MBChamberlain
Senior Member
Registered: November 2004
Location: Knoxville Tennessee
Posts: 210
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See Challenge Number 8 for info about the photo, your comments/advice are greatly appreciated.
What I did:
1. Curves and Levels to pull out the tones of the image
2. Selective color to improve skin color and to bring out the color of her hair
3. cleaned up the complexion using heal and clone, including the minor acne scarring, particularly on the cheek
4. Because her head is facing down and her turtle neck is pressing into her joules I used the liquify tool to slightly flatter the jaw line.
5. Used heal and clone to remove dust from the photo, as well as remove the earring and ring. I copied the top part of her middle finger and used it to reconstruct the two fingers distorted by the presence of the ring.
6. I duplicated the main layer and ran median on it, I reduced the opacity to 45% and masked off the image except for her skin
7. There was some odd shadowing on her right cheek so I duplicated my median layer and ran motion blur at an angle to match her jaw line, adjusted the opacity to 50%, then masked it off so only the area on the right side of the jaw was visible eliminating that shadowing.
8. Polled one of the gals I know on how women apply makeup.
9. For her makeup I created four layers, two were curve adjustment layers and two were solid fill layers. Both curves layers were adjusted to change the lips to the color of her lipstick. One was masked for her lips and the other a border around them. (lipstick and lip liner). I used the soft light blend mode and adjusted their opacity to 12% for the Lipstick and 42% for the liner. The first color layer was used for two purposes, first to add a little more depth to the color of the lipstick and more accurately match it to the blush, the second was to apply the blush. Finally the last color layer was the same shade as the blush, but slightly lighter in color and slightly less opaque for her eye shadow.
10. Duplicated the main layer again and adjusted it using curves, levels, blur, and hue and saturation to bring out the texture of her sweater, this was then appropriately masked.
11. Added a 50% grey layer above the skin layers and ran the noise filter on it (Gaussian 50%) then used the overlay mode and a layer opacity of 4% to add a little grain back into her skin.
12. The hardest part for me was getting the eyes right, I couldn't really tell her natural eye color from the photo so I used hue and saturation to play with green, grey, blue, and brown until I found a color of brown with a slightly gold tinge that I really liked, I matted this in with a little of the original grey color of her eyes in the photo creeping in at the edges.
Viola! a star is born.
I have tried to be a thorough as possible in describing what I did. I would be grateful for any pointers and advice concerning my technique.
Have a great day,
Michael
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