Need help on edit picture

[vt399]

Hi everybody,

I am new to this forum and need help on edit picture.
I took my friend at a night party (sitting), cropped and made it
a "portrait picture" but do not want the existing background.

How can I :
1. Replace the background by a solid white color?
2. Whitening the teeth and made the teeth look sharper.
3. Made the eye brown darker (black)
4. Make the lip more red

In short, I would like to make it looks like "Glamour picture".

My picture was taken by Olympus C4040, HQ, editing software "Adobe Photoshop element 1.0"
I did read some posting from this forum, search from Internet for the solution but have not got any result yet. Please, help.
Thanks a lot.

[roger_ele]

Hi, Welcome to RetouchPro! Their is a great bunch of people here who love to help out.

Your questions are so broad that I don't know where to begin ... kind of like buying a fishing pole and then asking how to become an expert fisherman. We are all working to improve on each of the techniques you asked about - and there are at least ten different ways to do each one.

Maybe pick one thing, tell us what you have figured out so far so that we can fit our answer to your current level of understanding or refer you to another thread for the info.

We are more than happy to help, Roger

[vt399]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for fast reply.
Maybe I do not know how to ask the right question, so I hope to make it clearer with the following explaination:

Using PS Element V1.0:

1. Manual filled background with white color: time consuming and
look not natural
2. Teeth looked burry and gray color, after edit it looked like a piece of white plastic teeth
3. Eye brown was light, after edit it look like a black line
4. Some spot on the lip was light, could not make it same color with other.

Again, thanks for your help.
Victor

[sdubose99]

Victor, it would also help if you could attach the image. Particular images require different approaches, and it would be much better if we could see the example.

thanks,
Scott

[vt399]

Hi Scott,

Attached is the picture. Please, let me know what should I do ?
(Step by step instruction is appreciate). Thanks.

Best Regards,
Victor

[CJ Swartz]

What a beautiful lady!

Victor, you say that you have Photoshop Elements, but don't say what you have learned to do with it already. I don't have Elements, and I don't remember what tools it has or doesn't have compared to Photoshop, but maybe someone with Elements will respond here also.

What you'll want to do is make some selections - choosing to work on parts of her face rather than the whole image at one time. You'll also want to use different layers to do different parts of the project - so that you can control how much color to add to her lips on one layer and controlling her makeup colors on other layers.

First duplicate the original image, and do not do any work on the original - use only the copy or layers above the copy layer.

You can whiten her teeth by selecting the teeth area of the image and using the dodge tool, or you can make a separate layer above the original layer, and brush on an off-white color. If you brush on the color on a separate layer, you can reduce the intensity by lowering the opacity of the layer, and/or by using different layer blending modes - Color blend, Normal blend, Soft light blend... You can do another layer to enhance the whites of her eyes - do it softly -- enhance -- don't make it noticeable to everyone.

You can clone over the wisps of hair on her forehead by clicking the tool on an area that has good looking skin and moving it over the hair. You can make layers over selections of her face and paint in makeup that matches the highlights and shadowed areas of her face and changing the opacity and layer blend of each layer to smooth and enhance her makeup. You can do the same with her lipstick.

Here's a quick idea of what can be done -- you'll want to have the satisfaction of doing the real photo yourself.

[sdubose99]

Beautiful...

I also don't have Elements, but hopefully you can do similar things as I did with Photoshop. Attached is my version showing original, retouched version, and the layers I used. The basic steps were:

- add layer in screen mode to lighten the image overall. You can see I added a mask as I didn't want to lighten all areas the same
- dodged teeth and eyes to lighten them
- add the background using a circular gradient, added a mask to reveal her to make it appear as if the gradient was behind her
- added lip color and reduced shine by adding an empty layer, sampled some of the good red in her bottom lip, painted over them with the brush in color mode, then reduced the opacity of that layer so some of the highlights showed through
- also toned down some of the shine on her face in the same way -- sampled some skin color with the dropper, painted over the shines with a reduced opacity
- bumped up the color saturation with another layer

I don't think you want to eliminate the catchlights in her eyes completely -- but I did reduce them a little with a low opacity black brush zoomed in very tightly.

Have fun learning!

Scott

[Karl j]

I hope you don't mind, but I took a stab at it and hope you like it. I substituted the background, I smoothed her complection and I added a little diffusion to make it look more soft focus.

[Vikki]

I also thought I'd give this a try.
I used the same retouching methods used in the "Portrait Retouching" chapter of Katrin Eismann's book. My goal was too reduce the shine and even out her skin. After I cleaned up her skin, I added a bit of cheek color.
A applied a darker vignette, to concentrate the focus on her face. To change the background, I selected the paint brush, set the mode to "color', selected black paint, and painted over the red area.
Vikki