Stargazer's fake tutorial

[stargazer]

Having created fakes in the forum for some time now, I have been asked many times if I could write a tutorial. This is it. I've had absolutely no training in photoshop and everything I've learned has been from browsing other tutorials along with trial and error. I'm sure that many photoshop purists are going to shudder at my style, but like I said, I've had no real training so I make no apologies.

I've decided to make this tutorial geared towards people who are almost completely ignorant of photoshop so that they're not lost before they start. If you have some experience, undoubtedly you will find a lot of this to be mundane. Feel free, however, to add comments as we go along which you think would be useful.

If you have little familiarity with photoshop, this tutorial will open up a whole new world. All the techniques and concepts used here can be applied to whatever image manipulation interests you, not just fakes.

That being said, let's begin..........

[stargazer]

Here I'm going to go over a few photoshop basics for the beginners. If you have some experience with Photoshop, you will likely want to skip this part.

Photoshop has a lot of panels for navigation and stuff, which you can move around to suit your tastes. You can stack them and tab them to whatever is convenient. Here is a snapshot of how mine is set up



At the very least you need the following panels:

1. Navigator. Great for zooming in and out and moving around the screen
2. Layers. We'll be working with layers, so this is a must
3. History. This is a long undo. If you don't like the last few changes you made, this allows you to go back to whatever point you like. Note that it only holds about 15 or so changes depending on your setup.

You can select these panels from the window menu at the top. Likely these are already present somewhere if you haven't removed them.

You SHOULD work completely non-destructively, which means that you don't alter any part of a picture. You make changes on new layers which partially cover up the layers below it. However, this can result in a lot of layers which can be confusing, especially with adjustment layers. So, I take a half approach. We work non-destructively until we're happy with the results and then save where we're at and then merge the layers. This is not a great approach because you can't go back and make adjustments without losing everything you did afterwards, but it's easier to work with. If you want to work completely non-destructively, don't merge your layers.

During this tutorial, we'll be using brushes and using the terms "opacity" and "hardness" and "softness". Opacity means how transparent the brush is. An opaque brush will completely blot out whatever you're drawing over, whereas a semi-transparent brush won't. A "hard" brush has a very solid, well defined edge while a "soft" brush has a blurry edge. It's opaque (if you have opacity set to 100%)in the center and goes transparent toward the edges. The softer the brush, the more gradual the change.

That should be enough to start with. Let's see what kind of trouble we can get into..............

[stargazer]

I've decided to use this picture for the tutorial. I have no idea who it is. It's just a random picture I pulled off the net. It's a good one for beginners because there's no annoying hair in the way, lots of skin, not too many shadows, and an easy pose. I might as well point out here that I'm a "mousy" kind of guy and I like to work with my feet up and the keyboard tucked away, so I don't use many of the keyboard shortcuts. Almost everything in photoshop has a keyboard shortcut and if you're interested, you can look them up. I'm not going to give keyboard shortcuts in this tutorial.



Go to the link, right click on the picture and select "save as" and save it to your computer. Then load it into photoshop. Alternately, you can select "copy image", and go to file --> new in photoshop to load a blank page. Then select edit --> paste to paste it in.

In the layers panel, you see a small icon of your picture. We don't want to touch this so the first thing I always do is to make a copy of it. Click on the layer and drag it down to the the "create new layer" icon to make a copy



Double-click on the name of the new layer and change it to "no straps". I don't usually bother naming my layers (yeah, I know), but during the tutorial this will help indicate which layer I'm talking about.

Ok, let's start stripping her........

[stargazer]

When making a fake, the less you have to fake, the easier it is and the better the results. For this reason, I always remove all clothing possible before doing the fake. In this case, that would be the straps. So the first thing we're going to work on is removing the straps.

If you have Photoshop CS5, this is a snap. For those who don't have CS5, I will do it the long way in the next post, so you might as well go there now. I will assume from this point in this post that you have CS5.

CS5 does a great job of removing straps. Sometimes a few mouse clicks is all you need. However, often it's not good enough and more touching up is needed. Therefore, when you're done this, I recommend trying the long way in the next post as well. It's a very useful skill to have. Ok, let's remove the straps.

Remember where we dragged the layer in the last lesson? Well, click on that icon now. It will make a new blank layer. This should be the top layer. If it's not the top layer, drag it up the top. Change the name to "remove straps".

Right click on the healing brush tool and select the spot healing brush. Make sure "content aware" is on as well. Also make sure "sample all layers" is checked and the mode is set to normal.



Right click in the picture and set the brush size to slightly larger than the strap width. I always leave the hardness at 100% and the spacing at 13%. Play with the settings if you want and see what works best fore you.

Make sure the "remove straps" layer is selected. Just click on it. It changes to blue. Now draw over a section of the strap. It disappears like magic. This is lots of fun to play with. If you get a funny result, just click on a spot in the history panel and try again. I love this. Try the section where it crosses the collar bone. If you pass the collar bone on a stroke it will probably fill in the missing collar bone for you. Don't be afraid to extend the stroke past the shoulder into the hair or the water. It often will fill the edge of the shoulder in for you as well. Play with it. Try different settings, brush sizes and stroke lengths. Chances are pretty good that you won't get it all perfect but you've saved a lot of work. For now, right click on the "remove straps" layer and delete it. We're now going to try it the long way..........

[Billy Sastard!]

So......is this a real tutorial...or a fake tutorial?

[stargazer]

Okay, let's create a new layer so that we don't damage the picture. Click on the "new layer" icon in the layers panel. It's the same one you dragged the background layer to earlier. If you don't remember where it is, it's highlighted in the picture below. This brings up a blank layer. If it's not the top layer, drag it to the top. Name this layer "remove straps". Make sure this layer is selected!! It should be blue.

Now right click on the clone stamp icon and select "clone stamp tool". You don't have to right click this everytime because it stays there unless you right click it again and select the pattern stamp tool. Make sure "aligned" is checked and mode is normal. Also set opacity to 100% and set it to sample all layers.



Right click on the screen and set the brush size to be about the width of the strap. Also set hardness to about 66%. Now press the alt key and notice the cursor changes to a bullseye. This tool will copy from where the bullseye is to where your cursor is. So, select the skin very close the strap, press ALT and left click. Now move your cursor over the strap, left click and draw over the strap. Notice that the cross which indicates the source moves while you draw. This is because aligned is checked. Try and remove the strap the best you can. Reset the source by pressing ALT and clicking as often as you want to. This takes some practice, especially at the edge and where the shadow is. Here is my result:



As you can see, I didn't try for perfection. This took me less than 2 minutes. Just get it the best you can. The better you do here, the easier the next step is. Do you see the little eyeball on the left side of your layer? Click on that to turn the layer off and on so you can see the difference your work has made.

When you're satisfied, let's move on and make it look better..............

[stargazer]

So......is this a real tutorial...or a fake tutorial?

It's a tutorial on making fakes

[stargazer]

Okay, now let's fix it up. Right click on the healing brush and select "healing brush tool". Set this up the same way as the clone stamp. Make sure it's set to normal and "sample all layers". Make sure aligned is checked, and the source is sampled. Right click on the screen and set the hardness to 100% and low spacing, about 13%. I never change these, but you might want to. The size should about the same as the clone stamp, but set it to your preference.



This works the same as the clone stamp. You set the source with ALT. The results are quite different. Make sure the "remove straps" layer is still selected. Go ahead and select your source and go over the cloned areas and watch the results. Try to pick a source which is similar to what you want, especially at the collar bone, shadow edge and shoulder edge.

Edges are very tough. One of the mysteries of photoshop is why they've never fixed the healing brush tool. At the edge, it will bleed colors from outside the edge. In this case, the water colors will bleed into the shoulder. You can make a selection, erase stuff, etc, but nothing works. Therefore you should avoid the shoulder edges at the point unless the source is also a shoulder edge. If you select a source from the chest area, it won't work on the edge of the shoulder. I suggest leaving the edges alone for now and getting the rest looking good. Here is my result:



I didn't take a lot of time on this, real quick and dirty, but it looks pretty good. Notice at the top of the bikini cups, I l left it alone. The bleed would have been horrible here, and the fake is going here anyway. The shoulder edges actually came out fairly easily, but I'm going to show you how to fix these up for the future or in case you're having trouble healing at the edges.

Smear campaign coming soon......

[stargazer]

Okay, now we're going to fix up those pesky edges. The healing brush pulls in colors from all around it to do its job. Therefore, at the shoulder edges and hair it pulls in colors we don't want. How do we deal with this? We put in the colors we want in the surrounding area. This can be done by copying and pasting in what we want, or several other methods. The one I like best is to simply smear the shoulder out. For this we use the smear tool. First, let's make a new blank layer like we did before. Name this "smear". Then right click on the tool indicated and select the smear tool. Make sure "sample all layers" is selected and set the strength to 80 or 90%. Right click on the picture and select a comfortable brush size and full hardness. Make sure the smear layer is selected!!!



Now smear the shoulder outwards to give yourself a comfortable amount of area to work in without bleed.



Now go ahead and fix up the shoulder edge without worrying about the water colors bleeding in. Use the healing brush on the smear layer to fix up the edges. You can click on on the eye in the layers panel to turn this layer off and on to see where the edges are and where it needs fixing up. You don't have to stay within the edge. By all means, heal past the shoulder edge and into the water area. Just don't go so far that you get bleed from the water.



When you're happy with this, go on to the next step where you'll meet your best friend.....................

[stargazer]

Now I'm going to introduce you to masks. In photoshop, masks are your new best friend. If you get nothing else from this tutorial, at least learn about masks. You will hardly ever want to to anything without them.

How a mask works is this: You attach a mask to a layer. Where the mask is white, the layer is opaque. Where it's black, the layer is transparent. Where it's gray, it semi-transparent. This makes it fantastic for blending layers. That's what our next step is.

With the smear layer still selected, click on the layer mask icon in the layers panel. This will bring up a white box in your smear layer.



This white box is your mask. It's all white, so the whole layer is opaque. That's why you don't see any difference. Click on the mask in the layers panel. Look at your foreground and background colors in the toolbar. You should have a black foreground and a white background.




You can flip the two by pressing X on your keyboard. This is one of the keyboard shortcuts I do use. If the colors are not black and white, you can set them with the color panel. If you don't see the color panel, select it from the window menu at the top. Check again that you have the MASK selected in the layers panel. If you don't have it selected, you're going to end up drawing over the work you've done so far and wreck it.

Ok, we have a black foreground and white background set. Select the brush tool. Set the opacity to 100%. Right click on the picture and set a comfortable size and set the hardness to 100%. Mode should be normal.



Now go ahead a draw over your smearing. It should disappear. If you get a black streak instead, back up in the history panel to try again and make sure you have the mask selected in the layers panel. Draw all of the smearing out. Don't leave any of it. Now you see why we didn't care how carelessly we smear it. You're not going to see most of it. We only wanted an adjacent color for the healing brush on the shoulder edge. Notice the black blob in your mask. That's the area of your layer that's now transparent, which is the area you smeared.

Ok, hit X and switch to white. Set your brush to 20-90 (20% opacity and 90% hardness). Now start brushing in the pesky edge of the shoulder that gave us trouble earlier. Just go over the area that needs fixing up. Don't drift into the water section. If you do, just hit X and draw it back out. That's the beauty of masks. You don't erase anything, just change the transparency, so it's easy to fix any mistakes. Just use black to remove areas, and white to put them back in.

Experiment with the opacity and hardness of the brush and find what works best for you to make a natural blending of the smear layer and the remove straps layer. When you're satisfied, we'll move on.......

[stargazer]

At this point, the straps should be removed. Make sure you do them both and fix up the area where the strap meets her hair using the techniques you've learned. When you're done, we're going to merge the layers. If you're comfortable with a lot of layers, then don't merge them. Once you've merged them, you can't go back and tweak them.

Ok, let's merge the layers. Before we do, click on the snapshot in the history panel. This will save where you're at in case you suddenly notice you screwed something up and would like to go back to the spot before you merged. Of course, you will lose everything you've done since the snapshot, so don't rely on it. I use the snapshot mostly when I want to experiment with something. I take a snapshot in case it doesn't work out and I want to go back where I started.



Now right click in a blank area of the smear layer in the layers panel and select "merge down". This will merge the smear layer and the remove straps layer together. Notice that your mask is gone. Do the same thing on the remove straps layer and merge it to the no straps layer. You will now only have 2 layers. Click repeatedly on the eyeball in the no straps layer to see the change you've made. If you're not happy with it, back up in the history panel or click on your snapshot near the top of the history panel and fix it up.

All the techniques you've learned so far will serve you well as we move on the next big step. It's a good idea to be familiar with them because we'll be using them, and I won't be explaining them again.

I'll wait until you're ready..........

[stargazer]

Ok, now we come to one of the most difficult parts of faking. Finding a good donor. Perhaps you're talented enough to draw the tits in, but I'm not. We need a donor pic. Finding a good match can be long and tedious, but there are worse ways to spend your time than looking at naked women, so it's not all bad. I've gathered a LOT of pictures and grouped them by breast size to make it easier. There's certainly no shortage of pictures out there and passwords to sites like Matt's Models, LSG Models, and FTV are pretty easy to find so you have a lot to choose from. Here is what you need to be looking for:

1. Choose a similar breast size and body type. You want it to look real don't you?

2. Try to get a similar pose. The position of her arms affect the way the breast hangs. You also have to go above and below the breasts to blend it in, so a similar pose really makes it easier.

3. The angle of the model. In our picture, the girl is almost facing directly at you. If your donor is standing sideways, it's not going to work. It doesn't matter which way she's facing, as long as it's the same amount. You can easily reverse the direction.

4. The position of the photographer. Most people take a picture standing up at eye level. Nude photographers tend to crouch down and shoot upwards. If your donor pic is like this, it's not going to look right. Also, the dimensions will be off. If you line up her shoulders, her breasts will be too high. You can adjust for this somewhat, but it's a lot better if the angles are the same.

5. Lighting. Our picture is of a girl on a sunny day. If the donor pic has a lot of side lighting, the shadows are going to look funny. Again, this can be adjusted, but it's more work.

6. Skin tone. The two girls will almost never have the same skin tone. You have to adjust one of them, usually the donor. Our girl has a nice skin tone. If your donor girl is really pale, you're going to have to color it up. When you do this, highlights and shadows are going to go funny. Again, a lot of work to fix up.

7. Resolution. Our pic is not huge, but a nice size. If the donor pic is low resolution, you're going to have to blow it up to match it. It will really look horrible. Try to get a donor pic that's at least as big as the one you're faking. Try to get close, anyway.

This is a lot of conditions and your chances of meeting all of them are slim. Try to get as close as you can. The time spent looking for a good donor will be paid back when you're faking. The fake will be much easier and look better when you're done. The donor pic I've selected for this tutorial is good, but not great. I took about 2 minutes finding it. I didn't want it to be TOO good because I want to demonstrate how to adjust for a less than perfect match.

Here is the picture I've selected. I haven't even tried it myself yet, so we're doing this one together. If I can't make it work, I'll have egg on my face so I'm crossing my fingers.



Save this to your computer. Open it up with photoshop and it will come up in a new tab. You can click the tabs to switch between pictures. When you're done this, we'll move on........

[stargazer]

Ok, we have our donor in a new tab. We don't need all of it, so we're going to select what we need. Be generous with your selection. I generally go from head to waist. Even though we don't need all that, it makes it easier to line it up correctly. In addition. you don't know how much of the donor pic you're going to need to blend it properly. You don't want to have to restart because halfway through you realize you should have got more of her waist.

Everyone has their own preference on how to make a selection. In this case, I find it's simplest just to use the elliptical marquee tool. If you prefer something different, go ahead and use it.

Right click on the tool indicated and select the elliptical marquee tool. Then move your cursor to the left and above her shoulder. Click and drag the mouse until the selection covers the area you need. If you need to move it, just click inside it and drag it around. If you want to redo it, just click outside the selection and draw another one. Make sure the new selection icon is on, or you'll end up with a bunch of selections instead of just one. You can also choose deselect from the select menu at the top.



Notice the "crawling ants" around your selection. This shows what you've selected. Now select copy from the edit menu. This copies your selection into the clipboard. Clip on the tab of our girl and select paste from the edit menu. This pastes our selection into a new layer. It's BIG, but don't worry. We're going to adjust it in the next section. Name this layer "donor"

When you're ready, we'll start the transformation........

[stargazer]

Now that we have our donor on a separate layer, we need to re-size and position it. For that we're going to use the transform tool.

Make sure the donor layer is selected and then go to the edit menu and select "free transform". You may have to zoom out because the donor pic is so big. When in this mode, you can do several things:

1. Re-size it. You can grab any of the edges and drag to change the size. For now, grab a corner instead of a side, and hold the shift key down. This will keep the proportions together.

2. Turn it. Click anywhere outside the selection and drag to rotate it.

3. Move it. Click anywhere inside the selection to move it around.

4. Flip it. Since our donor is facing the wrong way, flip her around. Right click inside the selection and select "flip horizontal"

While you're doing this, take a look at the top of the layers panel. See where it says opacity? You can click here and move the slider around to "see through" your selection to the layer below. You need to do this in order to line her up. Here are the important points when lining her up:

1. Try to match up the armpits. This is where the donor and original are usually partially blended together, so this is one of the most key areas to match up.

2. Watch the tits. The breasts on a girl that's dressed generally sit much higher than when she's naked. If you line up the donor tits with the original tits, it's probably too high. The girl we're using doesn't have big tits so it's not as critical. Just remember it for the future.

3. Sacrifice the shoulders. Since we got rid of the bra straps, we not likely to go all the way to the shoulders with our fake so it's not as important that they line up. It's best if they do, however, so that the collar bone matches up. You MIGHT be going that high. As a rule if everything won't line up, sacrifice the shoulders.

4. Line up the waist. You're usually going to be blending below the tits as well as above them. Try to line up as much of the waist as possible. Line it up SOMEWHERE on both sides and fake down to there.

As you can see, I was able to line up the right hand side pretty good, but the left side is off. The tits are a bit high, but I think it'll work. We're going to have to adjust the other side though



While still in transform mode, right click on the selection and select warp. This will allow you to bend the selection. Tread carefully here. You can really distort it badly with this. I'm going to use this to line up the other armpit and waist. I generally don't grab it near the areas I want to change because it distorts everything too much. In this case I will move the shoulder and bottom of the waist. If these flair out too much it doesn't matter because I'm not using them anyway. Here you can see how mine looks. I think everything lines up pretty good and we can always adjust it later if we need to.



When you're done, just click the checkmark at the top or any tool to get out of transform mode. Turn your opacity back up to 100%. We're going back to masking.........

[stargazer]

Ok, the donor layer opacity should be back to 100%. We're going to use a mask again. At this point I prefer to move the no straps layer to the top and mask it. If you prefer to mask the donor layer, be my guest. For this tutorial, however, I'm going to mask the no straps layer.

Drag the no straps layer to the top so it's above the donor layer which should now be in the middle. Click on the mask icon and put a mask in the no straps layer. Take a hard, opaque brush and draw over the bikini top. Don't go all the way to the armpits. Make sure you get the shadows under the tits. We're going to have to draw these in later.



The good news: this donor pic lines up pretty good and matches the original. Should be easy to fake.

The bad news: the donor pic had different lighting. It's going to be tough matching up the colors. Well tackle that next.....