Looking for advice

[stepher668]

I'm not sure if I'm over-thinking this or not, so I'm looking for others' opinions. I'm not sure his forehead is quite right, especially on our left. Any advice about any of it is much appreciated.

Before


Work in Progress

[Mhayes]

Looks good to me. The only thing I might change is on the background to your right; I would use the patch tool to even out some of the spots. The baby looks good, but the hairline (what little there is) seems to come in at the center rather than being rounded on the forehead.

Very nice restoring the damaged parts!

Margie

[Bambi]

I see what you mean. You have lost that soft baby hair around the forehead and the repairs have left the area looking a little bruised. You might try going back to your color corrected layer before you repaired the head, copy the bit of undamaged hair and paste it into a new layer. Free Transform and Flip Horizontal then Transform into place on our right. If you have CS6, Puppet Warp is an even better tool. If you stretch the layer too much in Free Transform, you can ruin the texture. So warp it gently into place. You might need more than one layer to cover all the damage.

It will still look rough at that stage so select the working layer and the hair layers and hold down the Shift-Opt-Command keys and hit E to merge the selected layers, but keep the working layers in case you need them later. Then work with your Patch and Spot Healing tools to blend the patches into the forehead.

Bambi

[stepher668]

Thanks for the tips! I'm updating to CC this weekend (currently only have CS5) so I will definitely try that Puppet Warp tool.

[stepher668]

What do you think of this? I tried the Puppet Warp tool, but there was too much of the baby's head that had damage to make it work. I just did some selective color correction to remove some of the blue tones in an attempt to get rid of that bruised look.

[Mhayes]

I think you have done a really great job with this, but what I was getting at is to notice the hairline in the center of the baby's face. Go back to the original--not your WIP as it won't show this--and click on the Channels tab and click on the green channel and next the blue. The green channel will have the baby's hairline coming down a little more in the center of his face and the blue channel will be more rounded.  Just as a suggestion, but I would bring a little more hair in and use the patch tool to the rosy part of his head. You will be able to borrow some good skin nearby. Here is where masking will help/

That is a small nit pic on an otherwise very nice restore.

Margie