Hello Retouchers. We all have had a go with smoothing out wrinkles in portraits, but what about "steaming" wrinkles out of clothing, but keeping film grain and resolution? I'm attaching an example that I'm working on right now. I have used the clone tool, healing brush, masking, but it is so laborious. I'm wondering if there are any tricks to get rid of "un-ironed" clothes at a faster pace. Any ideas on smoothing out ruffled fabrics?

Thanks for your help. steve

use some curves, to darken or lighten, paint in the mask to reveal them.

basically you are d&b'ing. make a couple of different curves to hit 1/4, mids, 3/4 tones etc. eventually it will come together. only non-destructive method i can think of off the top of my head with that small sample.

put them in luminosity mode and you won't have a major color shift.

for the bigger more hard edged area...that will take more than that, might have to do somee cloning, but try darken and lighten modes to help. it will get sloppy no doubt, but then you can d&b the seams together to make it blend better.

you can always try cheating some areas with a little airbrushing with noise addes to make texture. it will prob be a combination of all mentioned above.

retouching laborious....never.

Have you tried the patch tool set at source?

Hi there

You can also try the quiuck degrunge routine. Mask as needed

Butch

Thanks KR for your advice. I'll mess around with some of these tips. It would be so much easier to throw these fabrics in a dryer with fabric softener, but of course we have to do a "digital ironing" in Photoshop to straighten it out. BTW, the sample I posted was just a low-rez version, but the actual files are very hi-res images and "steaming" them is not fun, but I have to create something almost perfect for the client.

BTW, here was an interesting thing I pulled off by accident. Because the org images are underexposed about 1 stop, I ran the exposure/highlight adj, and the fabric was magically wrinkle free. The problem of course was the image was brightened up and even with some masking, I couldn't get it right. If I could, it was an instant "ironing."

steve

olbaldy pointed out the patch tool, which is a big time saver for certain jobs.
just hope you have large source/cover areas to really utilize it's power. just watch it's not destroying the natural texture of the fabric, (sofetning it where it's noticeable you were retouching it.)

if it's really hi-rez and for a client, than take your time and when you're in a good place, take a break, walk away from the screen, then go in deep and analyze your image like you were dexter.

you will have a fresh sety of eyes and will be able to spot to sloppy cloning/d&bing/healing/patching pixels. adding a slight bit of noise on a softlight layer will help you ease the transition of your tones and texture.