Beauty work on an aging rockstar

[David Bogie]

The issue is how much you can bill the idiots who produced the project.
You can apply softening to the person but only with careful rotoscoping of every single frame. Could take weeks. If you don’t roto out the performer, your softening system (whatever it is) will degrade the entire image.

Skin softening tools are available in a wide range from simple and not-so-simple blurs to complex blemish and line removal routines best done in Photoshop. That’s where I’d start, PS tutorials, and then see what you can adapt to your experience with After Effects, SHake, combustion, or Motion.

Trish and Chris Meyer have an old but relevant rick they used to call “instant sex” that is directly applicable but the techniques and concepts can be applied to skin reconditioning.
It’s in several of their AE books, page 224-225 of the original edition of their “AE in Production.”

Hope you get better advice but you ‘ve got to determine first if you can paid for your client’s screwup. It might also be cheaper for you to hand them the completed project and get paid for the work you did. Or find an experienced roto expert to subcontract. You may not want to do this yourself.

Best of luck, hold out for a few more days if you can to get more advice.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Mike Clasby]

This might take a few years off:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/blemish_removal.php

[Christopher Wright]

Now that is an awesome tutorial!!