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CrazyBusy
Dec. 19, 2007
PT&T: Photoshop Head-Swapping Surgery
(Ha, ha! I had to do this entire photo over again so that I could show you step by step how I did this. I just realized that I used a different photo to replace this certain child's face in this tutorial than I did originally! Oh well, you'll get the idea!)
I thought I'd show you step by step how I swapped heads on one of the pictures. However, I know some (a lot!?) of you are not remotely interested, so I'll just show the pictures first, since some of you wanted to know whose head got swapped.
Here's the picture I liked but one of the children wasn't looking at me:
Luckily I had taken several shots in this series and I had one I liked better of that particular child. If Gracie's eyes were open and Alek and Millie were smiling like they were in the other, I would've just used this one:
So I stole that child's face from that photo and placed it on the photo I liked better. I also used the spot healing tool to get rid of the sore on Gabe's forehead, and here's the final product:
Now if you're interested, here's how I did it. I normally wouldn't take the time to do something like this, but it was REALLY REALLY easy because the lighting was the same, they' were taken at the same distance and Josiah's head pretty much stayed in the same position. If his head was turned or it was from a totally different picture, it would've been much harder to do and make it look real.
So here's how you do it in Photoshop. If you're using a different photo editing program, well, I won't know how to do it! Photoshop is all I know, but I'm sure there are similar tools in other programs.
The first thing you'll do is open up both pictures- the one you're taking the face from and the one you'll be adding it to. Make the photo you're taking from the active photo by clicking on it so that it's in front.
Next go to filter>extract.
Then this window will pop up:
Usually the highlighter tool is already selected, but if not, click on it (see red arrow) and then select a brush size. I chose 39 but could've gone a little smaller if I was wanting to be more precise. If the photos weren't so similar, I would've made the brush size smaller to save some time and work later on. After you've clicked on the highlighter tool & have your brush size the size you want, you'll hold down the left button of your mouse while you trace around the head. Be sure you kind of center your brush over the outline of the head.
After you have the head outlined, go to the paint bucket tool (see red arrow), center it the selection of the head and left click. It will fill your selection like this:
Next, hit okay and it will take you back to your photo which will now look like this:
 See? Everybody's gone but the selection you made- but do you notice he's missing some parts and it's kind of jagged looking? We need to fill him back in a little. So now go to the history brush (see red arrow). (side note: if you did any editing before you started the extraction process, you need to put your history brush next to that last step, otherwise the original photo will erase back in- say, you lightened your photo first- what you erase back in will be darker). Choose an appropriate sized soft brush (one that's just big enough to erase back in his face- if you choose too big of a size, you'll get more back than you want). I underlined the brush preset bar, where you adjust the brush size, softness/hardness and opacity- you want it at 100% opacity.
I "painted" his face back in and this is what he looks like now:
Don't worry about what's showing around his head if you're using two very similar pictures, like I did. The more different (that doesn't sound right! LOL!) your pictures are, the more precise you'll want to be- you would NOT want anything but his head showing.
Now, hold down the control key and then click on the layer to the right, where it says layer 0. I should've put a red arrow pointing to it, but if you just draw a straight line from Josiah's mouth towards the right of the screen and you'll run right into layer 0. After you do that, you'll see the "marching ants" around his head, showing you it's been selected. You could also go to Select>All and it should select that way too, I just usually use the control/click method. Then go to Edit>Copy. Now his head has been copied and is ready to place on the next photo.
Minimize that photo and bring up the one you want to add his head to. Now go to Edit>Paste. His head should paste into that photo and should look like this:
Now since you don't want his head floating around there like that and the thought of two Josiah's is just, well a little scary, you need to move his head and make just one Josiah.
You may need to zoom in a little so you can get it right. Another thing you can do if you're having trouble fitting the head in just right is decrease the opacity of the floating head. To do that, you'd slide the opacity tool slider, which is located to the right of Josiah's eyes (make another imaginary line), to the left. That will make his picture see-through. Don't slide it ALL the way to the left or he'll completely disappear. Just enough to help you out. You'll be able to fit him in better that way. And then of course don't forget to bump the opacity back up to 100% when you're done! You may also need to resize it if it was taken at a different distance.
 Once you have the head in a good position, it's time to clean up the photo a little bit. You can see that because I was a little sloppy in my selection of his head, I have some extra stuff that I need out of there (see red arrow). To do that, you'll use your eraser tool. I circled the eraser tool on the left of the screen. Another important thing about this step is to be sure the "head" layer is the "active" layer. Again, look to the right of the screen & you'll see two layers- the bottom one is the main photo and the top one is his head. You want the head layer to be blue (selected), otherwise, when you start erasing, you'll erase the main photo. Just erase around the edges till it looks right, then flatten your photo. (I right click on the bottom layer and choose "flatten image")
Voila! It took me FOREVER to type up this tutorial and take the screen shots and upload them and everything, but it only took me a few minutes to actually swap the heads. It really is easy! If you try it, let me see how you did!
Here's the before and after. Before:
AFTER:
Now I have GOT to get busy around here! |
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Kirstin 
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Dec. 19, 2007 - I'm impressed!