The Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
Makeover Tools

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The Paint Shop Makeover tools are a group of really unique, easy to use brushes and when they are combined with a couple of other tools and effects you can turn anyone into a supermodel - or an other worldly being depending on how far you take it!

Are you one of those people who likes to take an ordinary picture of an ordinary person and perform a complete and stunning digital makeover on them?

Thought so ...

These Paint Shop tools and procedures simply prove that pretty much any photograph you see in magazines and ads does not really depict the actual human being who was originally photographed.

What The Tools Do

The glamorizing tools do exactly what they say

The Blemish Fixer removes blemishes - this tool is also really great for fixing blemishes and marks on any photograph.
The Tooth Brush whitens teeth.
The Eyedropper adds sparkle to the whites of the eyes.
The Suntan gives the skin a suntan, and
The Thinify removes unwanted pounds.

Open an image and give the Paint Shop Makeover tools a trial run. If you have any problems then open the Learning Centre (F10) ...

Learning Center

Learning Center

This is great - all of the tools are in the same place and the Learning Center tells you exactly how to use them.

These are the Learning Center instructions for the Blemish Fixer, the Toothbrush and the Suntan Brush.

They are clear and concise and tell you exactly what to do.

There are no instructions for the Suntan Brush or the Thinify tool.

It must be because using them correctly is self evident.

To add a suntan just paint it on. You can choose the strength and remember that less is more.

The thinify tool is really quite unique. Select the strength of the thinning effect and then click in the middle of the object being 'thinified" and let PSP do its thing. You can do as many 'thinifies' as you want until you are satisfied.

painshop thinify

Before Thinify

paintshop makeover thinned

After Thinify

Other Tools

Probably the most dramatic procedure is to run Skin Smoothing on the image (Adjust > Skin Smoothing).

As you can see from the screenshot of the Skin Smoothing Palette, the Amount is adjustable - from hardly any smoothing at all to the complete porcelain look.

Now that the skin is nice and smooth you need to do something about the rest of the picture because everything is waaay to smooth.

This is where you grab the Sharpen Brush and sharpen those things that need to be sharpened like the eyes, eyebrows, hair, lips, teeth and background.

The Sharpen Brush is in the tool bar as part of the Lighten/Darken group.

Like a lot of the other PSP tools, you can adjust pretty much everything with the Sharpen Brush including Brush Variance with your Graphire, Bamboo or Intuos tablet.

An Example

	The original image.
	The original image after using the Blemish Tool on the cheek and the shoulders.
	The skin on the cheek was blotchy red and these tools do not address that problem . I added a Soft Light Layer and painted over the blotchy area with white. You can find out about this method of Dodging and Burning by clicking the link.
	This image is the application of the eyedropper and then the Skin Smoothing dialogue (Adjust > Skin Sharpening ...)
	This is the final image. The Sharpen Brush was used on: the eye and eyebrow the lips the hair the ear stud the necklace and the wrist band I added one more Soft Light Layer and toned down the dark area above her lip and on her cheek.