Photoshop Tutorials: Easy Digital Nose Job In Photoshop
Learn Adobe Photoshop with Photoshop Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com
Written By Steve Patterson
In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial on digital photo editing, we're going to learn how incredibly easy it is to give someone a digital nose job (not that anyone we know would need it, of course!). This photo editing technique is so simple and easy, you'll be tempted to use it on photos of people who honestly don't need it. Or at least, that's what you can tell them when they ask you why you made their nose smaller. You simply had to because it was so much fun and so easy to do!
Seriously though, let's face it, sometimes photos don't do people justice, and even though in real life their nose may be a textbook example of what a human nose is supposed to look like, a wrong focal length setting on the camera lens, bad lighting or an unflattering angle can distort reality and make things look bigger than they really are. Fortunately, Photoshop makes digital plastic surgery a breeze without the need for any fancy surgical tools or even a steady hand. In fact, all you need is the Lasso Tool, the Free Transform command, and the Healing Brush to clean up any rough spots.
Here's the image I'll be working with in this tutorial. Before we begin, I just want to make it clear that I am not saying this woman needs a nose job. She is simply the unfortunate victim of this tutorial:
And here's what she's going to look like after we make her nose a little smaller (again, not that she needs it):
Let's get started.
Need A Printable Version Of This Tutorial? Get Unlimited Access To Our Print-Ready PDF eBooks!
Step 1: Draw A Rough Selection Around The Outside Of The Nose
Before we can start our digital nose job, we first need to isolate the person's nose from the rest of the image, which means we need to add a selection around it. Photoshop's Lasso Tool works perfectly in this case so select it from the Tools palette:
You can also quickly select it by pressing L on your keyboard. The reason the Lasso Tool works so well here is because if you've used it before, you already know that it's not exactly the most precise selection tool in all of Photoshop (that honor would go to the Pen Tool), yet for this technique, we purposely want to avoid making a precise selection of the nose. Instead, simply drag out a rough selection around the outside of the nose as I've done here:
It's definitely better to select too much of an area than not enough, since we'll be cleaning things up at the end.
Step 2: Feather The Selection
Next we need to make the edges of our selection softer, or "feather" them as Photoshop calls it. To do that, go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Feather. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Ctrl+D (Win) / Option+Command+D (Mac). Either way brings up Photoshop's Feather dialog box. Enter a Feather Radius value of somewhere between 20-30 pixels depending on the size and resolution of your image. You may need to experiment a little with the value. I'm going to enter 20 pixels for my Feather Radius:
Click OK to feather the selection and exit out of the dialog box.
Step 3: Copy The Selection To A New Layer
With our selection in place and the edges feathered, press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to copy the selection to a new layer. If we look in Photoshop's Layers palette now, we can see our original image on the Background layer and the nose now on a new layer above it, which Photoshop has automatically named "Layer 1":
Tired Of Scrolling Through Web Pages? Download Our Convenient, Print-Ready PDF eBooks!