Mona Lisa Retouched

[Tom V]

The last few weeks have been busy, but one fun project I worked on was to retouch Leonardo's Mona Lisa. It was for a magazine ad that promotes the use of the client's protective coating for signmakers' graphics.

The attached is the image without any of the text or other logos used in the ad. It is an example of some severe retouching to a face with some severe blemishes.

I duplicated the base Mona Lisa layer and retouched there using the Healing brush. I made a separate layer of nothing but lightly "textured" skin tone for the Healing brush to sample from. I first "healed" out all the most objectionable cracks with a brush just big enough to hide the heavy lines. I then went over larger areas following the contours of the shading. If there was a line I wanted to keep (eyelid crease), I would have the Healing brush skim along the edge of it, rather than cover it. I then used the Dodge and Burning tools to add back tone that the Healing brush blurred away. I also overpainted some color in the cheek and lip to add some red color. I used adjustment layers to make the color and tones look more like skin - without looking too odd. I had to paint and be creative with the eye, as I could not tell what the original looked like. When I lightened the original with Curves, the Mona Lisa looks like she has one green iris and one amber iris. She also has a lumpy head which to me looks like she has been clobbered on the left side of her face. It was also hard to put in the heavy shading under her eye without it looking like a black eye (bruise). I more or less had to draw/paint the iris from scratch, adding highlights, color, reflections, etc. with Leo's painting as just a guide.

When I was satisfied - I mean, tired of - the retouching, I trimmed away the left side of the retouched layer to reveal the original painting underneath.

Now that I have written this, and am just about to hit SUBMIT, I realize that this has nothing to do with the S2.

[cthornhill]

Very nice retouch! - Cecil

[sandman]

Brilliant Tom. if your cheaper than a health farm i'll send the wife over.

Brian

[Andre]

Originally posted by Tom Voegeli
Now that I have written this, and am just about to hit SUBMIT, I realize that this has nothing to do with the S2.

Very cool nevertheless. Nice job Tom.

[Andre]

Originally posted by sandman
Brilliant Tom. if your cheaper than a health farm i'll send the wife over.

Brian

Sandman, you nearly made me spray my monitor (through my nose) with Coke. :-)

[Wichita Wayne]

You need to add cyan to the final product. The Mona Lisa is a cool blue picture and not warm at all. Otherwisew you did fine. By the way you usually do not notice any cracks in the paint when viewing the real thing. I you look at the real McCoy you understand why everybody loves it.

[Tom V]

Originally posted by Wayne
You need to add cyan to the final product. The Mona Lisa is a cool blue picture and not warm at all. Otherwisew you did fine. By the way you usually do not notice any cracks in the paint when viewing the real thing. I you look at the real McCoy you understand why everybody loves it.

I agree that "she" looks yellow. I wanted to make the skin tones even warmer, but then it did not look like I was retouching the Mona Lisa, because it looked too different.

I spent more than 8 hours looking at different Leonardo books in book stores and the library. I bought 2 books and checked 1 out. I viewed at least 50 Mona Lisas on the web, including more variation I could stand (Frank Zappa, smoking, nude, Mona Gorilla, 3D animations, all the phony "discoveries that Mona IS Leonardo, Mona Groucho Marx, etc.. I really did not get the feeling that the Mona Lisa is cool blue at all. All the versions I saw show her as very warm (red to yellow), with a slightly cooler background (yellow to brown to cyan to greenish). Here is a link to the Louvre's official website, where they have about the best image you can find online. I have to assume that it is close to the real color. http://www.paris.org/Musees/Louvre/Treasures/gifs/Mona_Lisa.html

I agree that the cracks are very evident in my image, and they usually showed up very well in closeups of the painting. Viewed at distance, I would guess they are hard to see.

I think the main thing is that people know what it is, and know that it is an old painting of value, and that it could have used better protection from chemicals, UV damage, cleaning and abrasion - all the things my client promotes his clear protector as capable of.

[Wichita Wayne]

The Louvre's picture looks too warm and too monochrome to me. It has been 25 years since I visited the Louvre but it is not one of those things that you easily forget. The light that they use on it might also shift its true colors. Anyway yours does not look bad. I only added the comment because I had seen the original and thought it looked different. You should see if your client will pay for you to go to Paris to study the original and get the best possible color match.

[Tom V]

Originally posted by Wayne
T... You should see if your client will pay for you to go to Paris to study the original and get the best possible color match.

My client and I agree with you Wayne. I don't have much time to spare, so my client has booked me passage on the next Concorde flight to Paris. I can hardly wait! I love clients like this!

[Swampy]

Keep waiting Tom. I can bet that it's going to be a LONG time before the next Concorde flight... :P Jokes on you.

See this post: http://www.s2pro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2381

[Wichita Wayne]

I translate your statement to mean that you have about as much chance getting your client to pay for your time and the trip to Paris as you do being able to book the flight on the Concord. I am also wondering if you have contacted the DiVinci family to check up on any potential copyright violations. If they are not paying attention then maybe you could copyright the Mona Lisa yourself and send the French Government a retroactive bill for the use of the thing. You never know.......It could happen.

[ianmcc]

Isn't Mona now part of the public domain? It's been how many years?....

By the way you're retouching reminds me of some headshots I've had to clean up.:D

[Tom V]

The Mona Lisa is part of public domain, however it is really really really hard to get the painting to do anything with. Therefore, you have to use somebody's image of the Mona Lisa. Corbis, Getty Images, and Bridgeman archives have extensive image libraries of artwork in the public domain, including the Mona Lisa. Each has tried to promote the impression that they own the copyrights to the images in their collections. However, court cases have shown that it is very tough to prove that one can copyright a copy of an image in the public domain.

While there is technical skill required to make a quality reproduction of an image, it is generally limited to centering the camera, providing even lighting, and choosing the right film and exposure - generally dispensing with any "artistic" expression, and adding nothing of copyrightable consequence to the resulting copy photograph. If the photographer were to be creative by "expressing" themself with creative perspective, non-standard lighting, unusual film, processing and exposure, the resulting image may be considered a new piece of copyrightable work.

See http://www.ku.edu/~cybermom/CLJ/hallacy/hallacy.html for a far better discription of "The Dissemination of Art in the Techniclogical Age."

[Wichita Wayne]

I crack a pretty good joke about the DeVinci family and the copyright and you guys get all serious on me. Of course it is in the public domain. Old Leo De passed away more than 70 years ago didn't he?

[ianmcc]

Wayne, no smiley on your post and I have had crazier things suggested to me in the reverse like "I paid for your film so I own the copright!" :D

Back to skin retouching, I was reading a retouching book that was $60US and was trying to glean the one chapter about skin retouching.

In it the guy used the median filter on a Layer copy to create a soft skin tone then used a Soft Light layer with 50% fill , add noise and then a slight emboss to bring back some sort of skin texture, to get away from that glossy smoothness. Of course I had to run before grasping this concept totally and I don't wanna buy the whole book for this one idea...

It's snowing out and I don't wanna head backt to the bookstore, anyone heard of this kind techinque?

[smunky]

I agree that the Mona Lisa is a bit cooler than your retouch tom, otherwise GREAT work.
DaVinci is one of my very favorites.

[jknights]

Tom,
Can I have both the original and your retouched version printed on 'canvas'. Make sure the sizes match the original.

Let's see it the experts notice the difference. ;-)

[CaptJR]

Amazing work Tom.

I'm not saying that it needs it, but I'm wondering if your going to add any kind of brush stoke effect. Using an effect or by hand. If you are or even it you not. I'd like to get some ideas on how to do this. Especially by hand, because if I did it to any pictures I'd want it to look as real as posible, so an effect added to the entire picture wouldn't be good enough for what I'm thinking about.

Thank you
JR

[Wichita Wayne]

First to JK. I do not think a print on canvas would do you much good. Leonardo painted the picture on a poplar board rather than canvas. But you never know.....all you got to do is find a buyer that knows what it looks like but not what it is made of. If I recall right, copies of the Mona Lisa have sold for as much as $75,000.

And to Capt. As I recall the brush strokes did not show much at all so any added strokes would be too much for this style of picture. The misty style of the picture is called "sfumato" and Leonardo did a really good job of creating the effect in this particular picture. However, learning to do brush strokes and other art effects in PS is more than a worthwhile endever. Actually the cracks in the paint are much more visable than brush strokes so it would be best to use a paint crack filter.

And that is my art lecture for today. :D

[HulaMike]

Yes, good old Leonardo being of the High Italian Rennaisance painted Mona on a gessoed board, probably with hand ground egg tempera pigments. Oil paint was developed in the Northern Rennaisance. As Leonardo was at his height during the late or high rennaisance, it is possible that the notion of oil painting had reached Italy; but I think Mona Lisa was tempera.

The reason there are no visible brush strokes is because painters of the Rennaisance used many layers of pigment and clear glazes to create depth and a certain glow.

Very nice retouching Tom. I'm still taking notes! And please correct me if my recollection of art history is garbled.

[NZDoug]

Hey 4 eyes!
ur the retouch king,
par xlnonz....
Keep up the good work.

[Linda G]

Hey!

I want the REVERSE! I have some images I would love to have that crackled effect on. I've seen it done but it was using an extra, big price plug in program.

Any ideas?

Linda

[HulaMike]

Linda,

You could make one. Find a nice cracked, peeling painted wall or fence and shoot it. Make a transparent layer mask out of it in Photoshop.