Total photoshop makeover!

This is a picture of me taken just before I go out for a meal with my loving fiancée. It’s not the best picture in the world, so before I put it on facebook I need to touch it up a little.So first thing I need to do is adjust the levels. To make sure white is white, and black is black.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels… (CTRL+L).

Click on the white eyedropper and find something that is white in the image, and do the same for the black eyedropper (but find something pure black). This tells photoshop what is true white and what is true black and adjusts the colours accordingly. This needs to be done on photos because you dont always get a true representation of the colours due to un-natural yellow lighting etc.
So with the colours sorted out I need to start to clean up the image.

Take the healing brush tool (J) and start to clean up the spots by holding ALT+click near the spot (To select a unbleicora skin patch) and then clicking on the spot to make it vanish –if only spot lotion worked this fast eh?

I also removed some of my “laughter lines” on my forehead, and lightened the bags under my eyes in the same manner.
Now that i have cleaned up my complexion a little i need to work on my smile. I dont look too overjoyed that I’m going out for a romantic meal with the one I love do I?

This is where I start to liquify the photo.

Go into Filter > Liquify… (CTRL+SHIFT+X)

I use quite a large brush for this one. I need to take the corners of the mouth and move them just slightly outwards, and upwards just a nudge. This is hard as you need the smile to look natural –I know how Leonardo Da Vinci must have felt painting the Mona Lisa!
This one is quite an odd step. I suffer from eczema (itchy skin condition) and because of it my eyebrows are a lot thinner than i’d like. using the Healing Brush (J) tool again, i’m going to reconstruct them!Keeping on with sorting out my eczema I need to reduce the redness of my skin and smooth it out a lot more. For this what i need to do is:

Select > Color Range…

By clicking on the red-ish areas of my skin on the image I can see what areas are going to be selected. By sliding the slider accross I cover more of my face. My aim is to select as much of my skin as I can.

Once I have selected my skin, press CTRL+J and photoshop will make a new layer of the selection I just made.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur…

Set the radius to about 1px – not much blur is needed here so dont go over the top. Next I need to reduce the red so I go to:

Image > Adjustments > Selective Color…

and I reduce the Magenta & Yellow BOTH down by about 35% This is something you need to do by eye as everyone’s skin is diferent.

Press CTRL+E to merge the skin with your face.
Next thing I want to do is lose weight. This can’t be achieved in a matter of minutes –unless you use photoshop!

You need to go into Filter > Liquify (CTRL+SHIFT+X) again.

I start by pushing my double chin into my face, keeping the shape of my face. once I have done this i still need to remove the crease where my double chin used to be. so out comes the Healing Tool (J) once again and I remove the crease.
Now I have my new thinner face I need a waistline to match, so using the same method as I did with my face, I start to slim myself down. It is handy that I am against a white background or this wouldn’t be very easy at all!And there we have it! And who said the camera never lies? I’m quite surpprised at how I would look if I were to loase a bit of weight and sort my skin out -I look a lot like my younger thinner brother!

It would be fantastic if anyone tries this on their own photos, if they could upload them to this tutorial’s comments!

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