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What to do when a client gives you the photo they want for their ad but it's totally unusable... and they dont want to reshoot or hire a photog?!
Well retouching is the only answer:


The original print from client


The finished job


Photoshop is my friend!

..... nice work..... about how long would this take.....

About 40mins

Good PP work, you've made the original image useable, well done...

For their ad? For the lonely hearts column?

Nice work btw. The only nits are around the edges of the subject as they look like they've almost had a shadow applied between the subject and the background to hide where you've cut out the subject.

I notice you've also 'enhanced' the hair colour - nice piece of work

You'll be giving MattK lessons in PS soon!

For their ad? For the lonely hearts column?

Yeah go figure i was shocked when I saw it, and told them that if they want to use this it will take me time to convert it to a useable image and that It would cost them.. the ad is for a weight loss program...

Nice work btw. The only nits are around the edges of the subject as they look like they've almost had a shadow applied between the subject and the background to hide where you've cut out the subject.

Yeah I know, unfortunately when doing work for client I have to stop being a perfectionist because of their budget. I would loved to have spent hours fixing this but the client's budget was quite small. When included in the final ad this image will only make up about 15% of the total brochure and wont be seen as large as you've seen it and the shading will not be noticeable.

Nah that's cool, and I know it comes down to whether they want a kingswood or a mercedes. I think the shading on the back works fine it's just some other parts that didn't look right.

Great work Atorie. That's one hell of a transformation.

Good work Atorie! I like what you've done with the image. It has a style! One small area I think you could have improved is to take a liitle muscle off her arm. Just a small amount would have made her look a little more demure/fragile and or appealing. But you may have had a good reason to have left it there and it does not detract from the overall charm of the image anyway. 40 minutes you say? What took you so long?
I'm sure many forum members would love to know the steps involved in the transformation. Me included.

Great work Mike, Photoshop is definitely your friend and hers
Troppo

A fair bit of selection work.
I like the background - how did you acheive that effect?
I echo MattK's sentiments - perhaps a little bit of liquify tool on the abdomen and arms (is that ethical for a weight loss program? )
A touch oversaturated on the hair, eyes and lips for my taste, but otherwise well done.

Well after getting the brief from the client of what they require the image to look like "Well we want a clean look, like she's in a room, y'know..."

So I set about recreating the location and feel of the photo.

How?

First up I created my background by building up three layers
One gradient, one clouds filter @ 25% opacity and a mosaic tiles filter @ 75% opacity.

These layers came together to give the background a more natural feel, with uneven lighting and texture, which is somethig that can be quite hard to do digitally.

On a new a new layer set I placed the original image, masked out the background, created both curves and levels adjustment layers to increase the contrast in and focus on the girl. I then created separate layers for the skin cleaning (healing & cloning), the eyes, the lips, the nose correction, the hair and the shading. The colouring of the eyes, lips and hair was not done via bumping up the saturation but by using a solid colour layer and setting the blending option to 'overlay' then adjusting the opacity as required. I masked out areas where the colouring was not needed. This technique allows the underlying texture of the hair/eyes/ lips to remain unmodified and gives me more control of any adjustments required for the job.

All in all I had about 16 layers for this image, but by using layers and utilising masks I could keep full control over the whole image. If the client required any changes it was a simple as changing the opacity, editing a mask or colour of a layer to get the desired effect. If I made the changes by modifying the base image or a duplicate any changes would either require a restart of the retouching or undoing actions done which is more time consuming and therefore costly.

I could have sat there for hours perfecting this image and would have if it's purpose was for a full spread magazine ad but that was not the job. I was instructed not to change her body shape by the client (however body shape can quite easy be changed via the liquify effect - It's not just for making you uncle have big eyes & ears and a small mouth!).

My thoughts when posting these images was to show what can be done to rectify a poor image and that photoshop is a powerful tool. However when it comes to the crunch if I had my choice I would have had it shot properly in the first place but ultimatly that decision is made by the client.

really good your product !

Did I make my workflow easy enough to understand? If anyone wants me to explain anything further just ask.

Michael,

Great work.

You wouldn't like to go through all of the steps, slowly, and write the whole process up as a tutorial for us, would you?

I know that's asking a lot, and please don't be afraid to say no.

But it strikes me that this would make an excellent advanced tutorial to show people just some of what is possible.

Thanx in aadvance for giving this your consideration.

No problems Gary, I'll write up a tutorial showing my steps as best I can. I don't have to much spare time till the weekend but i'll see how I go.

Hey Michael. Good job, care to post any more examples of the work that you've done? You've got me interested now

Most of my work isn't as a dramatic change as this one. I worked as a freelance retoucher for a few years for some local studios but the images you get from them are already at a high standard and I only have to 'clean' the skin, change eye or hair colour. Most times when they need a background change I normally am given that also. The client in this case didn't have funds or time up their sleeve so I did what I had to. I also do a lot of photo restorations (digitally reparing old photos) as below:

Sensational stuff Mike! Thanks for the info I will have to pull out some of my not-so-good images and play one day!

Mike,
I love to do these works, I have the book from Katrin Eismann.
Your works are execllent, I know it's fun.

Great work mike!!!

I bet you like the spot healing brush in CS2, I do a lot of restoration work & this new tool has saved a lot of time.

Cheers
Ray

Thanks Guys, Yeah Katrin Eismann brilliant I have her "Photoshop Masking & Compositing" book which is an excellent resourse. I've been using PS for about 8 years now and I am still learning new techniques. Photoshop has great depth and there always more than one way to desired result.

Raydar wrote:I bet you like the spot healing brush in CS2, I do a lot of restoration work & this new tool has saved a lot of time.

Very much so, It was one of the many reasons I upgraded to CS2 the week it came out. Average timeframe for a photo restoration has dropped by about 5mins which is an excellent timesaver.

Another vote for Katrin Eismann's books. I have both Restoration & retouching and Masking & composition. Fantastic books for intermediate/advanced PS users.