Body Sculpting

[grafx]

What an amazing link. Site was a bit hard to navigate. I was looking for some bio information.

[Sean2]

Hello Graphx,

Pleased you enjoyed the link. I've been looking for more sights for good examples, but they are really elusive unless one really wants to ride the edge. The work on the page is certainly fascinanting though.

The threads on the bottom of this page are a real plus as well. Good idea by the "management". I have tried a few pics with the freeze, thaw tools and liquify filter. It is quite empowering to be able to assist people with slight modifications when they request how they might look, while testing photoshops flexibility.

I don't know how body sculpture might actually apply for "restoration" piece, unless someone wanted a particularly nice before shot or scene to be manipulated so that the body in the picture could be altered to fit the "new" image one has worked for.

Really enjoying the talent and comments from this community - Great artisans -

However, would really like to see a detailed thread or tutorial on CYMK and how to really manipulate the channels to bring the best detail and color out of a badly cast (tinted) and poorly scanned photo. The guts are often pointed out, unfortunately the specific steps for manipulating the CYMK and RGB or LAB pieces seem like they should be intuitive and I am not intuiting very well. Have read many tutorials, but they don't really go into much detail about the use of different tools in CMYK restoration, although many tutorials touch briefly on things like Alpha masks. Looking for greater detail than that -

In other words, How does one manipulate the CYMK channels (blurring, pasting, copying, luminosity, sharpen invert, blur invert, remove the colorcast etc) - Is there any tutorial that does any of this as a single picture recovery, restoration and retouch tutorial ? I have looked at the tutorials here, and excellent as they are, either this is not addressed in detail or only a specific step is briefly mentioned. In other words and I am still not really sure how much real manipulation can be accomplished in the CMYK or RGB channels

Sean2,

Sorry for the length of response.

[Duv]

Hi Sean

For color correcting I would stick with RGB, With color cast sometimes you have to make educated guesses as to what is black, grey and white, but if you can, by equalizing the numbers for each color, you'd be well on your way.

For working to a resulting CMYK, try duplicating the image. Change the dupe to RGB and do your balancing. Once satisfied, copy and paste back into your CMYK image and change to Color to compensate for luminosity variance.

In terms of skin colors, I almost always try to balance by known CMYK percentages for kids, caucasians etc.

Cheers
Dave

[Sean2]

Hello Dave,

Are those percentages located anywhere as rough numbers or do we need to figure those out by trial and error? I know we need to lean a little into the yellow rather than the red, but had never thought to keep a skin chart with a median color percentage. Good idea.

Would I do that by using the eye-dropper?

Sean2

[Duv]

Hi Sean

I'm a long way from a skin expert but you're right. Generally you should have more yellow than magenta, assuming caucasian. Obviously, North American Indian would be different (I think). If you don't have it, I absolutly recommend Katrin Eismann's book, Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Virtually, everyone on this forum are aware of this great book. She has an excellent section on skin color correction, much of it by the numbers. A lot of people guesstamate. I don't have much use for it personally. Go by the numbers. If in doubt with your results, consult someone else. Often our eyes deceive us.

If you haven't already, there's some current discussion on color correction under " Flesh Tone Corrections..Help".

Cheers
Dave

[Sean2]

Thanks Dave.

I found another interesting link on facial alteration and retouching that shows some of the fun one can have with stereotypical features and altering structure: where humour is the goal and not the hurting of feelings.

Hope this link is still in keeping with the initial sculpting piece:

http://www.ericmyer.com/red/stereotypes.htm

[Duv]

Tasty yummers Sean2! Made me giggle like a leetle girl.

Cheers
Dave