Recolouring heads from one race to another

[modu]

Ok. sorry for a confusing title, but here is basically what i am trying to do. there is one black male head (the one with the frizzy kinda sonic the hedge hog style hair) who i want to convert to a white male with the same face and hair (basically just change the skin colour). I have no idea how to do this so it actually looks realistic (and by that i mean like all the other heads in the game realistic). I tried using Jasc's colour switching tool, but it doesn't work quite the way I want it to. Does anybody know how i could do this? what program i need, etc?

 

 

ps: i am not trying to acheive the same shade of white skin as the other white male characters. I am looking for one that is slightly more tanned, so they don't look like an albino.

 

pss: don't take me to be a racist for this. it is just that i am white, and prefer to play with white characters.

[Damar Stiehl]

Photoshop's probably the best and play with hue/saturation... Although (IMO) none of the included black heads could be convincingly recoloured into a white guy. At best it'll probably look like a black man painted white...

 

No harm in trying tho.

[Harker]

Yes, you will need a good amount of patience, Photoshop, comprehension of Hue/Saturation/Brightness/Contrast, and time.

 

You will eventually get there...

[Drazin]

I'll give it a try, just to see what I can do.

[Drazin]

 

Best I could do as far as skin color goes.

I didnt bother with the hair and whatnot, just tried to get the skin tone to atleast match a normal caucasion body. Its not exact but its close enough.

 

If you like it, I'll see about reworking his hair color and stuff if you want. You will of course have to add the Caucasian body to your override and rename it to the Black body filename.

[Arlen Treesong]

Really the problem is... Hope I don't get shot down for this but. His lips and nose are too big, anything you do to him, deep down, the man is still african american.

 

On the flip side thoe, he does make a pretty cool lookin half breed.

[Drazin]

I agree.

The model of the head will remain regardless of the color. You can put whatever skin you want over it, but the features will remain. Nothing I can do about that, emphasis on 'I'.

 

Basically, what I did here was open the file in Photoshop, change it to a greyscale, then switch it back to RGB. Opened a Caucasian head portrait and inkdropped the skin tone. Went back to my greyed picture and used a small brush set to 80% overlay and repainted the grey skin. Then a quick Adjustment to the brightness/contrast and there you go.

Didn't take too long and the result seemed to look alright in game as far as Caucasian skintone goes.

 

The Overlay Brush setting allowed the actual skin texture to show through the new skin color. So there was no loss of lighting/texture from the original version. Actually I should say there was very little loss.

[SuperSquall]

Originally posted by Harker

Yes, you will need a good amount of patience, Photoshop, comprehension of Hue/Saturation/Brightness/Contrast, and time.

 

You will eventually get there...

I think you could do this by avoiding Hue/Saturation and doing some work with Color Curves and the Channel Mixer instead. I've never really tried going from Black to White, but you can do other skin tone changes very well by relying on good ol CTRL + M.

 

Re: This guys head:

I don't think you will be able to make him look caucasian because, as stated, his facial build just doesn't like caucasian.

[modu]

i dunno. i think that the version that Drazin did looks pretty good, but he is right. you would then need to go and fix up the skin for the rest of the body to match the head.

 

 

In terms of using that greyscale method, or the colour waves method, i am not very advanced in use of paintshop. I only build computers (lol), so that didn't make any sense to me.

[General Kenobi]

It looks like from your screenie that you did a good job changing fleshtone on the model.

 

If it were me I'd use only "adjustment layers" in Photoshop and overlay the adjustments on one another. For each change you make of any great importance make it a new adjustment layer.

 

If you only adjust the image "within" the original layer you will be VERY CONSTRICTED on what you can do.

 

Example:

 

If brightness & contrast layer is now darker than you wanted because of the last change you made in hue & saturation you either have to use the history panel to undo it and then do it over.

 

I'd always recommend using adjustment layers for everything possible.

 

Sounds like your pretty new to the image editing world, so I'd stay away from the Curves pallette as it is fairly complicated to use with any accuracy.

 

ALSO,

 

When overlapping adjustment layers if you alter the "blending" options from Normal, multiply, screen, vivid light, etc. It will offer subtle changes that you cannot get with using one lone adjustment layer.

 

Example:

 

You can have the same adjustment layer copy it to a new layer and then alter say the hue to a complimentary color. you can then fill in sections of the newest layer or vice versa to give you subtle changes, feathered gradiation effects.

 

It is possible to "turn" the skin to a caucasion hue of peach and yellow/orange. The model will still have the look of an african american but I've did this on one of the female models and she looks like shes always been asian instead of african american.

 

As for the "still looks black" stuff. I have seen many a person with curly hair and fuller pouting lips that were white. You can use shading with adjustment layers to "mask-off" sections to thin them out and the like. You can thin the nose out with shading as well as some other features. It will take tons of time but it most def. can be done.

 

Hope this helps ya,