Dry Lips!

[freddyfries]

Here is a part of a picture I was hoping to get printed out soon, it was only at the proofing stage that I noticed just how dry and chapped poor Lena lips were, the winter has not been kind to them,

Can anyone please help me to give her some lush healthy lips?

(I have been playing around with clones, blur and painting, however this just seems to end up making them look even drier!, it would be great if somehow they could have a slightly made up, moist feel to them)

Thanks


Mark

[skipc]

Post a larger sample, this one is to small to view on screen. Thx...skip

[byRo]

Hi there, Mark. Welcome to RetouchPRO

Seeing as how you've already tried a lot of things, I just sortta made this up....

1) Duplicate the image;
2) Run Motion Blur in the direction (nose / chin), in this case -78 degree;
3) Add a "Hide All" mask and with a soft and light white brush over the unwanted horizontal lines;
4) When satisfied, merge / copy to a new layer and run the motion blur in the direction of the lips (I was going to say orthogonal, but didn't want to scare folks away);
5) Add a "Hide All" mask and with a soft and light white brush over the vertical lines where they are too deep;
6) Add a mid-grey layer and "paint with light" to put in a bit of shine on the lower lip;
7) Merge / copy to a new layer and sharpen up a bit.

Hope this helps a bit.

Rô

[Kraellin]

there's others that will do this better, but i needed the practice.

lots of push, smudge, lighten/darken, a contrast adj layer and a color balance adj layer. no particular order to all this; just what looked better. the first steps, though, were 'push' to take out the wrinkles/cracks. oh, i also added some noise to the rest of the skin and smoothed that out a bit.

craig

[freddyfries]

Hi there Rô,

Thanks to everyone for getting back to me so swiftly there really are some fabulously creative approaches being put forward, including your choice of vocabulary (you had me reaching for the dictionary, and for others like myself

(or·thog·o·nal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ôr-thg-nl) adj.
1. Relating to or composed of right angles.
2. Mathematics.
1. Of or relating to a matrix whose transpose equals its inverse.
2. Of or relating to a linear transformation that preserves the length of vectors.
[From Greek orthognios : ortho-, ortho- + gni, angle; see genu-1 in Indo-European Roots.])

I was a bit stumped as well with the "Paint with light" however found this excellent tutorial if anyone else has not heard the term

http://www.adobe.com/print/tips/phslight/page2.html

Here is the latest version and also how it looks on the print

(in the final print there is a pretty harsh curve, the lips are loads better than they were, however they are still not really looking moist? any suggestions or refinements on this technique?)

Thanks

[ozonew4m]

ok i had a quick go at this but i think i might of gone a bit overboard..

my feeling was it was the rippling in the lips that was making them look dry so i went over them with a couple of red transparent layers and then added a bit of light..

[1STLITE]

Is this something like you were wanting? Maybe I over did it a little I dunno. But I have always had problems with the same thing and thought I would give this a go. I think I tried a little of everything really, but mostly just playing with a new layer set to overlay and lightening up the parts to make them loks shiney and darkening other parts to make the liops appear round and plump and also lightened the really creased part. I also used a bit of smudge and liquify to fix the shape a bit especially on the paryt where the top and bottom lips meet. Anyways, it was fun, and I like the result. Maybe you will too. Thanks for the practice.

Dawn

[freddyfries]

Thanks everyone, it really is great.

I particulary liked 1STLITE version.

Unfortunatly I am nowhere near as acomplished with Photoshop as it would appear you are. Would it be possible to get a bit more of a detailed break down of the steps you took in order to achieve such an excellent result?

Thanks

[1STLITE]

Thank you for your compliments freddiefries. I think I can elaborate a bit on it. Also what I said in the first post was a bit off. I used an empty layer set to overlay to as someone else said paint with light. but the skininess came from another empty layer and I used a med soft brush in white to make the shine, low-ish opacity, around 10% or so, and built it up to where I liked it. Other than that like I said I used a bit of smudge and a small brush to fix the lower part of the upper lip to make it not look so ragged. I think the last thing I did was used liquify to reshape the bottom right part of the lips, it just seemed off to me, and the pucker to me didnt work so well to make the lips appear moist, so I used liquify to also even that out.

I think thats it. Lemme know if you need any more clarification on anything.

Dawn

[freddyfries]

Hi there,

Thanks for all the advise. I have to get this printed out so I have settled on this version. Perhaps people could let me know their opinion.

I followed Dawns excellent suggestions and then went on to fade the opacity of both the "painted light" layer and the lips layer to get back a bit of the texture from the orignal lips.

Staring at the same thing over and over I can no longer be objective! Sometimes it drives you crazy!

[Cassidy]

This does not look like a glamour shot, so have to wonder if the harsh lips are part of the character portrayed here. If so, I wouldn't soften too much at all

[1STLITE]

Mark, I do believe that is absolutely perfect! Good job!

[Mig]

lol - what's this woman doing anyway? - kinda looks like she has some kind of saw going through her friend's head!

Mig

[Kraellin]

had to give this another shot.

mig,
interesting interpretation

craig