need lipstick cleanup advice

[jrose001 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jrose001]

I'm a full time product retoucher, and by chance have been handed a portrait of a very well known musician to retouch, without altering their look, and keeping everything"natural".

Can anyone toss me some pointers for cleaning lipstick bleed that goes over the lower lip edge, onto the narrow area of smooth skin, right before the pores and peach fuzz?

Thanks in advance.

[skoobey Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close skoobey]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

Look at things in luminosity(add a hue/sat adjustment layer with saturation set to -100, blended at "color" blending mode, and put it on top off all the layers). Dodge and burn to make everything the right luminosity.

Then do your color correction weather it's gradient map, or colorizing, painting on color layer.

[jrose001 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jrose001]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

Thank you, very helpful advice.

[Flashtones Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Flashtones]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

It's no different than working on product.

Use the pen tool to select/define the lip edge. Turn the path into a selection, inverse the selection, create a new blank layer with the selection as a mask. So what you have now is a blank layer with the lip edge masked OUT. Clone the clean skin toward the lip, the mask will prevent you from going too far. Use the mask options to feather the mask edge appropriately.

[skoobey Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close skoobey]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

It's no different than working on product.

Use the pen tool to select/define the lip edge. Turn the path into a selection, inverse the selection, create a new blank layer with the selection as a mask. So what you have now is a blank layer with the lip edge masked OUT. Clone the clean skin toward the lip, the mask will prevent you from going too far. Use the mask options to feather the mask edge appropriately.

This doesn't work in most cases because shapes are so small that texture quickly looses highlights, you really want to draw it.

[Flashtones Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Flashtones]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

Depends on the size of the mess. I'm assuming a sufficient amount of clean/similar skin to clone from. If that's not present than one needs to address it via color and luminosity, as you suggest.

In either case, for a defined edge I like to work with the pen tool and a mask, but that's just me.

[skoobey Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close skoobey]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

I do work with pen, but only as a reference, I find it looking way too fake when the line is really a line all around, I've fallen in that trap before. And if I do cut out lip line using pen tool, I clone some skin into it later, just so that the edge is a bit jagged.

[Flashtones Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Flashtones]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

Same here. That's the beauty of masks rather than working inside a selection. You can work "wide" and then cut it in/out with the mask.

[klev Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close klev]

Re: need lipstick cleanup advice

I typically used the pen tool and a feather of 1 just to create a mask to be used for boundary purposes. Any blending would be in that area, but it allowed for very slight overpainting. Obviously I do a visual check of the results as well.