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- Hi there, this is Unmesh from PiXimperfect
and a couple of weeks ago I made a post asking you
what would you like to learn in Photoshop
and the top comment here from Malex was
how to mix match heads and blend images
into other images where they still look natural.
And it received the most likes.
So we had to do it.
So thanks to you Malex we're gonna do the same thing today.
We'll learn how to swap heads and also learn some tips
and techniques to make it look natural.
So without any further ado, I'm super excited,
I hope you are too?
Let's get started.
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Back in the magical world of Photoshop
and if you are going to download any of the photos
shown in the tutorial you already know what to do,
check the links in the description.
So let's have a look at this.
We have the head that we're gonna use for the body
and this my friend, is going to be the body.
I know you're gonna create something creative
after this tutorial, I trust you with that.
Now when it comes to swapping heads or faces
there are two things we need to keep in mind
and these are the prerequisites.
If you get these two things right your face swap
or head swap is gonna be on point and excellent.
You don't have to worry so much about color matching
or lighting matching or any of that.
These are the two important,
very important necessary prerequisites.
And those are number one,
the angle of the head should match.
Have a look at this, he's looking up
also he's looking to the left.
Similarly, the head that we're gonna use
is also looking to the left
and the camera is at a lower angle.
They are very similar so this will work.
So the angle should be similar.
Even if he was looking to the right
we could have flipped it, all right.
Just make sure he was looking up
or the camera angle was low.
So both are happening in this cases.
So number one,
make sure that the angle of the head is similar.
What is number two?
Number two is definitely,
you might have guessed it, lighting.
Now when it comes to lighting
again there are two aspects to it.
Number one definitely is the direction of light.
So, in this case where he is looking
the light is coming from that direction.
Similarly, where he is looking,
the light is coming from that direction.
If this head was looking to the right
and then the light was coming from the left
it wouldn't have worked.
So the direction of light should be similar
with the respect to the head, make sense?
So if he was looking right, the light direction
should have been from the right
if you were to place this head on this body.
Then we could've flipped it and adjusted it.
Now number two aspect of light.
The hardness or the softness of light should match.
You cannot have a head with a soft light
to sit on a body with hard light.
Now, what do I mean by soft light or hard light?
Now soft light creates soft shadows
and hard light creates hard shadows.
Think of it this way, the lights usually used
to capture bodybuilders
where they have to accentuate the shape,
those are hard lights.
Hard lights create hard shadows.
Where you have to hide the wrinkles
or keep the skin even you use soft lights.
Soft light creates soft shadows, makes sense?
All right, so in this case in both the cases
as you can see there is hard light
thus creating hard shadows
and showing all of the shapes and the crevices of the face.
Similarly in this case it's definitely hard light.
So on that front, both of these images pass the criteria.
So what did we learn here my friend?
For a successful head swap or a face swap
the choice of images is way more important
then the entire editing process.
If you've got the lighting right,
if you've got the angle right
you don't have to worry about a thing.
Now some of you might go,
"Well maybe I have to combine
only this particular photo with that body."
So choose the body you want your head on
or anyone else head-on
and take the photograph accordingly
and mimic the lighting setup.
That is very essential to do.
So just to recap, number one angle of the head should match,
number two the lighting should match.
Now inside of lighting there are two aspects to it,
the hardness or the softness of lighting should match.
Number two, the direction of lighting should match.
But the direction should be similar
with respect to the face.
All right, let's get started with this example.
In the face document simply select the lasso tool
and just make a rough selection of the face area.
Make sure you also select the shadows associated with it
so that it makes it easier for us to create shadows
on the new body.
Press control or command + C here,
come to the body document press control or command + V.
Let's name this layer new face.
Simply decrease the opacity to about 50%
so that you can adjust it accordingly.
Now before we make any changes
let's not forget to convert this into a smart object.
Let's go to filter and then covert
for a smart filters, hit okay.
So that when you make it smaller
and then when you make it big again you don't lose details.
Now, let's decrease the opacity to about 50%
so that again adjust it,
press control or command + D, rotate it, make it smaller
and adjust it on top of the old head.
Once you begin to feel like that your adjustment looks okay
you can increase the opacity all the way to 100
and then even adjust it further.
Let's turn off and on the old and the new head
to see the differences whether you wanna make it
bigger or smaller or make similar adjustments.
Now, this is what I'm happy with.
Just make sure that both of the lines of the neck match.
If decrease the opacity you'll be able to notice
they're very very close.
It makes it very easy.
It's not a necessity but it just makes the process very easy
where the lines and the edges begin to match.
Simply create a mask right over here.
Take the brush, take a soft round brush
with black as the foreground color, flow and opacity at 100.
Slowly and gradually start to paint on the outside
and remove the extras.
You could also use your favorite selection method here,
it's up to you as to how you want to do it.
I'm merging actually the hair here
since both hair match a little bit.
The colors match so it makes it a little easier for us.
It's more like deepfake my friend.
Whenever you're trying to create a deepfake video,
if you have seen that on YouTube,
they try their best to match the model with the new head
as much as possible with that of the character
that they're replacing the head with, make sense?
All right, let's continue our process.
Quick tip, stay away from beards it's kind of complicated.
I feel that for the beard area we can use our hairbrushes.
So I'll have them for you in the downloads
in the description of the video.
So I have some amazing hairbrushes,
so I'm gonna use the hair close intense,
and let's try this with white as the foreground color.
Gotta make sure the mask is selected
and then just try to paint in this hair right there.
Maybe sometimes helps.
Now, this is beginning to look all right.
All right, now when you zoom out it's not a problem anymore.
Let's get back to our regular soft healing brush.
Now it's time for us to fix this particular area.
Erase a little more and then what you do
you select the hairbrush, hair close intense
and paint this area back with white.
That would be enough.
Now it is beginning to look all right.
Now the shadow shape looks weird, we need to correct that.
So simply select the mask, black as the foreground color,
flow at 10 or 20%, and correct the shadows, no big deal.
So there you go, the adjustment is finally done.
Now whatta you think we have to do next?
We need to match the lighting.
The direction of lighting is the same
but the light on the face, on the new face,
is a little harsher as it is creating darker shadows.
But on the body, the shadows are not as dark
as that of the face.
Have a look under the beard, it's so dark in here.
But look at the shadows of the body, it's not as dark.
So we can either adjust the face or the body.
Now in this case, since we can not recover much details
from the dark areas,
let's just darken the shadows of the body.
So, just above the background layer,
create a curve adjustment layer
by clicking on the adjustment layer icon
and then choose curves.
Now we need to darken these shadow areas, right?
So we can simply do that
with the help of the hand right there.
So select the hand and click and drag it down.
Now the colors are distracting us.
We don't want colors to distract us
while we adjust the luminosity of the brightness levels
so at the top create a luminosity check layer.
Click on the adjustment layer icon
and then choose solid color
and choose any color with zero saturation,
gray, white, black, whatever.
And then change the blend mode from normal to color.
This takes away all the colors.
Now let's come back to curves
and adjust this point right there.
This seems to be about right.
Now adjust the bright areas as well.
So with the help of the hand-select these bright areas
and bring it up, match that with that of the face.
This looks much better.
Let's take a look, here's the before, not matching at all.
Here's the after, so much closer.
Now it's also time for us to match the lighting
or the brightness of the face with that of the body too.
Maybe just the skin tone, but have a look.
It is so much brighter than that of the body
so we need to darken it.
So at the top of the new face
create another curves adjustment layer
and also we need to clip it to just the face.
Because if you make any changes here
it's also gonna make changes to the body.
So click on this button,
that way it'll create a clipping mask
and only the face would be affected.
Now, just select the hand right there,
click on the bright spot of the face that you wanna darken,
and just bring it down.
Stop at the point where it begins to match
with that of the body.
This seems to be a good place
but we also wanna brighten the shadows a bit
because there's also getting too dark.
All right, let's take a look.
So here's the before, here is the after.
So much more closer.
Let's take this even more down.
Take a look now, here's the before,
here's the after, much closer.
Now, it is time for us to match the skin tones.
First of all, let's turn the luminosity check layer off.
Now have a look, the body is too colorful now
because of the curves.
If you don't want the curves to affect the colors
simply change the blend mode from normal to luminosity.
See if that helps.
Maybe it does look, maybe it doesn't to me.
Actually, it looks weird the colors look unnatural.
Let's keep it at natural,
we'll later decrease the saturation.
But for right now we need to match the face
with that of the body.
So just above the curves adjustment layer
let's create a hue saturation adjustment layer
by clicking on the adjustment layer icon
and then click on hue saturation.
Also, you want to limit it just to the face,
so simply click on the button to create a clipping mask
and with the help of the hand,
click on the hand and then click on the skin tone.
We need to match the skin tone here.
Take the hue saturation all the way to the right
to see which areas are being affected.
Now expand the range
to make sure all of the skin tone is being affected.
So I'm gonna expand the range here as well.
Just make sure everything is being targeted.
Now bring the saturation and the hue back to zero.
Now you can adjust the hue
to see moving which side helps us.
But in this case, I feel that increasing the saturation
would make it match.
And have a look, as we increase the saturation
it begins to match.
You can also decrease the lightness a little bit,
there you go.
Now let's take a look at a before and after.
Here's the before, not matching at all,
here's the after, just look at the skin tone
it is so much more matching with that of the body.
Now, do you wanna match it even more?
I've got one more trick for you.
But before we do that I feel that we need to
increase the saturation a little more,
so I increased it to plus 40.
But it's also making the lips and the nose too red.
So let's go back to the reds
and we wanna take it away from the extreme red areas
so we're gonna have to play with the range.
So increase the hue all the way to the right-hand side
and just adjust the range
so that it doesn't affect the lips and the nose.
Just moving it like this.
All right, that would work.
Now let's put the hue back to zero
and there you go, it fixes the problem.
Now to match it even more just like we match
any other composite, let's apply a global effect.
A global effect is something you apply to the entire image.
It can be a curves adjustments layer,
a color lookup, a hue saturation, whatever there is,
it just has to be an effect
that you apply to the entire image.
And in this case, I'm gonna choose a color lookup table.
So let's click on the adjustment layer icon
and then choose color lookup.
And for this example let's choose candlelight.
And as you choose that suddenly
everything just begins to match.
If you don't want so much of it,
you can have a little bit of it, it still helps.
So I'm gonna keep it at about 50% for this example
and suddenly everything just starts to match.
Let's take a look at the before and after.
So here's the before,
nothing is matching the faces, completely different.
Here is the after.
So I took a little more time to make a little more tweaking
to the same adjustment layers
and this is our final result.
So that's how to swap heads or faces in Photoshop.
Just a quick little recap.
The number one thing you have to keep in mind
is that the choice of images holds 90% importance,
for the editing is just 10% or even less.
If you've got the right images nobody can stop you
and from there it is just an easy street.
To choose the images just keep in mind
that the angle of the head and also the lighting match.
Now, in lighting the hardness or the softness of the light
and also definitely the direction of light should match.
This is important especially
also while you're creating a new head for a body.
So let's say you have a body
and you wanna place your face in it,
you have to mimic the lighting of that body
and then take a photo and then place your head.
You can not just randomly pull out any selfie
because then the angle of view would also matter.
Maybe you took your selfie with a wide-angle lens
as most phone cameras have a wide-angle lens,
and then you have a bodybuilder with a telephoto lens.
They will never match,
it's gonna be very difficult for you to do so.
So, choice of photos are important.
After you've got that right, just bring both of them
in Photoshop and just take the head,
with the help of the lasso tool
and make a selection around it,
bring the head to the new body.
With the help of the mask, just take away the extras,
adjust it and from there you can use curves
to adjust the lighting,
hue saturation to adjust the skin tones
and then an overall global effect to match it all together.
I hope this video helped you.
I hope you had some fun watching and working with this video
and if you did, make sure to give us a like
and also don't forget to subscribe
and not just subscribe, ring the bell
so that you don't miss any other future tips,
tricks or tutorials.
I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice
and amazing people for supporting this channel
on Patreon and helping keep PiXimperfect free
for everybody forever.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you on my next one, til then, stayed tuned
and make sure that you keep creating.
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