Earlier today, @sleslie issued the following helpful suggestion on Twitter:
this entire site ripe for the #ds106 picking, but this page especially needs some Groomifying http://www.retronaut.co/2012/02/mens-jump-suits-1970s/- paging @noiseprofessor
A treasure trove of amazing content! I set to work grafting Jim Groom’s head onto this bearded man in a jump suit, and while doing so, decided to grab some screen shots for a tutorial.
Process-wise, here’s how I approach the problem. First, I take a good look at the source material. I look at the colors (what colors are represented, and in what ratios?), the saturation (is it washed out, candy-colored, or somewhere in between?), the clarity (are the lines crisp, or is the image muddy/dirty/noisy/old), the exposure (how white are the whites, how dark the darks?), the light (how is the image?). Once you have an idea of what the source picture is made of, you can set to work adding elements and trying to make them blend as seamlessly as possible into the original. I’m using Photoshop CS4, but most image editing tools share a similar set of tools.
Step 1 – The Source
The image isn’t very saturated. There’s a lot of red. There’s a strong light coming from the right. It’s old, perhaps a magazine add, so the lines aren’t very crisp.
Step 2 – Jim Groom’s Head
I have a lot of different files of Jim’s head. Notice it’s isolated from the background, and has transparency. My go-to method for making selections is the pen tool, which requires some understanding of bézier curves and so forth, but there really is no better way to make accurate selections, at least in Photoshop.
Step 3 – Registration Points
I created a new, transparent layer on top of the source image, and made bright pink dots on the eyes, tip of the nose, and middle of the mouth.
Step 4 – Align the Face
I pasted Jim’s head into the image, reduced the opacity, and then aligned the important bits. After this, you can hide or delete the registration layer.
Step 5 – Lighting Effects
The source image has some pretty strong light coming from the lower right, so I played around with Filter -> Render -> Lighting Effects.
Step 6 – Select Jim’s Face
Using the Lasso Tool, I selected the center of Jim’s face, then Selection -> Modify Selection -> Feather -> 6 pixels.
Step 7 – Blending Jim’s Face
I then inverted the selection (CTRL + SHIFT + I) and hit the delete key, creating a soft transition between the center of Jim’s face and everything outside, which allows the face blend in with the original, but without hard edges.
Step 8 – Brightness and Contrast
Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast. Fuss with them until things look right.
Step 9 – Hue and Saturation
Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation. Fuss with these until the colors seem to match the original.
Step 10 – Add Noise
The image of Jim’s head is crisp and of a much better resolution and quality than the original, which is likely a scan. To “dirty up” Jim’s head, Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise. I think I used .5% monochromatic Gaussian noise. YMMV.
Step 11 – Adjust Levels
In a nutshell, Levels determine where Black, White and Neutral “are” in an image, and also allow you to control black and white levels. Play with these until things look right.
Step 12 – Color Balance
Image -> Adjustments -> Color Balance. Fiddle with these to make the grafted image match more accurately the colors in the original.
That’s about it. I also sometimes end up fussing with transparency. Reducing the transparency of the grafted image by just a few percentage points – leaving it at 94% opaque, for instance – often makes it blend more seamlessly with the source image. Two other essential tools for these kinds of images are Image -> Adjustments -> Exposure and Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.
