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Removing Tattoo

Lesson 6 from: How to Use Frequency Separation for Retouching

Lisa Carney

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Lesson Info

6. Removing Tattoo

Lesson Info

Removing Tattoo

All right, now we're gonna talk about the tough solves. It's gonna be quick but you'll get the idea. I am not expecting any of you guys to be able to do this right away. This took me a while to do. But, it's the same idea of using other material, other people's pictures and, um, thinking about. So here's the job, and then I'm going to deconstruct it for you. I'm not going to rebuild it from scratch but I'm gonna deconstruct it. Time Millford shot this ad. It's beautiful. It's for a water bottle company. And, who knows, marketing reasons, whatever. They decided the tattoo was no bueno. Now, for just a second, so, he sends it to me and he's like "Can you take that tattoo out?" and I'm like "Ooo, eee, yeah, I can." and I'm like "Ahh, this new frequency separation thing, this should work." So I started it and it wasn't as easy as I thought, but it provided a huge breakthrough for me with the program. And, I'm going to walk you through it. It's the same idea of using other parts. File's a l...

ittle large because I like to build things big. Now, it took me two hours to do but it took me two hours to do because I had to figure it out. Like now, it would take me 15 minutes maybe to do this but, it's because I know how to do it now. The two hours was the figuring it out. So, before and after. Before and after. I also did a color correction on top of it to smooth it out a bit more. But, I'm going to turn that off for now. Let's unpack. Don't be scared, all right. (exclamatory singing) All right, so here's what we have. I started the frequency separation like normal and I started cloning. Or painting. And I realized in two seconds this wasn't gonna fly. I was like "Uh oh!" I'm a firm believer in Adobe Stock. I love Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock is my friend and I use it on most jobs. But, I don't use it the way people think I'm going to use it. I found a body on Adobe Stock with an arm in about as best of a position as I could find. Now, why I did that is 'cause I cannot paint, I can't render. If I could have drawn that muscle, I woulda done it by hand, but I'm not that good of a renderer. But, I love my stock. Okay? Paint, I apologize I didn't label all these layers. Painted the shoulder. Painted underneath. Painted a highlight. Painted his arm. This started getting tricky. His foreground arm and little, little. That one little layer is just a little bit here. I mean, I still had to paint, 'cause it wasn't the exact copy. Had I had a muscular man in my neighborhood or in my vicinity I would have shot him and said "Hey, could you just put your arm here" and then it woulda been much much much faster. You can do that with your iPhone. 'Cause do you see how blurry that was? I just need a blurry shot, I don't need a in focus shot. All right, again, a little foreground painting. I'm gonna close that up 'cause it's hard to look at. And then on the gray... I ain't gonna lie, The gray took a minute. That was cloning. But, think about the cloning, you guys, how hard is that? I don't have to worry about the color. I'm just cloning skin texture. That's all I have to do, okay? And then I got clever 'cause he's got water on him, right? Water beading. (gasp) What? I took... the water drops from here, lassoed it, copied it, moved em right there. I can't spell forearm. Droplets retouch gray copy. I just literally command a little lasso, copy, move. Lasso, copy, move. That was a good touch. Forearm patch. Forearm patch. I'm gonna pull this out so you can see it. I quite literally took his forearm... I'm gonna Command + J this a bunch so you can see it. I grabbed his fore... sorry. His forearm. And, used it, because it had more skin texture and just did a little teeny, tiny patch. Okay? And then a little flat gray. A little flat gray. So, right there. What's the flat gray for? Do you remember the wrinkles? So when I say flat gray, that's the color of 50% gray and it takes away wrinkles. So I just use it... again the screen's a little chicken. I painted it right there. Now, do you remember on the demo before I filled a whole layer with the color 50% gray and masked it in. You don't have to do that. You could quite literally pick in your foreground color the color 50% gray. Why is it not doing that? Saturation: zero. Anyway, you get the idea. 50% gray, saturation zero. Um and just hand paint it. It's more important for me that you know the idea. That that's the thing to do. All right, and then I did a little white highlight right there. This is me getting a little minutia looking. Because he had that hot crispy white thing, right? Right there on his forearm? Well, I painted that out. Well, how did I do that? Do you remember that red channel I pulled for the shadows on his feet? On the seamless dude? I did the exact same thing. I pulled a channel from the original but I used it for highlights instead. So, I pulled a channel to get the highlights. You can't pull the red channel for that by the way. You need something like the blue channel. I'm gonna grab the channel by its name, drag it to the "add a copy" icon. Command + L Lisa loves levels. And I want to darken it. Because I just want the highlights. Okay? And then I just put the highlights back in with white paint. How do I do that? After I made the image, Command click on the channel I just made. White fill forearm blue copy. Label your layers, please. Because two months from now you're not gonna remember what you did. And I used a color white. Gonna hide this so you can just see me painting. And I just painted the highlights in. Cool, so details back in. So, again, that job took me two hours. Now it would take me much much much less. So the takeaway here is for you guys to figure out what would you do if you had to solve this problem. How would you fix it? It's paint, or get the paint. I got the paint from Adobe Stock 'cause I can't paint forearms. So that's my class. That was a lot. I know most people's heads are spinning. If it was too much, take a breath, watch it again. You're gonna have to watch this like seven times I would say. You think seven's pretty fair? Excellent. And, if it's all went over your head it's cool, come back in a year and you'll be ready for it. Um, I am, um, I have a bunch of classes here at creative live. On the paperwork you'll have the how-to. There is a frequency separation fabric PDF available for you. I've got some actions which will do these for you. Get good, then get fast. I'm at lisa@lisacarney.com. Let me go backwards one more for that. I really don't want you to miss that. Why I want you to make sure you know how to get ahold of me is if you have a question, email me. Don't get mad, don't say bad things about me on the Internet. If you have a question, just say "Hey Lisa, what was that step number two?" and I'm here to help. Okay? So, thank you very very much. Y'all been great.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Frequency Separation Presentation & Notes
Frequency Separation Photoshop Actions
Leather Skin Texture

Ratings and Reviews

user-6180b9
 

Wow, what a great class, another one by Lisa Carney! This one kind of blew my mind in places, all the clever methods she shows. After watching the first couple chapters I paused the video because I suddenly realized I could use this method to fix a problem I had in one of my composites (removing some kids' sidewalk chalk patterns from some pavement) Lisa Carney is fantastic about showing the way she thinks, how she goes about solving problems. I personally find this very empowering, it makes me inspired to think creatively about tough photoshop issues I'm grappling with in my own projects. She says she does not provide a cookie cutter formula for solving a problem, the reason is the problems we'll be solving are different. What she's providing is way more valuable, it's the way of thinking about attacking a problem. I found the course to be paced perfectly. It assumes some base knowledge which is covered elsewhere. But she provides all the information you need here, you just may need to watch the videos a few times (and you'll pick up new stuff on each watching). I ended up joining the CreativeLive annual subscription, literally because I wanted to watch all of Lisa Carney's classes - I find that she packs in so much extra useful information, it almost doesn't matter what she's "officially" speaking about, I have found I will always come away amazed and enriched with her insights!

Mick van Meelen
 

Lisa is all over the place but in a good way. I love her enthusiasm, she clearly loves her job and she makes you want to be a better photoshopper. Just see it, try it and see it again, that worked for me.

a Creativelive Student
 

Fast paced and great education! Not for the beginner, but definitely worth your time to learn these techniques and speed up your editing. I love Lisa's handouts, very visual and detailed. And I love being able to rewatch Lisa's videos when I get stuck.

Student Work

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