Quick Fix

Today’s post is about using Photoshop to fix small problems in photos.

For example, you take a picture of your friend and they aren’t exactly smiling.

This can be fixed in Photoshop.

This is the photo I started with.

First I’ll fix the contrast a bit.

Now here’s how we’re going to adjust facial features: the Liquify tool.

It can be found in Filter tab.

This is a tool many professionals use to make models look thinner, enlarge their eyes, and even completely re-proportion facial and body features.

That being said, it’s also extremely fickle and can have disastrous results if you try too hard and don’t pay attention to details.

The screen should look something like this when opened.

I don’t personally like drastically altering what people look like in Photoshop.

So, I’m going to use it to make the blonde little girl smile a bit more using the brush.

The key to this tool is subtlety.

Moving anything too much will make it look unnatural and distort the photo.

Now I’m going to put Julia Trotti’s “Humming Bees” curve to give the photo a bit of a vintage look.

It softens up the photo and adds a bit of warmth.

Now to add even more I’m going to paint some digital light leaks on another layer over the photo.

I used a yellow shade and then played with the layer’s opacity.

_{(For another way to do this you can check out this post by Cameron Rad.)}

The key to making most digital light leaks look realistic is to make sure the brush being used has a very soft edge.

Now I’m going to add a bit of a vignette to the photo, just so the edges of the picture are a little crisper.

To make a vignette, you can select the Gradient Tool (hidden under the Paint Bucket in the Toolbar).

Make sure that the color and transparent option (second to left on the top row in the picture above) is selected, as well as the circular gradient shape next to these options.

_{(If that doesn’t make sense just copy what I’ve done in the picture.)}

Just click, drag, and let go and your gradient should appear.

I always do this on a separate layer so that I can play with the opacity.

In this picture I turned it way down because I only wanted a very subtle darkness on the edges.

That’s all folks.

Here’s Conor Oberst‘s Milk Thistle for nostalgia’s sake.

Eye Brighten/Color

Today will be about making the eyes pop, while not over-powering the photo.

I’m starting with an old, pre-edited photo of my cousin’s child.

This was another one from before I had Photoshop and when I had a bad monitor.

It didn’t turn out quite how I’d wanted it to so I’m going to fix it up.

To start making the eyes less dull, I’m going to use the Dodge Tool.

It’s in the Toolbar and looks like a black magnifying glass.

The Dodge tool lightens parts of photos, and alternatively the Burn tool darkens.

Here it’s made the shine more white, and the eyes brighter.

In film photography it was much trickier since the photographer/developer would have to find a way to expose only the part they wanted to brighten for longer.

On top of having to manipulate the light for exposure it would sometimes become a guessing game of how long to expose it to brighten it because if it was too long, it would look odd since the rest of the photograph would be much darker.

_{Now that today’s photo-history lesson is over…}

When I had originally edited this, I didn’t have a way to remove the pasta stain from her skin.

Now I’m going to get rid of it using the Patch Tool.

I’m also going to increase the contrast now.

The old version looks dull because my monitor made it look like the contrast was fine.

The skin under her lip still looks a little patchy from the pasta.

To fix this, I’m going to use the Surface Blur technique I used in a post 2 weeks ago.

Children tend to naturally have nice skin, so this is purely to even out the skin tone.

Now I’m going to go ahead and put a Curve on this.

I used Julia Trotti’s “Lullabye” for this one.

It gives it whimsical purple and pink tones that also match her dress.

Now like in my Selective Coloring post, I’m going to use the Hue/Saturation Adjustment to change her eye color slightly.

I’m going to use the Layer Mask that is made when creating a Hue/Saturation layer.

I have it high-lighted here so everyone can see where the Layer Mask is.

Make sure you have the Mask selected to add or subtract from it.

Now the Paintbrush can be used to add or subtract from the selection.

White adds. Black subtracts.

I’m going to select just the eyes.

This means I can change just the blue of her eyes without effecting surrounding colors by selecting Blue and Cyan from the drop down and changing them by playing with the Hue slider.

Here I mostly just lightened them and gave them a slight teal tint.

This works best for changing blue eyes since they contrast so well against skin, but can be done to other eye colors as well as long as you get a good selection.

Here’s another, more apparent example using this on my own eyes.

That’s all for this week.

Here’s a little She & Him for listening to while editing.

Have a _______ Thanksgiving.

_{(I don’t want to tell you what kind of Thanksgiving to have.)}

Some of My Favorite Photographers

I’m going to do something a little different today and go through some of the photographers that have influenced both how I take and edit photos.

The best way to learn Photoshop editing, at least for me, was to find something about a photo I liked the look of…then try to reproduce that effect in Photoshop, to varying degrees of success.

So, without further ado, here are my top 3 favorite photographers:

1. Nirrimi Joy Hakanson

_{Picture commissioned for Myer’s Miss Shop Lookbook.}

Nirrimi is an Australian photographer and probably my favourite photographer because she always manages to make all of her photos look nostalgic. She used to be a bit of a wanderer, traveling through many countries, taking pictures mostly for fashion magazines, but since then she has had a child and settled down a bit. None of this has dampened the wanderlust that shows through in her photography, really it’s just added a touch of warmth and home to her photos. She keeps a blog where she documents her new lifestyle as a young mother, and if you wander far enough back you’ll find some of her older photography. Nirimmi is also where I learned a lot of what I know about Photoshop Curves. She maintains an online shop for her Curves here, but there are two (Cult and Great Grandma) curves up there for free right now.

2. Eric Ogden

_{Photograph of Sufjan Stevens.}

Eric Ogden has taken pictures for many different magazines and won various awards (there’s a list on this page). He’s an American photographer, and he’s fantastic at getting dynamic portrait shots. He’s taken pictures for many celebrities including Steven Spielberg, Philip Glass, Fergie, Kevin Bacon, and Kings of Leon (though this is only a very small portion of the number of people he’s photographed). His photographs tend to feel both staged yet incredibly real at the same time, perhaps because of the sharp contrast and colors too vibrant to seem real. Actually, the best way to describe it would be like a frame out of a movie. It’s made to look realistic, yet flawless.

3. Julia Trotti

_{Picture for Black Milk Clothing.}

Julia is mostly a fashion photographer though she also dabbles in music photography as well. She’s been featured in the Digital Photography and Design Magazine multiple times. Her portfolio can be found here. She’s also shot for many companies like Black Milk and Oh Deer Boutique. Many of you may recognize her name since I use many of the free curves she makes in editing my photos. There is a collection of her free Photoshop Curves here, as always. Her photos come off as very whimsical, yet realistic, which makes it seem like her photos live in almost a world of their own.

And that’s it for now.

Since I’m feeling nostalgic I’ll leave you with a good, old song,

“Cape Canaveral” by Conor Oberst for this week.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for next time.

Make-up in Photoshop

Hello again,

Today will be about using Photoshop to add make-up.

It’s surprisingly easy and can take a lot less time than real make-up.

All you have to do is chose what color you want in the color picker.

Then make a new layer and do all your painting on this layer.

Next turn the opacity down on that layer so the skin’s texture comes through.

Make sure only to apply the color in places where make-up would actually be.

Then we’ll clean up any blemishes with the Patch tool.

Now to clean up the skin even more, start by duplicating the original layer.

Then go to Blur and choose Surface Blur.

You can play with the setting to get the kind of smoothness you’d like.

I left mine on the original settings since I wanted fairly smooth skin.

And this is what it’ll come out like.

Obviously this has blurred things that should not be.

For this we can  just use the eraser to get rid of the blur in unwanted areas.

Then I’m making her lips a little darker using the same technique I did in the first part.

As I said before, be careful to make sure the color only gets where people would usually apply it.

_{(Sorry guys, girls will be predisposed to be a little better at this.)}

And now I’m going to add in some more smoke.

Here’s some smoke brushes to do so.

You can go to the Window tab to activate the Brush window.

This toolbox will allow you to rotate the smoke if it’s going the wrong direction using the little compass looking thing.

Just click one of the arrows sticking out and drag, you’ll be able to see which way the brush is moving at the bottom of the window.

Even though the smoke brushes are already fairly opaque, I’d turn the opacity down a bit anyway just to be sure.

Then combining everything together for contrast and color editing will make it look more cohesive.

Then the “Alice in Wonderland” curve will also help all the colors go together as well as bring out the purple tones already throughout the photo.

And that’s all for this week.

As always, if you have any suggestions let me know.

This time I’ll leave you with an awesome song by the XX.