What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Color and tonal corrections in face swapping


zaizaizzja

Member
Messages
11
Likes
0
I am planning to surprise my boyfriend with a picture where his face is on my body in this picture. (Maybe his friend's, too I haven't decided yet :) )
However, I have problems with getting the skin tones to match. I use 'match color' and every time that I've tried the face has ended up losing all of it's sharpness because the lighting is wrong. So I'm trying to find a picture where the lighting would match with this picture's. What kind of lighting would I have to find to get the best match? 600258_3111037669715_731061413_n_s1.jpg
 
Last edited:

IamSam

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Messages
22,721
Likes
13,258
zaizaizzja said:
So I'm trying to find a picture where the lighting would match with this picture's.
Yes, that's what you need to do.

zaizaizzja said:
What kind of lighting would I have to find to get the best match?
You would have to find one with the same lighting as the image you posted. You answered this yourself.

Please do not add any images of your boyfriend to this thread. If we need to explain anything further, we will use random images from the net.
 

Steve

Retired Administrator
Messages
7,868
Likes
1,506
Match colors in theory is a very nice tool, in practice, not so much.
And it doesn't do a thing for shadows and lighting.

Start by using a much larger image and get the colors right.
In this image I just adjusted Red Green and Blue to have the same highlight and shadow values

Also if you want a full body shot don't chop off the head and the feet.

adj.jpg

Now check out THIS tutorial and see if it helps.
 

IamSam

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Messages
22,721
Likes
13,258
Getting the same lighting is important as well as matching the colors as closely as possible.

You will need to use many different techniques and tools to create a convincing face swap. Adjustment layers, the Brush Tool, and layer masks.

Screen Shot 2015-06-29 at 11.41.42 PM.png

Why don't you post some of your efforts so we can see how your doing so far.
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
You know, when you carefully re-read the OP's original post, in spite of her talking about "match color", lighting and such things, it seems that her main complaint was that the added image "had ended up losing all of its sharpness". That sounds like a problem with the size (in pixels) of the image to be added. Let's see how she responds to what has already been posted.

Tom M
 

Paul

Former Member
Messages
12,879
Likes
7,023
When i try and balance out the colours and light tones i usually go with COLOUR BALANCE and then drop into shadows first then mid tones and usually end up sliding the lights around to finish off the effect.

wham.gif :thumbsup:
 

zaizaizzja

Member
Messages
11
Likes
0
You will need to use many different techniques and tools to create a convincing face swap. Adjustment layers, the Brush Tool, and layer masks.
I have a routine that is semi-refined using combinations of various tutorials. I do have some 200 face swaps under my belt but I still consider myself a newbie :) The color matching is my biggest Achilles' heel but I nabbed one day the match color -trick from some tutorial and it has yielded the best results so far.

Also if you want a full body shot don't chop off the head and the feet.
This is the only version I have of this picture 'cause this is from my friend's camera and this is how she sent it to me. I don't even know if there exists one with the full body.

This my 'best' effort so far with the 'match color' -technique. I'd like to note that one of my key steps is using a morphing software to make a 30/70 blend so you get some of the features of the
'base face'. That makes the facial expressions are extra important to me. 600258_3111037669715_731061413_n_s1.jpgBut as you can see it's just not what I wanted it to be :(
 
Last edited:

zaizaizzja

Member
Messages
11
Likes
0
Plus I'm using a CS4 since I got it from my friend for free and I am too frugal to invest in a new version As you can see the 'sharpness' if you will, is what I think is wrong in the face but I couuld be wrong BIL-TRUTHb.jpg
 
Last edited:

IamSam

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Messages
22,721
Likes
13,258
What morphing software are you using?
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
Since you asked about colors, my guess is that you applied some sort of yellow-green action or Instagram-like filter to the image, thereby changing the colors throughout the photo from anything one would ever encounter in the real world.

I appreciate that this is a novelty photo, and some people might even think of such effects as "creative" and "artistic", but they are not. Such effects began to look dated and amateurish about 5 years ago, after the first few million people applied exactly the same canned effect to their photos. A suggestion: Stick with reality colors. In case you are interested, here's an attempt to restore the colors that might have existed in a straight shot of the scene.

Tom M
 

Attachments

  • 600258_3111037669715_731061413_n_s1-tjm01-acr0-ps02a-698px_wide-02.jpg
    600258_3111037669715_731061413_n_s1-tjm01-acr0-ps02a-698px_wide-02.jpg
    254.6 KB · Views: 23
Last edited:

zaizaizzja

Member
Messages
11
Likes
0
In case you are interested, here's an attempt to restore the colors that might have existed in a straight shot of the scene.
Tom Mann Could you restore the colors in the original photo in page 1? The photo you did is my face swapped one
 
Last edited:

IamSam

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Messages
22,721
Likes
13,258
Could you restore the colors in the original photo in page 1? That is my face swapped one

The photo in post #1 has already been swapped...........with your face?

I was under the impression that you were a girl and your swapping your boyfriends face for your own.

zaizaizzja said:
I am planning to surprise my boyfriend with a picture where his face is on my body in this picture. (Maybe his friend's, too I haven't decided yet)
 

zaizaizzja

Member
Messages
11
Likes
0
The photo in post #1 has already been swapped...........with your face?
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was referring to the picture in post #13 being the swapped one. Post #1 is the original photo.
 
Last edited:

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
In a private message, @zaizaizzja asked me how I color corrected his image. Since others may be interested in this, I'm responding in the thread instead of by PM. Unfortunately, this was such a quick fix, I didn't bother to save the PSD file or any of the intermediate steps, so my comments are from memory only.

1. When I am confronted with a situation like this, the first thing I usually do is put a "levels adjustment layer" above the image, and work my way through each of the channels, moving the (upper) left-most and right-most sliders in to the point where the histogram is about to "take off" from near zero values, such as is shown in this post: https://www.photoshopgurus.com/foru...old-timers-post1533641714.html#post1533641714.

2. After I get the six color channel endpoints nailed down, I then return to the three central (aka, "gamma") sliders (ie, one for each color channel) and tweak the mid-level colors using these controls in this process of successive iteration to a good color appearance.

3. Steps #1 and #2 almost always result in an undesirable increases in contrast and saturation, so I typically add "brightness / contrast", and "vibrance / saturation" adjustment layers and reduce the contrast, vibrance and saturation (but not the brightness) till I get the image in the right ball park with respect to these variables.

4. If the skin tones are still too saturated in the red, I add a "Selective Color" adjustment layer, select the red channel, and move the cyan slider to the right of zero until the ruddy skin tones look reasonable.

5. If there still are color problems, I might bring out my "secret weapon", Color Mechanic, for very precise but quick adjustments of individual colors:
http://www.dl-c.com/site/products/buy-cm.php/
http://dl-c.com/Temp/downloads/Color Mechanic 2/CMReference_Manual.pdf


BTW, try to be very aware of differences in the color of the illuminating light in different areas of the image. This is often caused by mixed light sources. If I see that this is an issue in one of my pix, then I'll develop masks to separately select (say) the areas illuminated by very warm tungsten light vs the areas illuminated by my daylight color-balanced flash, and then apply the above steps separately to each of the two (or more) areas in the image to bring the areas to a common color balance, and then recombine them.

While I don't remember exactly what I used to correct your image, it was definitely along the lines described above. Not saving my adjustment layer stack is also why I'm not going to go through each of the above steps to cc the other version of the image, as you requested in one of your posts. My posting of a better cc'ed version was mostly done just to illustrate that one could actually recover decent colors, and that this would look better than that sickly Instagram-like yellow preset that was applied before you received the image.


HTH,

Tom M
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
PS - Because this color correction method uses lots of different adjustments, it is imperative that one work at 16 bpc (bits per channel) bit depth, not 8. At the very last step, then convert back to an 8 bpc JPG for posting.
 

Top