I Need Advice For a Background

[Mac Attack]

So there is this girl who asked me to make her a personalized background for her computer. I've done about 6 of these over the year for various people and all have come out really well, however here is my problem on this one. She is Ugly as Hell. And she asked me to make her look pretty in the Background. So here's my problem I don't know how to go about making her look prettier.

I attempted to simply try to blend her into the background hence changing her from a pasty Sheamus white to a simple purple but it's not enough.

Will Rep you for any advice on how to make this happen, as I have a reputation for being a nice guy and want to make this nice for her.

 

[Wade's Public Transit Bomb]

Aren't you a nice one. What program are you using?

Here are some options:

(I used Alicia Fox because I think she is ugly as hell)

Original:

Spoiler

Scanlines:

Grab a scanline pattern (or making one), fill it with the background and fade it:

Spoiler

Gaussian Blur:

Desaturate the layer > duplicate layer > Gaussian Blur (in filters, higher the blur, the better) > Set new layer to "Soft Light" or "Overlay"> Sharpen (in filters) original layer > Fade into background:

Spoiler

Mess around with colors:

Curves (In layers) > Play around until the image is lighten, but just enough to still see important features (eyes, mouth, etc) > Selective Color (in layers) > Play around with the colors of an image > Fade into background:

Spoiler

Those are just off the top of my head. Might be of a better help if I knew what program you were using.

 

[Mac Attack]

Ok for the record I'm using Photoshop. And one thing that I did that seems to be working is I changed the opacity of a few of the pics to give the transparent kind of look to some of the pictures. As well I actually did pointilize the background and blended it in to some pictures as to take away from certain features.

 

[Kayoh]

Create a new layer & call it "touch up". Go to Dust & Scratches and adjust it to the point that you can't see any acne, wrinkles, or any other imperfections that she has. Set up a layer mask and invert it so the mask covers up the whole layer, then grab a white soft brush and brush over ONLY her imperfections so it looks like her skin is really clear but it doesn't look like you posterized the whole layer. If you just leave the Dust & Scratches layer visible it just looks weirdly posterized but if you use it to only cover imperfections it works as a great touch-up tool.

Also, use the eyedropper tool to get a color sample from her eye, then create a new layer and with a 100 brightness 100 saturation version of the color of her eye, paint over her eye and set the layer to overlay. Makes eyes pop and girls think that's "pretty".

Just a couple of subtle things you can do that generally make people "prettier". lol