Stages Making Face Graphic by Gale Franey The Graphic Groove Website

This is the original photograph.

This photo was taken by a friend, and was being thrown away due to its very poor quality. The poor lighing magnified shadows and made the make up look extremely harsh. It was taken at an angle that emphasized the jaw, giving the model a very masculine appearance, whereas she actually has a very sweet heart shaped face.

So when my friend told me this image was being thrown away, I thought it would be a challenge for me to see if it was possible to improve it, and possibly resurect it using the wonders of Photoshop.

I considered this an interesting challenge. Scroll below to see the various changes it underwent in Photoshop.

	This is the original photograph. This photo was taken by a friend, and was being thrown away due to its very poor quality. The poor lighing magnified shadows and made the make up look extremely harsh. It was taken at an angle that emphasized the jaw, giving the model a very masculine appearance, whereas she actually has a very sweet heart shaped face. So when my friend told me this image was being thrown away, I thought it would be a challenge for me to see if it was possible to improve it, and possibly resurect it using the wonders of Photoshop. I considered this an interesting challenge. Scroll below to see the various changes it underwent in Photoshop.
	Using Photoshop, I made a second copy of the image, so that I now had two layers. I started by using the healing brush to remove the wrinkle between the eyes and to also mute the harsh makeup lines of the eye shadow and the outer edge of the eyebrow pencil. I also softened the lines underneath the eyes, but allowed some softer lines to remain, in order to keep a realistic appearance. I removed the hair from the bottom left side of her face, which appeared messy and detracted from the beautiful line of her cheek. Then I began experimenting with all of the many Blending Modes, superimposing the image over top of itself. After comparing different choices, I chose Screen Mode, which seemed to brighten up the face and give it a very soft feminine appearance. The next step was to fix the lips. Using the Clone Tool and also by making a selection around them, I chose Hue and Saturation to change the color to a brighter, more pleasing feminine hue. If you look closely you will see that I closed a little gap between the lips that in the original photo was showing the teeth.
	Then came the very tricky and painstaking task of changing the jaw line to a more feminine heart-shaped line. To do this I again made a new copy of a flattened version of the image so far and chose: Edit, Transform, Distort to mold the jaw into a more pleasing line. Scroll to the image above to compare the jaw of both images. You will notice quite a marked difference between the two versions. I then had to clone some more hair on the right side of the model's neck, as a gap was created by skewing the image. Scroll below to view the preparation and various versions of graphic ideas I came up with after having repaired the photograph.
	I then faded the colors of the face in preparation for overlaying some graphic elements. The fading was done so that the graphic elements would stand out from the face. Scroll below to see the three different graphic ideas I came up with.