Another piece done in Corel Painter

Technorati Tags: corel painter, photo, photography, images, digital, alterations, art

 
Before and After (click for larger image)

An easy and very effective way to convert to black and white in PhotShop is to use the channel mixer: 

1. Create a new adjustment layer:  Layer > New Admustment Layer > Channel Mixer

2. Click on Monochrome

3. Use the sliders on each color channel to adjust your image

4. When you have it where you want it, flatten the layers and save

1. Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels
   You could do the levels manually if you want; however, auto seems to work well for this adjustment.
2. Duplicate your layer
3. Image>Adjustments>Equalize
   This adjust the brightest pixels in your image to white. The darkest pixels will go black. After this command is executed, check the histogram. It will appear level almost all the way across
4. Set the equalized layer’s blending mode to Soft Light
   The image should look less harsh and have a better contrast
5. Drop the Soft Light layer’s opacity
   Try dropping it to 30-35%. However, try different opacities to adjust it to what you want in the image.
6. Merge the layers

Technorati Tags: photoshop, filters, photography, digital, image, contrast, post processing, photo, tutorial, tips, techniques

The book, “The Impressionists” by Diana Newall which gives a nice overview of many famous Impressionist’s paintings, their basic pallette colors along with other interesting hightlights. I decided to digitally capture the pallettes of several paintings to find out what colors they had in common and I was very surprised by the results. Obviously, the color accuracy will not be extremely high. Here are images of the paintings followed by the sampled color palete for each:

Hoarfrost at Ennery by Pissarro

 
Impression, Sunrise by Monet

La Grenouillere by Renoir

The Dance Class by Degas

The Luncheon at the Boating Party by Renoir

Next, I combined each of the palettes into one single image to get an overall sampling. Here is the image that I sampled:

This is the sampled palette created using the image of the collection of palettes above.

It is amazing how many colors each of the images have in common.

“Jazz Man” made the wall at the 34th Juried Art Exhibition
at the Lyndon House Art Center

Using the following steps you can make a photo image look older:

1. Open your image in Photoshop

2. Desaturate the image: Image -> Adustments -> Desaturate

3. Make the image a duotone: Image -> Adjustments -> Variations (select the tone you like)

4. Create a new layer.

5. Select a foreground color from a mid-tone color your now variated image and make the background color white

6. Select Filter -> Render -> Clouds

7. Select Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur  (Make the angle 90 degrees and the distance Max to the right)

8. Now set that layer to hard light

9. At this point you may optionally make this layer more transparent

10. Flatten the image

11. Create a new layer

12. Set your foreground color to white

13. Select a Paper Damage Brush (you can download if you don’t have them ready to load)

14. Stamp the image with the brush. If the image is larger than the brush, use the Move, hold down the shift key and resize the it so that it covers the entire image.

15. Make the layer as opaque as is effective

16. Flatten the image

One thing that you can optionally do is use the eraser on the paper damage brush impression layer to take away any “damage” that may hinder the details on your image. 

Here is the original image that I used:

Technorati Tags: photoshop technique tips tutorial old age aging image photo portrait digital editing alteration

There are various ways to touch up skin in Photoshop. Some seem more adept at specific areas of the face than others. I have tried various filters to show these various effects. I found that some of the filters do a much better job than others. Younger skin is much easier to touch up than skin that has weathered the years. The subject in my example image is a middle-aged female. Most ladies at this age want to have their skin look like it is 20 years old. That is a big order, but getting close to it is the challenge that may be met using a combination of the following filters with layers and the eraser tool.

Original image of portion of the face unretouched

The original image shows signs of natural aging. The pores are very visible. There are wrinkles around the mouth and below the eyes. In a senior person, wrinkles can be dimished, but should not be completely taken away. Should the wrinkles be completely taken away, the image does not look realistic at all. So, smoothing the areas where pores show can be done. The wrinkles can be diminished but not taken away entirely.

Skin Surface Blur Filter Applied
with a Radius of 36 pixels
and a Threshold of 32 Levels

The Skin Surface Blur Filter seems to smooth out skin pores very well; however, the shadows areas around the nose begin to pixelate and look unrealistic. When using the Surface Blur Filter, it is important to note that the radius controls the blur intensity while the threshold controls the sharpness. This filter can be appled and used with the following steps:

1. Duplicate the background layer

2. Make the duplicate layer invisible

3. Select the background layer

4. Filter -> BLur -> Surface Blur (change the Radius and Levels to suit your image skin requirements)

5. Make the duplicate layer visible

6. Select the duplicate layer

7. Set the eraser tool to about 30-35%

8. Begin erasing the porous areas of the skin until the desired smoothing is achieved

9. Merge the layers

Reduce Noise Filter Applied to Original Image 3 Times

The Reduce Noise Filter seems to work very well at preserving facial details. In this image example, the area around the nose has been nicely smoothed while the detail has not be overly diminished. Here are the steps that achieved this result when applied to the original image:

1. Create a duplicate layer from the background

2. Make the layer invisible

3. Select the background layer

4. Filter -> Noise -> Reduce Noise

5. Settings for this example: Strength=10, Preserve Details 0%, Reduce Color Noise 0%, Sharpen Details 0% 

6. Run the filter 3 times total for the effect

Noise Median Filter with a Radius of 8 pixels

The Median Noise Filter also works well for retouching the skin. If the eraser tool has the opacity set very low, this filter can work very well on all areas of the skin. However, this filter has to be used carefully as the final image may look too much like a cartoon with many important details getting lost in the smoothing.

My first attempt at re-touching skin in portraits was using the gaussian blur filter. I found that using the Gaussian blur filter works but it loses a lot of detail much too quickly. In addition, if the radius is set low enough to preserve important details, the skin does not get smoothed enough for the results that I am attempting to get. Here is the original image with the Gaussian Blur applied with a radius of 7:

Gaussian Blur Filter Applied to Original Image
with a Radius of 7

The great strength of Photoshop is using layers. Time is always of the essence, so choosing the most time/cost effective way to touch-up photos is key. Use the comparisons above to make your own decision on which filter works best for you. Using several of these filters with layers, erasing the “rough spots” will help make a very nice image. Since no single filter seems to do it all, using several of the filters on duplicate layers of the background/original layer may make a big difference in how you post process your portraits. Here is the “final mix” image:

The “final mix” image is a a combination of
the Median Noise Filter and the Surface Blur Filter

Technorati Tags: portrait photoshop filters touchup touch-up touch up skin tutorial tips techniques photo editing post processing

Original Image

1. Open your portrait image in Photoshop and create a duplicate layer

2. Select the duplicate layer

3. Use the eye dropper to select a portion of the color surrounding the highlight and set your small brush to about 30% transparency

4. Begin covering up the highlights within the eye by working small areas and going over. The highlights will begin disappear. You may have to select color areas in severl steps depending on the image

5. Once the highlights are covered, select the dodge tool (which lightens the image) and set opacity to about 30%

6. Make the dodge tool small enough to fit within the whites of the eyes and begin working the whites.

7. Make the lower portion of the eyes lighter than the upper portion and make sure that you lighten close the the edges of the iris

8. Once you are happy with the work you have done, merge the layers

Image with highlights covered and whites whitened (Steps 1-9 above)

1. Create a new layer - name it Highlight - Select it

2. Set a soft brush to white with opacity to 65%

3. Set the size of the brush to the size that you want the new highlight

4. Give the area of the iris where the natural light would fall a shot of white (shown below)

5. If the highlight is not bright enough for you hit it again

6. Do this for both eyes with the eye facing the light having more highlight

Image with new highlight (Steps 1-6 above)

1. Make sure you have the Highlight layer that you just put highlights into selected

2. Make the layer a layer mask by selecting the icon at the bottom of the layer panel

3. Make your colors default - black foreground, white background

4. Set a small soft brush to 30% opacity and begin to erase the highlight, especially in the pupil area

5. Continue until you are satisfied - You can change the color to white to undo some of your erasing

6. Merge all all layers

Image after cleaning up added highlight (Steps 1-6 above)

1. Create a new layer called Color Highlights

2. Select a color from the pupil, open the color selection box and select a color less muted

3. Select a soft brush that approximates the color portion of the iris and apply the color

4. Don’t worry about coloring areas that you don’t want color on - apply liberally

Image with color highlight applied to Color Highlight Layer (Steps 1-4 above)

1. Select the Color Highlight layer and make it a Layer Mask by selecting the icon at the bottom of the layers window

2. Make sure the default colors of balck foreground and white background are selected

3. Use a small soft brush at 30% opacity and use the black color to erase the portions of the highlight color

4. Do this until you begin the see the detail of pupil color variations begining to show

5. Erase all color from the outer edge of the iris, the pupil and the whites of the eyes

6. Merge all layers and you should have the eye work completed

The final image

Obviously, the more care and time you put into these steps, the better the final image will look. I honestly rushed through the steps for this blog entry. Critically speaking, I think that the white specular highlight should have a more crisp look to the right edge of the eye and I was sloppy adding the color highlight as well. However, using care and these steps will give you a very artisitc interpretation while maintaining the actual look from the original photo.

After going back to the image, I did one more step on the eye that is highly optional. I used the dodge tool to make the color highlight area more transparent and lighter. The image is displayed above. I like the effect. 

In addition, the skin needs to be smoothed to compliment the eye work. I have a tutorial which shows you step-by-step how to do this:

Skin Smoothing Tutorial

Technorati Tags: photoshop eyes portrait toughup tough up face post processing airbrushing technique tips tutorial

One Photoshop Action that I really like is the Duotone Dream action. It allows you to not only get an :old fashioned” sepia look to your image, it also adds a “dreamy, glowing effect” that is very attractive. In addition to the action applied to the image above, I also downloaded several “scratch” brushes that give the image a look similar to those where the old glass plate “negative” was scratched over time. I duplicated the base image and then applied the scratches. Then, I erased over the faces and other key areas of the women to bring out their faces. Some of the scratches were distracting in the image.

Here is a link to the ZIP file that contains the Duotone Dream action for those of you using photoshop:

Duotone Dream Photoshop Action