Advice on changing lingerie colour

[Flashtones]

FWIW, Here's Vivid Light over a curve. It could probably use some HSL to reduce saturation, as Shaun had suggested in the first place in other thread. But it's all speculation without seeing what the material is supposed to look like.

[chillin]

The first step is to change the white color to any, but not white. Next-channel mixer to bring closer to the desired one, next- HSL adjustments couple of times to replace the light parts & the last- fine tune with a curve layer.

[Flashtones]

IMO, the hard part isn't knowing how to make the change, it's what these panties should really look like in such a dark shade, ie, depth, saturation, shininess, etc.

http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img/item...erie-1f80d.jpg

My sense is they should be pretty rich, but really, who knows...

[nebulaoperator]

yes Flashtones my rendering is missing vividness or possess 2D appearance. And your last try comes much closer to natural look. Bad thing is that no sample was provided of how it meant to look or clear guidance on project leave us only guessing how it should look. In this scenario I go for natural looks.

[Crapaud]

Nebula operator, forget what I said about controlling the highlights with a blend - I was wrong with the mode anyway. The attached is done entirely in Lab, I just adjusted the L channel only from the previous one. I reckon it's pretty much bang on the money. (I put a swatch in the image and it blends in nicely )

[Crapaud]

Originally Posted by nebulaoperator

Just browsing through internet and looking for the second book you've suggested. I suspect we are going slightly out of topic but still relevant. Tell me if LAB will benefit me in retouching beauty? Do you use it often or as replacement? What is your biggest revelation since you picked up that book? Curiosity taking over.

Difficult to say. You have to realise that I was at a relatively early stage using PS, so It was all amazing to me. Probably the most profound aspect was the colour theory: how to assess colour casts and the best approach to correcting them. It was a revelation that you could work in different colour modes with the same image! Until then if a job was going to print all work was carried out in CMYK, for web, RGB. The only problem I found is that I now see colour casts everywhere and have developed a kind of OCD where I have to copy pics from the web just to see what they really look like.

IMO, Lab can help with any aspect of photography, so, yes, it's got it's place in beauty re-touching. As always, though, it depends on the photo and what you're trying to achieve.

I use Lab quite a lot and Margulis' techniques all the time. They profoundly changed the way I work.

[nebulaoperator]

Thank you for swatch. Looks really good!!! I am re-installing my CS5 atm after that I will try to do it my self. After all why did you mentioned blend mode before.?

[nebulaoperator]

and Flashtones thank you for the link. I counted 24 in total

[Crapaud]

[QUOTE=nebulaoperator;292246]Thank you for swatch. Looks really good!!! I am re-installing my CS5 atm after that I will try to do it my self. After all why did you mentioned blend mode before.?[/QUOTE]I tend to be on here late at night, so I'm not at my brightest. I hadn't actually tried the blend, but it seemed a way to go. I was in the supermarket (looking at packaging, nerdy, moi?) when I realised it wasn't necessary.

Alternative explanation: sometimes I'm an idiot.

[nebulaoperator]

On the left is Lab right is RGB.

[Tony W]

As far as Lab colour goes the book by Dan Margulis is probably the best and most comperhensive I have seen.

As I see it you need to see at least a hint of flesh under the colour and then there is the choice of how dark to make the lightest parts.

There are several ways to tackle this but as you were interested in Lab then this is my take:

Convert to Lab

Curves Layer alter lightness a and b channels to match desired colour.

Blending options alter the a and b underlying layer to bring back as much flesh tone as possible

Mask areas not covered by blend as required.

Three samples here set to Normal, Multiply and Hard Light - It may also be worthwhile trying a blend of two of these

[nebulaoperator]

Thank you Tony,

I am wondering if possible to get that shine like on one of your samples hard light blend colour of the other two. I am just looking at mine one and they look too shiny. Meanwhile yours let the flesh coming out. I really like it.

[Tony W]

Originally Posted by nebulaoperator

I am wondering if possible to get that shine like on one of your samples hard light blend colour of the other two.....

If I understand correctly you want to add a little shine back on the Normal and Multiply samples?

Few ways I can think of - although not tried them!

1. Selective D&B
2. History brush set to Screen or Colour Dodge to lighten and Multiply, Colour Burn to darken
3. Curves layer to steepen the curve in the purple tones to bring out contrast. Hide all mask and then selective reveal by painting.
4. 2 Layers first one use multiply second one use the hard light image. Try varying the opacity of the top hard light image and blend modes to taste. It may be worth trying contrast increase on just the hard light image as well. You will probably also need to apply masking with this method.
5. Any combination of the above

[edgework]

This uses a gradient map and some masking for the transparent skin tones underneath. http://edgework.tripod.com/panties.png

[DWThomp]

Here is my attempt. I'm fairly happy with the color, but wish I could get the skin showing thru a little better.

Copied bg, desaturated, masked to painties.
Clipped a curves layer to copy.
New layer filled with the color and copied 2 more times.
Changed bottom blend mode to Multiply, 64% opacity. Changed middle to Overlay, 46% opacity, and top to Color, 31% opacity.
Another curves adjustment on top.
Set the Group to Multiply.

[lurch]

Has anyone besides me noticed the panties underneath the panties? They seem to show more on the purple versions than on the white.

[nebulaoperator]

Sorry didn't have enough time to participate on my own thread. Thank you all of you for valuable tips. What I've learned here there are more then one way to do it. Also I have plans to get my hands on LAB colour space.
Lurch Yes they are there. I am not an expert regarding ,,panties under panties,, but I will ask my wife and post it back to you the reason they are there. of course I am joking.

[4personnen]

I remember that we used the word "cache-sexe" in French for these small pieces of cloth only hiding the front part. Worn to the purpose of hiding genitals (for females) on lingerie, glamour shots, in the days when the grooming wasn't as extreme as now. They were exclusively made on skin colour tones with very thin material. Models were advised not to wear proper underwear at least 1 hour before the shooting (due to marks on the skin), so some used to wear that instead (it's very loose and doesn't hold very well )... I'm talking about the late 80's - early 90's... I have no ideas about now... with all these Photoshoppers around, everything is possible! Evil people....


PS Don't even try to google "cache sexe": NSFW at all!

[Crapaud]

Originally Posted by 4personnen

I remember that we used the word "cache-sexe" in French for these small pieces of cloth only hiding the front part. ...

According to my native french speaking teacher it's their word for 'thong'.

[4personnen]

Actually, the word in French for "thong" is "String" (don't ask..) the word "cache-sexe" refered exclusively for the models' item (but it was maybe just in my area/studio, I'm not a specialist in linguistics ) The word is also used in French in another context which the translation is lointcloth (for example the Tarzan's suit).

[Siciliana]

I learned quite a bit from the LAB Canyon Conundrum book. There is a video with Dan Margulis and Bert Monroy on YouTube somewhere where he changes the color of a car in LAB. That might help those who have never used it to get a grasp. The main thing to be concerned with is that you can easily push things out of gamut, and you may end up with heavy ink densities if you head back to CMYK or other effects in RGB conversion. These are just some considerations to keep in your head, so it is good to read a book and understand the nuts and bolts of it before you go wild making pretty things on screen.

Here is the one I made in LAB. This is a really quick go, took only a minute. The newer Masking panel with refine mask edge did a pretty good job of the underwear texture--I'd fix it up if it were the real thing, but not bad. After I copied the background and masked it, I attached a curves adjustment layer to the masked layer to change the color and darken the luminosity. I grouped the masked layer with its curves adjustment and then copied it and set the copy to overlay to add more dimension. I then pumped up the contrast a bit more by copying the background layer(white underpants) and putting that copy on the top of the stack on soft light...not sure why I did that, wasn't really thinking, just had an intuition that it might look more realistic, but I probably could have accomplished the same thing with a curve. Then I added another curves adjustment layer on top and made an S curve in the L channel to darken the midtones more and increase contrast. Done.

[women'sdesk]

Panties with skin showing:

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/9425/pantiess.jpg

This took about 20 mins, resorted to destructive work + loads of artifacts... But the skin came through eventually. I don't think you could ever achieve a great result with this unless you spent hours on it, which would defeat the purpose right? They might prefer someone in India who can churn out thousands, one per day might seem a bit self-indulgent haha xo