Did I embalm or improve this person?

[Tom_M]

Background: This image is an intentionally silly grab shot I took of a good friend of the family while at a miniature golf course on vacation (ie, on-camera flash & similar limitations).

Our friend is sitting on the knee of a life-sized wooden statue of a pirate, acting like she is flirting with him :-) . The retouched version (along with other images) may be given to her as a gag gift.

Given that this most definitely was not a professional shoot with a 20-something thin-as-a-rail model, do you think I took too many years / pounds off, or did I embalm her (as my wife claims ;-) )? Have I exceeded the bounds of propriety in liquifying her features, smoothing her skin, etc? Should I have stuck to just removing the hotspots caused by the on-camera flash?

Would your answers to the above questions be different if the image wasn't going to be used as a gag gift, but the subject was still a a friend of the family, not a professional model?

TIA,

:-)

Tom

[Tom_M]

whoops ... attachement didn't make it.

[Tom_M]

... and here are the frames from which the previous crops were taken

[snook305]

You certainly over sharpened that is for sure...
Snook

[stereokatt]

How far you take it depends on what your final objective is. It looks like you've moved in the edges of the entire image, which affects everything in the image. Just tweaking the figure a bit is all it needs. Here's your original and a slightly tweaked version, with very localized use of liquify, plus a little cloning. Not huge changes but they do make a difference. Of course if you wanted something more extreme the sky's the limit.

[htown]

The image is highly pixelized but I gave it a shot. Just removed some shadows and a little tiny bit of liquefy.

[Tom_M]

Originally Posted by snook305

You certainly over sharpened that is for sure...
Snook

Good eye! When I first read your comment, I thought, "no way" because I didn't remember doing any sharpening whatsoever in PS. I checked my psd file, and indeed, I had not sharpened it at all.

Then I looked at the original in-camera sharpening setting. It was set to max. That setting carried through when I ingested the NEF file in NX2, and since this was just a silly little fun project, I never noticed it. Fortunately, it's not yet at the level of blinding white halos around every high contrast edge ;-) (see attached).

Thanks,

Tom

[Tom_M]

Originally Posted by stereokatt

...It looks like you've moved in the edges of the entire image, which affects everything in the image...

Very close. To keep the proportions of the statue correct, but try to take a few pounds off our friend, I selected only the right half (approx) of the image and then squished that part a bit horizontally.

Originally Posted by stereokatt

...Just tweaking the figure a bit is all it needs. Here's your original and a slightly tweaked version, with very localized use of liquify, plus a little cloning. Not huge changes but they do make a difference. Of course if you wanted something more extreme the sky's the limit.

It looks like your major concern was the dark circles and the jowls, and I love the job you did on them, but you left the hot spots and pale areas alone. I'm curious why because these were the problems that were highest on my list, but my repair of this is probably exactly what triggered my wife's "embalming" comment. Do you tend to leave traces of hot spots (from oily areas of skin) as a visual cue that the skin is not plastic?

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom_M]

Originally Posted by htown

The image is highly pixelized but I gave it a shot. Just removed some shadows and a little tiny bit of liquefy.

Sorry about the low quality of the image. I did the usual dance between number of pixels and jpg quality, and with a 100k posting limit, the image didn't fare too well. Thanks for giving it a shot.

I really like your version of her face ... probably the best yet. You got rid of some of the blemishes and hot spots, but you didn't make her skin look plastic. I guess that the take-home message is that even for a gag photo, it's easy to be way too heavy handed.

If I may ask, how exactly did you remove the hot spots on her nose, between her nose and her lips, etc?

Cheers,

Tom

[stereokatt]

...you left the hot spots and pale areas alone. I'm curious why...

That's why I began my comments with "How far you take it depends on what your final objective is." There's no "right" or "wrong", it's all up to personal preference and how you want the final image to look. In the case of this photo, possibly why your wife made the "embalmed" comment was because you almost totally removed the highlights (hot spots), which flattens the face and makes it look like it's a person wearing too much makeup. Reducing the highlights is a good idea, eliminating them I feel goes a bit too far. A bit of highlight left will leave some dimension to the face. Here's another version with the highlights reduced but still there, slightly.

[htown]

Use the clone stamp tool on DARKEN between 10 and 20% opacity. You can sample just about anything darker than the area you are retouching, but it helps if you try to sample the target color. Pretty simple really. The problem with this method is, if used to heavy handed, you seem to loose texture and it will start to look blotchy. So it is wise to work it very slowly, zoom out and take a look, and keep going if necessary.

[Tom_M]

Originally Posted by stereokatt

...possibly why your wife made the "embalmed" comment was because you almost totally removed the highlights (hot spots), which flattens the face and makes it look like it's a person wearing too much makeup. ...

You hit the nail on the head. She said that it looked like I slathered her friend in way too much makeup.

Reducing the highlights is a good idea, eliminating them I feel goes a bit too far. A bit of highlight left will leave some dimension to the face. Here's another version with the highlights reduced but still there, slightly.

Very nice job. Thank you.

I think the root of my problem is that I thought that since this was only going to be a gag photo, it would be fine to use really fast but crude techniques (eg, squishing down half the frame instead of liquifying selected areas, painting over parts of the skin with a solid color instead of cloning / healing / patching to retain texture and hilights). Apparently, unless one goes completely to the extreme of a cartoon-like graphic or an obviously retouched photo, if the image purports to be representational, you better not do a half-hearted job, even for a laugh.

It just occurred to me that my wife's strongly negative reaction is somewhat analogous to the common perception that the scariest monsters / villains in the movies are never the obviously evil cartoon characters, or trivial to see through special efx (eg, Godzilla), but characters / creatures that are almost "right", but not quite (eg, Jack Nicholson in "The Shining").

Thanks for all your thoughts / help / examples.

Tom

[Tom_M]

Originally Posted by htown

Use the clone stamp tool on DARKEN between 10 and 20% opacity...

I know and use that technique. It's really good. I just wanted to see if you had something else up your sleeve. ;-) .

Thanks,

Tom