[bohngy]

Hi all, thanks for all of you who helped me out with my last thread on tonality, I'm still working on that one. This one is asking for a bit of direction with removal of facial hair.

I shot this image as a favour for a friend, she's a makeup artist and would like some beauty images in her book. My problem is that I can't remove the fine hair on her forehead without it looking terrible.

The picture is about 1/4 done, so I know there is still loads that is wrong with it. I've removed hair on her top lip by blurring a copy of the area and then adding skin texture with a new layer comprising of a selection from her cheek, running a high pass filter, then overlay mode.... thanks to godmother's vid for that one!
The problem is that it isn't working on her forehead, and I don't like the loss of texture on her lip, in the area I have done. dodge and burn techniques aren't working due to the different tones.

Could anyone provide some advice/guidance on what to do? I'm not asking people to do it for me, just throw some ideas in my direction, on how to achieve a really professional result.

also, if you've got any ideas on how to fix the skintones! they look a bit horrible at the moment.

Thanks, Bohngy
http://www.benlawrencephoto.co.uk/forehead1.jpg

[edgework]

Is that the full sized image? What does the original look like?

[KR1156]

if it's very minor, sometimes you can cheat with a little, carefully done, dust & scratches, followed by a little noise and additional D&B for cleanup. if not, i usually just make a curve that really hits the highlights and darkens them in to match the midtones, and just paint in each hair.

[bohngy]

it's been resized for the web, and cropped a little, how come edgework?

[mistermonday]

Bohngy, this technique should work well on your image:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213Regards, Murray

[Daviskw]

Hi there

Added a texture layer grouped with a masked snapshot of median filter layer

Butch

[Gary]

Copied a section from the right side of her forehead, flipped horizontally, moved it over-top of the hair and lowered the opacity to suit; healing brush tool to blend in the blemishes; painted with a low opacity soft brush on a blank layer in Overlay mode using the skin color from the right side of her face for the skin tone; enhanced her eyes using masked duplicate layers in color burn and color dodge modes, sharpened.

[cricket1961]

I wouldn't remove the hair at all. I might darken it down slightly though.

Chris

[bart_hickman]

Butch, that's a nice job. Your method sounds very similar to mine.

I duplicated the original and used surface blur to remove the hair. Duplicated the original again and used the pattern maker from a sample of her own skin, highpass, and slight blur to create a layer with the new texture. Combined the new texture layer with the blurred skin layer using linear light and put both of them into a group that is selectively masked.

Bart

[MatthewMarshall]

do you realy want her to look like a plasic barbie doll? Sometimes if you cant get a realistic version, leaving it alone is best. I agree with cris, darkening the strands is a nice idea. So here is an example of a very light hair removal. I still think the original photo is nice by its self. But as you can see i did other things to the photo like soften the lace, ect. I used neat image to even the skin, (as a layer painted in) and cleaned up the rest with just burn tool and color corected areas.

[Daviskw]

Thanks Bart... your technique looks good...I'll have to try the pattern maker..sounds like it could work good.

I think this is a very nice shot... it can be strong colorful and bold... or muted and mysterious.

I always like the bold as you can tell and I like the eyes half hidden and colorful…lol… I personally think this would be a great candidate for the Soft Doir Technique.

However it works great bothways...I like Matthew's as well

Butch

[cainam]

A bit late, but liked the photo.

[idreno]

i thought i'd also do some minor changes. lots could be done on this. it's a great photo. the skinjob corrected the hairy forehead problem. afterwards i had some freetime to do a nosejob and color correction. hope i could help. here's the link to compare.
before/after

[crazyfly1]

Butch and Bart, I have tried making a pattern with skin and I don' get a good result. Would one or both of you go into a little detail about the method please?

[superkoax]

here is mine....