Written by Steve Patterson. In this Photo Retouching tutorial, were going to learn how incredibly easy it is to give someone a digital nose job (not that anyone we know would need it, of course!). This photo editing technique is so simple and easy, youll be tempted to use it on photos of people who honestly dont need it. Or at least, thats what you can tell them when they ask you why you made their nose smaller. You simply had to because it was so much fun and so easy to do!
Seriously though, lets face it, sometimes photos dont do people justice, and even though in real life their nose may be a textbook example of what a human nose is supposed to look like, a wrong focal length setting on the camera lens, bad lighting or an unflattering angle can distort reality and make things look bigger than they really are. Fortunately, Photoshop makes digital plastic surgery a breeze without the need for any fancy surgical tools or even a steady hand. In fact, all you need is the Lasso Tool, the Free Transform command, and the Healing Brush to clean up any rough spots.
Heres the image Ill be working with in this tutorial. Before we begin, I just want to make it clear that I am not saying this woman needs a nose job. She is simply the unfortunate victim of this tutorial:
The original image.
And heres what shes going to look like after we make her nose a little smaller (again, not that she needs it):
The final result.
Lets get started!
Step 1: Draw A Rough Selection Around The Outside Of The Nose
Before we can start our digital nose job, we first need to isolate the persons nose from the rest of the image, which means we need to add a selection around it. Photoshops Lasso Tool works perfectly in this case so select it from the Tools palette:
Select the Lasso Tool.
You can also quickly select it by pressing L on your keyboard. The reason the Lasso Tool works so well here is because if youve used it before, you already know that its not exactly the most precise selection tool in all of Photoshop (that honor would go to the Pen Tool), yet for this technique, we purposely want to avoid making a precise selection of the nose. Instead, simply drag out a rough selection around the outside of the nose as Ive done here:
Use Photoshops Lasso Tool to draw a rough selection around the nose.
Its definitely better to select too much of an area than not enough, since well be cleaning things up at the end.
Step 2: Feather The Selection
Next we need to make the edges of our selection softer, or feather them as Photoshop calls it. To do that, go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Feather. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Ctrl+D (Win) / Option+Command+D (Mac). Either way brings up Photoshops Feather dialog box. Enter a Feather Radius value of somewhere between 20-30 pixels depending on the size and resolution of your image. You may need to experiment a little with the value. Im going to enter 20 pixels for my Feather Radius:
Feather the selection to make the edges softer.
Click OK to feather the selection and exit out of the dialog box.
Step 3: Copy The Selection To A New Layer
With our selection in place and the edges feathered, press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to copy the selection to a new layer. If we look in Photoshops Layers palette now, we can see our original image on the Background layer and the nose now on a new layer above it, which Photoshop has automatically named Layer 1:
Press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to copy the selection to a new layer.
Step 4: Resize The Nose With Photoshops Free Transform Command
With the nose now on its own layer, we can go ahead and resize it, making it shorter, thinner, or both! To do that, well use Photoshops Free Transform command, and we can quickly access it with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac), which brings up the Free Transform box and handles around the nose, as shown below:
Press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshops Free Transform box and handles around the nose.
To make the nose thinner, all we need to do is drag the side handles (the little squares) in towards each other. To drag both sides in at the same time, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option key as you drag one of the handles and the handle on the opposite will drag in as well. The further in towards each other you drag the side handles, the thinner the nose becomes:
Drag the side handles in towards each other to make the nose thinner. Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) as you drag one of the handles to tell Photoshop to drag the opposite handle in at the same time.
To shorten the length of the nose, simply drag the bottom handle up. The further you drag the handle, the shorter the nose becomes. You can also hold down your Alt (Win) / Option key as you drag the bottom handle to have Photoshop drag the top handle in at the same time:
Shorten the length of the nose by dragging the bottom handle upwards. Hold down "Alt" (Win) / "Option" (Mac) to have Photoshop drag the top handle downwards at the same time as you drag.
Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when youre done to accept the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform box.
Ive now made her nose a little thinner and a little shorter simply by dragging a couple of Free Transform handles. If we look closely at the image though, we can see that theres some problems. For one thing, the shadow lines under her cheeks no longer match up, especially the one on the left, as Ive circled below:
The shadows under her cheeks no longer run in smooth, continuous lines but appear broken.
To fix that, Im going to bring up the Free Transform handles once again with Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) and this time, Im going to hold down Shift+Ctrl+Alt (Win) / Shift+Command+Option (Mac) and drag either of the bottom corner handles out to the side. Holding all three keys down at once as Im dragging the bottom corner handle tells Photoshop to drag the bottom corner handle on the opposite side as well while leaving the top two corner handles locked in place. Technically, this is what Photoshop calls transforming the selection in "perspective", and Im simply using the keyboard shortcut to access this mode. I could also go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, choose Transform, and then choose Perspective and then drag either of the bottom corner handles outward, but I find the keyboard shortcut easier so Im going to hold all three keys down at once and drag the bottom right corner handle outward, which is also going to drag the bottom left corner handle outward as well, and Ill continue dragging until the shadow lines under her cheeks no longer appear broken:
The problem with the shadow lines under her cheeks is now corrected.
Once again Ill press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to apply the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform command.
Step 5: Add A New Layer
The only problem remaining with the image is the area under her nose where I made it smaller, which now looks a little messed up, as we can see below:
The area under her nose needs to be cleaned up.
To clean that area up, Ill use Photoshops Healing Brush, but before I do, Im going to add a new layer above Layer 1, since its always good practice to do your "healing" on a separate layer. To add a new layer, Ill simply click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:
Click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of Photoshops Layers palette.
Photoshop adds a new layer above the two existing layers and automatically names it Layer 2:
Photoshop adds a new layer at the top of the layer stack and names it Layer 2.
Step 6: Clean Up The Area With The Healing Brush
With the new layer added, select the Healing Brush from the Tools palette. In Photoshop CS2 and CS3, youll find the Healing Brush hiding behind the Spot Healing Brush, so youll need to click on the Spot Healing Brush in the Tools palette and hold your mouse down for a second or two, then select the Healing Brush from the fly out menu that appears, as shown below:
Select Photoshops Healing Brush from the Tools palette.
With the Healing Brush selected, look up in the Options Bar at the top of the screen and make sure you have the Sample All Layers option selected:
Select Sample All Layers in the Options Bar.
Youll need this option selected whenever youre using the Healing Brush on a separate layer as were doing here. The Healing Brush works by sampling the color, tone and texture from part of the image but since were working on a new blank layer, theres nothing on the layer for the Healing Brush to sample. By selecting the Sample All Layers option, Photoshop is able to sample from not only the layer were on but also from any layer(s) below it, which is exactly what we want.
The Healing Brush works best when you set the brush size to just slightly larger than the area youre trying to heal, and you can quickly change the size of the brush using the left and right bracket keys. The left bracket key makes the brush smaller, and the right bracket key makes it larger. It also works best if you click on individial spots with it rather than trying to paint over the entire problem area at once. One final thing to keep in mind with the Healing Brush is that you want to try to sample an area of skin thats close to the area youre healing, since different areas of a persons face have different skin texture, so you dont really want to sample an area from someones forehead when trying to retouch part of their nose. With that in mind, Im going to resize my brush with the bracket keys and then sample a good area of skin from below her nose by holding down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and clicking on an area just above the top left side of her mouth. Youll see your brush cursor turn into a target icon letting you know that youre sampling the image from directly under the icon:
With the Healing Brush selected, hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and click on a good area of skin to sample it. Make sure you sample from an area close to the area youre trying to heal to keep the skin texture as similar as possible.
Then, with my first area sampled, Ill release my Alt/Option key and begin clicking on areas under her nose that need to be cleaned up. Youll see your cursor change back into the brush cursor when you release Alt/Option, letting you know that youre healing areas of the image at this point rather than sampling from them. Again, Ill click with my mouse rather than paint with it, since painting large areas with the Healing Brush tends to give Photoshop too much information to work on at once and usually gives you poor results, so its best to click instead of paint. Ill click on a few spots to clean them up, and as I do, Photoshop replaces the texture from the area I clicked on with the texture from the area I sampled. It also tries to blend the color and tone from the area I sampled with the color and tone of the area I clicked on. This replacing textures and blending colors and tones is what Photoshop calls healing.
If I continue clicking on areas to heal them using that exact same area I sampled from though, the area under her nose is going to end up looking like a repeating pattern, which is a dead giveaway that the image was retouched. To avoid turning her skin into wallpaper, Im only going to click on a few spots to heal them and then Ill hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and click on a different area of good skin to sample it. Then, with the new area sampled, Ill release my "Alt/Option" key and click on a few more spots to heal them before sampling from a different area again, repeating this process of sampling and healing, sampling and healing, over and over until the area under her nose looks good.
Continue sampling from different areas of good skin by holding down and using them to heal problem areas until the area under the nose looks natural.
Once youve cleaned up the problem areas with the Healing Brush, youre digital nose job is done!
Here, for comparison, is my original image once again:
The original image.
And here is our final result, with her nose now a little thinner and a little shorter:
The final result.
Keep in mind that in most cases, you wont be after a Michael Jackson-sort of drastic nose job. Youll usually want to keep things more subtle, and if youre lucky, the person in the photo wont even realize what youve done. If they think they look great in the photo and have no idea what sort of work you put into it to make them look so good, then consider it a compliment to your Photoshop photo retouching skills and a job well done!
And there we have it! Check out our Photo Retouching section for more great image retouching and editing tutorials, or see below for tutorials you may be interested in!
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