The best retouching space

[rutt]

Those who have been following very carefully know that Pathfinder is hard at work on a summary of chapter 11 of the LAB book and that it will be ready any day now.

But just to whet your appetite, here is an example of one technique from this book. It's just the kind of thing I have always found impossible.

Here is the image before retouching:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/54467646-L.jpg

And after:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/54467716-L.jpg

I found the tree and park bench distracting (perhaps this was a symptom of OCD, and I should have just left well enough alone?) Anyway, the bench was no problem; it succombed easily to conventional weapons. But that darn hat. If you look at it carefully, it's very soft and furry, lots of light wisps. In short a bear to work aroud.

Dan's basic idea for this situation is to divide and conquer the problem. First attack the color of the unwanted object and then attack the actual details. Roughly:

Duplicate layer of original.
Copy a rectangular area of background and paste over the offening element in a new topmost (third) layer.
Use blending options and or layer mask to limit the damage as much as possible.
Change blending mode of topmost layer to "Color".
Use Rubber Stamp (Clone) tool on L channel of middle layer to clone bits of the background over the offending object.
Again, blend-if and/or layer masks may be useful to control the impact of the L channel clone.


Using this two-prongged attack (color on one flank and detail on the other) really really helps get more natural looking results for this kind of annoying "edgework" a lot easier.

[rutt]

So Andy says, "Loose the Micky D cup." Now this is just the sort of thing that the guy who could never color inside the lines find the biggest sort of challenge. There doesn't seem to be anything in my arsenal that works, certainly not the same trick that worked on the hat. Suggestions?

[Mike Lane]

A couple minutes with the patch tool and a smidge of dodging got me this. Kind of a rough job, but if you spend some time with it you can make it look perfect.

[LiquidOps]

What is the Green thing sticking out of her side? Might be part of the bench, but I really don't think it would be missed if you got rid of it...

just my thoughts,

Steven

[chrisjlee]

hmm doesn't look convincing enough; but thats probably because you just did it quickly to prove a point.

[edgework]

So Andy says, "Loose the Micky D cup." Now this is just the sort of thing that the guy who could never color inside the lines find the biggest sort of challenge. There doesn't seem to be anything in my arsenal that works, certainly not the same trick that worked on the hat. Suggestions?

Here's the #1, all-time iron-clad bullet-proof rule for retouching: It doesn't have to be right—it just can't look obviously wrong. Green skin would raise eyebrows. The shadow under the bench, however, offers more flexibility.

Partially obscured by the cup, we can't tell what's causing it: maybe it's coming from from the bench, perhaps it extends farther and we'd see more if the cup wasn't there, but it just looks like a scab or something out of context. I say get rid of it and replace it with the all-time #2 rule of retouching: problem areas don't call as much attention to themselves if they're in shadow.

http://idisk.mac.com/crawfordhart-Public/nocup.jpg

One of the easiest ways to make a retouch like this look obviously wrong is to botch the edges when there needs to be some kind of geometric consistency to them, either as in the curve of the bench or the perspective drift along the sidewalk. It helps to define your areas with paths. Then, in the Make Selection dialogue in the Path Palette options, set the feather radius to a value that matches the overall focus of the image (I used 1.5 pixels). I used these three paths in various combinations by using add, subtract and intersect, to isolate each area so that I could clone and heal in them yet keep the edges crisp and real.

http://idisk.mac.com/crawfordhart-Public/paths.jpg

Once I cleaned up the sidewalk, I just dropped a dark blob in a multiply layer over the shadow area and trimmed it with a layer mask (relying again on the paths I'd drawn to help clip the edges.

There were a few stray pixels between the curve edge of the bench and the shadow, that stuck out like warts. A quick pass with the smudge tool at a 2 pixel radius made them go away.