How to Apply Makeup in Photoshop
Have you ever wanted to see what you’d look like in various sorts of make-up, but never wanted to spend the money on cosmetic products? There’s a relatively painless way to test those cool colors and looks without spending needlessly on eyeliner and powders. Well…it’s simple if you happen to know Photoshop, or know someone who is conversant in the software. Applying Photoshop makeup is about as delicate a process as applying real makeup itself, so you really have to focus on subtlety and learn to put the opacity way down on all brushes and effects used. Here are some hints and tips as far as putting some digital makeup onto a photo.
• Immediately create two duplicates of the photo; name one layer “luminosity” and the other “copy”. The copy layer will be where you will be making facial edits, while the luminosity layer is saved until later for a final effect.
• First, begin removing all the lit tle imperfections from the skin using the Healing Brush tool. Edit out blemishes, scars, wrinkles, and dark under-eye circles. Consider this a sort of digital foundation.
• Then you’ll need to do a little blurring. Use the Blur tool set to a middle-low intensity (15-20 percent is good) and use it all over the skin, being careful not to blur the eyelids, eyebrows, eyelashes, hairline or lips. Sometimes a weird texture shows up due to pixilation, and it should be ironed out with the Blur tool.
• Use Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation to enhance the photo’s colors. Play with these to your liking, as there’s really no wrong way to apply these effects. I’ve found making the image slightly lighter helps smooth out highlights and blending even more.
• Next, get out the Dodge and Burn tools and make sure to set each at a low concentration (like 3-5 percent), Midtones, and an airbrush effect. Use the Burn tool to very d elicately darken shadows and lighten highlights. Darken the shadows under the chin and in the inner corners of the eyes a couple times, and then lightly strengthen the shadows around the nose, under the lips, and in the corners of the mouth.
• Use the Dodge tool to lighten up the highlights on the nose, chin, forehead, and above the cheekbones. Highlights must be kept even finer than the shadows because you’ll end up with what look like white lines drawn across the face. If necessary, use the Blur tool on these highlights to blend them a little more evenly.
• Now comes the part where you begin adding the makeup. Make a new layer and name it “eyeshadow”, because that’s exactly what you’re going to be including. Decide the color you want for the eyeshadow and reset the Paint Brush size appropriately with opacity of about 15 percent. Select the area above the eye, up to the eyebrow, and a little past the outer corner of the eye us ing the Lasso tool. Draw within this area, and add color a stroke at a time, putting the most vibrant spots nearest the eyelid. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and experiment with the blur until you find the level of smoothness you like. Obviously, do this with both eyes. There’s your eyeshadow.
• Start another layer and call it “eyeliner”. Pick a brush dimension that is about the same width as the part of the eyelid where liner is typically applied and then select your color. Set the opacity higher this time – around 70 percent. Draw around most of the eye, leaving the inner corner uncovered. Go back in with the Eraser tool set to a low intensity and size and gently fade some of the liner away from the tear duct area. Bring down the opacity on this layer and run the Blur tool over the lines while it’s set on a low opacity.
• Give the eyebrows a touch more arch with the Liquify tool (or, rather, the Pucker tool). I’m not discussing how to do plastic surgery in Photoshop with the Liquify tool…just makeup. If you want to play with the sizes of the eyes or lips, go for it.
• Make another layer and call it “lips”. Use the Paint Brush and draw around and fill in the lips with a solid black. Choose either the Overlay or Soft Light setting for that layer and play with the opacity if the color is too vibrant. This will result in red lipstick, so if you want a different color, you will need to tinker with tints other than black to get a different effect.
• Make yet another layer and name it “blush”. Choose a rosy-red color (kind of like what your tongue is) and set the Paint Brush to a large, low-opacity setting (like less than 9 percent). Brush it once over the cheekbones and blur using Gaussian Blur if it looks too solid.
• Touch up the hair if need be using the Lasso tool and the Levels, Curves and Hue/Saturation tools mentioned before.
• Change the eye color by selecting the pupils and irises with the Lasso tool, copying it and pasting it again (will paste in place on a new layer). Rename the layer “eyes”. Hit Ctrl+U to open the Hue/Saturation window and then check the “Colorize” box. Move the topmost slider to your liking and then use a small 100 percent opacity eraser to remove color from the pupil and any glow spots on the eyes.
• Remember that extra layer named “luminosity”? Set that layer to the Luminosity setting and change the opacity of the layer to about 40 or 50 percent. It softens the entire image in a very lovely way.
That’s about it, really. These results are all very slight changes on their own, but when used mutually in the same image, create a vast improvement. If it looks like your model is really wearing makeup, then you’ve succeeded in employing delicacy to digitally augment a photo with makeup. Keep in m ind you’ll probably have to do most of these changes by first zooming in by around 1200 percent, and said changes can be applied to full-body snapshots or portraits. Plus, if you’re a professional artist, you can use this in a graphic design resume as a sample of photo re-touching. If you want to have a lot of fun with this, Photoshop some makeup on to a male friend’s face and put the picture on Facebook with a caption like, “Jeremy won the bet that night”.