trying to fabricate an arm, help!!

[RamonaMarie]

Hi all,
I posted a couple of days ago here http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...ht=ramonamarie

The photo is attached to my reply, so you have to scroll down a bit.

Trying to do this for a friend by Christmas (maybe). I've begged, borrowed, stole and fabricated. I believe the original photo is attached to the last post (it's not quite the original, but it was with very little work). Here is where I'm at now. I'm sure everyone can pick out easily what I've done. The lady on the left seems definitely sliced up, but it's the best I can get her. I "borrowed the arm on the right from the sister in the middle. Of course, right now that's all I've done. I've tried cloning the flesh, but it's getting messy. I think if I could get the hair out of the way I can get levels pretty close to her skin color. I just can't get the hair out without it getting blotchy with the clone. Maybe there's some secret in the settings? I'm using CS2. I'm not sure the arm looks really realistic. I used free transform. I played with perspective, but it was a bit beyond me. She's looking a bit anorexic, but it was back in the 70's when this pic was taken. That highlight on the arm is making her look funny. Not sure how to relocate it nicely. I'm ok with the gal (she's the mother) on the left. I think I hit my limit on her. I just want to get this arm joined up now. This is my first attempt at recreating people, so please be kind, but objective. Any criticisms will only help me in the future. Thanks in advance. I'm renaming this the Franken Family. I just don't want to creep my friend out too much when she looks at this.

[Kraellin]

there's several ways you could do this. probably the easiest would be to mask the arm and use a color balance or a hue/sat layer and simply move the colorations closer to her natural skin color.

short of that, you could probably also set a blank layer above the existing ones and set the layer to 'color' and simply paint/airbrush in the proper colors. this is probably a little trickier than the first method.

a third method would be to close/smudge the tones/textures in from her other skin areas. leave the outline, but clone in the color and textures. again, a bit tricky and more time consuming.

[bart_hickman]

I just started with your attached result (1st photo), then cloned out the hair on the darker arm (#2), then selected the dark part of the arm and applied a levels adjust (attached) to brighten the arm (#3), then finished up with a bit of cloning between the shirt and arm to clean up that interface (#4).

Bart

[Panpan]

Hi RamonaMarie,

I used Match Color in Photoshop CS2. Put the arm on a layer. Put the skin (only the skin) of her chest and other arm on another layer. This will be the source of the match. There's no need for a precise selection for that layer; we only need a good sample of skin colors of different shades. Usually I set the blending mode of the target layer to color, but in this case there is an important luminosity change involved, so I left the blending mode normal.

For the hair at the shoulder, I stretched skin a little, patched a little and cloned a little .

Pierre

[Lasa]

Match color is seldom written about, but its a very useful tool.
Nice job.
lasa

[Panpan]

Thank you Lasa.