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Hi all, I have a client who wants American football paint on his face like the attached but my efforts aren't great. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Thanks!

Phil

2022-05-18 1214 Screenshot.jpg

2022-05-18 1213 Screenshot.jpg

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Looks like the brush has Wet Edges set. Try using a brush with multiply for a blend mode.

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Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Try this...

  • Open the image
  • Use the frequency separation filter 
  • Create a pixel layer and place it below the high frequency layer, so it's in the middle
  • Select the brush tool and under the Marker brushes select the "Brush tip marker" brush (third one down)
  • Go into the brushes settings and change the spacing to 1%
  • Now paint on the pixel layer, you can adjust the blackness of the brush and maybe adjust the opacity a tad

The reason for the frequency separation is to keep the skin texture

image.png.2a3ec363aec366b820d581844536e409.png

The only issue is that eye black is a grease so it has a reflective quality, which is a bit problematic to simulate.

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26 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Try this...

  • Open the image
  • Use the frequency separation filter 
  • Create a pixel layer and place it below the high frequency layer, so it's in the middle
  • Select the brush tool and under the Marker brushes select the "Brush tip marker" brush (third one down)
  • Go into the brushes settings and change the spacing to 1%
  • Now paint on the pixel layer, you can adjust the blackness of the brush and maybe adjust the opacity a tad

The reason for the frequency separation is to keep the skin texture

image.png.2a3ec363aec366b820d581844536e409.png

 

 

Thanks. I tried that. I think it's a little better. What do you think? 

 

2022-05-18 1215 Screenshot.jpg

I like turtles!

Windows 11

Sony A7iii

Sony A7riii

Sony A7Rii

Sony RX10 Mkiii

Canon G5x

Mavic Mini drone

A partridge

A pear tree (occupied)

www.philrosephoto.com

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Needs to be thicker and a bit shorter.

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A bit of experimentation gave me my attached image.

  • A new Pixel Layer was created.
  • The paint was drawn with Paint Brush “Acrylics / Gradual Acrylic Cotton Paper 01” (wet edges).
  • A 3D Layer Effect was added, as per the settings in the image.
  • A Gaussian Blur Layer Effect was added with 1px blur.
  • The Smudge Brush was then used to smudge the ends of the paint.
  • The Opacity of the pixel layer was then set to 96%, just to ‘soften’ it a little.

It’s not perfect by any means but it might be something worth playing around with.

I think one of the things to keep in mind with this sort of thing is that the result won’t always look totally ‘natural’ because the real thing doesn’t always look natural – it’s some streaks of paint on someone’s face, and that’s not ‘normal’ (for most people).

As mentioned above, it’s probably the reflections that will do the ‘heavy lifting’ on something like this and they may be tricky to do well.

 

Screenshot 2022-05-19 095024.png

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I wouldn't make the effect so strong. I think there should be a little bit of the skin texture and the lights and shadows of the face visible in the strokes. So a Blend Mode like Overlay, Soft Light, possibly Hue or Colour (can't check it at the moment, just check them out yourself)... could help, because it exposes one layer over another one (or even all visible layers below) so that the texture shows through.

And I wouldn't use a 3-D-Effect (or at least an absolutely minimal one) because the colour has to lie flat on the face. 3D doesn't make much sense, I think.

I would possibly choose a chalky brush, not too grainy in the center, but on the edges. For fine tuning use the layer opacity.

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2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

I think there should be a little bit of the skin texture and the lights and shadows of the face visible in the strokes.

I thought about that and came to the conclusion, perhaps mistakenly, that the skin wouldn’t show through the black paint.
I’ve not used this sort of face paint myself but from what I can remember seeing, in TV shows and what-not, the skin doesn’t show through it, for the most part at least. (I’ve based this on vague memories of the ‘oily’ face paint that I’ve seen soldiers scrape from a tin.)

2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

So a Blend Mode like Overlay, Soft Light, possibly Hue or Colour (can't check it at the moment, just check them out yourself)... could help

I tried a few Blend Modes but nothing looked good to me; more experimentation is needed.

2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

And I wouldn't use a 3-D-Effect (or at least an absolutely minimal one) because the colour has to lie flat on the face.

The 3D Effect was just a quick attempt at adding some kind of ‘weight/body’ to the paint so it didn’t look flat, but I agree that it doesn’t look very good.

All-in-all, my example was just a quick experiment and I agree that it can be improved upon a lot.

(I first tried using the Displace Filter, which I used for some half-decent tattoo ‘overlays’ a while back, but didn’t get good results as I’ve forgotten what I did earlier. Maybe I’ll try that again sometime and see if I can get something half-decent again.)

With any luck, and further input from people like yourself, this thread may become a good resource for people wanting to create this sort of effect.

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@GarryP

I haven't ever painted my face this way too, but as far as I know it is some kind of charcoal they smear on their skin. So I think that it will create only a very thin, flat layer on the skin. Not much weight, I think. I meant, the skin shines through in the meaning that the colour stroke adapts to the texture of the skin, not in the meaning of transparency.

The problem with the 3D-effect in this case is that it doesn't adapt to the three-dimensional surface of the face. So it tends to look like a plank or so, that is pasted in front of the face.

But I must confess that these are all things I only formed out in my mind. I didn't test it out. I think it sounds like a topic concerning then Blend Modes. I would suppose that Overlay or Soft Light might be good choices. But to look genuine of course also the colour and consistency of the strokes are important.

Maybe I should try it myself to say something more reliable.

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The vague memories I have is that the paint was something like boot polish (that’s what the tin looked like), but that would probably be shiny, and therefore pointless as camouflage or for keeping light out of your eyes.
I’m sure things will have moved on since then and the paint used in modern times will be quite different and more like make-up than actual paint.
(I didn’t want to do lots of web searching for examples of this kind of thing as I didn’t want it being in my search history.)

I think I understand what you mean with the texture/effect now; that’s definitely something which needs to be addressed.

I’m sure there must be a good way to do this so I’d be interested to see better methods, and hopefully learn something too.

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I'm not sure. Maybe you're right that it is some kind of boot polish or Body Painting Colour. But I think that the main problem is that it must somehow be adapted to the surface of the face. Even the dull black strokes don't reflect much light, I think they must at least reflect a little at the highlights.

I'm still fiddling. The Blend Modes alone don't do what I want. But I possibly found a bit of a solution by separating the highlights of the face on an extra layer that I moved to the top (attached screenshot). I also increased the contrast of this layer a bit. Still not perfect, but maybe a first step.

Of course it is also important that the strokes are not darker than the shadows of the image. So also the image must be optimized, concerning the contrast and brightness. And also the sharpness of the strokes must fit to the sharpness of the image.

firstTry.thumb.JPG.4dca8b693665b26808cd290b06293346.JPG

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OK, here is a second try. It is basically the same as the first one, with an additional step. What I did:

1. I optimized the image (contrast).

2. I duplicated it, then desaturated the duplicate using the HSL-filter and strenghtened the highlights with the contrast/lightness-filter. Both filters should be applied only to the duplicate layer.

3. I released the Highlights of the duplicate using the Blend Ranges (the small Gear symbol on the top right of the Layers Panel). You can see the curve on the screenshot of my last post.

4. I created a new Pixel Layer between the basic image layer and the desaturated duplicate.

5. I chose a brush that fits my needs (in this case I took one of the basic brushes, because I don't know what brushes the OP has in his repertoire) and painted the strokes. There may be better brushes for this job. Just look for one you like.

6. I applied the Gaußian Blur Filter to the strokes layer just a little bit, so that it fits better to the image.

Now the Highlights Layer already lightens the parts of the strokes that cover the highlights of the face. But they lighten also the whole face, so that it becomes too bright.

7. So I moved the Highlights Layer to the Strokes Layer so that it snapped to its bottom. Then only the strokes will become highlighted - not the rest of the image.

8. For fine tuning still the Contrast/Lightness-Filter can be used.

The advantage of this solution is that the highlights and the texture of the skin will be applied to the strokes in a realistic way.

 

secondTry.thumb.JPG.3724e1b4728ac4fb25d77ee3bdf52472.JPG

 

 

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18 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Here’s my last attempt for today.
Brush used – Acrylics – Gradual Acrylic Cotton Paper 02
Live Motion Blur of 16px
Some minor edits with the Erase Brush.
It’s still not right but it’s better than before, I think.
Still needs lots of work for highlights/shadows/etc.

Screenshot 2022-05-19 142755.png

That looks very good.

I googled for images of the NFL, where I found some images with this kind of face painting. Looks in fact more like some kind of oily colour.

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Depending on what kind of colour is used, it might be even a bit shiny/glossy looking. But I wouldn't work with any 3D effects either. And yes, the skin texture needs to be visible in order to make the result look real.

Here are two real-life examples, which might give an idea of how the edit should look like.

Covering a huge area to demonstrate the texture effect:

raiders-sign-bruce-irvinjpg.jpg

Here's a bit more glossy colour:

459007302.jpg.0.jpg

As you can see, the second example is completely opaque, yet the skin texture remains clearly visible.

 

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5 hours ago, GarryP said:

(I didn’t want to do lots of web searching for examples of this kind of thing as I didn’t want it being in my search history.)

Private browsing, anybody?

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6 hours ago, GarryP said:

I didn’t want to do lots of web searching for examples of this kind of thing as I didn’t want it being in my search history.

As @Alfred suggested, perhaps private browsing mode. 

Or, perhaps use a different search engine, like DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/

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I'd always approach this sort of thing by using Blend Ranges which has always given me decent results when doing this sort of thing - see vid:

Daz1.png

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4 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I'd always approach this sort of thing by using Blend Ranges which has always given me decent results when doing this sort of thing - see vid:

Yes, that's cool! I was afraid that there might be an easier way than mine. Et voila. Damn! 😄

My workflow is a thing I used to do somehow similar in GIMP for years. But GIMP doesn't have Blend Ranges. So I had to look for a substitute.

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Forgot to use multiply (I need a coffee), and a bit messing around should give you something usable? 

Daz1.png

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Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

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On 5/20/2022 at 1:57 AM, Dazmondo77 said:

That's amazing but I'm not seeing how you made the mask for the face, am I missing something? Thanks! 

I like turtles!

Windows 11

Sony A7iii

Sony A7riii

Sony A7Rii

Sony RX10 Mkiii

Canon G5x

Mavic Mini drone

A partridge

A pear tree (occupied)

www.philrosephoto.com

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