Changing the color of eyes and lips

I've been asked to show how I edit pictures for doing a caption. Specifically I was asked about the changes that I make to lips and Eyes.

So as long as Mr. Cuckold doesn't mind I'll do a few posts to show how I do things. This is not a basic image editing tutorial. It will just be about making simple changes to photos before you add captions to them.

So here's our basic image. I like it but I'd like to make some changes to it to give it a bit more pop.
To do that I've opened the image in GIMP. GIMP is an open source image editing program. It's free and it's pretty powerful. Many other programs are available including Paint.net, which is also free and a lot more like Photoshop in it's menus structure. Any decent image editing program will work.

Take a look at the top menu bar in the picture window. The numbers 1689X2100 is the size of the image in pixels. Since I normally post images that are about 1000X750 pixels in size this is a pretty big image. Notice that many of the posts to this site are much smaller than that but that I just like the larger images.

We'll scale and crop the image down to the final size that we want but first we'll do the image editing so any traces of what we've done during editing will all but disappear when we scale the image to it's smaller final size.

I almost always change the eyes and lips of a picture and that's what I'm going to do now so to do that I've zoomed in on that part of the image.

Notice in the bottom of the image window that the image is 229% of it's original size.

OK now we start. I've used the lasso selection tool to trace a selection around the lips. We want to change the color of the lips but first we must use some sort of selection tool to select just the lips from the photo. Notice the dotted black line around the lips?

WE have two windows open in this picture. The big one on the right has the picture that we're work in on while the window on the left called “Gimp” has are tools. All of the tool is the top row are selection tools. The third tool from the left has a dark box around it. That is the lasso tool and every editing program has one and frequently the icon is exactly the same.

So what I've done is take the lasso tool and drawn around the lips. Notice that I didn't include the teeth. If we include the teeth then the color changes for the lips would end up on the teeth as well and red teeth would make her look like a vampire or something.

I Gimp I trace around the outside of the lips then I press and hold the control key and draw around the teeth. By pressing the control key while I draw I'm telling the program to remove what I'm drawing from what I selected before. So I drew the lips then removed the teeth by drawing the teeth while I held down the control key.

Notice that in the tools window that I've turn on anti aliasing and feather edges. This means that the program will help fade the color changes into the background image making things look a bit more natural.

Also if you look closely at the picture you'll notice that I really didn't do a very good job of tracing around the lips. That's OK because when we scale the image down to it's final posting size you will never be able to see it. That's why I like to start with big images.

Finally we've done something! With the lips selected I brought up the color adjustment window. Your editing program may call it something different. What ever you do be careful that you don't somehow delete your selection because if you do then the color changes you make will be applied to the entire image and not just the selected lips.

In the color balance window I've increased the red because I just love those ruby lips. Notice I tweaked the Magenta a bit to make the red a little deeper in color. Have fun play with the sliders; you can always reset and then start all over again.

Now I'm working on the eyes. This is like the lips. You take the lasso tool and draw around the eyes. I never include the pupil or any of the bright reflections on the eye in the color selection. You want to leave them the colors they are or it will look very unnatural.

Normally I select both eyes at once. You do that in Gimp by pressing and holding the Shift key. So you draw around the first eye then press and hold the shift key and draw around the second eye. Works like the control key but it adds instead of subtracts. Nice!

Once we've selected the eyes we bring up the color balance window and adjust the eye color. First I selected the right eye, her left eye, and then turned it blue by using the blue and cyan sliders. Then I selected the other eye and turned it green. This is what you see in the picture.

Remember the original picture? She had brown eyes.

We could be done here but I like the pictures I work with to be a bit richer in color. So here I've zoomed out on the picture window to see more of the picture and opened the levels window. Every good image editing program has a levels tool and this time they're all called levels.

I could have just taken the middle slider and moved it to the rightt. That would have made the image a bit darker but it would have also made the highlights on her face dark as well so in this case I moved the right slider a bit to the left and the middle slider a bit to the right. That made the highlight brighter and the image darker. The boxes below the slider show you haw much the image was tweaked. The middle slider started out at 1.00 and is now at .85 and the right slider started out at 255 and is now at 245. Not a big change but it makes a big difference in the image.

So now I've decided to change her hair color a bit. Again I selected her hair with the lasso tool and again notice that the selection is pretty haphazard but you'll not see it after it's scaled down.

Here I've opened the hue saturation window. I've turned the saturation down. This has the effect of removing the color. If I move it all the way to the left the image looks like a black and white photo but you could still add color to it if you wanted. Then because the saturation makes her hair gray which I don't want I tweaked the hue tool just a bit to the right to give it a bit more yellow. I could have used the hue/saturation tool and then the color balance tool but you need to know about the hue/saturation tool.

So since we're finally done with the color work it's time to crop and scale the image. Here I've cropped the image to a horizontal and I'm scaling the image from it's present 1609X1161 to 1091X750.
When you opened the image/scale tool you'll only see one window. I've cut and pasted the image so that you can see the window before and then after the changes that I want to make.

I could have made the image smaller but again I like bigger images.

So here we see the before on the left and the after on the right. Too much trouble?

This is our final product ready for some hot racy text...............

This is the same image a little darker, with no changes to the hair and cropped and scaled a bit different.

Very good I would love to see more of these!

Thank You, Ms. Jane! What a wonderful tutorial. I didn't know you used GIMP, i've heard good things about it in the "farking" community. i'm still a novice with photoshop... Your suggestions, and talents, are most helpful, thanks again!

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Does anyone know how to do bruises?

Yeah don't you just hate it when he leaves
his marks all over her?

I created a new layer, mixed up some red
and painted it. Then another new layer
and painted it with some purple. PLayed
with the transparency sliders.

Merged the layers together then used the
smudge tool to smudge the hard edges
away then used the lasso tool to select
the shape of the bruise.

Copied the selection and pasted it into
another new layer. Turned off the other
bruise layers.

Then moved the bruise to the location
that I wanted. I further smudged the
edge of the bruise and then used the
transparency slider to make it a little
less dark.

He did it to her last week!

If you need another bruise then turn
back on the merged bruise layers make
another selection, with a different shape,
copy and then paste to a new layer. Now
you go through the same smudge/transparency
again.

I'm sure that there are a lot of ways to do
it but this works OK.......

Aren't they just beautifull............... ..

For greater depth you can cut and paste
different selections on to different layers but
on top of each other and then use the
transparency tools.

Use the scale and rotate tools to get the
size and position that you need.

You know she that likes the bruises. She
goads him on about bruising her. She
wears them like a badge of her infidelity.

Every time you look at her you see them.
Every time you see them your reminded
that she was with him, that she prefers
him, wants him.

You can never imagine that your just a
normal couple. Can't ever forget about
it for one second. Your always reminded
that she had to find another man because
you just don't measure up do you?

.. ehhhh, a bruise...

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Thanks!

Jane_fressia,
Thank you for a very interesting tutorial.
Permisterally I use Photoshop but I must say GIMP is very impressive, particularly in your hands.
Please show us what else can be achieved.
Thanks again,

Greenman

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_____________________ Jane_fressia

I have trouble trying to get skin tomes to match when I'm transferring a head to a different body. I have tried using sliders, but to limited sucess. Just because I am aware of the tool doesn't mean that I know how to use it.

Any advice or tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

had to put a black necklace on her

Pretty quick and dirty.

I just selected the face and tried
to see how the colors were different.
In your case the face is much more
pink/red and too little yellow. So I
just messed around with those sliders
and then used the smudge tool to
mix the head and the body.

the head is by the way a little too
big but I think it still works.

I don't do this kind of stuff usually so
maybe you can ask the people that do
how they do it. I think you just need
to spend the time trying it again and
again.

Good luck.

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