Updates by Email
RSSPhoto Retouching: Alicia Silverstone… And You?
If you’ve ever encountered my lack of fashion sense in the real world, you know that I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with not looking like you stepped out of a magazine, but in order to learn how to retouch photos with the GIMP, I’ve had to pick someone to practice on. Because they are really easy to find, I figured that I’d try to enhance some of those pictures of celebrities when they get caught looking like the rest of us.
Here’s a picture of Alicia Silverstone that I retouched. To see the original from Top Socialite’s Celebrities Without Makeup Page, hover your mouse over the picture
I’m no pro and Ms. Silverstone can afford way better retouchers, so I gave up with a “good enough” before I wasted too many hours on it. I’m trying to learn how to retouch things while preserving natural skin texture, but the original photo was a little too pixelated to get any real detail out of even if I had the skill. You can see where I gave up near the hairline, but I think the eyes, eyebrow, and that little bit of hair over the ear show that I’m making progress.
Can You Help Me Out?
Retouching celebrity pictures feels pointless because it’s unlikely that they would ever see the results or care if they did. If I know that someone is going to see the result, I’m more likely to spend time on it, so I’d like to ask a little favor:
If you have a photo that you would let me take a shot at retouching, I would really appreciate the practice.
This is free, and the worse the photo, the better the practice. I know it might be embarrassing for some of you to send me bad pictures of yourself, but I wouldn’t think of putting the results on my site without your permission because I respect your privacy and recognize you as the owner of your pictures. You would be doing me a big favor by helping me to learn how to enhance photos, and hopefully you’ll end up with a picture that you really like.
If you’re game, drop me a comment or use my contact page. The best photos to send are the ones where you think, “This would be a great picture if only [insert issue here].”
And you know that I think your fine just the way you are.
Thanks for your help.
Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article
May 20th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I think you are doing an awesome job.
I have been a designer for 10 years and am a photoshop man. However I have just downloaded GIMP with the intention of learning it and then offering a free email graphics course to newbies with GIMP being at the center. I love the idea of people creating professional graphics totally free.
I’ll dig around for a bad photo of myself and send you a link.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
are you training for a new career as a photo retoucher?
May 20th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Excellent job. You even did eyelashes and everything! I find myself hovering on and off of it really quick to see what all has been changed.
How long does something like this generally take?
May 20th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
@Forest: Thanks! I’ve never used photoshop or any of the art tools because of their insane price tags, so I use the open source tools like GIMP and Inkscape. One thing I envy about photoshop is the liquify tool, which GIMP sorely lacks.
@Yo sis: Is that a career? If I can do that all day at home, I wouldn’t mind.
@n0ia: Thanks. I think it looks ok until you hover and see the changes. Then, the original starts looking weird to me. I would say that this took me a couple of hours, but when I care about the results, it can take twice as long.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I don’t know if this is helpful?
http://docs.gimp.org/en/plug-in-iwarp.html
Aparently that is the closest tool to liquify in Gimp.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I’ve used iwarp, but you can’t edit with it real time. You can only edit with it in a small preview and then apply the changes, making detail work with it nothing but frustrating.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
If you have any other photos of Alicia Silverstone, please post them.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Have you ever tried Portrait Professinal? Great program. You should take a look. I think it’ll be better to use versus photoshop at the start.
http://www.portraitprofessional.com/
I use this program to start then pull into Photoshop with layering to get the original background(s).
May 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
A project to make ugly peope hotter? Jon you are a true humanitarian.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:54 am
If you haven’t seen this site, it’s good for what you’re lookign for. THey have monthly photo retouching contests. There’s also a forum that goes over software, tips for retouching, tutorials, etc. Give it a look.
http://www.retouchpro.com/
There are a lot of good ‘crappy’ images there to retouch…and not just of people.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:17 am
The retouching work you have done on this photograph looks excellent, I was wondering how you did the hovering over to show the before and after photo. I have a similar site and would love to be able to show the before and after photos in this way. I use Photoshop Elements because as you say the full version of Photoshop is a little pricey, again great job!
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Wow that’s impressive. I’m wondering why you got rid birthmark though.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Ha. I honestly didn’t even realize that it was a birthmark.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:51 am
lol
August 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
very nice!!! I’ll look for an bad picture for you, just for practice. Ha!
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Great job.