Wedding Blues

Hi ya. I have been using Photoshop for some years now - on and off. I have problem that I can't fix and wondered if anyone out there could provide some pointers. I was recently married and one of the photographs of my wife and I is absolutely great (taken by a friend). The ONLY problem is that at the time of the shot it looks as though my wife has a large piece of confetti on her tongue. This is a real shame because she looks absolutely stunning. Does anyone know how I can remove the offending piece of confetti and restore her teeth, tongue and lips? Any help would be welcome. I have already tried clone, blend and one or two others but I am just not happy with the results.

I don't know if you've tried this, but I would zoom in very closely and try to color that piece with the exact color of the neighbouring pixels. As you know you can change the color of your brush to the exact color of any other point/pixel on the picture.

Sam K.

Thanks for this Sam. I have tried that but I lose the contour of the tongue and teeth. This is the closest that I have come to a solution so I might just have to accept a compromise. Thanks for your help.

hi there,
post the photo.....there are tons of people waiting to fix your pic, congratulations.

Hi pjm. Thanks for your good wishes. I could post the photograph but then if some kind person/s fixes it for me I will have learnt nothing! lol. But then again, it is a good idea of yours .....

Maybe this could work - try and take a picture of her in the same pose, then crop out her 'good' mouth from this photo and overlay her 'confetti' mouth I am sure that lightening would not be a problem - maybe worth a try?

I have tried this method before on several photos where one person isn't really smiling, and the rest of the photo is perfect, so I'll grab another photo of that person in the same pose, and transfer 'smiles'

EDIT: Yeah - I think it would be a good idea to post it here, then if someone makes it look good, I'm sure they would be willing to explain how they did it.

Hey! That's one red hot idea Red Hot. I will give that some thought. I was hoping that the 'official' photos would be of help but they all show the same offending piece of confetti. I think that I will shortly post in here and see what the experts can achieve. Thanks again!

Here you go then - the offending confetti. If anyone can 'fix' this I will be most grateful as this is one of our favourite pictures from the whole day. Many thanks. If you succeed please let me know how you managed it.

Well tell me what you think

It's not perfect, so tell me how it can be further improved!

Basically, all I did was to use the Clone Stamp tool for most of the tongue, and then I used the blur and smudge tools to make it look more even and natural. Then I tidied it up with the paintbrush.

Then, I took some teeth from the upper jaw, and rotated them and placed them on the lower jaw, and penciled in some 'teeth.'

This was done with a combination of brushes, healing tool, cloning tool, smudge tool, unsharpen mask and blur.

Tell me if you notice any other differences between the pictures.

It's not great, but then again it's only 5 minutes worth of work. If you have any other photos of her with her mouth open and her head turned in the same direction (hint: break out your camera for a re-shoot) I can probably clean her mouth up perfectly. Her tongue was hard to rebuild because part of it is in a shadow, the other part is in light and the confetti covers 90% of it.

enclosed pic for you to have a look at, you can see what you think.

Used clone stamp for the most part (29% opacity / 41% flow),
then used the brush, picking out darker colours to accentuate the shade (25% opacity / 21% flow).

finally selected the mouth area with lassoo tool and darkened the levels down to make it a bit more natural looking.......

....hope it helps

anew.

Anew - you did a great job on that! Maybe you could remove the blue piece of confetti from her right cheek, too, for a totally clear face.

I totally agree. The job was awesome! I wish I could fix my graphics that great. Anew, any tips how you work?

hi there...i just worked off anew's photo..to get rid of more confetti.

nice work pjm, the photo looks a whole lot better with the extra confetti wiped out.

i think when working with the clone stamp, it's best to use low opacities, as this gives you more freedom and also, it's like painting, working it up gradually until you come to something you feel is close to your goal.............