Glamorizing

Sometimes as artists we are forced to work with what we are given because of the client, the budget, or that's is to work with.. The grainy digital image from a $50 camera, cousin Al who insist because he owns a $3000 camera he can take good photos, and our topic the model with a lot of freckles. Most people including models have imperfections that my not be noticeable until the cruel eye of the camera brings these minor issues to our attention. Photographs are static images that allow our eye to see every detail. Ever take a photo you thought was perfect only to discover that a small missing paint chip on the wall became incredibly obvious in the final print?

The model in this image has some freckles and lines which in life are not obvious, but the camera lens makes far to apparent.

For this tutorial you will need this image and Photoshop 6.5 or 7.

This process can be used to create a natural looking repair or , taken to an extreme and artificial computer generated character look. The picture on the left show the imperfections to some extent but downloading model.zip, opening it in Photoshop and zooming in to %200 you can really see the problem.

Because we don't want our corrections to be too obvious we will need to make several masks to control exactly where the corrections are applied.

Image on the left shows all of the areas that we will be working in 1st. The lines around the eyes and mouth we will deal with on a later tutorial. Open the image and make a copy of the background layer. Using the lasso tool with the feather set to 10px select the area of the forehead and other similarly affected areas (Shift+Lasso tool). Save the selection.

Create a new empty layer and place it above all other layers. Reload your saved selection mask. With the eye dropper tool select a pixel of color from their model's forehead that represents her natural color lighter than the freckles but darker then any reflected highlights (see thumbnail).Choose a soft brush from the brush pallet and set the size at least 60px. larger is better. Set the tool's blend mode to lighten, and opacity to around 10%. Brush the color in to hide the blemishes but not lose the details of the face. When all of the effected are done, Deselect and change the new layers blend mode to lighten and adjust the opacity to create a natural looking blend. For dark areas like the throat area try setting the layer and brush blend modes to Normal and then adjust the opacity as before. Repeat on new layers for other areas until you get the look you want (see last).

Final Product