Shiny foreheads....tips on removing??

Kevin CTMP

I recently shot a wedding in a church with no air conditioning on a 90 degree day!....needless to say, I have lots of red faces and shiny foreheads in the formals.....the bride had all of her make-up air-brushed, so lucky for me it held up great .....but the poor groom was constantly wiping his forehead..lol........anyone have any ps tips for removing forehead shine?.....i've tried heal brush and even coloring over it with the opacity turned down....but I'm not quite satisfied....any suggestions?

kwcrow

Kevin CTMP wrote: »

I recently shot a wedding in a church with no air conditioning on a 90 degree day!....needless to say, I have lots of red faces and shiny foreheads in the formals.....the bride had all of her make-up air-brushed, so lucky for me it held up great .....but the poor groom was constantly wiping his forehead..lol........anyone have any ps tips for removing forehead shine?.....i've tried heal brush and even coloring over it with the opacity turned down....but I'm not quite satisfied....any suggestions?

I would suggest the healing brush or the clone stamp tool. For subtle shine removal, I sometime use shadow highlights with the middle setting of highlights set to 0 or 1 and the amount between 50 and 100. lower the radius between 0 and 20 to cover more. The problem is if it is already blown out, you have no color to work with.

ziggy53

kwcrow wrote: »

... The problem is if it is already blown out, you have no color to work with.

Correct. If you blow out even one color channel you may not sufficiently recover the color.


There are 2 types of shiny skin that i typically deal with:

1) Bright skin, this is typically what I get when the subject does not have makeup on and the light is fairly contrasty.

2) Blown skin tones, where the skin is so light, because of a reflection from the skin usually, that detail is lost.

For the first case, where there is still visible skin detail but the tones are obviously different from the surrounding skin, I'll use a technique to selectively replace the tones similar to the link below:

http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/quick-skin-tone-retouching-in-photoshop/

For the second case, I use a multiple of techniques to "repair and replace" the missing tones and detail/texture. I will often start with the technique in the above link to paste in some similar color, and then use the "Clone" tool in PhotoShop to finish the job with samples from similar areas that are correct. This can also work for "blotchy" tones caused by uneven lighting like under a tree with the sun peeking through the leaves.

MarkR

I have had good luck using the clone tool (on a separate layer, always!) set to "darker" blend mode. This will ensure that only the highlights will be cloned over, which will usually provide a more natural look.