Photoshop Tutorial: Basic Facial Photo-manipulation

[pyost 0]

This is my first big tutorial, so it won't be perfect.

Here I will explain how to manipulate someone's face by using some quite easy methods. A lot of these things have been inspired by great tutorial from deviantArt.com, but they are not copies in any way. Hope you like it.

 

In this tutorial I will use my friend's picture. I will show you how to soften the skin, change the eye colour and brighten the teeth, and some other things. Here's the picture we will be using:

 

 

First of all, we will remove the background. To do this we can use the lasso tool. Select the area around the person you are manipulating, but don't try to be precise, we will sort that out later.

 

When you are done with selecting, switch to quick mask mode in order to make the selection more precise. Now what you need to do is "colour" the area that is not necessary by black colour and a brush of wanted size. This is the time when you should be as precise as you can. This is what you should get in the end:

 

 

While still in quick mask mode apply a Gaussian blur with radius of 1 pixel, in order to soften the edges we are about to cut. After you have done that switch to standard mode, invert the selection and delete the background.

 

Note: It's best to do this on a new layer, so you don't touch the original image.

 

Anyway, if you turn of the original layer, you should get something like this:

 

 

Now let's move one to the skin. To soften the skin we are going to use a quite primitive method. First of all, apply a Gaussian blur of a certain radius so that the skin appears to be softer, but not unreal. In this case, I have used the radius 7. Now, you must open the history window, and select the small square next to the Gaussian blur. Then make a step backwards. What we are doing is applying the blur only to some parts, in this case the skin. Now, activate the history brush of the wanted size and carefully go over the skin. This way you will get the Gaussian blur only applied to the skin.

 

The result in my case is this:

 

 

And now - the teeth. This one can be done in an easy way, but you can complicate it a lot when you master face photo manipulation. I'll do it the easy way. First switch to quick mask mode and select the teeth (be precise). After that copy the teeth to a new layer. There you can mess with the brightness and other options, that usually works. If it looks unreal in the end, feel free to change the opacity of that layer.

 

Here's Ivana with new teeth:

 

 

Now we move on to the eyes. I will lighten the eyes a bit and change their colour to green. For brightening them, do the following. Create a new layer, and then go to Edit > Fill, and choose 50% gray. Change that layer's mode to Soft Light and activate the dodge tool. Now use the dodge tool on the white part of the eyes to lighten it a bit. I suggest you experiment with this, since it is quite hard to do it right. The difference might not be noticeable, but it's there.

 

 

This picture is not very high quality, so changing the eye colour wouldn't be successful. If you want to change the eye colour, this is what you have to do. First select the eyes and copy them onto a new layer. Then desaturate that layer, and edit the curves for it. That way you will be able to set the wanted colour and it will look natural. In addition to that, you can adjust the opacity for that layer in order to make it more realistic.

 

What we can do now is beautify the eyebrows. You can do this in two ways. You can use the Smudge tool, or use the Clone Stamp tool. It is really up to you. If you are using the Smudge tool, make slow and gentle moves in order to hide that action. If you are using the Clone Stamp tool, select an area as close to the eyebrow as it is possible. I have used the Smudge tool and here is what I got.

 

 

And now, the final touch. Choose a random background that you find appropriate and put it in a new layer below the person layer. After that you may apply any effects you want. I have chosen a forest background and blurred it a little bit.

 

And here it is - what it looked like in the beginning and what it looks like now.

 

[szupie 0]

Really helpful tutorial. I've always wanted to know how to soften people's skin with Photoshop. Isn't there another way to do it too, by just using a brush?History brush was kinda a new thing to me. I've only learned about it a few weeks ago, so I'm lucky that I know about it before I've read this, or I would have been very confused with how to us it. For those who can't find the History brush, it's the button right under the normal brush.What did you do when you "beautified" the eyebrows? The only change I noticed was that they became a little bit thinner afterwards. Is there anything else that has to be done to beautify the eyebrows?

[pyost 0]

Thanks B)I'm also new to this and I had some problems finding good tutorials, and in the end I had to use many different tutorials. That's why I made a tutorial right at the beginning. Some things might be confusing, and some even I don't understand completely.Softening the skin is probably easy to do with some other tools also, but I (as a newbie) don't know about that. There is a tool in newer PS verion that looks like a plaster I think. It should be able to do something to the skin. I am using PS6 so I can't tell you exactly.As for the eyebrows, well, there wasn't much to do, only to make them a bit thinner. I currently can't think of anything that could be done to beautify them even more. Not because I don't know the way to do it, but because I have no ideas.

[Vue 0]

Hmm nice tut! But I think if you used the dodge tool to drag bits of hair out, it would look more natural.