Phil Parsons

Retouching the eyes – part 4

In this tutorial we will address the eyes before moving onto the body to do a minor structural change.

Step 1:

Once you have your file from the previous tutorials opened up in Photoshop we will merge everything to the top using shift+ctrl+alt+E and then create a new layer above that. Take the stamp tool (S) and set its mode to lighten and sample all layers. Using the techniques explained in the previous tutorials brush away the eyelash beneath the left eye as below.

Next create another new layer above the last and using a fairly hard brush paint some new less bushy lashes in with a black colour to balance the look of the other eye. If the lashes look too hard or thick experiment with a smaller brush and play with the layers opacity.

Step 2:

I now want to bring the whites of the eyes up slightly and brighten the dark area of eye lash in the right eye. So with a new layer and the stamp tool set to lighten paint some of that dark area of eyelash away then on a soft light layer paint in some white on the eyes with a nice soft brush tool to lighten the whites up a tiny bit.

Ok so now we have nice bright eyes a smooth clean face and no major distraction around the face area so we will leave the face there and move onto the body.

Step 3:

There is only one real structural change on the body I want to make which is the skin folds in the arm crevices. To do this make a selection around the area with the marquee tool and using the liquify filter straighten out the line of the arm as below.

Then using the techiques from the other tutorials remove the wrinkle and brighten up the shadows slightly.

Retouch the opposite arm in the same way and the body is now finished too.

You could continue to clean the image up even more but always remeber not to go too far, we want it to remain believable. Check out my result below and if you want to know how to create the effect with the flowers subscribe to my blog and I will add a quick tip in the near future to show you a simple masking technique.

Posted on January 11th, 2009 under Photoshop tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.