How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?

How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?

I get credit for "taking good pictures" because, unbeknownst to the female
recipients, before sending office-taken photos to them, I often clean up
blemishes and wrinkles with "Photo! Editor" Windows freeware.

My problem is sometimes the touchup is visible because it's just "too
smooth" so what I do to hide the fact is I run a series of IrvanView
"sharpen" and "blur" actions ... which seems to do the trick.

But, I wonder.

What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits of
female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?

Tom wrote:

> How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?
>
> I get credit for "taking good pictures" because, unbeknownst to the female
> recipients, before sending office-taken photos to them, I often clean up
> blemishes and wrinkles with "Photo! Editor" Windows freeware.
>
> My problem is sometimes the touchup is visible because it's just "too
> smooth" so what I do to hide the fact is I run a series of IrvanView
> "sharpen" and "blur" actions ... which seems to do the trick.
>
> But, I wonder.
>
> What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits of
> female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?


You gets what you pay for (or can steal... ain't limewire a wonderful
thing?)

You need better image manipulation software, CS3 or similar, and
experience in using it. No short cuts work.

Cal

"Tom" <twilson3@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:wm1bk.9452$89.7078@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com...

> How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?
> What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits
> of
> female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?

Most of the women in my office are total babes plus, I'm a pretty good
photographer--- so no image manipulation is necessary ;-)

Tom wrote:
> How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?
>
> I get credit for "taking good pictures" because, unbeknownst to the female
> recipients, before sending office-taken photos to them, I often clean up
> blemishes and wrinkles with "Photo! Editor" Windows freeware.
>
> My problem is sometimes the touchup is visible because it's just "too
> smooth" so what I do to hide the fact is I run a series of IrvanView
> "sharpen" and "blur" actions ... which seems to do the trick.

It's easier and better to do a more subtle touchup, than try
and retropectively hide an unsubtle touchup.

BugBear

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008 02:55:33 -0700, Tom <twilson3@hotmail.com> wrote:

>How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?

>What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits of
>female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?
I just let them see how ugly they really look.... Preferably snap a
picture of them when they got to come into work around 5am after
working late the night before.... That way their eyes are usually
wide-open when they see the camera and their mouth ends up being open
as they hollar out "Put that down!"

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008 02:55:33 -0700, Tom <twilson3@hotmail.com> wrote Re
How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?:

>My problem is sometimes the touchup is visible because it's just "too
>smooth" so what I do to hide the fact is I run a series of IrvanView
>"sharpen" and "blur" actions ... which seems to do the trick.

Are you re-saving the image between each sharpen/blur cycle?

On Jul 3, 7:24*am, "J.H. Holliday" <doc@okcorral> wrote:
> "Tom" <twils...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:wm1bk.9452$89.7078@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com...
>
> > How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?
> > What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits
> > of
> > female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?
>
> Most of the women in my office are total babes plus, I'm a pretty good
> photographer--- so no image manipulation is necessary ;-)

I divorced mine. smilie

On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:34:48 -0500, Caesar Romano wrote:
>>My problem is sometimes the touchup is visible because it's just "too
>>smooth" so what I do to hide the fact is I run a series of IrvanView
>>"sharpen" and "blur" actions ... which seems to do the trick.
>
> Are you re-saving the image between each sharpen/blur cycle?

I was wondering about that. At the moment, I actually run two blurs and one
sharpen. All in the same cycle.

I was wondering if a sharpen and then a blur is exactly the opposite (is
it?) algorithm?

But, the only problem is the picture gets grainy. A bit too grainy since
I've already resized to 640x480 at 72dpi.

That brings up another question ... do you edit the ORIGINAL (8mpixel)
image and then shrink to an emailable size or do you shrink and then fix
blemishes and wrinkles and spots and flash correction?

Does anyone have a freeware blemish/wrinkle correction tutorial technique
published?

"Tom" <twilson3@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:wm1bk.9452$89.7078@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com...
> How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?

> What steps do YOU take to hide the fact you've cleaned up your portraits
> of
> female coworkers in order to make them appear better in your pics?
Some suggestions:

Get Vicman Photo! Editor. It has a very good submodule called Makeup which
does an excellent job of removing blemishes without being obvious. It also
has a warp submodule which I have used to "thin out" extra wide cheeks,
extra chins, etc.

http://www.vicman.net/vcwphoto/

For more control, get Paint.net. It can do layers and layers allow you to be
much more subtle.

http://www.getpaint.net/

M

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008 10:16:34 -0500, M.L. wrote:

>> How do you hide the fact you fixed blemishes and wrinkles on women?

> Vicman's Photo Toolkit has excellent blemish removal and correction
> tools that make it unnecessary to over-smooth photos.
> http://www.photo-toolkit.com/

It's good to know the recommended freeware touchup tool is Vicman's "Photo!
Editor" which is what I already use.

What I really am looking for is how you hide the smoothing that goes on.
For example, if you remove a wrinkle, you get, by necessity, a smoother
face but it's too smooth, too blurry. Too homogeneous in the pixels.

So, I sharpen. That makes it look a little less homogenious. And then I
blur. Both with Irfanview.

I was wondering if there was a better tool that masked the smoothing that
occurs when I remove wrinkles with Vicman Photo! Editor (which is the
successor of Vicman's photo toolkit).

Is there a blemish correction tutorial out there yet?