Removing facial wrinkles

[Robert Morris]

Touching up anything frame by frame is not only tedious, but can also reveal inconsistencies when played back real time. Off the top of my head, I would suggest looking into AE’s clone tool. Although, I’ve been trying to find some info on revoming human skin blemishes and wrinkles as well. Someone should write an extensitve tutorial on this for After Effects. I know it can do it, but I haven’t had the time yet to get into experimenting. Hopefully someone else out there uses it for that and can tell us about their techniques. I imagine it’s a combination of tracking a cloned area and masking. I look forward to responses.

[Grand Admiral]

that crazy teaser trailer from Resident Evil:Apolocyps comes to mind.

[Mike Clasby]

Zits… wrinkles, this might or might not help.

Zit removal? by leemce on Apr 14, 2005 at 00:03 gmt

https://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_post.php?postid=111341183256774&forumid=2&highlight=zit

and

Tracking that ZIT by leemce on Apr 21, 2005 at 03:40 gmt

https://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_post.php?postid=111402962334571&forumid=2&highlight=zit

[Steve Roberts]

Indeed.

I recently removed a boom shadow on a moving subject by copying a shadowless frame and masking around the relevant area, then using the liquify effect to warp it to the shape of the shadowed part of the subject. Luckily, the other shadows were the same for both. If you had a frame where the subject were twenty years younger, this technique would have worked. 🙂

I tend to shy away from frame-by-frame retouching because yes, it’s tedious, but it also can result in a jittery look that can be next to impossible to remove. AE isn’t yet set up for that sort of thing. Ideally, you’d be able to run a RAM preview, and retouch while it’s running so you can see the effect of your changes on a moving image. Currently, attempting to do the fix stops the RAM preview.

I would try a feathered masked solid that follows the desired motion. Make the solid the colour of the forehead. It won’t be perfect, because it needs to show the shading/modelling of the forehead without showing the wrinkles. As a result, it might just reduce the wrinkles slightly. Maybe a masked adjustment layer with blur might help.

There was a thread on removing pimples a little while back, and it did involve tracking. Searching for “pimple” might work.

Hope that helps,
Steve

[Tomadonna]

Thanks for all the help/suggestions guys,
Will give it a try!

Tom

[Robert Morris]

That zit thread was great! I didn’t think to do a search for “zit”. Go Chris Smith! Your explanation triggered it for me. I do the lightening trick all the time in Photoshop with the History Brush. But I guess I just didn’t apply that knowledge to AE yet. I’d still like to master the vector paint tool in AE eventually. I hear it can do a lot of retouching work. Thanks again!

[Jim Arcon]

There is a technique called skin-softening or skin-detail, where anything a certain color (flesh-tone) is blurred just enough to eliminate or reduce wrinkles, zits, etc.

Some high-end broadcast cameras have this ability – when turned up too high the people look like they’re using a very thick layer of makeup. Seems like there are also some plug-ins that can do the job in post. I think DFT 55mm has one called “skin smooth.” Do a search.

You might also be able to do it using chroma-keying to generate a mask that covers the area.