Need some Photoshop/Editing help

So, I'm having some trouble, specifically getting rid of the stray hairs around this guys neck and ears. So first photo is original, 2nd is after I fixed the bags under his eyes (I think it's decent, not gonna win awards, but decent), but the big issue is trying to get the 3rd one correct. Any tips, tricks, help, or is it just not possible without doing a crap done of pixel by pixel editing and actually really knowing what I'm doing?
 

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S

SandyP

Guest
You're on the right path. There are a few correct ways to do this to make it look really good. But certainly they all involve checking your edits and doing most of it at 100%, or even 200%. After you clear it all up, you need to shade the edges back a bit by dodging and burning. You can use refine edge detection, and then make selections and all sorts of mask work, but really if it were me I'd make a mask for the rough areas I wanted to edit out, and then add texture and more or less patch/clone in similar stuff, and blend it until it looked normal.

As I said, there are a few ways you could do this, the way I described above is more of a blunt solution, but it can work.

The biggest lesson here though, is to catch these things at the shoot and deal with it then. A comb or a brush could go a long way in this case.
 
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Just to chime in, one of the biggest mistakes I see people making when trying to clean things up is using a brush that's 100% hardness, and using it at 100% flow. There's very little margin for error there. Instead, try using a 50% hardness brush at 40% flow or so and go over mistake areas a little bit at a time. If you're more patient, you can make it look even better by dropping the flow of the brush to 20% or so, and just going over it a little at a time with brush strokes. Fixing mistakes like this quickly will only make it look bad in the end.

As the previous poster said, catching things like stray hair during the shoot will always save you time in the end. Hope that helps and was a clear explanation.
 
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A quick hair edit that took less than 1 min. It is actually the same technique that you can use to remove bags under eyes/ even skin tones:

Assuming Photohop:

1. Make a separate layer- so you don't damage pixels and you can always then reduce effect (opacity).
2. Select Clone Stamp tool- blend mode: lighten // sample: all layers // hardness: 0% // flow: 10%
3. Sample a part of the clean background & start painting over the wispy hair!

Since your blend mode is set to lighten, the cloning will only happen where there are darker pixels- his hair.
I wouldn't use any type of selection tools on a photo with shallow DOF and soft edges, it's too obvious. paint it on soft, then you can always adjust opacity and go back in and clean up edges if you paint over his jacket or beard.

This technique is perfect for lightening bags/ shadows too.

Also note- his right eye (camera left) needs to be adjusted. look at the whites. It is darker than his left. Besides that, I wouldn't do much!
 

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Quasimodo said:
I'm no expert on this. Do you use CS 6? If so, you have a content aware spot healing brush tool, or the content aware patch tool. I think that is probably an easier way. I agree with SandyP that you should work in 100-200, and zoom back and forth to see the whole picture several times.

I've got CS5 (whatever version the free updates bring me to, maybe 5.5?), and I tried using some content aware spot healing, but never really got it to work. Might just be me not really knowing how to use it.
 
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On the Canon Rumors home page, top left corner, is an excellent tutorial on retouching eyes.

Unless you need to cut out the background to composite somewhere else (and that's something entirely different), I wouldn't worry about the stray hair. And if you are planning on doing that sort of compositing...well, a great deal would depend on the new background. You might be able to get away with a loose mask and darken blend mode, or you might need to do a black-and-white conversion with some levels adjustment to create a tight mask, or you might even need to manually paint in a mask...again, depending on the new background.

Final usage has a lot to do with it, too. You can get away with murder with an icon for a social site, while a 24" x 36" framed portrait to hang on the wall in the corporate lobby...well, I'd re-shoot, frankly, if that were the intended use.

Cheers,

b&
 
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O

Orion

Guest
I can do just about any sort of advanced edit in PS, but a real good short cut is to photograph the person's ears again, with hair moved aside, and then clone them into your original image. . . if you have the possibility of taking photos of this person's ears again ( sorry I didn't read everything). Just a little tip, though: DO NOT remove the person's FINE hais around his head . . . ever, especially if the style affords it, and if his hair isn't totally jelled back slick 50. You need that little definition that those fine hairs bring. . . . unless those hairs are too obvious in distracting from something. . . . leave them in.

P.S. try to fix it yourself . . zoom in and manually erase every little dark line you see in the ears area, and use a soft brush with 50% or less opacity. . . the less the better, when cloning such intricate details. Do mthis because it is GREAT prep/training!

One last thing:

for such a portrait, have the person lean on something with his arm, and have him lean over a bit, and facing the camera. . . get a couple of reflectors at each side of his face and flash in front. . . try multiple setting until you get what you want. Your portreait is good too, though, due to the look he gives, etc.
 
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You've opened up a can of worms here. Some good advice about slowing down your changes with lowering brush opacity and rate here.

But, there are more basic problems to discuss in this picture that occur again and again in portrait retouching. First, the job you did on the "bags" or circles under the eyes is good for a beginner, but, especially when working on a man or a "normal" woman (not a fashion shot with a beautiful model who has had her makeup airbrushed on to an otherwordly smoothness), your cloning here makes what I consider a common error; while you removed the offending eye bags, you also removed all skin texture and slightly changed the color and brightness of the affected areas. This also is the case when you clone out any other facial "fault." It is very hard and time consuming to add the skin texture back after removal and to keep the skin color, overall brightness and brightness "ramp" looking realistic, but it can be done with practice. Bringing it over, in modfied form, from other areas of the face using a combination of cloning and healing brushes usually works; sometimes more creative measures, like texture mapping, need to be taken.

Regarding the problems encountered with areas of border between hair ends and whatever is behind it, encountered when you try to remove "messy" hair from around the face, this is a tough one to which there is never an easy answer. The best resolution is, as has already been mentioned here, to shoot it better so as to avoid this issue entirely. If that's not possible, cloning and healing other hair areas to re-cover the problem areas that you've purposely partially over-removed, while sometimes difficult, can be done. The same is true of recreating the new and necessary hair end points; although recreating the superfine and random nature of the hair ends in places further inside the rest of the hair or on top of parts of the face or background is hard, it is do-able, but very time consuming. Extremely fine and careful color selection, and PS plug-ins that accomplish the same task with more control, are your best friends here, along with a superfine brush to sometimes create just a few mock hairs at a time. Also, one must keep in mind that the area of sharp focus is all over the place where your subjects hair needs to be moved or removed, and, when recreating it just a little bit more neatly, one must maintain the same look of approximate sharpness or softness of the original.

This is a lot to digest, and it is overkill for most jobs, but it is probably important to gain the skills necessary to be able to do this stuff, when and if called upon to do so. Most likely someone will probably expect this of you sometime, if you are doing this commercially, but whether or not they will be willing to pay for the time necessary to accomplish it is an awful subject best left to discuss at another itme.
 
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DB, what you did looks very good for spending just a few minutes applying the very well known multi-layer global adjustments used by many people directly, and indirectly when using independent software programs which try to semi-automate the same techniques. Just about any way you do human face, or any other type of retouching, using multiple layers in many different ways is, of course, standard operating procedure. Just one thing, however; your particular method here, while being quick, lost almost all of the skin texture on this portrait, again rendering him almost as extremely as one would for a head shot of an aspiring female fashion model. This is fine for many applications, but there are also many others where people become slightly offended by replacing their recognizable skin characteristics with what looks like a quite soft and slightly misfocused rendering of the surface texture of their faces. Also, one must try very hard to resist the obvious temptation of overly brightening and evening-out the brightness of the subjects eyes, therefore replacing good photo lighting with a sort of "mystery lighting" variation where eyes pop out of subjects faces. All this stuff works great sometimes - when you're in a hurry, or subjects want to be "improved" rather than be shown in the best way otherwise possible, or just when they don't mind the kind of results that are common on modest 8'x10" model composites.

None of this is to say that you aren't a very good retoucher, which I am quite sure you are; rather that it would be better to let the less practiced of those (like the OP) understand what they're looking at, so they can make the proper choice in their particular working style.
 
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pdirestajr said:
This thread is becoming out of control with incredibly over-the-top post processing suggestions for really basic work.

Well...I did ask. I think the point is, if I want to do much of anything in PS for retouching, I need to get myself into a good workshop/class or find a good re-toucher with whom I can become really good friends with so I can get the occasional favor done :)
 
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J

Jamma

Guest
Hello,

First timer here.

I don't have any quick fix tips for cleaning up the hair around this guys ears, but if you dedicate the time to clone stamp at 100% viewing on a very low opacity I believe you will be able to get fantastic results. Unfortunately this is going to give you the best results unless you do the shoot again and comb it away.

I would love to share with you a technique for removing the bags under his eyes to achieve a more natural look, in my opinion it always gives the best results.

1. Duplicate the layer.

2. Use the patch tool full opacity to circle the bags and drag the selection down to sample below the bags.

3. Now here's he trick. Make sure the selection is still selected and click on edit. You will see a new option called Fade Patch Tool (I think that's what it called) if you don't see it it is because the patch is not selected.

4. Click this option and you will get an opacity dialog box for the patch tool, take it all the way to 0 and slowly bring in the opacity until it looks natural.

Hope this helps some.
 
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Drizzt321 said:
pdirestajr said:
This thread is becoming out of control with incredibly over-the-top post processing suggestions for really basic work.

Well...I did ask. I think the point is, if I want to do much of anything in PS for retouching, I need to get myself into a good workshop/class or find a good re-toucher with whom I can become really good friends with so I can get the occasional favor done :)

...or go to MM, pick one from the 6403 retouchers and pay a few bucks if the work is important and/or worth it for you... at least until you feel more comf. doing it yourself...
..and if you are really interested Youtube (and Google) could be your best friend to find good tutorials....
 
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Oct 15, 2010
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pdirestajr said:
A quick hair edit that took less than 1 min. It is actually the same technique that you can use to remove bags under eyes/ even skin tones:

Assuming Photohop:

1. Make a separate layer- so you don't damage pixels and you can always then reduce effect (opacity).
2. Select Clone Stamp tool- blend mode: lighten // sample: all layers // hardness: 0% // flow: 10%
3. Sample a part of the clean background & start painting over the wispy hair!

Since your blend mode is set to lighten, the cloning will only happen where there are darker pixels- his hair.
I wouldn't use any type of selection tools on a photo with shallow DOF and soft edges, it's too obvious. paint it on soft, then you can always adjust opacity and go back in and clean up edges if you paint over his jacket or beard.

This technique is perfect for lightening bags/ shadows too.

Also note- his right eye (camera left) needs to be adjusted. look at the whites. It is darker than his left. Besides that, I wouldn't do much!
I like the technique mentioned here. I have also been successful with this type of background by doing the following:

1- Select only a section of the gray background
2- CTRL-J to jump that selection to a new layer
3- Move the gray behind the hair you want to clone out
4- Add a layer mask by holding down ALT (it will be black for conceal)
5- Paint in (low flow) the gray with white
 
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Quasimodo

Easily intrigued :)
Feb 5, 2012
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pdirestajr said:
This thread is becoming out of control with incredibly over-the-top post processing suggestions for really basic work.

Speaking for myself, I truly enjoy hearing different people who are good at using photoshop sharing their takes and techniques. I am like the OP a beginner in Photoshop. I started wrong with buying what I was told is the bible my Martin Evening, but soon realised that you actually need som ground skills to even read the book. My best friend has been tutorials on youtube, and copying the tips until it sits. Hence learning is a very slow process of learning one thing at the time, then suddenly some kind of logic surfaces.

I would love for this thread to continue, and even more like it, where experienced users give good advice.

G.
 
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Quick and dirty. Fixed the levels, saturation, warmth, contrast, curves, and cleaned up the skin (portraiture) maybe 5 min of work. I cloned out a bit of the wispy hair, and didn't take much time, but I feel like cloning out all of it would never look quite right, and the effort to result ratio would not be good.
 

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