Best way to get rid of "furry ears"?

GHP

GHP

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Gary
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Hi All.
I was in a forest on Sunday, and I grabbed a quick shot, unplanned of a friend who was backlit quite strongly.
As you can see, his ears are backlit, and appear quite furry.
He likes the shot, but wants me to get rid of the fuzzy bits on his ears.
Suggestions on how best to do it please?
Here's the shot:


Furry ears (1 of 2) by Gary Hickling, on Flickr

And the offending ears :
[url=https://flic.kr/p/AnuHkc]Furry ears (2 of 2) by Gary Hickling, on Flickr[/URL]

The shot was awful SOOC, as the woods were dark, dappled sunlight bright, etc, etc.
I've already done some editing, but not sure best way to do this bit.
If anyone wants to help, I would be grateful.

Thanks,
Gary.
 
Gary zoom in on the ears, I think its more a case of burnout than back-light and its the actual ear that's been lost. the back-lit hairs are negligible.


A simple clone with a soft edge brush.

Probably not the way to go on a full sized image that is going to be printed.


13560-1446056516-dc19b8a6cfb528354447d3924e67d8e1.jpg


Rhodese.
 
arthurbikemad said:
I'm too slow... See post 3. :)
Click to expand...

Thank you. Thankfully, a nice soft background will help !

Rhodese said:
Gary zoom in on the ears, I think its more a case of burnout than back-light and its the actual ear that's been lost. the back-lit hairs are negligible.


A simple clone with a soft edge brush.

Probably not the way to go on a full sized image that is going to be printed.


13560-1446056516-dc19b8a6cfb528354447d3924e67d8e1.jpg


Rhodese.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I have tried a couple of methods, just wondering which one others would suggest,
It's never going to be printed, just used on his Farcebook I should think !
Thanks again.
Any-one else?
 
Pen tool to protect/redefine the shape of the ear (the edit above looks dodgy on camera right because it's taken a chunk of ear off). Clone out the hairs using the soft background. Invert selection and rebuild ears using clone and/or paintbrush.
 
That's really good, thank you.
It's not a technique I'm good at, so I'll go and practice I think.
Thanks again.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I notice you did the easier ear :D
Click to expand...
:D

The pen tool takes some learning...especially how to make complex curves that reverse directions. But, it's a pretty essential tool for advanced editing IMO; definitely worth learning.
BTW, I made the selection area extra large so I could mask/feather it into the BG better.
 
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Just to add I'd echo using the pen tool for initial selection but once selection is made a good way to get a cleaner edge than cloning when you have a plain or blurry background like this is to duplicate the selection so you have the person isolated and then use liquify or warp on the underlying layer to push in the edges slightly which keeps it looking more organic.

on the below image...
  1. Duplicate the image
  2. create a selection with the pen tool isolating the head
  3. right click on the path and select to convert path to selection
  4. for this image size feathered edge 3 pixels
  5. with the selection active press ctrl+j to duplicate selection to new layer.
  6. click on the background and use the liquify tool to push in the edge past the selection, it' takes a wee bit of guess work as you only see the background layer in liquify but it's fairly easy to work out, just don't be too heavy handed and sometimes best to use a few passes.
  7. mask out any unwanted areas from the middle liquify layer
result...
22559378701_13824a156c_k-edit.jpg


Another tip which you may or may not want to use which I picked up from a video I can't remember is if you know a subjects being strongly back lit a bit of black gaff tape on the back of the ears stops them glowing red. Not an every day use but if you're doing headshots like this it does make a difference.
 
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Thats a pretty informative video, might need to look at more of his stuff!
 
im fairly new to PS and just watched one on enhancing eye color and wow, the difference was amazing.
 
CraigDHD said:
Just to add I'd echo using the pen tool for initial selection but .....
Click to expand...
What happened to his earlobe?

You do make a good point... the liquify tool is good for "taming" hairs but leaving more "context." I did this in less than a minute with just liquify, no masks/selection/layers/etc.
Untitled-1.jpg
 
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sk66 said:
What happened to his earlobe?

You do make a good point... the liquify tool is a good tool for "taming" hairs but leaving more "context." I did this in less than a minute with just liquify, no masks/selection/layers/etc.
Click to expand...

yeah just reedited post to do proper selection, rushed with the liquify and pushed down where I shoulda pushed up, should be right now, pearls of rushing :D
 
WOW, thanks for all the (quite confusing) help!
One of my processing problems is that when I have something specific to do, there seems to be more than a few ways of doing it, some easier, and some not.
However, they often get the same (ish) end result.
This is why I get confused. (It doesn't take a lot !)
As for the red ears, there was no chance for me to tape the back with duct tape (seriously?) as it really was a test shot to test the light.
The light was rubbish, so we found a better spot.
As said, the original shot was truly bad, but my mate asked me to see what I could do with it, and here we are.
He wanted a few zits removed, red ears fixed, furry ears fixed, and his hair (where it's blown out) fixed.
So, not a lot to ask then !!
If there was a way of posting the NEFs on here, I would, and have a mini competition to see who does it best.
(Hmm, now there's a thought! ) hahaha

And thanks for the link to those tutorials, they seem really useful. I may well buy some sort of PS/LR course, as it would benefit me a lot I think.
 
GHP said:
One of my processing problems is that when I have something specific to do, there seems to be more than a few ways of doing it, some easier, and some not.
However, they often get the same (ish) end result.
This is why I get confused. (It doesn't take a lot !)
Click to expand...

Yes, that's very common with editing. And it's why threads on how to do something occasionally become heated :)

Basically, what you're trying to do is affect some pixels and not others. Everybody has their own favourite way of doing this. Sometimes you can use one method for ages until somebody shows you a far simpler/quicker/prettier method.

I bet there's a way of doing this using the calculations function too. But stay away from that unless you have a whole afternoon free.

 
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