the waddle. i also used it to pull the left side of her neck in all along the dress line. i did the same on her right side and pulled the lower cheek in a bit. also ironed out some wrinkles in her cheek/jaw on her left.

i used the clone to smooth things up a bit in the previous waddle area, some push and smudge also. made a selection of that same area and added back some noise for texture. burn and dodge tool to get the shadows back in right.

i dont know if Photoshop has the warp tool, but it's a great tool. notice i didnt say warp mesh. the warp tool is actually a brush that does the same thing only with extra arguements to it that allow for 'push', 'expand', 'contrast', 'iron', 'twirl' and some others. very handy tool for things like this.

great looking couple! love the shot.

Craig

edit: oh, i also whitened her teeth up a bit. no extra charge :)

I used the healing brush. I used long, thin oval shapes slanting left, right, and horizontal to more or less matching the neck direction. Of course, on a section of a duplicated layer. Used lots of short stokes.

When working on the neck area next to the dress, I enclosed the area using the magnetic lasso set to follow the dress line closely with a 1-2 pixel feather. This way you won't get any color bleed from the dress. I also used the clone some in this area. If the dress line is too sharp after this, use the blur tool to soften.

When done, the area had a grayish cast caused by blending in all of the dark wrinkle lines. Set brush to color, 5-10% opacity, and hold down the alt key and select a skintone that is in the light mid range and vibrant. With large soft brush, go over grayish area. It will dissapear, leaving a more natural skin tone.

Put back slight wrinkle line under chin by healing from a dark area with small strokes.

I still need a little more shadow under the chin, that is a little darker. This I would do latter in my workflow using a dodge and burn layer, 50% gray, overlay blending. White lightens and black darkens.

Larry

Thanks to everyone for the input. I really appreciate this forum and web site.
Vicki

I just worked on the bulging neck. I used the patch tool to eliminate her surgical scar and then selected an area just beyond the bulge. That selected area I copied to a new layer and then used the move tool to move it over the bulge. I cloned the residual.

The area that I selected before copying is outlined in green.

I used the patch tool followed by clone. Then found a med skin tone added a new layer set my brushes to about 50% and painted on the layer, created another layer picked a shadow tone from her skin and repainted in the shadows. Used noise on both these layers at .4 to simulate skin, and merged three layers. Set opacity to about 70% and then merged with original image and used clone one more time. Time 7 minutes. Like everyone else had to limit the file to under 100k, so doesn't look as good as it could.
~Nancy~

And what about his neck??? :pleased:

He didn't want his neck retouched. I guess he feels okay with it. i'm trying to make them match more.

Vicki

Well here is my final try. Hopefully they will like it. This is the finished product with complete retouching to look natural and not too overdone. Her neck still doesn't look quite as natural as I would like. I tried the technique you used Phil and didn't quite get the result that you had. Yours too me looked the most natural and matched her husbands the most. I appreciated everyones tips and tried several versions.

I tried the warp tool also but need more practice with it, so I trashed that version. The explanation in Katrin Eismanns book used the warp tool but the neck in her example was very different. If anyone knows of any tutorials using the warp tool let me know.

Thanks to all for the input.
Vicki

Please let us know what the client finally likes. For me, I like Gary's and Phils rendition. The neck is reduced without making her look like it's a neck from a 22 year old. You might want to have a version where the correction is not so dramatic and let them decide.

k

Vidanse, a very nice final touch but something quite easy to reduce and provide a little more shape to the finished item (I think) would to be grab using the colour picker some of the shadow from under the neck and on a new layer, just applying in a low opacity in colour mode some shading with the paintbrush up to the shadow line on the cheek

thanks for the tip Cassidy. I did just what you described and it helped make it look more natural. Will let you all know what they think.

Vicki

wishing you the best with this one

The retouched neck area has purplish cast so it stands out from the other neck areas.

Try this, set your brush to blending Color, opacity 5-10%, and large, soft. Sample a good skin area from the neck or chin - while in brush mode, hold down the Alt key to the eyedropper and make sample.

Sweep over the discolored area, gradually removing the color cast. Might be a good idea to make a snapshot before you start, so that you can make several tries if necessary until you build up the technique.

This similar in effect to painting from a layer with low opacity, but it is quicker. You can also do different areas by resampling as you go. For example to reduce red areas and bring them into line with the rest of the skin.

This sometimes does not work, especially if the effected area is too strong and saturated in a particular color. But for slight casts, it does a good job of evening out things.

Larry

Hi Vicki:

On a separate layer I cloned from surrounding areas of the neck using varying amounts of opacity. While cloning I tried to keep some skin texture under her neck so that the repair would not stand out as much. On a separate blank layer, I set the mode to color, selected a color sample from another area of her neck and painted in a more uniform color to her repaired neck.

Alan