Rutt's Butt

rutt · August 2, 2004

OK, Lynn. You asked for it. As you said before, I'm an man and don't know anything about makeup. What should happen to my challenge candidate to make it generally more wonderful? This is really not my usual sort of topic and in fact, my particular brand of PS knowledge is probably 180 degrees away from what's required here. I'd like to see a little more roundness here and there if you know what I mean. What else? Are the skin blemishes a problem or a asset? But first off, I think roundness is what we are after, no?

DoctorIt · August 2, 2004

monochrome all the way!

rutt · August 2, 2004

DoctorIt wrote:

monochrome all the way!

That's what happens after I give up. Making the color work is harder, but more rewarding if possible.

rutt · August 2, 2004

rutt wrote:

That's what happens after I give up. Making the color work is harder, but more rewarding if possible.

With a little help from a FM denizen.

lynnma · August 2, 2004

rutt wrote:

With a little help from a FM denizen.

Rutt.. this is lookin damn good without my help... it's your butt rutt.. and it's good.:D

Andy · August 2, 2004

does anybody have a cold towel?
tsssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

that's hot

wxwax · August 3, 2004

rutt wrote:

With a little help from a FM denizen.

Wow, they did a great job on her skin. Any idea what they did to make it look so good?

dkapp · August 3, 2004

wxwax wrote:

Wow, they did a great job on her skin. Any idea what they did to make it look so good?

I'd like to know too. I've done a few portrait style shots this weekend with my 50mm f/1.8, and I got too much detail. When I try to smooth it out, the skin starts to look like plastic.

Dave

PerezDesignGroup · August 3, 2004

wxwax wrote:

Wow, they did a great job on her skin. Any idea what they did to make it look so good?

I can take a couple of guesses here...

The area was selected and a gaussian blur was applied to smooth out the skin.
The area was fixed using a really big healing brush.
The area was fixed using the clone brush ( this would take wayyy too long I think).
Neat Image might have helped out too. (The image below was filtered in Neat Image with the "remove all noise" setting.

Just my .04 cents.

PerezDesignGroup · August 3, 2004

Another way to skin a butt -er-cat. In this image, I made a small selection and applied a gaussian blur to smooth the skin. I then healed the rest using that sample blurred sample. For the edges, I used a soft clone brush set at 30%/30%.

rutt · August 3, 2004

Pretty close. Here is the story:

Heal blemishes
Make duplicate layers - flesh, everything else, with flesh below
Use Neat Image on flesh layer
Erase the flesh from the top layer, so the Neat Image flesh shows through.
Select background in top layer and darken it with CMYK curves (LAB would be easier.)
Sharpen the top layer (which now has no flesh) to make the suit pop.
Make tons of puns and other bad jokes. Wink wink nudge nudge.

I think this story might not be quite over. As usual, there seem to be a lot of ways to, er, skin this particular cat. But it certainly is interesting to get to see what the pros can do and get some insight into how. In this case my image was enough fun to make them want to play.

PerezDesignGroup · August 3, 2004

rutt wrote:

Pretty close. Here is the story:

Sweet technique! Very creative and results are pro. Thanks for the tip!

rutt · August 3, 2004

PerezDesignGroup wrote:

Another way to skin a butt -er-cat. In this image, I made a small selection and applied a gaussian blur to smooth the skin. I then healed the rest using that sample blurred sample. For the edges, I used a soft clone brush set at 30%/30%.

This also looks great. I'm so glad playing with this image is so much fun. It means I'm getting a lot of great help with it and learning something I didn't really know.

Please explain more exactly how and why use used the clone brush on the edges. Thanks.

wxwax · August 3, 2004

Very educational. I'd put a Gaussian blur on her, but it didn't make the skin look nearly as nice as you gentlemen have. I don't have Neat Image, I use Noise Ninja. I'll have to try it and see if I can duplicate your results.

rutt · August 3, 2004

wxwax wrote:

Very educational. I'd put a Gaussian blur on her, but it didn't make the skin look nearly as nice as you gentlemen have. I don't have Neat Image, I use Noise Ninja. I'll have to try it and see if I can duplicate your results.

It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it.

lynnma · August 3, 2004

rutt wrote:

It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it.

OH dear... bin on an ice cream bender.....

sorry rutt.. couldn't resist

p.s. by the way.. Rutt did the post processing alone.. I did'nt help... I missed out the "out" when typing reply.. too much wine with dinner.

rutt · August 3, 2004

lynnma wrote:

OH dear... bin on an ice cream bender.....sorry rutt.. couldn't resist

Laughing Out Loud (for real.)

Nobody can keep his/her hands off this one. One of the FM pros did this:

lynnma · August 3, 2004

:roll :roll

rutt wrote:

Laughing Out Loud (for real.)

Nobody can keep his/her hands off this one. One of the FM pros did this:

rutt · August 3, 2004

Now, now, Lynn. I'm never going to see 50 again, but I can keep it under control. Mostly.

lynnma · August 3, 2004

rutt wrote:

Now, now, Lynn. I'm never going to see 50 again, but I can keep it under control. Mostly.

Right... I'm back under control Rutt

PerezDesignGroup · August 4, 2004

rutt wrote:

Please explain more exactly how and why use used the clone brush on the edges. Thanks.

First I took a sample of the butt and gaussian blurred it to get the skin leveled. Then I used the healing brush from that sample. The only reason I shifted over to the Clone brush around the edges is because the healing brush acts really strange around drastically different areas like the area where the skin meets the surf. This is probably my bad. I'm not an avid user of the healing brush so I probably have a setting out of whack

But that's why. Plus I really, really love the clone brush. I've done lotsa damage with it in my time.

DoctorIt · August 4, 2004

lynnma wrote:

Right... I'm back under control Rutt

wow Lynn, that was kinda skeery! I almost didn't want to keep looking at this thread...

rutt · August 4, 2004

A totally different take
I asked for help with the half assed image here, on FM, and on Dan Margulis' Color Theory mailing list. The FM post produced the information I needed most, how to make the skin smoother and more beautiful. In fact, I got quite a bit more help with this image than I ever would have guessed.

The CT mailing list question was a little different. I wondered how to add contrast and varying saturation in order to make the subject look rounder, more 3D. It was shot under very flat light (fog actually) depending on what I was looking for at the moment, this was a problem.

Dan has a section in his book about plate blending to make things look rounder. His example uses fruit, food, flowers, and clothes, and is pretty dramatic. (Plate Blending as Poetry) But this is one of the most challenging topics that Dan teaches and I have to admit I've never really mastered it. And given what I do understand about it, the application to this shot is not obvious.

Anyway, I got a very interesting reply on the topic. Dan also replied. Keep in mind that these people are trying to solve a different and much more subtle problem than the obvious cosmetic issues that I've already posted a recipe for. Ideally, these techniques would be applied before the glamorizing steps and amplify their effect.

Making the color theory and glamorizing work together has a lot of moving parts. Deciding when to stop is a good test of the enough-is-enough gauge. Still all knowledge is useful so long as it's used appropriately.

Rutt's Butt

Comments