"Fashion Magazine"-style manip

zapphnath · 01-12-2006

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../heather1d.jpg

This is my first real attempt at doing a "Fashion Magazine"-style manip.
It's the first in a set that I was asked to work on for a friend.
All-in-all, I spent about eight hours getting from one to the other. Of course, a lot of that time was spent trying techniques that, for one reason or another, didn't work out.

So - whaddaya think, huh?

**Bub** · 01-12-2006

Wow, that looks alot better. Do you know what you did to make those changes? I'm curious to know

Can't wait to see more of your work!

zapphnath · 01-12-2006

Okay...well, I started by scanning the 4X5 photo at 600 dpi so that I could, later, convert it to 8X10 at 300 dpi without any loss of detail.
Next was a great deal of time spent using the Patch tool to get rid of "blemishes" and dust.
To bring out the colors, I used a method I read about somewhere: convert to LAB color mode, use Auto Levels on both the A and B channels, convert back to RGB, then blend with original. I think I used Saturation and dropped the opacity to about 50%.
Next came smoothing out the skin using another method I read about online: duplicate the layer and blur the bottom one, add a mask to the top one and paint it to reveal only the outlines and hair. (The tutorial said to use Find Edges to get the mask, but I wasn't happy with the results so I painted them by hand).
Next she was masked so that I could change the background, which was made using Clouds, Plastic Wrap, and Spotlight.
Next I added a black layer with a mask. Using the Eliptical Marquee with a feather of 100 pixels, I made a soft vignette.
Finally, I added the text. I rasterised it, then selected it, did Modify > Contract by a few pixels, and Cut. This added a little something "extra" to the text.
And...that's about it. I'm not going to bother going into all of the things I tried that didn't work out. That would take all day.

Thanks for commenting, btw.

**unleash** · 01-12-2006

I will remind it for somethngs in the future because it really works

**Man1c M0g** · 01-12-2006

Looks really good! I especially like the way that you have brought out deepness in the colors and achieved that whole 'studio' look. I'd personally lighten up the eyes a little myself because I think they are a tad too dark... but thats just me I guess.

dusneed · 01-12-2006

I really like this. for her right eyebrow I would use the blur tool just to make it look smoother.

My question is do you still have the links for the tutorials that you used?

bedlam123 · 01-13-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by zapphnath

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../heather1d.jpg

This is my first real attempt at doing a "Fashion Magazine"-style manip.
It's the first in a set that I was asked to work on for a friend.
All-in-all, I spent about eight hours getting from one to the other. Of course, a lot of that time was spent trying techniques that, for one reason or another, didn't work out.

So - whaddaya think, huh?

Wow, she is beautiful! I would be interested in seeing the links for the tuts as well. I copied the info from your post and will be trying out the methods you used and see what I can come up with. M0g is right about the eyes, I think if you lighten them up so the rest of her face will "pop". Good job!!!

zapphnath · 01-13-2006

Thanks for all the positive reinforcement - hehe.
It took a while, but I managed to find those tuts you asked about.
Here's the one on vibrant color:
http://fotofects.com/articles/95/1/Ultra-Vivid
Here's the one on smoothing skin:
http://www.shinybinary.com/Tutorials/Images/Photo.jpg

As for brightening up the eyes and the areas around them, I was thinking the same thing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to change the original that much but decided to go ahead and give it a try. I lightened the whites and iris', as well as the areas around them and the cheek, on a new layer and masked it so that I could use a similar method to the one for smoothing the skin - this time to only highlight what I wanted, leaving the outlines and pupils unchanged to allow more detail to show.
Here is my result:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../heather1e.jpg

I thought about adding some "digital make-up" but decided against it. She's only sixteen and doesn't need to look too "Times Square", if you know what I mean.

I wanted to add, in case anyone was wondering, the font is called Kunstler Script.

**Man1c M0g** · 01-13-2006

Much better! Now give her shiny white teeth and you have yourself a fashion icon!

zapphnath · 01-13-2006

Thanks. I did lighten her tooth, but it shone like the North Star. She has braces and that little orange spot in the middle of her mouth is the only evidence of teeth in the image. I thought it best to just leave it be.
Maybe I'll use the Image Warp and just close her mouth. I dunno.

Cpalmer76 · 01-14-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by zapphnath

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../heather1d.jpg

This is my first real attempt at doing a "Fashion Magazine"-style manip.
It's the first in a set that I was asked to work on for a friend.
All-in-all, I spent about eight hours getting from one to the other. Of course, a lot of that time was spent trying techniques that, for one reason or another, didn't work out.

So - whaddaya think, huh?

Great look...........................

tigerlily2678 · 01-17-2006

Thank you for posting the tutorial links. Those were helpful. You did a great job with the picture. It must have taken forever with the patch tool. Your time really paid off. Nice work.

**unleash** · 01-17-2006

your friend must be very happy after she saw the pictures!!

zapphnath · 01-17-2006

Thanks, all. Yeah, she was happy with 'em. Actually, it's her parents that I'm friends with. When I took them over, mom-n-dad only got to see them for about 30 seconds. Heather came in and snatched them up and took them up to her room. And she never came back down. I wanted to point a few things out on them, but - oh, well. For the next set, I printed out an extra copy just for mom-n-dad.

Speaking of which, here's another one. As with the other one, I spent about 1.5 to 2 hours just "cleaning" it - getting rid of all of the specks and squigglies that always seem to show up on scanned photos. It doesn't matter how clean you THINK your scanner bed is, you always end up seeing things you don't want to, especially at that high a resolution. And, yeah, it takes a long time when you're zoomed in so close her nostril fills the entire screen.
After cleaning it, I decided to do something a little different (for me, at least) - make an actual fake magazine cover. She's already signed up to go to bootcamp after she graduates, this year. Hence, the concept.
Here it is...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1.../Heather4c.jpg

I racked my brain trying to come up with a plausible acronym for A.R.M.Y.. I think this works. I made up all of the "stories", as well, of course.

blkfire · 01-18-2006

realy nice work can you give here a tutorialhow yuo do this?