shadows!

[backygirly]

Hi everyone!

I need to fix the shadows on this kid's face, or at least even the skin color out, but I can not get it to look right at all. I have tried cloning it so many times but everytime it looks ridiculous. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get this to look a little better?? Thanks in advance!!!!

[gland]

Sort of a small image but here goes.
Select-midtones. Feather 2-3 pixels. Copy via layer. Set the new layer to screen and adjust opacity to your taste.

[backygirly]

Thank you SO much Gary for replying! You did a great job lightening up the shadows, but I guess my real problem is trying to get the spot that the sun hit on the right half of his face evened out with the shadows. Here at work, we're going to be making a life-size cutout of him posing as a firefighter, so it's going to be rather obvious since it's going to be so big! Maybe it's not really possible to clone out that spot and make it look good. What do you think?

(thanks again!)

[Leah]

What I tried:

Put color samplers on the normal highlighted skintone on the affected side of the face (read R255 G250 B244) and on the discoloured area that looked as though it should also be a highlight (read... hmmm, forgot to write that down. Something like R255 G215 B196 though.)

Ran color balance several times on the duplicate layer until the "discoloured" color sampler read nearly the same as the original "correct colour" color sampler figures (i.e. R255 G249 B244). Applied "Hide all" layer mask to this layer, then used soft edged brush at low opacity on the layer mask to paint in the colour adjustment over just the affected area.

That had the colour problem more or less sorted. Created new blank layer and used Alt+Merge Visible to merge the two existing layers into that one while leaving them intact in case of mistakes.

On the new layer, used the smudge tool to even out the pointy bit of shadow on the jawline and the dodge tool on a low opacity setting to lighten the shadow dappling a bit (or a lot in some places). Also used the Blur tool a little bit to blend things in.

This still left a greyish tone in places, so created new layer set to Color blending mode and painted in a more natural flesh tone (R255 G230 B215) over those bits with a soft edge brush and low opacity.

Added back a bit of noise using an Overlay layer filled with 50% grey and Gaussian noise added, but the original image posted was quite JPEG artifacty so it doesn't match perfectly; would be easier with original scan/file.

Hope this is of some help...

[gland]

Leah is right. A larger image would be better to work with.

[backygirly]

you guys are really so sweet for helping me out...

i wish i had a larger image but that is the only version i have of it. i mean, i have the full version which contains the rest of the kid's body and such, but his face isn't any bigger. and yes, the original image does contain the dreaded jpeg artifacts.

also - can you believe i have to enlarge it to be about 6 foot tall?! crazy, i tell you...

i am very grateful for your responses....thanks again

[Leah]

You might want to check out the thread http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/sho...&threadid=2039 - particularly recommendation on NeatImage which can do a good job on reducing JPEG artifacts.

[DJ Dubovsky]

You might also check out this page If you scroll down to where I posted you will see an attachment that is an action to reduce shadows. It's pretty good and you can adjust the settings for more or less shadowed images.
DJ

[KenB]

I used Image Doctor from Alien Skin software to achieve the results on the attached file. Is this at all what you are looking to do with the image?

ps... I only worked on the right cheek and his nose.


Ken

[GOLDCOIN]

I just airbrushed the area, after selecting the shadow parts.

This is what happened with that method.

[roger_ele]

I figure go with the flow - that is sunlight hitting the face and the shadow under the hat looks perfect to me without any adjustment.

I selected around the blotchy area, layer via copy, changed layer to lighten mode, used curves on layer to lighten more - so as to match sunlight with a feeling of texture, cleaned up edges with layer mask to give it a good shape...

-Roger

[Guest]

Yes, the picture is too small to do properly, but this method should work on any reasonable size. NOTE: To do this job I first enlarged the pic to 400 pixels wide, then reduced again at end.

First, select the cheek and nose shadows with lasso, taking more than you want, hit control/command-J and put these pieces on a new layer.

Dupe original and desaturate it to b/w. Do same for "pieces" layer. Keep it above the b/w face.

Then darken pieces with hue/saturation till they blend to suit.

Using fuzzy eraser, erase away excess edges of shadow pieces, then merge to make new layer.

Set original layer over top of this new layer, and set to color mode. Merge layers.

Paint over the grayish areas with brush set to color mode and/or clone tool set to color mode, selecting colors from surrounding areas of face.

Add "clumped" grain from the texture filter menu, and reduce opacity to blend in softly.

Touch up remaining edges by using clone tool set at 50% opacity, selecting evenly lit colored areas from cheek etc. to blend in the corrected shadow areas.

You don't want to remove the shadows completely as it would look flat and unnatural, so keep some light on the nose and chin etc., but get the line off the cheek.

I also used a bit of dustnscratches and increased contrast.

Phyllis