Tattoo Removal from video in PS CS5

M

mcg222

New member
Hi,

We shot a film that had the same actor playing multiple parts, and in one incarnation he has a tattoo. Well, we weren't careful enough with continuity and 2 shots we have show the tattoo, but on the character that is not supposed to have it! Any tips/techniques to remove the tattoo in PS? Getting Pro Res 422 video in and out of PS is no problem, and of course removing the tattoo in a single frame is easy enough (with patch or clone tool) - but when we play back the fixed footage it looks bad - like something is moving around on the characters skin. After Effects may be a better way to go but I'm not super familiar with that program. Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
Does it seem too obvious that it is a still frame floating on his skin?

If that's the issue, perhaps I would try to find footage large enough of the clean arm and patch this video slice over the tattoo in after effects.
It would need to match the color, skin grain, and size to cover up the new tattoo.
It would take some finessing, to be sure- even in a best case scenario.
But if you patch video over the arm instead of a photoshop still it might read better due to grain continuity. I bet you could even loop 5-10 frames.

Either way, with a video patch or a still patch, if the camera moves at all you will need to track the movement of his arm (should be easy with a tattoo) and have your patch follow precisely.

Just a shot in the dark. Alternatively, can you crop in on those shots without distorting resolution? Could you ditch those shots all together?
 
If you have after effects it should be doable - plenty of tracking tutorials out there.

if the arm moves significantly, if it goes from straight to bent, etc - you may have to do it it bits and pieces. You may have to fake DOF or shadows to hide problem parts.

If it's fairly static, you can open the frame in photoshop and paint up the best patch you can do - save the patch as a transparent PNG and track it onto the footage.

There's no one-size-fits-all fix for this unless its a very static frame though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top