Lips

[Karen Chandler]

My photo is showing a bumpy lip texture, and uneven color. How can I make them look smooth and evenly colored without removing the naturally dark line between the lips and without removing the attractive shine and natural vertical lines in the center of the lower lip?

Thank you, Karen

[Wendy]

Hi Karen ...

Not too sure about the texture but try this for the uneven colour:

Select a nice lip colour then create a new layer, set its blend mode to colour and then paint over the lips :)

Wendy

[Karen Chandler]

Thanks Wendy. I experimented and it looks like the problem is solved. Here is what I did:

duplicated the photo layer (maybe I should have created a new layer instead, but the duplicated photo layer is what seemed to work for me)

selected a color from the lips (tried several colors before I decided on one)

selected wet media brushes> light oil flat tip (#19)

set mode to color

opacity 30%

flow 60%

adjusted size of brush

I discovered I had to stay away from the edges of the lips. The natural line needed to remain or it looked strange. I brushed over areas of the lips that were too light, then changed the mode to "lighten" and brushed over areas that were too dark. The shine remained in the center of the lip even though I brushed over it. The slightly bumpy texture was minimized but not removed completely. When I tried to cover it completely with increased opacity, it did not look natural. I'll print it later today and let you know how it looks.

[Wendy]

Hi Karen ...

Oh that sounds good ... :)

When you set the blend mode to colour (either the layer or just the brush) that adds the new colour but leaves intact all the original highlights and shadows :)

Wendy

[dmrdm]

Might wanted to try a slight guassian blur after you duplicated the lips to see if you could get rid of the bumpy texture.

[Priss]

Did you give the smudge too (within a magic-wand selection) a little smoothing? Make selection first to keep the tool under control and see if that might help.

[Karen Chandler]

Thanks dmrdm and Priss. I tried the smudge tool this morning on the small bumps. Keeping the opacity very low (around 18%) worked quite well to smooth the texture. It was a little tricky, because the bumps had photographed darker, so I set the smudge mode to lighten and that helped keep the darker area from darkening even more. I only needed to smudge tiny areas. That was fortunate because smudging smoothed out the natural texture along with the bumps.

I'm working on the cover of my album and have another question. I have a red sweater that I need to change to pink (just adding some blue will do the trick - I don't need to lighten or darken. I tried to use hue/saturation and change the reds only. Worked well on the sweater, but the natural rosy tones in the skin went away!

I'm new to PS, and haven't tried "selective color" - is that what I need to do the job?

Karen

p.s. dmrdm - I had one stubborn area where smudging did not work well. I selected the lips and applied a very slight gaussian blur
(.01) and that worked perfectly. I just printed the photo and the combination of the techniques was perfect. This photo is MUCH better now. Thanks everyone!

[Priss]

Thanks dmrdm and Priss. I tried the smudge tool this morning on the small bumps. Keeping the opacity very low (around 18%) worked quite well to smooth the texture. It was a little tricky, because the bumps had photographed darker, so I set the smudge mode to lighten and that helped keep the darker area from darkening even more. I only needed to smudge tiny areas. That was fortunate because smudging smoothed out the natural texture along with the bumps.

I'm working on the cover of my album and have another question. I have a red sweater that I need to change to pink (just adding some blue will do the trick - I don't need to lighten or darken. I tried to use hue/saturation and change the reds only. Worked well on the sweater, but the natural rosy tones in the skin went away!

I'm new to PS, and haven't tried "selective color" - is that what I need to do the job?

Karen

p.s. dmrdm - I had one stubborn area where smudging did not work well. I selected the lips and applied a very slight gaussian blur
(.01) and that worked perfectly. I just printed the photo and the combination of the techniques was perfect. This photo is MUCH better now. Thanks everyone!


Make a selection of the sweater and get it onto a layer of its own--then adjust that hue-saturation to what you want, merge it back down, and it won't have affected the skin tones. Try that and see if that doesn't do the trick----now that you have conquered the "lips." Selective color's fairly tricky to mess with--think this will work in the meantime

[Karen Chandler]

Priss, I will give it a try. I thought about doing that earlier, but Amy's hair is over the sweater (spread out with red sweater showing through the strands in several areas) and I thought I would end up changing the hair color along with the sweater. I might have to go with the red or change to b/w - but I had my heart set on color for the cover...

Thanks,
Karen

decided to go with b/w!

[dmrdm]

I was looking through one of my books and it talked about making luscious (wet gloss look) lips...not knowing what your photo looks like, that may not be something you are interested in, but it mentions, selecting the lips, with a 3 pixel feather, put them on a new layer, to add mositure select filter>artistic>plastic wrap and adjust the highlights and smoothness while supressing some detail..and the adjust the layer opacity and refine the lips with a bit of cloning.

As far as the color...bunch of ways to do that....one...dup layer, make a rough selection a round the car/sweater/whatever to avoid changing other stuff, slect IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>REPLACE COLOR, then you have to take the eyedropper and drag over the color and watch the resulting selection in the box...once you've made your selection, there is a box to replace the color.

Have fun.

[Karen Chandler]

Thanks for the info, dmrdm. I may not be able to try the techniques you explained with the current project, but definitely something to try with future projects. I'm going to play with replace color with my next project - sounds like fun!

Karen

[Priss]

I was looking through one of my books and it talked about making luscious (wet gloss look) lips...not knowing what your photo looks like, that may not be something you are interested in, but it mentions, selecting the lips, with a 3 pixel feather, put them on a new layer, to add mositure select filter>artistic>plastic wrap and adjust the highlights and smoothness while supressing some detail..and the adjust the layer pacity and refine the lips with a bit of cloning.

As far as the color...bunch of ways to do that....one...dup layer, make a rough selectiona roudn the car to avoid changing other stuff, slect IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>REPLACE COLOR, then you have to take te eyedropper and drag over the color and watch the resutling selection in the box...one you've made your selection, their is a box to replace the color.

Have fun.

Cool! Thanks for that tip--might be just right for JUST the right project! --Into the bag of tricks it goes!