Victoria's Secret Manip Tutorial
Program: Photoshop CS3
Translatable: No, has selective coloring as well as some other photoshop steps.
Difficulty: Hard, but not too hard. Ask me if you have any problems or questions.
Steps: 4
Objective: To manipulate Miranda Kerr's face onto Alessandra Ambrosio's body and make it look realistic. In doing so I hope to help those of you who desire to make manipulations for any reason are able to learn some new tips and tricks from this tutorial.
You will learn:
-How to improve the quality of a low resolution picture after sizing it up larger.
-How to use masking effects with different layers to make blends
-How to properly adjust coloring and luminosity from one image to blend with another image.
I'm taking Miranda Kerr's face in Picture 1 and blending it into Picture 2.
The first thing you will notice if you are editing both of these pictures is that Picture 1 is much smaller and has less resolution than picture 2. First, I'm going to show you how to fix that.
1. First we're going to open up Picture 1. When changing the resolution in the picture it's best to create a whole new image, making sure the resolution is at least 300. Then drag the layer you are trying to add resolution to over to the other image. It will still look the same, very pixelated, but what changing the resolution does, is that it allows us to blur the square pixels to make it look less pixelated, while keeping other areas sharpened.
Step 1
I used my selection tool to select just Miranda's head, then I just copy pasted it into a new image with a 300 pixel resolution. This helps increase the quality of the picture. I had to scale the image up to 156.5% to make it large enough. To do this go to Image >> Image Size and change pixel to percentage. ((make sure constrain proportions is checked))
2. Once I have my new file of Miranda's head, it really needed sharpened. I sharpened it more Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen More. As you can see in Step 2 for the top middle image, it is sharpened a little too much. So I went to Edit >> Fade Sharpen More, where I reduced the effect by 50%. If you look at the image on the top right of Step 2 reducing the sharpen more helped reduce the noise, but it is still very pixelated.
I then went to Filter >> Noise >> Reduce Noise so that I could remove a lot of the pixels without making the image any less sharp.
I made my settings
Strength: 10
Preserve Details: 14
I did not remove any of the color noise or sharpen the details at all. Click Ok.
I then went to Filter >> Noise >> Reduce Noise and repeated what I had just done. Since that was the last filter we used we can save time and just hit Ctrl + F.
As you can see again in Step 2 in the lower left hand picture it is still just a bit too pixelated. At this point I took my blur tool, set the strength to 50% and blurred out the excess noise. Compare The top left image to the top right image and notice the difference in the clarity of the image.
Flatten the image
3. Now we are ready for Picture 2! Open the file up, and then Picture 1 on top of Picture 2.
**Note: I highly recommend to duplicate your background layer in case you mess up. It's always good to have a backup layer**
Once I placed Miranda's head over Alessandra's I then used my freehand selection tool to select Miranda's face. After I selected her face I hit the button Refine Edge. These were my settings for cleanly editing the selection around Miranda's face. Play around with it until it looks right.
After you hit ok, go down to the layers menu (make sure Picture 1 is selected and not your background) and hit the add layer mask button
.
The nice thing about masking, is that unlike using the erase tool you can go back and add something you accidently erased and it is not permanently gone. By adjusting your paintbrush colors, painting white on your masked image "un erases" the image, and then painting black erases it, like right here where I have painted some of Picture 1 onto Picture 2.. You can also adjust to different shades of gray for opacity effects. Always make sure you have the layer mask selected rather than the layer image, as shown below.
I highly recommend duplicating this layer so that you have it as a backup. You can hit the eye next to it to hide it.
I then hit Ctrl + T or Edit >> Free Transform to adjust Miranda's head so that it looked proportionate to Alessandra's face. Once you have finished this I had a bit of Alessandra's face, such as her ear poking out from behind Miranda's face. I took this time to open my duplicated background layer Filter >> Liquify to adjust it so it will not look this way as you can see in Step 3.
Once I have finished that I right clicked on the layer mask for the layer with Miranda's face and applied my layer mask. I then took the smudge tool and played around with Miranda's face until it looked blended enough into the picture. My result is here.
Step 4.
The hard part is over with! Now all we have to do is adjust the coloring for Miranda's face to match our background image and we are done!
First, we are going to right click on the layer with Miranda's face. Make sure that you have applied your layer mask if you have one, refer to the red text in Step 3. We're going to right click and select the pixels around Miranda's face. This allows us to create adjustment layers that we can go back and edit.
First I edited the Luminosity of the image. Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Levels. I needed to add a little bit of contrast to the image and lighten it as well.
My input levels were 16 1.12 237.
I then duplicated this layer twice. The first duplicated layer I set at 50%, then for my second duplicated layer I changed it from Luminosity to Hue 100%. Still having the second duplicated layer selected I went to Layer >> Change Layer Content >> Color Balance. This adjusts the hue of Miranda's face without affecting the saturation at all. These were my settings.
Shadows: -24, 0 +5
Midtones: -23, +1, +11
Highlights -14, +4, +16
Next I worked with selective coloring by duplicating the Color Balance Layer and setting it to Normal 100%. Again I went to Layer >> Change Layer Content >> Selective Coloring. These were my settings.
Reds:
C: +7
M: +20
Y: -11
B: -11
Neutrals:
C: +11
M: -5
Y: -1
B: +11
Lastly I duplicated my Selective coloring layer and changed it to Saturation 100%. Layer >> Change Layer Content >> Hue/Saturation. I changed the Saturation on the master opacity to -17.
The reason I duplicated my selective coloring layers was so that I could maintain the layer mask around Miranda's face. You can also right click on the layer with Miranda's face and just create new selective layers. Or, if you're bold enough and don't think you will make any mistakes you can simply just adjust everything without making adjustment layers.
And we are finished. Here is my result:
I would love to see all of your results! Please message me if you have any questions whatsoever! I hope everyone got something from this tutorial.