Are you sure it’s worth the effort? Experience has its own beauty…
In any case, it’s impossible to give any general guidelines on this type of work. Post some examples.
1. Create a background copy.
2. Blur the background copy.
3. Create an inverted mask (black) so background copy is completely blocked.
4. Now carefully paint white onto background copy mask with soft brush, while viewing entire image. Very easy to soften wrinkles without looking artificial.
Richard Southworth
I’ve had good luck with the clone tool. This is a low tec way.
Pick an area of skin that is close to same color/shade as wrinkle area, but free on blemishes. Then set the brush to opacity of 40 or ? percent and clone away. When finished use the smudge tool set at 30 or so to blend in any overlaps of the clone brush circles. If a little too much set eraser tool at 20% or so and take off a little.
There is no perfect way, it is all a matter of experimentation and what methods you get comfortable with.
Erich,
The latest on to use the clone tool, set to lighten.
If you haven’t already, try the clone tool, set to lighten, soft-edged brush, opacity turned down to about 25%.
Erich – I forgot to mention that I use the clone tool in Normal mode.
Patch tool?
Don’t have CS4 so I don’t know if that’s still an option (or even if there’s room to work with in your photo).
The clone tool is very useful in certain situations, generally those where one part of the image needs to be replaced with another. However IMO it is abused far more often then it is correctly used. The clone tool picks up color and luminosity from the source area and modifies the target area, making it difficult to use for subtle retouching such as softening/erasing wrinkles.
A very basic layer and mask technique, i.e. make a copy of the background layer with an attached black mask, is a much better technique in general than using the clone tool for basic retouch. It’s not that difficult or time consuming (I have an action built that creates such) and once mastered becomes the mainstay of portrait retouch. It’s useful not only for softening features but for also selective sharpening, lightening, etc.
Richard Southworth
Healing brush for rmoving wrinkles.
Assuming, that is, it exists in CS4 and behaves as in CS3.
thank you all for your suggestions. I will try them all.
Erich
I have now tried the blur and masking method, but found this to look artificial, compared to the rest of the skin. I used the Gaussian blur. The main problem aria is the neck, with some very deep wrinkles
Can you post a sample of the image? If we can see what it looks like and play with it ourselves we may be able to suggest a technique for you to use.
-Rilla
Thank you for trying to help. However, I am not sure how to add part of the photo. Copy and paste didn’t work. I am very new at forums
Erich,
The Patch Tool can be used for severe wrinkles – make a narrow selection around the wrinkle and "move" it to another smoother area on the face. The Patch Tool will generally do a good job of matching luminosity and color at the source area, unlike the clone tool.
Richard Southworth
For small lines and wrinkles, or bags under the eyes use the healing brush.
if you are trying to make some granny that looks like a prune younger, give it up.
You might try the "blur" method, but with the dust & scratches filter. Threshold to zero, radius up to where the wrinkles disappear, then threshold to 999, and move back down to where it kills off the blemishes. Maybe mix two of the d&s layers with different setting targeting the shallow and deep wrinkles, reducing their opacity to suit. Then you use the clone stamp tool on a separate layer ("use all layers" checked). Use a 10-25% opacity brush. I like keeping the brush un aligned. Find a nice spot and just use the clone to paint texture over the wrinkles. Do a small bit, pick up the brush, do another small bit, and every time the clone sources jumps back to "nice" skin (say, the lower left chin area). For the wrinkles on the lower right in the shadow, you’ll need to match tone there, so use an aligned brush and run along them. This is a quick (less time than writing the post touchup):
<
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ApqWV8YwRKllCkSP6 bPIkK6K267o>
thank you very much. I will give this a go. If I can’t fix this, I am not allowed to take another close-up. The actual picture is much bigger, shot in raw across the table in a restaurant
Erich,
Took a few trys, but finally came up with a reasonable process:
1. Make a duplicate layer of the background, on top, disable for now.
2. Select original background and "clean" the area, in this case the neck. I used the patch tool since it retains most of the color and luminosity of the fixed area. At this point don’t worry too much about realism, just get rid of the wrinkles while leaving a reasonable surface.
3. Enable the upper layer, adjust the opacity to let some of the original image thru. I found 30% worked fairly well.
Here’s the after: <
http://rgbaustin.com/after.jpg>
Richard Southworth
this took me about 30 seconds or less with the heal brush. bit sloppy but you get the idea.
this took me about 30 seconds or less with the heal brush. bit sloppy but you get the idea.
once again, I would like to thank you all for your help. It looks like I have an awfull lot to learn. Using one of the methods suggested by one of the guys from lynda.com, I had already spent several hours trying to remove the wrinkles and made the face look worse than before
Just like anything it takes time to learn how to do things. everyone here has spent many hours working on this stuff which is why we can push it out so fast. CS4 is a powerful tool and has many advantages over earlier versions so keep plugging away. you will get.
