Project 17: Retouching A Face.

After learning to use the Clone Stamp tool to extend a photo in the previous project here i moved on to looking at another use, in this project its more how it can be used to make small adjustments when working with peoples faces and appearances.

Retouched Eye. Normal Eye.

Normally this isn't an area of photography that i find that interesting so i tend not to do much work where I'd need to do any retouching on a persons face but for the purpose of this course I'm happy to have a go and see what i could achieve. First off you asked to look at the image of the women's eyes, here you're asked to go through the process of removing lines from below the left hand eye by first selecting the area with a highlighting tool then softening the selected area using a very light amount of blurring so as to maintain the colouring of the skin but to remove the texture then finally using the clone stamp and selecting an area around the cheek bone add texture back to the area you've blurred. Now i followed this process to begin with and found that the end results weren't that great, what i mean is that i could really see when compared to the other eye that I'd altered the area under the left eye so i tried to alter the process to gain results i was more happy with. Above is what i finally settled on as being my best effort, to create this image in the end i simple went down the route of just using the clone stamp with a very soft brush and the opacity set to around 60%. By doing this i feel that the texture and skin colouring seem much more natural then any of my other attempts. On reflection i feel the shadows under the retouch eye are still a little strong but this could be easily rectified by increasing the opacity slightly just to hide this area better.

Original Cheek.

The next step was to take the image of the women's cheek above and remove the two small moles on the upper area of her cheek. To me this was a far easier process and one that i felt i did a real good job on with my first attempt.

Retouched Cheek.

To produce the image above it was just a matter of using the clone stamp to remove the moles and there associated shadows. Again you had to be very much aware of the skin tones in choosing an area to clone from (i went for an area just above but not to far away from the affected area because of it being quiet a light area but with a small amount of shadow created by the hair line). As I've already said i felt pretty pleased with my efforts straight away this time whether this is because I'm becoming more proficient with the clone stamp or whether its just my ego talking i leave you to decided.

Original Face. Retouched Face.

For the final part of this project you're asked to take a shot of a face for yourself and then apply what you've learned to retouch it. For this process i used my own face as there are some small place that i knew i could alter and one more major area that i could attempt to alter. The smaller areas were quiet straight forward these being the larger freckles on both cheeks and the small scare that runs along the bridge of my nose. The more complicated alteration i wanted to make involved my left eye which sits slightly lower than the right, here i wanted to attempt as best as i could to level it with the right one. To do this i used the lasso tool to ring the eye then simply copy and pasted the area into a new layer and repositioned the eye as best i could. Then after merging the layers i used the clone stamp to blend the edges into the skin around it so as it wasn't obvious what i done. I'm fairly happy with the end results as i haven't gone for any major changes because as it say in the course i did want the face to appear doll like in appearance as after all I'm looking for things still to appear natural. One thing i did consider afterwards was whether it would have been easier to have drop the right eye instead of raising the left but i not that sure it would have been that much easier.

I did really enjoy this project as much buts that's more to do with the subject matter then the actual process that I've studied I'm more of a landscape man and I'm not that interested in portrait work but i suppose it doesn't hurt in the long run to attempt all forms of photography so maybe one day I'll have more of a go at this kind of work.