Need Editing Help Please

My DIL wanted to be sure the top of the Christmas tree was visible in the image and the only way to accomplish this and crop to 4x6 was to get low and shoot up. Unfortunately it left her neck with a very unflattering look. I've spent hours in Elements try to make it look better to no avail. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be forever indebted. Thanks for any help.
Just in case there's any doubt, she's in the top row, center.

May we see the area close up?

Id try the liquefy tool in PS I don't know if elements has it.
Here is a real quick go at it, i'm sure it could be better with more time spent.

I would also say the liquify tool is your best bet.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Elements does have a Liquify tool . I've been playing with it a bit but am getting some grotesque results. Obviously there is a learning curve .

Here's a close-up Damo77

You can do this w/ the liquify. The jpg is small to give a good result, but here is a sample w/ the image you have:

Whew. Out of the female subjects that I know, this is their most hated thing that happens in photos.

In the future: As a photographer, you have to be mindful of this. As soon as you see that photo on the LCD you think "oh boy, she's going to hate this one," you delete it without saying anything, make some posing adjustments, and take a different one. For posing help, search on Youtube for Peter Hurley's "It's all about the jaw" video. Send the link to the women in your life who are self-conscious about this sort of thing.


OK, but let's talk about fixing this one that's already in the can.
You have two issues here to try to fix: One, the shape of the neck/chin/jaw; second the lighting and tone of the neck/chin/jaw.

Using liquify to reshape it is only half the battle. You'll also gently use dodge and burn (mostly burn) to adjust the lighting under the chin and jaw.
I do most of that work in Lightroom, using some custom adjustment brushes, so I can't give specific advice on doing it in Elements. But, you're going to imagine - "What would the shadows look like if that little roll wasn't prominent? Where would the shadows from her chin and jaw fall?"

Darken those bright areas directly underneath her chin and jaw. Don't overdo it or it'll look too fake and obvious.

If you are hoping for an edit to use here, that's cool, but be aware that you are posting your JPEG (8bit file ) in ProPhoto color space, which may yield some posterized results if folks start adjusting tones (to compensate for the WB, for example).

Liquify will take care of the issue in a snap - I used the "Push Left" tool with a low density (effect strength) and a few strokes on either side of the lower jaw line/neck area.

The perspective distortion skewing the window in the background is also distracting, but attempting to correct it will crop off the top of the tree as well.

Next time, set the camera at a level about midway between the seated and standing subject's eyes, level the camera and shoot square to the window. Back up or zoom out until the entire scene is captured and then crop - shoot knowing which crop size(es) you intend to use. Also, consider shooting in Portrait mode if the taller element of the tree is important. Shooting up, under peoples' noses is not real flattering.

You can also group the subjects so that their faces are closer together and shoot a portrait, with DOF blur that will capture the tree in the background (not the whole tree, but a nice part of it) with nice blurred light circles.

kirk

Liquify may work, but would be a lot of work. I'd try a face swap first. The sample posted is too small to work on, but the girl in bottom right has a chin that looks like it might be a good match. I'd cut out her chin and neck, paste it over the target face, then transform/rotate/size and mask.

WOW - thanks for so many people chiming in. RE: the image size and format - I originally shot in RAW and imported into Lightroom. What is the desired image size and format for posting here?

link a raw file for us...use dropbox.

Everyone would be better served with a re-shoot using knowledge of what went wrong the last time.

chauncey wrote in post #18205143
Everyone would be better served with a re-shoot using knowledge of what went wrong the last time.

Couldn't agree more but logistics are probably going to prevent this from happening.

Here's a link to the raw image. Again, thanks so much for all the help.

https://dl.dropboxuser​content.com/u/51241585​/_MG_4829.CR2

There are two ways in which I think you can do this. I did a very quick and dirty edit (on the jpeg - only after posting this did I notice the link to the raw file).

1. darken the neck and fill in the edges with cloning the hair, like so:

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