The modern capabilities of computer retouching and artistic processing allow you to change the smallest details on any digital image and solve a wide variety of artistic tasks. Often in photographs it may be necessary to get rid of wrinkles on clothing or accessories. For example, this must be done in order to improve the appearance of the character in the front photo, to adjust the details of the interior or to give the presentation of a thing sold through an online store. In other cases, on the contrary, on various types of draperies for aesthetic purposes, it may be necessary to add folds or change their direction and quantity.
This article is about how to smooth wrinkles on clothes in Photoshop, and how to create them.
Preparing to delete or draw creases
Before you remove or how to draw pleats on clothes in Photoshop, the image file must be edited and prepared. The fact is that manipulations to create or remove bends on the fabric imply an imitation of the play of light and shadow, and the actions are rather delicate, so all adjustments for brightness, contrast, color saturation and tone selection must be done before working with folds. The selection of these parameters after removing or drawing wrinkles on the clothes can significantly affect the already processed fragments of the image and change them in an undesirable direction. Suppose an increase in the contrast of the entire image can make the crease deeper and sharper, and a decrease in sharpness and highlighting of the entire file can make the crease hardly created almost invisible. In this case, either all the steps will have to be repeated again, or there will be a need for painstaking image editing.
Smoothing the folds with the cloning tool
Unnecessary, spoiling the appearance of the characters photos of the folds on clothes in Photoshop can be removed, first of all, using the cloning tool. This method is suitable if the clothes are plain or their pattern is very small and colorful. Select the Clone tool (Stamp) in the Tools panel. Then set up a brush convenient for you. Most often, a round brush of a small diameter of medium stiffness is suitable for this. A high degree of rigidity is likely to make the insert sloppy, as its borders will be clearly visible. Point the brush at a piece of clothing that does not contain wrinkles, and press the Alt key. Now your brush will draw the fragment of the picture you need when drawing it. That fold on the clothes, along which you will drive with a brush, will be replaced by a “smooth” fragment.
This is the simplest technique. If the borders of the insert are still slightly visible, use the Blur tool to hide them.
Copy and paste the necessary fragments
There is a method similar to that described how to remove wrinkles on clothes in Photoshop. It also consists in closing crumpled with smooth pieces of clothing, but they are not transferred with a stamp with a brush, but by copying and pasting. This method is also suitable for retouching if the clothes are plain or filled with a small and variegated pattern.
Find a crease-free area of clothing. Select the Lasso tool (or the Straight Lasso, if it is more convenient for you to work with it). With the help of it, outline the “smooth” fragment, copy it and paste it. Then move in the desired direction, covering the unwanted crease on the clothes. If necessary, use the Eraser tool to make the edges of this fragment smoother and thus hide the insert. In the parameters of the eraser brush, you must select the minimum stiffness for this. After the fold is copied, pasted and processed, the layer with this insert can be merged with the main layer of the image.
How to smooth creases by highlighting
The third way to remove wrinkles on clothes in Photoshop is to highlight them. This technique is especially justified when it comes to clothing with a complex pattern, which is difficult to copy or clone, and also when there are a lot of additional jewelry or accessories (beads, rhinestones, buttons, etc.) on the clothing. It is extremely easy to remove minor wrinkles on clothes in this way or to supplement copying or cloning with the help of a lightening method, improving your work.
Select “Clarifier” in the “Tools” panel, select a convenient brush for work, adjusting the parameters, and also adjust the “Pressure” of the clarifier. Most often, one hundred percent pressure is not required; for starters, leave about twenty to thirty percent. Please note that working with a small diameter brush as a clarifier is not very convenient, as it can leave unwanted small strips. It is better to choose a large brush with minimal rigidity and work with minimal pressure. Highlight the shadows formed by the crease.
If necessary, remove the glare that has formed due to wrinkles with the similar Dimmer tool.
Blur the folds
The retoucher often encounters the problem of small folds, removing each of which is extremely painstaking, not justifying work. In this case, it is worth using the Blur tool to remove creases on clothing.
Select the Blur tool, adjust the diameter of the brush and slide it over your clothes until the folds are no longer visible. If we are talking about small details of the image, then, probably, before you remove the folds on the clothes, they will need to be selected, that is, to limit the range of pixels that the blur will affect.
Close the folds with other elements
It often happens that scrupulous work on retouching folds is completely unjustified and redundant. Perhaps, a clothing item will be much more reasonably and rationally covered by other details (elements of the interior or landscape). They can be copied on the same image or taken from a completely different file.
For example, a photograph of a woman will be appropriate to supplement with flowers or other decorative elements, and a photograph of a child with toys or animals.
Brush the folds
When making a photo collage, it is very often necessary to drape the fabric to add naturalness to the image, that is, add wrinkles to it. It can be both soft and large, sometimes barely noticeable folds, and small and sharp wrinkles that catch the eye. Before making folds on clothes in Photoshop, you need to make sure that further work with the image does not imply adjusting the brightness, sharpness and color saturation, since bending the fabric can automatically change and change its character with any change in these parameters.
The first way to add creases, which begs the very first, is to paint them with a brush. However, this method requires precise movements and careful selection of tone - any inaccuracy in color will turn folds into stripes on clothes.
If you choose a brush, then do not forget that the fold consists of two parts - the shaded and brightened parts, that is, you need to draw not only a dark, but also a light strip, and if we are talking about shiny fabric, then glare. A large crease will also require a third tone, darker than the shadow bar, to add depth to the crease.
When drawing with a brush, it is better to use not a regular mouse, but a graphic tablet.
Draw Folds Using Dimming
A much more reliable way is to paint with dimming. This method is good in that you do not need to select either the color or tone of the brush, just follow a certain sequence of actions. Their logic is as follows: first you need to draw a wide and pale fold that is almost no different from the background, then you need to draw a narrower and darker on it, then, on these two, even smaller and even darker. So you need to draw until you reach the required depth. The shadowiest part of the fold can be either placed in its center or shifted to one side - depending on your plan.
Select the Dimming tool, set the Exposure options to a minimum, adjust the brush so that it is wide and not hard, and draw the first layer of the crease. Please note that this tool has a very convenient feature: until you press the mouse button, the dimming will be drawn without overlapping, that is, no matter how many times you mouse over the same pixels, they will be changed only once. To darken them again, you need to release the mouse button, click on it again and expose the pixels to secondary dimming.
Next, “deepen” the shadow from the artificial fold either with a tool with the same parameters, or gradually reducing the brush and increasing the percentage of exposure of “Dimming”.
The crease will be naturalized by highlighting the external “folds” and, if necessary, glare.
Add folds by copying
Often the easiest way to copy and paste the creases on the clothes. Photos and drawings often contain elements of fabric drapery necessary for artistic design, but they are not enough. In this case, it is enough to select them, resorting to the "Lasso", copy and place in the right place. You can smooth the edges of such an insert with either an eraser or a blur.
We clone fragments with folds
An alternative to copying can be cloning folds using the “Stamp”. The downside of this path is that the crease cannot be rotated or flipped vertically or horizontally. However, it will be possible to do this if you use a new layer for cloning, then edit it, and only then merge it with the main one.
Thus, there are several interchangeable and complementary ways to remove or create creases on clothing in Photoshop. Their choice depends on the nature of the image and what goals you set for yourself.