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removing nasolabial folds (laugh lines)
I'm practicing photography and I use friends and relatives as models. I often photograph women who are in their late 30's -early 40s and most of them have nasolabial folds (laugh lines) . I want to completely remove these lines in Photoshop CS5, but I tried using the healing brush and the results are really bad when these wrinkles are in a transition between light and shade (sorry for my English , I hope you understand what I mean). What tecniques do you use to eliminate nasolabial folds? Would you recommend me some tutorials on the Internet on removing these wrinkles? Thank you May 30 14 03:34 am Link neve wrote: can you give us example May 30 14 04:27 am Link Removing them completely makes a face look too flat and lifeless imo. Especially if the model is smiling. May 30 14 05:09 am Link Try changing the shape of the brush so that it doesn't touch the shaded or darker areas. I use an oval shape when things like that happen. May 30 14 05:16 am Link The area you choose as a source for the healing brush should be aligned with the area you are correcting. This applies to any scene. For example, if you were removing knots from a plank of wood, you would align your source and destination with the edge of the wood. Similarly, you need to align your source and destination with the break in light/dark on the face. You may need to alter your source and destination several times while working on a single line. Working around a shadow, then a contour under the eye, then the edge of the eye. May 30 14 05:26 am Link This is much easier to do via micro dodging & burning than through healing or clone stamp. Set up a dodge and burn layer (soft light layer with neutral gray). Above this, you need to create two helping layers to make it easier to see what you are doing. Set up a hue/saturation layer set to 0% saturation (basically making it a black and white landscape). Then set up a curves layer and drag the center point down to darken the midtones. On your dodge and burn layer, you are going to paint with black and white at a low opacity/flow (something like 15/20 or 20/20) with a very small brush. What you want to do is paint white over dark wrinkles (and black over any bright spots). You can make wrinkles look much less prominent or disappear entirely. This may cause some shifts in hue/saturation which you might have to correct subsequently. May 30 14 06:10 am Link May 30 14 02:24 pm Link Thank you everybody for the replies, your advices have been very helpful! And thanks Zael Photography for the youtube link, the video is really interesting and it will help me a lot, but do you know a tutorial more specific on nasolabial folds? I have some questions for those who use the healing brush: what "hardness" and "spacing" do you choose? The size of the brush should be the same of the lines, a smaller or bigger? The method you select is "normal"? Thanks again! May 31 14 07:08 am Link Clone stamp on lighten (blending mode), lower opacity perhaps. You could also look at frequency seperation as its very helpful strategy in general and for what you are talking about. May 31 14 07:16 am Link AJScalzitti wrote: Thank you for your advices, I'll try this tecnique too! May 31 14 11:46 pm Link AJScalzitti wrote: this is what you want to use Jun 01 14 01:19 am Link Thank you everybody for your help! Could someone give me a tutorial link or a step by step guide on removing these nasolabial folds? Jun 02 14 03:17 am Link I select the darker area(s) with the lasso tool, then make a layer via copy of them, (control J). (You put that layer in the "screen mode"). With a very small, soft edged brush, I use the erase tool to get the area as close to the edge as possible, then take the opacity of that layer down until it looks good, then merge it down. Done ! I do this with panty and bra lines too, (usually not necessary). You make the area the exact same value as the surrounding area, and they have disappeared. At the moment the area looks EXACTLY like the surrounding area, you quit, and merge it down. -Don Jun 02 14 03:45 am Link There are a few ways you can do this, obviously. I had a tutorial up here a long time ago describing the problem with healing near a transition area. First, if you aren't already doing so, I recommend you do your healing/cloning onto a new blank layer above the layer you are repairing. Choose current and below for source. One way to do this: If you are healing near a line, make your source selection on the line. Then start on the line and move outward with the healing brush. If you have view source turned on for the brush, you will see to be able to line it up properly. It takes a bit of practice, but this works great when you can do it. Another way: Clone near the line. Using a soft brush with low opacity or flow usually works best so you can blend it in until it looks good. Then, if necessary, you can go back over with the healing brush. Just don't get near the transition area with the healing brush. It will bleed over. You can also use a smaller brush while healing to limit the amount of bleed near the transition. The bleed will only cover the area you moved the brush over for each stroke. So if you "color in" an area (think coloring with a crayon) the bleed will cover that whole area. If you take just a small swipe/stroke near the line, the bleed won't be as much. So if you work from the clean area toward the transition, you can gradually make the brush smaller and use smaller strokes. This, too, takes practice but once you get used to it, it'll become natural. Frequency separation: Do a frequency separation and place a blank layer between the low and high layers. Using a simple, soft brush with low flow or opacity, sample from the area that's good and paint onto the blank layer over the area that's bad. When finished, you may see some specks, lines, etc. Use the healing brush on the high frequency layer, current layer only for source, and clean it up. I'm sure there are plenty more ways, but those are typically what I use.  Jun 02 14 05:18 am Link Don Garrett wrote: Thank you, I will try this tecnique! Jun 02 14 07:29 am Link Photons 2 Pixels Images wrote: Thank you very much for your great and detailed explanation! It's very interesting! Jun 02 14 07:32 am Link |
