Before & After

[Big Mike]

Here is a shot of my fiancé, her mother & sister. I started by putting in some new eyes for her sister, and then gave the girls a little nip/tuck followed by some skin treatment. What do you think?

 

[Meysha]

Hey good work. This is my favourite thing to do in PS.

I have the same problem with my nip/tuck pictures - they end up all blownout and overexposed looking - especially if you do a lot with the patch tool.
Great job with the eyes aswell.
Two very little nitpicking things to be careful with though would be the shape of the neck where it comes in contact with the chin. Sometimes gets distorted with the shrink tool. And also becareful of the shadows under the chin when you do the tucking there. They're all wavy on your fiance.

Great job though. You've reminded me to post some of my own tomorrow.

 

[JohnMF]

some times the liquify tool can be good for this sort of thing

 

[Big Mike]

Thanks, I did use the liquefy tool for all of the nip/tuck. I wasn't really happy with the chin-neck, I reached a point where it kept looking worse and I didn't want to start again.

They look blown out, mostly because if the big camera mounted flash I used. I usually dial it down a stop when inside like this but I didn't for this shot.

 

[Meysha]

Thanks, I did use the liquefy tool for all of the nip/tuck. I wasn't really happy with the chin-neck, I reached a point where it kept looking worse and I didn't want to start again.

there is a sort of 'undo' brush you can use in the liquify mode. It's great for using on that neck area if you stuff it up. And that way you don't have to start all over again.

They look blown out, mostly because if the big camera mounted flash I used. I usually dial it down a stop when inside like this but I didn't for this shot.

I meant that after I do all the cloning and stuff, the pictures look blown out. Even if the original photo is fine.

 

[OBrien]

How did you do that eye transplant Big Mike?? That's a clever trick.

 

[Big Mike]

How did you do that eye transplant Big Mike?? That's a clever trick.

That was actually the easy part. I had a similar shot taken just a moment before/after so I had a good shot to take the eyes from. I loosely selected her head in the other shot and copied it into this one. Then I set the opacity lower so that I could manipulate the new eyes to match the size & position of the closed ones (I could/should have done a better job of this).
Then I masked off most of the layer with the new eyes until everything looked good.

On another note, it can be a tricky thing to manipulate photos of your significant other. At first, my fiancé said that she didn't like original because of how her chin looked. When I printed out the touched up version, she didn't like it...and was a little offended.

 

[PlasticSpanner]

Yes I can see this could be dangerous ground! :er:

Is that how you think she's supposed to look or how you'd prefer her too look! Either way can be the start of a cold night in the dog house!