Dynax Digital Forums

Want to look twenty years younger? Want your friends/ partner to think you are the greatest photographer in the world?
Well here it comes: the skin and anti-wrinkle treatment:

open your portrait > duplicate the background layer (ctrl – J) > filter > blur > Gaussian blur: put 20-25% in the radius (don’t get a shock- we are not finished!) > layers palette: lower the opacity to 40-50% > layer > layer mask > hide all > choose a soft brush and white as foreground colour and start painting over the wrinkles/ blemishes or the whole face leaving the eyes/ eye brows and lips out (or anything else that you don’t want to have changed). Don’t think this is crap yet- we are still not finished!!! > if you are not sure what you might have missed: press the alt /option key and click directly on your layer mask in your layers palette: This is something many people don’t know!!! It will turn your colour pic into a black and white mask and you can continue painting directly on your masked image and touch up the areas you might have missed!!! If you click again on the colour thumbnail next to your mask you return to your colour image (cool!) Now some people want to just stop here and lower the opacity of this layer and are happy. Fine if it works for you (and it will already look fairly good!) but not for me... here is what you do if you want it to be perfect:

> hold ctrl/ command key and click directly on your layer mask: this will select the part that you have just worked on > click the background layer > press command/ ctrl – J and it will load the selection on its own layer > click the eye icons next to your blurry and background layer to hide both and just show you the selection layer > command - shift - U/ ctrl - shift – U (this takes the colour out) > filter > other > high pass filter > start with the slider all the way to the left and then slowly drag it to the right until some texture re-appears (might be somewhere in the 20-30s) > make your background and top layer visible again by clicking on the eye icons > now click you middle layer (the grey one) and drag it to the top of the layer stack >  change layer blending mode to soft light >  now this is important: lower the opacity until you are happy

Well done if you made it this far! This is something I regularly use in portraits and especially when it comes to weddings!

Happy photoshopping!

Stef.

P.S. Because I have not posted any tips the last couple of days...I throw another one in:



How to remove shiny areas on your subject:

This happens particularly when you use flash or uneven lighting. You subject might end up with hot spots on his/ her face as if they are sweating.

open your image > duplicate the background layer (ctrl-J) > choose the clone stamp tool > in the options bar at the top of your screen under “select” and “filter” change the mode from normal to “darken” and the opacity to around 30% > under “brush” left to “mode” choose a soft edged brush >  alt –click next to your hot spot on a clean area > paint carefully over your lighter spots > keep on sampling from different clean areas and brush carefully over your affected areas.

Job done!

Happy photoshopping!

Stef.

Stef:

I wish I had more time to follow up on your helpful instruction. (I really have to become retired again.)Even tho I have E6 v CS3, some of this still works and in any case the concepts are what are important--there are sometimes more than one way to achieve similar effects.

You are keeping a record of all of these techniques, right? Or they are already written down somewhere in all of your stacks of computer folders, right? (You are not typing all of this from scratch are you?)

Soooooooo ... there must be a list of "top twenty" processes..or maybe 50 processes. Any chance you could put the "Top XXXX" into a single document and convert to a PDF and make available online? A combo of words and screen-capture images showing what's going on....

Now maybe you are working on this anyway with a view to selling an online book one day--or  a real hardcopy book ...so naturally that would be harmed by my suggestion.

Just a thought.

Cheers!

Clive

You are keeping a record of all of these techniques, right? Or they are already written down somewhere in all of your stacks of computer folders, right? (You are not typing all of this from scratch are you?)

Nope and yes I type it from scratch- whatever it is I am just working on...

Soooooooo ... there must be a list of "top twenty" processes..or maybe 50 processes. Any chance you could put the "Top XXXX" into a single document and convert to a PDF and make available online? A combo of words and screen-capture images showing what's going on....

I have no such list. As said I really just quickly put down what I am working on. Guess everybody interested can just copy paste the tips into their own document and sort them. I am aware that some of the tips are all over the place- black and white tips (and there are more than one) are not in on go but on different pages in this thread. Anyhow- for people interested- they can start their own list by copying the relevant and interesting tips in their own lists?

Maybe a dedicated section could be created on this forum, so that we can easily browse through these amazing tips!

Not sure what you mean by dedicated section? This thread is already pinned- so always at the top of the darkroom thread?

Even tho I have E6 v CS3, some of this still works and in any case the concepts are what are important--there are sometimes more than one way to achieve similar effects.

Yes most if not all of these tips also work in Elements but it would take too much time for me to "translate" them into Elements language. As you said rightly it is much more about showing that these things are possible and you then have to experiment with it.

Have fun!
Stef.

Very quick way to tone your images:

(a) open you colour image
(b) create a new layer: > layer > new > layer
(c) choose the eyedropper tool > double click on the black and white swatch in your tool palette > choose any colour you like
(d) edit > fill > use foreground colour
(e) in layers palette set blending mode to colour
the next step is optional:
(f) click on background layer > new adjustment layer > hue saturation > play around with the hue and the saturation sliders

Voila you have a duotone image! Very quick indeed!

Happy photoshopping!
Stef.

Hand Colouring

Some of you might remember the good old days of hand colouring black and white images? Well if not - let me tell you it was usually a huge mess and you needed quite a few black and white prints before you got it right (at least I did)
Here is what you do in Photoshop:
(1) open your image
(2) convert it to black and white (there are many different methods in this thread so just choose one...)
(3) make sure your image is in RGB mode: Image > Mode > RGB Color
(4) create a new empty layer: Layer > New > Layer > BEFORE you click OK change the "mode" from normal to color (second one from the bottom)
(5) now choose your brush tool and any nice colour and start painting! To choose a different colour just double click on the black or white little square in the tools palette

Modifications:

(a) Don't forget you can change the opacity of this layer
(b) Don't forget you can also change the opacity of your brush to get subtler colours
(c) You can also select parts of your image and use the fill tool: Edit > Fill

Important: Red Eye Removal

The above method also works very nicely with red eyes! Just choose a colour close to the original eye colour and paint on a separate layer (which needs to be in colour mode) and voila a nice way of getting rid of red eyes!

Hope this is useful?

Happy photoshopping!
Stef.

(d)

Neutral Density Gradient Filter

How often does it happen that you end up with an image where the foreground is exposed correctly and the sky is to light because you have forgotten your filter set at home or don't have one Well here is what you can do to remedy the situation...
(1) open your image in photoshop
(2) make sure the foreground colour is black
(3) Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient > just click OK
(4) now the gradient fill dialogue box opens: tick at the bottom: reverse and align with layers > DO NOT CLICK OK YET! > double click directly on the gradient in your dialogue window and it will open another dialogue window > now you will see "little" gradients at the top and one big black to transparent gradient at the bottom. Over the bottom one on the right hand side is a little white thingy that looks like a house on its head > click this one with your mouse and drag it to the left > let go of the mouse to check your image: the black to transparent gradient that went all the way from the top to the bottom of your image should slowly lift towards the top. If it's not enough drag the little white "house" further to the left until it lines up nicely between sky and foreground. (Don't forget you have to let go of the mouse to see the difference!!!)
(5) click O.K. once happy and click O.K. again to close both dialogue windows > now you have two layers on top of each other. Make sure the top one is activated > set its blending mode to overlay and you are done!

Fine tuning
The effect is not strong enough for your taste? Click on the top layer and drag it to the bottom of your layers palette over the symbol next to your rubbish bin to duplicate the layer. Now the effect might be too strong so just lower the opacity of that very top layer before flattening the whole thing.

Hope this is useful?
Happy photoshopping
Stef.

Stef i was just reading thru these tips. Thank you for taking the time to put so many on here. Everything i know about cs2 is self taught, so these are most helpful. I just read the one about how to create an action; you have just saved me hours of work! Thanks again!
Amie

To echo Amie's comment, Stef these tips are a godsend - your dedication and wealth of knowledge is something to behold... and your generosity in sharing all this wisdom is fantastic.

I've lost count of the number of things I've learnt from this thread alone - Thank You!