# Disaster...help =)



## Andrea (Sep 8, 2013)

I'm very new to lightroom.  I took this shot...which is awful to begin with, but I have to work with it.  I was put on the spot to take pics at a birthday party since I'm a "photographer"  (don't laugh)  What tool would you suggest to get out the wrinkles in that horrid sheet?   I'm using the skin smoothing tool and layering it, and it's time consuming and not even looking nice.  =/  

I would love to give her a couple of nice shots of her kids, but I dont have much to work with here.  These pics turned out awful.


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## erro (Sep 8, 2013)

I'd say it requires way too much and hard manual work in LR. Maybe you can do it in Photoshop (or similar) by for example deleting the background and replacing it with something else. Or selecting the background and bluring it heavily.


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## Andrea (Sep 8, 2013)

There is not a "heavy blur" tool in LR?  Grrr.   I dont have photoshop.


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## erro (Sep 8, 2013)

Well, yes, you can use the adjustment brush with negative sharpness. And you can stack multiple brushes on top of each other if the maximum for one brush is not sufficient. Didn't think of that....


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## Chris_M (Sep 8, 2013)

I use negative sharpness and sometimes negative clarity as well to simulate Depth of Field,
but I don't know how good either would be in loseing the wrinkles.
Trying can't hurt though since LR is non-destructive.


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## Jimmsp (Sep 9, 2013)

Andrea said:


> There is not a "heavy blur" tool in LR?  Grrr.   I dont have photoshop.



This is where I use PS Elements. It is a very cost effective tool for pixel editing like this.


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## Katherine Mann (Sep 9, 2013)

Oh dear. I sympathize. Next time you go to her house "forget" your camera.  Good luck.


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## Andrea (Sep 9, 2013)

Jimmsp said:


> This is where I use PS Elements. It is a very cost effective tool for pixel editing like this.


Can you give me a link?  =)  

This was my final edit.  I used some layering.   It's still awful.


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## Andrea (Sep 9, 2013)

Chris_M said:


> I use negative sharpness and sometimes negative clarity as well to simulate Depth of Field,
> but I don't know how good either would be in loseing the wrinkles.
> Trying can't hurt though since LR is non-destructive.



That's exactly what I did....several times.  This one didn't turn out so bad.


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## Anthony.Ralph (Sep 9, 2013)

Actually, the picture isn't too bad at all. Bear in mind that the viewers are not going to be looking at it the same way as you are. They are going to be chuffed to see little Jemima looking cute and lovely - they won't even see the background.


Anthony.


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## Jimmsp (Sep 9, 2013)

Andrea said:


> Can you give me a link?  =)
> 
> This was my final edit.  I used some layering.   It's still awful.


Here is a link to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-6519398...1378735310&sr=8-1&keywords=adobe+photoshop+11

There will probably be a new version in a month or two that will cost about $100. But this version would work perfectly for you.
If I get a chance, I'll play with your photo a bit with my PSE v10.

Jim


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## Jimmsp (Sep 9, 2013)

Andrea said:


> Can you give me a link?  =)
> 
> This was my final edit.  I used some layering.   It's still awful.



Here is a quick play in PSE - it is a bit rough because of the jagged jpeg I was able to download; but you get the idea.
I used a Topaz plug in, ReMask, for speed of extracting the original background.
I added a new background, but left a small amount of texture in it and added a bit of vignette. I changed nothing else.


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## Grizz (Sep 9, 2013)

Here is a real quick edit, blurring in PSE and then using a neg clarity,neg sharpness brush (multiple times) in LR 5.2 It would come out better with a higher res file. but you get the idea.


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## Victoria Bampton (Sep 11, 2013)

An alternative tip for you... if it's a one off, and feels like too big a job, you could outsource it.  There's a company I've used in the past for odd jobs like this, when I haven't had time to do them myself - www.retouchup.com


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## DianeK (Sep 13, 2013)

Andrea said:


> Can you give me a link?  =)
> 
> This was my final edit.  I used some layering.   It's still awful.


I don't think it's awful.  Consider your audience - parents in love with their daughter.  She looks like a cutie and that is what they will focus on.  Considering what you had to work with, I'd say "well done"!


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## Paul_DS256 (Nov 8, 2021)

I'm not sure why I just got an email on this but now noticed it was from early Sept and it's now early Nov.

For future 'work'  consider placing the subject more forward if you can the you set the aperture so the background is out of focus.

I agree with those above that this is best addressed in PS but as part of my learning of the new Masking in LrC 11, I tried the Colour Range mask. I dropped Exposure to the max and this is what I got. Not, the JPG was low res and some tweaking of the mask is needed e.g. her eyes are currently part of the mask. I tried other settings but in my short trial Exposure worked best.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 8, 2021)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I'm not sure why I just got an email on this but now noticed it was from early Sept and it's now early Nov.


Hmmm! Quoting Diane's post? Sometimes a thread gets resurrected by a spam post, but if it was Diane's post, I have no clue!


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 8, 2021)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Sometimes a thread gets resurrected by a spam post


Spot on! A new user posted into this 8 years old thread with a link to a retouching site. I deleted it as spam, but obviously not before Paul_DS256 received an email about it.


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## LRList001 (Nov 8, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> Spot on! A new user posted into this 8 years old thread with a link to a retouching site. I deleted it as spam, but obviously not before Paul_DS256 received an email about it.



And we really appreciate the hidden work you do to keep junk off this site!

Thanks guys.


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