This is the nicest shot of the sequence that I took however the brides hair is all over her face. I have had a couple of attempts at getting rid of it with the Healing Brush. When I get to the area around her eyes where the hair is quite thick I just end up with a blotchy effect on her skin. Any tips or suggestions on an alternative method would be much appreciated.

Jason

Hows this?

Never used the patch tool until tonight.

Combination of patch tool and clone

I can't see this being an easy job and quite frankly, how well it turns out, is going to depend on how much time you spend on it.

You could clone it out but that is going to be time comsuming and if you are not very skilled with the clone tool you run the risk of losing your highlights and shadows and blurring everything up into a muddy mess.

If you had a similiar shot taken with the same lighting and at roughly the same angle (with no hair in the face) you could borrow skin from there and copy it in. With some creative use of the Free Transform tool you could get it to fit and then mask out the edges. Adjust the lighting with Curves if necessary. This could be the quickest and most painless route. It is the one I would try first.


Quite an effective Mask can be made from the Red Channel in this Photo. It is the Channel that shows the biggest contrast between the skin and the hair. You could increase the contrast with Levels. Select the Mask, invert it and on your original copy the selection to a new layer (Cntrl-J). Now set the Blend Mode to Screen and lower the opacity to about 45%. This gets rid of most of the hair but leaves the skin looking a bit muddy and blotchy. At this point cloning, healing or the patch tool are all considerably easier. Finally with a little bit of dodging and burning you could draw attention away from the bad areas and make it look fairly decent. The bigger the file size the better too.

Hope this helps.
Syd

Thanks guys - some good results there.

Enjoyable project. Original on the left, retouch on the right.

dc