Acne removal technique

[SMETZ99]

Hey all,

I have been going back to the photo restorations and manipulations to learn different techniques. One of which was to smooth out a models face (I think it was actually in the critique section) that had a skin condition.

I've been applying this to a great lot of restorations across the board, but I wanted to test out the beleivability on an extreme example.

Please comment on the effort and give me any hints as to what I can improve on. Meanwhile I'll try to find the original post that helped steer me on this path and link to it here so others know how it was done.

I've been looking at this for a while so I think I've lost perspective on it.

WARNING: IT'S A PICTURE OF SEVERE FACIAL ACNE, WHICH SOME MAY NOT FIND APPEALING TO LOOK AT. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK

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[Duv]

Thanks for the warning and thanks for sharing your effort. From my perspective, you've done an outstanding job. Even the highlights and skin colorations have been maintained. I'm going to have to find that tutorial myself.

Cheers
Duv

[Duv]

As a postscript, I must admit I'm becoming a bit of a Neat Image freak. I highlighted the worst zitzoids and ran it thru the software. What do you think? Does it give you something better to work with as a starting point?

Cheers
Duv

[Vikki]

Where's the retouched version? I only see the original....

[Vikki]

Got it!

[Mig]

You did a super job. That must have taken a lot of time. The only thing I'd consider is to add some contrast back. You can see the softening if you compare the sides of the original nose with the touched up nose, outside the nostril area and slightly on the cheek.

Good job!

Mig

[SMETZ99]

Okay, I found the original post that got me started. It's in the Help Requested Forum, and can be found by clicking here

The post was made by Trimoon (thanks Trimoon)

Here is the content of the post:

Originally posted by Trimoon:
I duplicated the background layer twice so that I would have a total of three layers. The background layer is not used but is there for backup. Turn off your top layer so that you are able to see the middle layer. You do this by clicking on the icon that resembles an eye. This way you can turn the layer on and off as needed. Then selecting the middle layer apply a median blur, which you find under filter > noise > median. Watch the image as you apply the median and stop when you no longer see the blemishes. Don't overdo it. Next, go to filter > texture > grain and apply the following settings: intensity at 14-20, contrast at 50 and grain type soft.

Now go to your top layer and click on the eye to turn the layer back on. Select your eraser tool and set the opacity to 50 percent. Now, brush away the forehead, cheeks, etc. as needed. Remember each time you lift off the mouse button, you will take another 50 percent off of the image. Try to do it slowly. You might want to try actually setting your opacity at 25 percent maybe. Stay away from the eyes and just do the cheeks, forehead, etc. Flatten image and that should do it. You might want to do a little adjustment in your levels and then use unsharp mask to bring it out nicely.

Hope this helps you. It really doesn't take that long to do once you get accustomed to doing it. Others usually suggest using a history brush to do the same thing I mentioned above. This is just a shortcut. Steve

[SMETZ99]

... as an adder, I had to also use a Gaussian Blur on the center layer to get rid of all the blemishes.

Thanks for the other tips to add back some contrast, I think that's what I "feel" it's missing. I like the result, but it looks a bit too CGI to me. Printed out I'm sure it'd look fine hanging on the fridge, but we're all too much of a perfectionist for that, right?




As for other plugins that get a better starting point, the whole purpose of the excersize for me was to see what I could do from start to finish with only out of the box PS techniques, but that image would be of help to start out with normally.

Thanks

[Hunter]

I used a different style here to clean up the face. I was not going for a smooth skin look, but a fairly realistic look. What I did was use the Clone Tool (btw, using Corel Photopaint here) but I changed the Merge mode of the brush to Color. I selected various parts of the skin and just wound up cloning color into the area instead of blocking the acne. Once I had some skin tones I liked, I went in and did some regular cloning. On the skin highlight area, I created a new blank layer and then I used the eyedropper to get various skin color levels and just did some random brushing of color on the blank layer. The brush I was using had a 50% transparency to it and 100% feather to get a pretty soft look and I then went to the layer and dropped the transparency down 10% to get some skin texture coming through. This was a pretty quick attempt - hopefully it looks ok

[SMETZ99]

Looks good. However, the point of my excersize was to see the effects of using a particular technique.

Oddly enough, I did another rendition of this to see what I could do using all my bag of tricks and I came up with something strikingly similar to your method..