February 2013 Video Tutorial - Advanced Image Retouching

[Barbara B]

Advanced Image Retouching

Gary has pulled out all the stops this month: you’ll be walked through not just image editing in Xara Designer, but advanced image retouching. Significant areas of a target image are missing, but by first defining a process, and then by following it with Xara’s tools, you’ll be able to restore a photo exactly as a pro would with Xara. How about gaining a serious edge on a new professional skill? Get the tutorial files and and then post your excellent tiki retouching work here.

[angelize]

I enjoyed this months tutorial, maybe I'm the exception to the rule here but I liked the fact that it was a little longer. After I went through the tutorial I started playing with different colours and came up with a kind of tiki pop art piece

[stygg2003]

I enjoyed this months tutorial, maybe I'm the exception to the rule here but I liked the fact that it was a little longer. After I went through the tutorial I started playing with different colours and came up with a kind of tiki pop art piece

I like the tiki pop art Francis, not got round to doing this tut. yet and likewise, I don't mind at all it being a little longer. Love the colours Francis.

Stygg.

[Gare]

I LOVE what you did with this month's "assignment", Frances.

The ice cube tray was created to be fun (I think, wasn't there), so I'm pleased we see the fun, and extend that fun in our endeavors here.

Let me ask: was the colorizing more fun, or learning the retouching technique and more importantly the process of discovering, evaluating and choosing the right tools?

Because I could easily flip an addition real world (difficult) example image or two right here in about a week.



Something with people in the photo, and no chance to fake anything. I'd like our membership to seriously consider Xara as a retouching tool, while in the same mindset realizing it's not going to drive Adobe Systems out of business tomorrow. Quite honestly? I use Xara depending on the type of retouching because the zoom levels are better and large high res images can be worked on faster.

By the way, there's a long way around retouching the three images together. You use the Freehand tool to draw the area that needs replacing, and then put the shape to back, clipview it to a copy of the replacement area, and then feather, then position it. This gets you around having to make one image out of three to use the Clone tool. Attached is a whack I took at this method. Apologies in advance for the file size, but whenever I can I use PNGs and not JPEGS because PNGs use lossless compression/greatest possibly fidelity.

My Best,

Gary

[BeanPole]

Hi Gare!

Thank you for the tutorial. I had a chance to work on the imaging tutorial today. Here is my example.

[Gare]

I think you did very well, BeanPole. The bridge of the nose is a little flat, but this area is compl;etely up to the artist's interpretation because it doesn't really exist in any of the photos!

Did any of the "process" register with you?

IOW, are you ready to tackle a fresh photo problem based on your resurrection experience with this one?

-g

[BeanPole]

Hi Gare,

After such extensive surgery on the nose I think it will be fine, once the swelling goes down! I too did find the nose a little flat and wide, but decided to continue on with the tutorial.

Changing the colors was neat.

I would love to tackle a fresh photo!

Bring it on!

[Gare]

You got it!

Let this simmer with our community for around a week before I roll out a new image, okay?

If I don't pace myself, this is going to be a full-time job with a volunteer's wages!

You did excellently overall, BeanPole, right up there to the front of the class after not much time at all, pal!

My Best,

Gary

P.S. By suggesting a highlight at the top of the nose shape, you can reduce the swelling and learn something new, too. See my attached file.

[BeanPole]

I tried the highlight and it does look a little better.

[angelize]

was the colorizing more fun, or learning the retouching technique and more importantly the process of discovering, evaluating and choosing the right tools?

Most definitely the best part ( and this is the same for any retouching job I do) is the process of discovery evaluation and and coming up with right tools and method to fix a photo. I would love another real world example to practice on.

The feathered highlight to provide roundness to the nose is exactly what I did in my example because I thought the exact same thing, that the nose was too flat Great minds think alike! (and yes I know the rest of that saying )

Here is another bit of fun with the tiki this time I used a stained glass fractal plasma transparency and the embossing filter to get a sort of wood like texture and then cloned the resulting image three times. Each clone was recoloured using the hue slider on the photo tools and areas were erased out leaving an image that looked like it was painted. I grouped all layers and erased out the mouth and eyes to create a tiki mask. The wood texture is not perfect, it still looks a little soft but I like the end result.