Photoshop magician required, inquire within

[angelyne]

I find that despite the amazing talent out there, I am constantly dissatisfied with skins.  In some cases, I really like the faces, but I'll prefer another artist way of drawing bodies.  Or I'll like the way the women are draw, but prefer another artist's male bodies.  Or I might like most of the skin, but not a particular feature of it (like the bellybutton).

I tried mix and matching textures by importing them into a skin file.  That works, except for the obvious problem of slightly different skin colors.

Is there any way with Photoshop to make the skin color of one texture match another?  And is there any way to cut and paste bits of one into the other and make them blend in, so it doesn't look like it was cut and pasted. ?

Oh and before anyone gets upset at me, I intend to alter these skins strictly for my own personal use.  No artist will be harmed during this process

[LK]

Is there any way with Photoshop to make the skin color of one texture match another?  And is there any way to cut and paste bits of one into the other and make them blend in, so it doesn't look like it was cut and pasted. ?

Yes and yes.  The complexity (detail) of the skin would determine how hard it is to do what you ask, but, yeah, that's all possible.

[Sagana]

Is there any way with Photoshop to make the skin color of one texture match another?

Probably (without doing it myself on these specific skins and checking) the easiest way to do this is with blending modes. Put the skins on layers, and use the opacity options to transparency options to choose a kind of blending that leaves the details but lets the color show through (you should see options like 'normal', 'burn', 'dodge' um etc.) ...this is kinda hard to explain without going so far as to show pictures and write it up. You might want to look up a photoshop tutorial on layers and blending modes.

And is there any way to cut and paste bits of one into the other and make them blend in, so it doesn't look like it was cut and pasted. ?

This shouldn't be too hard. Make a selection of the part you want to cut and paste, feather your selection so the edges aren't hard and use the "gaussian blur" filter to blur the edges slightly (you probably also want to blur the edges of the spot where the paste is going in a similar way) playing carefully with the sliders until it gets rid of the edges but doesn't affect detail. Leave them on separate layers until you've got the amount of blur just right, otherwise you might lose details you want to keep. You can then add a tiny, tiny bit of overall blur after you flatten to smooth it up even more.

[angelyne]

Thanks Sagana.  That gives me a place to start.  Now I only need to RTFM

[IgnorantBliss]

That works, except for the obvious problem of slightly different skin colors.

Hmm, are you talking about TS1 files, not TS2? Because with TS2 clothing, the skin color is not included in the clothing texture, while with TS1 it was.

[angelyne]

No I mean TS2.  Does anyone still play TS1 ??

What I did is replace some textures in a skin file with ones I prefered.  So basically I kept the same face texture, but changed the body textures.  What that does is create a line at the neck level where the two texture don't match.  Also, it seems to create a line around the hair line.  That one I don't get.

[Paperbladder]

Well, I know that in Photoshop CS2 there's a Match Color option but I'm not sure if it's in the previous versions since I haven't looked for it in the others.  I've done this to make a skin the same color as another one and it worked fine, although it only seems to take one color.

The other method I believe would be going into Color Balance and editing values there till the R/G/B values of each area match up, but I've only done this with Paint Shop Pro so it might be different in PS.

[SaraMK]

What I usually do is cut-n-paste a bit of another skin onto the one I plan to use, and then use the "eraser" tool. Select a circle that looks like it has fuzzy edges. You want to choose a fairly large one for best results. Now move it around the edges of the bit that you pasted. The edges will become partially transparent and will blend with the skin underneath. This works much better than using the blur tools.

For the face, what you might want to try is to use the above method and erase everything except the facial details (eyes, nose, mouth, etc). Use a very large eraser tool for best results.

Here's an example of what I mean:

On top is Louis's medium skintone, made by nihilin.

On the bottom is the same skintone blended with the face from Enayla's Fresh Summer.

This took less than two minutes to do, so it isn't perfect, it just shows one way to solve the color blending problem.



ETA: For many color problems, simply adjusting the Hue/Saturatio (it's under the Image > Adjust menu) works well enough. For more advanced option you could try Image > Adjust > Selective Color.

[SaraMK]

Also, it seems to create a line around the hair line.  That one I don't get.

Sims have a separate texture for the scalp. That's why the face doesn't match - it doesn't match the scalp.

[IgnorantBliss]

No I mean TS2.  Does anyone still play TS1 ??

What I did is replace some textures in a skin file with ones I prefered.  So basically I kept the same face texture, but changed the body textures.  What that does is create a line at the neck level where the two texture don't match.  Also, it seems to create a line around the hair line.  That one I don't get.

Oh, ok, I didn't realize at first you were talking about skintones.

Yes, there is a fairly large number of people who still play TS1. I don't, but some do.

[angelyne]

I'm a real dimwit when it comes to graphic editing

Did you mean that you pasted Enayla's face over the louis face ?

[SaraMK]

I'm a real dimwit when it comes to graphic editing

Did you mean that you pasted Enayla's face over the louis face ?

Exactly.

Like I said, this was very quickly done, just to give you an example. If I was doing it for real, I would do it much more carefully.

This is the bit that was left after erasing the edges of the Enayla face:



The steps I followed are these:

Extract the face from both skintones.
Open both faces in Photoshop.
Copy Enayla face and paste it (becomes a new layer automatically) onto the Louis face.
Use the eraser tool to erase around the edges of the Enayla face.
Use Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturaion to move the slider very slightly to make it more pink, which matches the Louis skintone better.

As you can see, nothing very fancy was done!