Smooth 'fat stomach' under clothing from the front

[Asillett]

Hi,

How do I remove signs of a fat stomach under clothing. You can see smalls folds in the attached image.

I've tried removing the lines using the healing brush, but it leaves marks and the swelling of the belly is still visible.

thanks in advance,

Andy

[Chuck Uebele]

I think the best approach would be to use frequency separation to balance out the color/shades, mainly using the low frequency layer. Next might be the clone stamp tool, or a curves adjustment layer to balance the shades.

[Norman Sanders · Accepted solution]

I suggest the Patch Tool to remove the shadow-modeling followed by the Quick Selection tool selection to the area from the line below the pendant to the bottom of the image. Then a alight Gaussian blur to smooth the area, if desired.

[Norman Sanders]

A small kindness.

You might also consider a gentle Filter > Blur > Surface Blur of the hand.

[Asillett]

Thank you Norman and everyone else who replied so promptly to my query.  I tried using Chuck's method but got rather lost due to my own lack of experience. I opted for the patch and then 3.5 pixel gaussian blur and clean up using clone and healing brush.

That surface blur tool for the hand is also v. useful to know. Previously I softened skin using the high pass, which I am not entirely happy with