Stop you are making me blush!!

This image is from a photographer called Chaf on Model Mayhem (#1895650).  Along with a lot of skin retouching and blemish removal, this image I felt could be enhanced by some digital make-up.  In this instance I created an empty layer above the background and sampled a colour from the lips (I had adjusted the hue of the lips earlier) and painted on the layer with a pressure sensitive wacom tablet, I then changed the blending mode to colour and reduced the opacity of the layer to taste.  By first painting on a normal layer gives you a better idea where exactly to add in the eye liner and blusher before changing the blending mode to colour.  By sampling the colour from the lips you help balance the colour palette of the face, if you wanted to change the colour of the added make-up you could just add a clipped Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to your layer stack – this way you would be just affecting the colour of the layer immediately below it, not the entire face.

Before

After

 

High pass an Old Man

The high pass filter is often overlooked as a method of sharpening in Photoshop perhaps because it is not grouped with the other sharpen filters hidden away as it is in the “other”  section of the filter menu.  Of course sharpening really is increasing the contrast of neighbouring light and dark pixels. The typical implementation of the filter is to duplicate the background layer apply a low pixel radius high pass filter and change the blending mode of the layer to overlay and adjust the opacity of the layer to taste.  The soft light blending mode has a less harsh sharpening effect and hard light and linear light have harsher effects.  I find the filter useful for sharpening images that have well defined edges already such as architectural images and less so for portraits as it can be quite unflattering, incidentally an inverted high pass filter is useful for portraits for a quick smoothing of skin (used with layer mask and low opacity layer).  In the example here I used the filter to exaggerate the lines on the old mans face, I duplicated the high pass layer a few times and also used a number of other blending mode techniques to desaturate and tone the image.  As with all blending modes a little experimentation can yield pleasing results……

Before

 

After

Cheers Colin

 

Bleach beach Girl

I found this contemplative portrait of a young girl on a beach on the free stock site http://www.sxc.hu.  Overall I thought the image had a nice feel to it – it was let down by by being too flat and being too warm (overly red).  So naturally for a beach shot I decided to cool it down substantially and increase the contrast………

 

Studio Retouch

Stuart over at Ebony & Pearl photography (great photographer check out their website) gave me a couple of great studio shots to retouch, giving me free reign to play around with as I saw fit, cheers Stuart!. This particular shot I decided to give a grittier look to…..

Daniel Photographed by Stuart McNamara

 

Graffiti A Wall with Vanishing Point

When adding an element, such as text, to an image you can use the transform perspective command to match an existing plane within that image, however an easier and more accurate method is to use the vanishing point “filter”.  It’s under the filter menu but it doesn’t act like a filter, it’s more like a match perspective tool.  The tool is very useful if you wanted to superimpose an image onto a laptop screen, particularly if that screen is at an angle.  In the following example I will superimpose text (spray graffiti) onto the side of a building, CFC free.

1. Open the image you want to be your background.  Use the type tool to type your graffiti.  Format the text as close to the final size as possible, I chose a font called Newrus.
2. Once you are happy with the size and spacing of your text, rasterize the text, note you will not be able edit the type after this stage.
3. Choose Select > Select All, and then Edit > Copy.  You can now delete the text layer as you no longer need it.  Create a new blank layer.
4. Under the Filter menu go to the Vanishing Point filter.  Using the Create Plane tool define the Plane or perspective you want to match by selecting the four corners of that plane.  The Plane grid turns blue when the plane is a valid one.
5. Now paste the rasterized text (Ctrl/Apple V), use the transform plane tool to place the text where you want it, you will notice that once you move it close to your defined plane it will snap into the desired perspective, scale your text as needed . Hit OK.
6. You can now blend to match your background using a blending mode, the mode I used here was the overlay mode.  You could also apply a texture to it to blend it further.  Flatten your image.  

 

Lab Mode for quick color boost

Converting your images into Lab mode can have several advantages when adjusting or retouching your images.  One of these advantages is the way lab mode allows you to saturate your images while driving opposing colors apart.  Lab mode is a very powerful editing mode but also a dangerous one as you can easily introduce unprintable colors and colors outside your monitors gamut.   In the Lab colorspace  many of the color adjustment tools work in a completely different way to those in the RGB colorspace.  The red, green and blue channels are replaced by the Lightness and the a (green as opposed to magenta) and b (blue as oppose to yellow) channels.  This method is relatively safe if used in moderation, you do not have to delve deeper into the complexities of the Lab mode.

• Under the Edit menu convert your image into the Lab mode.
• Create a curves adjustment layer. make sure your the grid has more detailed lines in it by alt/option clicking on the grid.
• Select the a channel and move the top of the curve point to the left by either one or two  grid spaces, move the bottom of curve to the right by the same amount.
• Repeat this procedure for the b channel.
• Reduce the opacity of the adjustment layer to reduce the effect.
• Flatten the image and convert back to the RGB colorspace.

It is very important that you convert your image back to the RGB colorspace before printing or sending out to the client.  You could also record the above as an action, but beware out of gamut colors (Shift+Apple+Y).

Enjoy!