Age Progression of a Female Face

Page 1 : Preface

 

Men and women age a little bit differently but since I've only aged female celebrities thus far, I'll just focus on women for this tutorial. I’ll be using the image of Katie Holmes that I did for a past W1K contest, as an example. 

Step 1: Choosing an Appropriate Photo
 
When deciding to age-progress a celebrity’s face, I try to select a picture that is touched-up as little as possible.

I find that candid shots, or any shots that have not been taken in a studio, work best because the resulting harsh lighting reveals more of the skin’s details i.e. slight bags under the eyes and faint wrinkles. The appearance of such details makes it all that much easier to visualize how your subject will age. Visualizing what the end result will look like brings you one step closer to aging her face realistically.

In Katie’s case, we can see very faint horizontal lines on her forehead, fairly obvious lines under her eyes and lines bracketing her mouth.

Step 2: Collecting Reference Material

Reference material is key in my method of aging. Keeping Katie’s face in mind, I scoured the Web, looking for faces of old women who either resemble Katie and/or share the same facial expression. Here, Katie is smiling with her face positioned at a 3/4 angle so I tried to gather as many pictures of old women who are smiling in the same manner or close to that. I then opened up the picture of Katie in Photoshop and pasted the found images around her face on a separate layer, spread out to provide easy visual access.

Another kind of reference I like to use but is usually hard to find, is pictures of the subject’s parents. I managed to find a couple of reference pictures of Katie’s mother online and they really helped me to decide whether or not to give Katie a double chin. Since her mom has quite a bit of mass under her chin, I decided I would apply that to Katie too.

Step 3: Thinning Brows

Now the fun begins! The first thing I like to do is to thin out the subject’s eyebrows and eyelashes. The older people get, the thinner their hair gets - either because hair falls out and/or because it dries out as it greys. 

So to achieve this, I like to use the Clone Stamp tool at 100% with a relatively small brush size depending on the size and resolution of the image. I sampled the surrounding skin to thin and reduce the number of hairs.

Step 4: Mold the Face

Next, I like to add the basic sags to the skin. I do this in the Liquify mode. I tried to create sagging effects to the cheeks, jowls and the cliff just above the eyes by using the Push tool. For the eyes, I tried to be subtle; otherwise she may end up looking somewhat ghoulish.

From what I’ve learned about the aging process, I know that while bones cease to grow, and in fact shrink, cartilage does continue to grow. As a result, the end of a nose may appear larger as a person grows older. So while I was still in the Liquify mode, I used the Push tool to extend the length of the nose slightly. Then I used the Bloat tool to also enlarge it slightly, being careful not lose the essential quality or character of the nose. Go too far and it may not look like Katie anymore.

Step 5: The Aforementioned Double Chin

Based on her mother’s pictures, I then added a fairly massive double chin. I initially used the Airbrush tool with some fairly broad strokes, sampling the colors that were already in the area of her neck. I then worked in the details with a finer brush size. Also, keep in mind that I was also using the other reference photos of older women to guide me.
 
Step 6: Wrinkle Up the Eyes

For me, the most important parts to get right are the eyes. They can make or break the project. Done wrong and the picture may no longer be identifiable as one of Katie Holmes anymore. I sought out the fine lines around the eyes and I tried to imagine how they would progress into wrinkles. I then extended them in length and width accordingly. Referencing the pictures of old women helped a lot with this step.

I used a combination of the Stamp tool and Brush tool. I wish I could explain my technique at this point in a more clinical manner but mostly I relied on my artistic instincts. I emphasized the wrinkles around the eyes by widening and deepening the lines slightly and increasing the contrast by darkening the recesses and lightening the edges. Also, I extended wrinkles to the cheekbone areas. I then applied the same technique to the wrinkles around the mouth and to the forehead.

Step 7: Reducing the Lips
In this step, I work on the lips. As people grow older, the outline of the lips tends to recede. Using the Stamp tool, I sampled the skin surrounding the lips and thinned them out. 

While I was at it, I also added a few vertical wrinkles above the lips to give her a bit of a "prune" effect. We just want a hint of that, so don’t carve out deep lines; deep lines would only be necessary if she was puckering her lips.

Step 8: Planning Out More Wrinkles

Here, on a separate layer, I faintly outlined or sketched, with a relatively thin brush size, areas that I may or may not add more lines and wrinkles to. It’s easy to get carried away with the addition of wrinkles. So, I stopped, took a step back and assessed where to take to image. For me, it's essential and a great test to see what best works.

Step 9: Touching Up the Wrinkles

Based on the previous step, I added wrinkles where I thought they were needed most.

Overall, I found that the wrinkles and lines seemed a little flat in comparison to the rest of Katie’s features. They needed more definition so that they could pop out more. So, I highlighted the raised edges of the individual lines with the Brush tool and with a lighter skin tone.

Step 10: Hairy Lips
 
Facial hair becomes an issue with most women as they age. For some strange reason they lose it in the brow area and grow it back around the mouth area. I didn’t want Katie to be the exception so with a very fine brush size and the Brush tool, I added hairs to her upper lip.

I tried to make it as subtle as possible. Hairs too thick or dark would draw the viewer’s attention straight to her mustache and I didn’t want that. I also added more wrinkles to the area below the corners of her mouth.

Step 11: Refining the Neck

I decided that the neck was too smooth for a woman of 75 years of age. So I added finer wrinkles to that area. Also, I added more mass and weight to her jowls with the airbrush by increasing the value of the tones in those areas thus creating more contrast between surface planes.

Step 12: Adding Age Spots
 
A key component to effective aging of a face is the addition of age spots.

So at this point, I sampled one of the darker skin tones on her face, and on a separate layer that was set to Multiply and 30% opacity, I brushed them in and tried to create irregular shapes (there IS no perfect age spot). You can add as many as you like; the amount varies from person to person. I decided to be conservative with Katie.

Step 13: More Refinements

I took a little break from it and came back to it later to possibly get a better perspective on it. When I looked at it, at this point, I decided that certain areas needed refining and added detail. This is the beauty of working with a high-resolution file; I can zoom in real close and deal with a wrinkle up-close and personal.

Unless their teeth were subjected to regular whitening, most people’s teeth yellow with age. Gums also recede, showing less gum and more bone. And so with that in mind, I sampled a yellowish-brown color and on a new layer that was set to Multiply and 30% opacity and painted that color to the teeth with the Brush tool. Her gums didn’t show to begin with, so receding the gums here wasn’t necessary.

Step 14: Preparing the Hair

The finishing touch here is greying the hair. I began by creating a mask defining the area of the hair. I used the brush for this and tried my best to define as many loose strands of hair that I could.

With this mask as a selection, I then created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and reduced the saturation to –63.

I then created a new adjustment layer based on the same mask and adjusted the Brightness/Contrast to brightness +9 and contrast –36. As a result, I found that the darker areas were too pale and caused a loss of depth and so to adjust that, I then selected the mask and scratched out the darker areas with a 5px brush size at 50% opacity so that they could show through from the original image.

Step 15: Hair Raising

The next step was to raise the hairline and thin out the hair. Hair loss is common with both sexes.

I sampled the area at the top of the forehead and extended the skin area above the original hairline.

Step 16: Greying the Hair

A lot of details of the hair were lost in the previous step so with a thin brush size at 80 percent opacity I drew in fine grey hairs, sparsely laid out.

Patiently, slowly, stroke by stroke I added more and more hairs until I was happy with the amount of grey I had added.

Step 17: Finishing Touches

Finally, I took a step back, refined a few wrinkles here and there 

Animal Crossbreed Example

Using the transform, liquify filter and some shading, were going to effectively dress up a rhino in zebra fur.

Page 1 : Source Images
In this tutorial, we're going to combine 2 animals 

 and this:

To make our final product below:

First and most important is to find the proper source images. I chose these 2 since the angles and stances are very similar.
Since I liked the high contrast color of the zebra, I decided to use the actual fur and "mold" it over the rhino's body. So with that said, I extracted the zebra from its background and pasted it into the rhino file on a new layer.
NOTE: It's a good idea to use a hi-res image because when you're stretching pixels, a low resolution file is going to lose its realism.

Page 2: Test Fit 

Okay, let's see how similar or different these two images are.
Lower the opacity of Zebra and compare it to the Rhino background. Using the Transform tool, stretch and compact the image as needed so that you could get the best fit possible. The better match now means less work later.
I found it important to match up the legs first and then the head for this image.

Page 3: Liquify is your friend

Since my goal is to cover the rhino's body completely with the zebra, I decided to use the Liquify filter to make the rest of the adjustments.
You need to have quite a bit of patience with the Liquify filter to get the best results. I'm going to assume that you have some experience with this filter so I'm gonna get to the point.
1. Decreased the the Zebra's opacity to about 70% This will help you get better results matching up the two animals.
2. Start off by using a fairly large brush (about 1/3 the size of the animal) and with small strokes, pull the Zebra's main torso to match the rhino. Try to avoid making looong pulls because you won't get desired results. Using the large brush, I basically stretched out the top, buttocks, belly, chest and then I repositioned the head.
3. Once you're happy with those results, you're then going to fine tune the rest of the body using smaller sized brushes. For the Zebra's head, I used small, even strokes to match the shape of the underlying Rhino.
Since the legs are so close together, I had to use the Liquify filter's built in mask tool to protect one leg as I shaped the adjacent one.
Once you have matched the entire silhouette of the Rhino, save your adjustments and get ready for the next step.
 
Page 4: Shading 

Okay, the shaping looks ok but our new animal friend is looking a bit flat. We're going to add more depth to this image by adding shadows. I'm not going to be using any blending modes because I want to keep as much detail and contrast as I can -- so with that said:
Make a new layer atop the Zebra and select a soft brush set a 15-30% opacity.
TIP: Hold down the OPTION key and move the cursor in between new blank layer and the Zebra layer. When the cursor changes it's shape, click the mouse button and you have now effectivley made a clipping mask. All your shadows will now be contained inside the zebra. 

To get the best shading, I occasionally turned the visibility of the Zebra layer on and off used the Rhino background as a reference as to where to add new shadows.
Yeah, that looks better.
Now for the head:

If you look at the original rhino picture, you'll see that the head has a distinct shape under the horns. It looks like its beefed up.
Okay, add a new layer
Using a smaller, soft brush at around 30% opacity, draw out the distinct lines under the horns (again, use the rhino background image as a reference). With some patience you should get the desired results.
If you find that the shading is a bit too dark, you could adjust the layer opacity of your shadows.
Good Luck and I hope this helps.

Body Art

Having had a bit of success applying tattoos to celebrities I'll explain the tricks and tweaks I used to create realistic tattoos. This tutorial uses a few basic photoshop techniques, masking, colour adjustment, liquify and the resize and transformation tools.

Page 1 : Geri Halliwell

We'll use my recent Geri Halliwell image as the template for this tutorial. Bikini clad, light skinned people are the easiest to make this rather simple but very effective bodyart.

Page 2: Flash Sources

The source artwork I use for tattoos is the "flash" artwork that real tattoo artists design and use as a templates for their work. Walk into most tattoo parlours and hanging on the wall or in their design books you'll see a huge selection of artwork you might want to have a tattoo of.
So just Google Image Search with the keywords tattoo + flash and you'll find ample sources to use. Be sure to use an image that is public domain (or ask the author first). It's possible to cut and paste tattoos off the body or image of a person and use different blending methods to achieve a similar effect, but it is very time consuming and much more difficult to get good results. For Geri's arms, legs and torso I used just 3 pieces of flash artwork.

Page 3: Position and Multiply

Let's start with Geri's abdomen and the skulls artwork, just drag the image over her abdomen and apply a mask to the skulls layer. Using the Move tool roughly place the artwork where you want it to sit, using the Transform option stretch/perspective, etc. to get better placement. Mask out the areas where you have any overlap, return to the Move tool if need be and Transform it to your liking using its different settings, I ended up with this. Some people have used displacement maps to align tattoos, not once have I required them.

All you have to do next is click on the image thumbnail in the layers palette and alter the blend mode from Normal to Multiply. Simple as pie! because most flash artwork is on a white background selecting Multiply will cause the white background to instantly disappear,leaving you with the coloured or in this case black artwork blended to Geri's abdomen. Tattos are never a solid black so tweaking the layers, colour balance and lowering the opacity makes for a very realistic effect.

Page 4: Joining patterns

The same process was used on Geri's arms and legs. a single piece of flash artwork was duplicated and used on 4 or 5 layers, masking, resizing and using the Multiply on each layer. Because the arms and legs had the same pattern I just placed the lower arm and the upper arm layer over the top of each other and masked out any overlap creating a smooth pattern.
 The image below shows the 3 layers used with some masking and a pretty good flowing pattern as achieved. Seems a little messy but remember once the Multiply blend is applied all the white instantly disappears.

Page 5: Transformation
 
For Geri's shoulders and chest area, again a repeat of the previous process, just a different piece or artwork was used and it was duplicated onto 2 layers, then one was horizontally flipped for left and right.
For some body parts you might consider using the liquify tool in moderation if the Move/Transform/ Distort option is not achieving the desired "fit". I also mask certain areas with a low opacity brush to achieve a feathered smooth flowing ink effect. You wouldn't want a solid colour to apply to areas in a body cavity or around the edge of a shoulder.

Page 6: Coloured tattoos
 
Finally, for coloured tattoos pretty much the same techniques are used as for black ink work. A little extra work is involved adjusting the opacity of the layer to get that blurred well worn effect, you don't want too vibrant a colour or you will not get that see-through ink applied to skin look. I sometimes use Adjustment layers and the Replace Colour option to lessen a red or to make a green more vibrant.
So basically there you have it, there is nothing too difficult to creating bodyart.
1. Use "flash" source images
2. Use Multiply for your layers
3. Use the Transform option to position and distort the tattoo.
4. Be a little creative and play with the colour and opacity settings.