Reversed aging without pain
kortirion asked in a comment to edoraslass 's lovely little ficlet (for lady_branwyn's birthday, to make the story complete) whether one could photoshop out wrinkles. The answer to that is "yes". Within reason.
Scott Kelby, a photoshop wizz, wrote the instructions in his book "The Photoshop Book For Digital Photographers". I'll repeat them here, with examples. Please note that I did the retouching rather quickly; to make things perfect will require a bit more careful dabbing and painting.
First up, Sean Bean. (Photo from shrinetolust by way of the wonderful queenofthorns, click images for a larger version)
Au Naturel: a somewhat craggy Bean (to quote queenofthorns)
Now, for a little nip and tuck:
First, copy the image into a new layer. Work on this layer, leaving the original image as is.
Start off with the Patch tool. Make sure it's set to Source in the Options Bar and draw a selection around the wrinkle. Drag the selection to an area on the face that has a clean texture. Usually, the area right next to the wrinkle works well. Release the mouse button. The selection will snap back into place, but... with the wrinkle removed!
For fine-tuning, use the Healing Brush tool. Hold down the Alt-key (Mac: Option) and click on an area of smooth skin. With the brush, paint a stroke over the wrinkles you want to remove. The Healing Brush does its calculations and "magically" the wrinkle disappears.
Note: it might take some practice to get the desired results.
A smoothed Bean, not entirely natural looking
You'll end up with something resembling the picture to the left. Nobody has skin that smooth, and the image looks definitely retouched, so we'll bring a bit of skin texture back.
Use the opacity slider of the top layer and set the opacity lower. I used 50% so half the wrinkles are still showing through, resulting in a much younger- but still natural-looking Bean!
Finished!
Second attempt: Denethor. Here I also needed to colorize his hair a bit because of all the gray but the basic technique is the same as described above. I'm not entirely satisfied with the end result (Sean Bean came out much better, I believe), but considering it took me all of twenty minutes, the result is not bad. Again, click for larger versions.
The original photo
The retouched version
The final version
Scott Kelby, a photoshop wizz, wrote the instructions in his book "The Photoshop Book For Digital Photographers". I'll repeat them here, with examples. Please note that I did the retouching rather quickly; to make things perfect will require a bit more careful dabbing and painting.
First up, Sean Bean. (Photo from shrinetolust by way of the wonderful queenofthorns, click images for a larger version)
Au Naturel: a somewhat craggy Bean (to quote queenofthorns)
Now, for a little nip and tuck:
First, copy the image into a new layer. Work on this layer, leaving the original image as is.
Start off with the Patch tool. Make sure it's set to Source in the Options Bar and draw a selection around the wrinkle. Drag the selection to an area on the face that has a clean texture. Usually, the area right next to the wrinkle works well. Release the mouse button. The selection will snap back into place, but... with the wrinkle removed!
For fine-tuning, use the Healing Brush tool. Hold down the Alt-key (Mac: Option) and click on an area of smooth skin. With the brush, paint a stroke over the wrinkles you want to remove. The Healing Brush does its calculations and "magically" the wrinkle disappears.
Note: it might take some practice to get the desired results.
A smoothed Bean, not entirely natural looking
You'll end up with something resembling the picture to the left. Nobody has skin that smooth, and the image looks definitely retouched, so we'll bring a bit of skin texture back.
Use the opacity slider of the top layer and set the opacity lower. I used 50% so half the wrinkles are still showing through, resulting in a much younger- but still natural-looking Bean!
Finished!
Second attempt: Denethor. Here I also needed to colorize his hair a bit because of all the gray but the basic technique is the same as described above. I'm not entirely satisfied with the end result (Sean Bean came out much better, I believe), but considering it took me all of twenty minutes, the result is not bad. Again, click for larger versions.
The original photo
The retouched version
The final version