Novice retouch

[Lacrymator]

I saw this picture, of my buddy's daughter, and HAD to try to fix it.
I am a novice, seeking advice on how I could have better accomplished my goal.

1.jpg is the original. The eyes are untouched, and literally AMAZING. But that hand is in the way.

2.jpg - I rotated so that the pupils were level, making it easier to work with.

3.jpg - I cut out the visible portion of her lips and flipped it. Matched it up.

5.jpg - More cloning, healing.

8.jpg - Final.. for now.

Let me know what you think.
Lac

[philbach]

Well in case you haven't been welcomed yet, Welcome to retouch Pro. I really like what you have done. Removing the leg/thigh in the background was an excellent idea. So removing the red chair on the other side would help too in my opinion.

I thought the child's highlights were a little too bright and tended to wash out the skin tones so I lowered the luminosity of the face somewhat. I also cropped the photo some to emphasize the child.

Its a matter of taste, and I think you did a fine restoration.

Phil

[Manjumena]

My 5 minutes fix

[nvstyle]

I love retouching children

[bart_hickman]

I think you did an excellent job of removing the finger (now if I could just do that in real life with my kids!)

The only thing I'd fix is the hair extraction on the right is too abrupt going to the new background--get a wispy brush of some sort with low opacity and smooth out the transition. Probably best to brush in normal mode on a new layer and then set the blend mode of the new layer (burn, darken, whatever you like to work with). Or use the same brush tip with the eraser tool and erase the edges of the hair (assuming you have the girl on a separate layer.)

Bart

[Lacrymator]

I appreciate the great comments. I have to confess. I did this before I had any clue what layers were. I am still learning that now.

I really like the website, this is an amazing resource!!

O, ya know how long I tinkered with that pic??

I'd say I have a good 14 hours.

Yeah, I REALLY need to learn to be more productive. Nothing worse than working an hour on something and scrapping the whole session.

I see others' posts on how long they take, and I gotta say..

How do you get to be THAT fast???!!??

Practice I presume.

Lac

[Photo678]

HAHAHA

Thats great

[Kraellin]

very nicely done on the hand removal. not sure it was really required with an image like this, but nonetheless a very nice job of it!

but, like someone else said, the image is too bright in the skin tones. she looks overly pale and needs some color. some children are pale this way, and if that's the case, why fine. but i suspect it's the lighting in this case.

i did a Fast Fix first (the fast fix plugin) just to get things somewhat close. lowered the lighting but raised to contrast and added just a touch more red.
added a brightness/contrast adjustment layer.
ran a blend mode of darkness on the fast fix layer over the original.
did a copy merge and pasted as new layer.

from the copy merge layer i made a completely new image.
on the new image, cropped closer and resized the image size
did some blending and smudging (very light) and some smoothing to even up the skin textures and coloration.
used the sharpen brush to sharpen her eyes and lips a bit.
did a dupe layer and gausian blurred at 1
blended the gausian blur level into the others with 'lighten' blend.

that was pretty much it. half hour job maybe.

Craig

[dkcoats]

I thought something needed to be done about the eyes. (Somebody should get the word out that flash-on-camera is an invention of the devil). So I made the pupils a little bigger and gave her new catchlights. I also thought the highlights on her skin made her look wet, sorta like she'd been drooling heavily. Smoothed a bunch with the healing brush, twiddled color, added a couple of blurrred layers at various blending modes, cropped.

And I'm not sure I would have removed the hand, either, if I were starting from scratch. It's kind of endearing.

[Peter S]

Very nicely done.
I also wouldn't have removed the hand or straightened the head either (kids hold their heads that way).
Removal of the leg in the background - that was needed though.

Peter

[maureeno]

Here's my go at the wee sprite....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...eeno5/1abc.jpg

As you can see, I opened her pupils a bit. I did none of this in PS (I am limited to PS6) and did the project in PhotoImpact 10.

Maureen

[briarrose]

Nicely done--and welcome! :-)

I couldn't resist giving this little sweetie a try, myself...and my end result leans a bit more towards photo art, rather than a retouch job--but this little one is such a cutie that I couldn't help myself! :-) (I can't decide who was in my subconscious more...Dolly Dimple...or the Northern Bathroom Tissue girls! ;-))

First, I masked out the background, and put in a background I'd painted some time ago, in Painter, then created a dark vignette, and put it over the background, then created a smaller, circular curve vignette that I set to screen, to site behind her head, and simulate a hair light.

Since it looked as if her hair was all brushed over to one side, rather than evenly distributed, I decided to "brush" it back, around her head. I cloned individual curls, and transformed them to fluff out the other side of her hair, then cloned her bangs, so they weren't quite so stringy looking, then used the smudege tool to "paint" her hair, on a new layer, then lowered the opacity way down again.

I converted the image to LAB, and tweaked the magenta and yellow values, and lightened the darker areas of the image, then hopped back to RGB to paint in larger irises and new catchlights. I then sampled multiple areas of her face, and painted on a couple of new, blank layers, using a brush in color mode (16% opacity), setting the layers to darken and lighten, to increase the color depth.

Since the catchlights didn't match the light source, I burned in more shadows and highlights, to suggest a more modeled light.

Finally, I transformed the little girl, so she was more tilted, and quizzical looking, cropped it off center, and then added a small, dark vignette over the girl, to draw her further in to the photo...and then burned in harder highlights around the edges of her hair, to suggest a hair light, and resized and sharpened.

Thanks for a fun 45 minutes or so! :-)

[Cameraken]

Hi Lac
Welcome to Retouch Pro.

I couldn’t resist a play with this either.

Ken

[Lacrymator]

Wow!

Briarrose that is amazing! I am in awe!!
Lac

[briarrose]

Thanks, Lac--but trust me--given a little bit of practice, you'll have no problem doing the same--and even better! :-) Nothing I did was terribly difficult or time-consuming.

Your "novice" post shows that you've got a good eye for details, and a strong artistic sense...and that's more than half the battle, in my opinion. (The other half is mostly mastering layers and layer masks. ;-)) Your cloning is especially impressive, particularly if you're not using layers to their fullest potential. (And don't worry about how long it took you! You should've seen some of MY early PS work!!! Oh sure, it might've LOOKED good...but OH the hours and hours and hours I spent, trying to get it there!!! Sometimes I revisit my original files...and I'm amazed at the convoluted paths I took to get to the end!)

I just realized that your original post said you were looking for advice on how you could've better accomplished your goal...and the best advice I can give you at this point is--master using layers and layer masks. They're the basis of EVERYTHING in Photoshop--and the key to a faster workflow...understanding them--makes understanding adjustment layers (mostly allowing you to "adjust" light and dark values and colors in your image) easier, more intuitive...and when you add using brush and layer blend modes into the mix, you've got a bag of tools that will allow you to do most anything you want, in Photoshop. After that--you'll still have plenty to learn--but even if your workflow isn't quite as fast or sophisticated as someone else's might be--it won't be obvious to most people. :-))

Oh yeah--my other advice is, if you CAN--spend at least 1 hour a day playing in PS, trying something new, or practicing something you're trying to master. I don't save most of my "practice" images--which means I'm free to REALLY experiment, without having to be "perfect"...and if I'm say, practicing with color balance layers, I don't waste my time trying to make perfect masks--I focus on my goal, for that hour. I tell my students they should think of it as "playing scales" for an hour everyday. ;-)