Daz Tutorial Manual Brow Removal in Photoshop

Snarkfu

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I've been working on some fanart and found myself having to remove brows from a g3 texture that didn't come with a no-brow variant, usually this would be done with brow remover but in this case I found that the results really weren't good enough (try it first though, it'll be way faster if it works out).
So I figured if I was going to be doing it manually I may as well share the process I use that uses frequency separation and the healing brush, I link the video I learned to do this from at the bottom so you can follow that if you'd rather.
This is not a particularly long process however you will need to perform it on multiple maps, only removing the brows on the colour map gives you this:

0. Just Colour Removed.PNG

Not ideal.
Anyway, let's do this.

1. Get your map.
Load your character into the scene then go Surfaces(tab)->Surfaces(dropdown)->Face(dropdown)->Base Color, you should see an image of an unwrapped face on the left hand side, click on that and in the new menu that appears click Browse (top left).
This will open a new window, select the address at the top and copy it, now open an explorer window and paste the address you just copied into it.
Find the map you want to modify and open it up in photoshop.

3.Open_Map.PNG

2. Photoshop setup
We're now going to create two duplicates of the background image.

4.Duplicate.PNG

Hide the topmost image and select the first duplicate, go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and increase or decrease until you can no longer see skin details.

5.Hide_And_Blur.PNG

Now un-hide the topmost image and select it.
Go to Image->Apply Image and enter the following settings:
Set Layer to Layer 1 (the layer you just blurred).
Set Blending to Subtract.
The scale should automatically be set to 2 and the offset to 128, if they aren't then set them to those values.
It should now look like this:

6.Apply_Image.PNG

Hit OK.
We now have two layers, the topmost layer contains all of the details for our image, it has the skin texture and eyebrow...brows? The hairy bits.
The middle (blurred) layer contains the colour values for our image.
Starting on the topmost layer we're going to use the "Healing Brush Tool" to remove the hair details, to access it find the paintbrush on the left hand side, right click the tool directly above that (by default the spot healing tool is selected) and selecting the healing brush tool which should be the second option down.
With our top layer selected choose an area above the eyebrow and Alt+Left Click to select it as a source, the Healing Brush Tool will use this selection to fill in the areas we paint over in much the same way as the Clone Stamp Tool.
I suggest working from the inside out, so from the bridge of the nose to the outer section of the eyebrow, make sure your brush size is larger than the area you are painting over at it's widest point.
In the following image the circles represent the source areas I used and the arrows indicate the direction of the stroke I then made.

7.Heal_Top_Layer.PNG

This gives us this:

8.Top_Healed.PNG

Now hide the top layer and select the middle blurred layer, we're going to do exactly the same thing here.

9.Heal_Blurred_Layer.PNG

Result:

10.Blurred_Healed.PNG

Now obviously neither of these images now look much like anything, to recombine them unhide and select the topmost layer and change the blending options in your layers panel to "Linear Light".
11.Reassemble_Map.PNG

If you're not happy with the result you can continue to modify both the colour and texture layers until you get something you feel you can use.
Now you need to remove the brows from the other maps that contain the eyebrows however for the most part you do not need to separate the details from the colour on these maps and can just use the healing brush to remove the eyebrows.
Once that's done you end up with something like this:

13.Removed Brow.PNG

Hopefully that's helpful to someone, it's becoming less necesarry as fibermesh brows become more common but it still crops up every so often, you can also use this method to add skin details and make changes in post-processing which is where I learned about this method ( .)
 

recreation

pure evil!
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Nice tutorial!
One question tho. Did you ever try to use just the healing brush/repair tool on only the original layer without any blending options? It gives nice results on it's own and I usually go just with that.
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Snarkfu

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Nice tutorial!
One question tho. Did you ever try to use just the healing brush/repair tool on only the original layer without any blending options? It gives nice results on it's own and I usually go just with that.
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I usually try that but I find that if the brow remover tool doesn't do the job then the healing brush won't either and I've got to go in and do it by hand.
 

recreation

pure evil!
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I usually try that but I find that if the brow remover tool doesn't do the job then the healing brush won't either and I've got to go in and do it by hand.
Oh okay. I don't use the brow remover tool. Sounds weird tho, if both, the brow remover and the repair tool doesn't work, there must be something wrong with the texture :unsure:
 
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Snarkfu

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Oh okay. I don't use the brow remover tool. Sounds weird tho, if both, the brow remover and the repair tool doesn't work, there must be something wrong with the texture :unsure:
I'm not sure it's something being wrong exactly it's just that the brow remover (and the healing brush) both work by essentially copying one section of a texture into another and trying to match them up, if the match isn't good enough it looks strange.

Separating things out lets you choose a texture that works and a colour that works if they don't exist together in the image which is where the problem usually is for me.

You should try the brow remover as well, it deals with all maps at once which saves time if it works.
 
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recreation

pure evil!
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I'm not sure it's something being wrong exactly it's just that the brow remover (and the healing brush) both work by essentially copying one section of a texture into another and trying to match them up, if the match isn't good enough it looks strange.

Separating things out lets you choose a texture that works and a colour that works if they don't exist together in the image which is where the problem usually is for me.

You should try the brow remover as well, it deals with all maps at once which saves time if it works.
I usually use my own skins or edit other skins and generate new normal and bump maps myself, so i don't really need the brow remover.
For things that don't match I just copy one other part of the texture, paste it over where needed and use the repair tool to cover the seams. But I also have and use a selfmade skin texture (8k b/w skin scales) that I can use as overlay which makes things like this easier.
If I ever come across a texture I really really like that need the brows removed I will probably use the brow remover tho^^
 
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Snarkfu

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I usually use my own skins or edit other skins and generate new normal and bump maps myself, so i don't really need the brow remover.
For things that don't match I just copy one other part of the texture, paste it over where needed and use the repair tool to cover the seams. But I also have and use a selfmade skin texture (8k b/w skin scales) that I can use as overlay which makes things like this easier.
If I ever come across a texture I really really like that need the brows remove I will probably use the brow remover tho^^
I'm not that fancy most of the time :LOL:
I'd never thought of copying over another part and then healing it, that's a neat idea, thanks!
 
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