Seam fix

Fusion

I was in a flower mood, and decided to dig up an old image of a rose, to make a hat

Note that I reduced a shadow from the model, but still left a hint of it, because it gives an image a nice 3d feel. Also, I had to draw a new shadow on her face. To mimic a correct shadow-falling, you need to reconstruct the lighting conditions, even if you do that with other objects by the hand. I didn’t, because I’m lazy, but you should: when making up this types of images, it is important  to watch for physical credibility of objects fused together in a new scene. Also, the lighting on the rose was different than the lighting on model image, so it’s still not a 100% believable.

Speaking of believability, aside from this picture… “Scrap-book” type of  collages is what they used to do a lot in vintage advertising, mainly because they didn’t have a better way to create new scenes (now we have genius CGI studios, well, those working in the 50-s didn’t). But there’s more to it than just a design faux pas. Actually, when you want to emphasize some object apart from others, one of the ways to do it, is to put it into your image in a rather “wrong” way, so that the audience starts feeling how this object stands out. It is one of the ” forgivable” design mistakes, a mistake committed on purpose for the sake of attention drawing.

Digital makeup

When applying digital eyeshadow (here I did it simply with a brush in “color” mode), don’t forget to mask out the lashes:

I used 800% magnification and a 1 px brush to mask out each lash.

Red Shadow

I’m not sure how this is happening, but many of my images have reddish tint in shadows, which is particularly annoying under nose or eyelashes. This is what I mean:

I personally suspect that this has to do with sensor or/and with a lens. It’s a digital problem.

Correcting this problem has become a mechanic routine with every image I retouch. It starts with a feathered selection of course. Sometimes I use Hue/Saturation tool, where I darken the reds. Sometimes I use Selective Color tool, where I also work on reds, by increasing Cyan and darkening. I’m sure there are more educated ways to work it with channels and calculations.