Photo Retouching

Photo Retouching: Under eye curves

2009-07-23T23:43:00.007-04:00

Have you ever come across a situation with under eye circles and try to tried to use the healing brush and the clone stamp to cover them up but then get frustrated with the textures don't match? Well that has happened to me plenty!! I watched a tutorial by Chris Tarantino about a month ago when I was down at LOOK3 in Charlottesville Virginia that made an interesting point. Its not so much the texture of the skin that needs to change, but more the pigmentation and color.

In doing my own research to try and combat under eye circles (much of which are caused my stress and over working :); I have found out a little bit of background information that may come in handy when thinking about ways to rectify them in photos. The skin under your eyes is much thinner than the rest of your skin on your face, thus is more transparent. Un-oxygenated blood settles under your eyes and can be seen through the thin skin that lies underneath your eyes. This is what causes dark circles. (Disclaimer: I am a photographer, not a doctor).
Heres a way to retouch out dark circles without touching the texture of the skin at all. And as far as I am concerned, the best way to tackle under eye circles.

Here is the unretouched image in its original state. As you can see, she's already a gorgeous girl that doesn't need much retouching at all. This is just to show the example.

I started by clicking the quick mask button on the lower left part of your tool bar. Then with a soft edged paint brush, draw in the area that you want the effect to be applied to. Make it look like your subject has a black eye (but in this case, it's bright red).

Then hit the Q key to exit out of quick mask mode and second, hit Shift+Command+I to select inverse. You should now have marching ants around the area you want to focus on.
With your selection still present, go to Select-Modify-Feather to feather the area by 15 pixels. Then REPEAT.
After you have feathered your selection, you can Command+H to hide the marching ants. Now go to your adjustment layers icon and click on a curves adjustment layer.

On the RGB Channel, take your midtones up until they match the surrounding skin brightness. Make sure you have the Preview button checked so you can see the changes in the image as you play around with the curve.
Then change your channel to the Red channel and increase the midtones there as well. This will increase the saturation of the red times in that area to combat the blue that is there to begin with.
Heres what the left eye looks like after the changes.
Then I repeated the whole thing on the other eye. Clicking on the quick mask button.

Then drawing in the area that I wanted to changes to be applied to by using a feathered brush to color in under her other eye.
Then hit the Q key again to exit out of quick mask mode and second, hit Shift+Command+I to select inverse. You again see marching ants around the area you want to focus on.
Then repeat the feathering of the selection by going to Select-Modify-Feather to feather the area by 15 pixels...again. Then REPEAT.... again.

Once you have feathered your selection, you can create another curves adjustment layer.

Make the same changes to the right eye as we did to the left on both the RGB channel and the Red channel. The reason you do the two eyes differently is because 9 times out of 10, one single adjustment won't work for both eyes.

Here is the finnished product! Good job guys!!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Thinking outside the box...I mean frame!

2009-05-15T07:03:00.000-04:00

Have you ever almost had that perfect shot from a vacation or shoot where one of the most important parts of the picture is out of the frame? One of the things I have learned through my retouching is to think outside the box...I mean frame! Just because your canvas ends doesn't mean your photo has to! Ill show you how!

LEARN HOW By Clicking READ MORE...

On my trip to South Africa, we went to a game park and I had no idea how close the animals would get to us so while I was prepared with my 70-200mm and a doubler (2x), I was caught at a disadvantage when the animals got close to me without enough time to take off the doubler. This was the photo that I was left with.

Step One: Increase the canvas size. You are going to want to go into Image>Canvas Size and open up your canvas to be larger than the original image because you will be adding things to it.

When you get into the Canvas Size window, you will see a nine by nine square with arrows in it. This tells you where the image will sit on the canvas when the extra canvas is added. Since I want to add more canvas to the left side of my image, I have chosen to change the gray square one over to the right by clicking on it.

Step Two: Start rebuilding the part of the image that is most important. In my case, the part that is most important is the giraffe's mouth. Since I have another giraffe in the same photo that is not cut off, I have selected those pixels to copy and paste over to the giraffe that is cut off.

Select the mouth with the marquee tool, and press (cnt/cmd) C to copy and (cnt/cmd) V to paste. Don't be alarmed if you don't see the paste effects. The selection has been pasted directly over the original pixels so you may not see them at all. Then press (cnt/cmd) T to transform and (cnt/cmd) H to hide the lines (it will be easier for you to line up the edges if you can't see those white lines. Use the arrow keys to move the copied selection into place. Once it's in it's place you can press the enter key to accept the transform or the check mark at the top of your toolbar.

Once again that is: (cnt/cmd) C, (cnt/cmd) V, (cnt/cmd) T, (cnt/cmd) H.

Step Three: I saw that there was a small color change between the first giraffe and the second, and I needed to fix that. Press (cnt/cmd) L to bring up your levels pallet
and take down the midtones a tad.

Step Four: Start building the other areas of the image. The more prominent the features are in your background, the harder this part will be for you. The biggest suggestion I can make for you is not to grab pixels from the same area and use them to fill in the black area. You will end up with the "bad clone stamp effect" as I like to call it.

Peoples' eyes and brains are constantly looking for patterns in images thats why they are so easy to spot on a bad photoshop job.

This bush was important because it is a large part of the picture. So I knew I needed to continue it on in my black space. I copied it and pasted it like I did in step 2, but this time since it is going to be the opposite side of the bush, I needed to flip this piece of the image vertically so it would look like the other side of the bush.

Press (cnt/cmd) T to transform your selection and while holding down shift, drag the box/line on the right side of the box all the way past the left line and over further. Now you have flipped the selection. Press enter to accept the changes.

Do this a few more times from different parts of the image so you don't create any patterns.
Move the selections into place using the arrow keys or your pen/mouse.

This is what your image should look like after you have filled in the space on the left of the photo with different areas of bush from around the photo.

Here is a close up image:

The next step is to use the clone stamp and healing brush to get rid of those lines in your image.

Here is your final image! Congratulations!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Skin Smoothing

2009-05-14T20:59:00.011-04:00

I went to Photo Plus last year in October and while I was there, I sat in on Katrin Eismann's retouching tutorial. I saw the technique that she learned from Chris Tarantino. It is shown in this video link below.

The technique shows you how to select just the skin and soften the shin without loosing detail.

Skin Retouching Video
***It takes a minute to load... but I promise it's worth the wait!***

One thing that I did not include in this video was using the High Pass filter to add even more detail to the skin.
The way you can do that is once you finish the video tutorial, you will hide the skin layer you just made and select the layer underneath it (your layer that is the equivalent to my "Skin Retouch" layer).
You need to duplicate that layer, then you will go to Filter > Other > High Pass.
Use a radius of about 8 or 9.
Select the High Pass layer, and then Command+U to take the saturation of that layer down to zero.
Change the blending mode to Overlay.
Move the layer with the detail to the top of the layer pallet.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Retoucher to ReTeacher

2009-03-07T22:08:00.002-05:00

I am pleased to announce that I am going to start teaching retouching seminars at Washington School of Photography! I'm really excited to be passing on my talents to other people that are eager to learn.
If you are in the area, please feel free to come in and take a seminar.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Flickr's Retouching Love Story

2009-02-24T20:19:00.009-05:00

From what I read here It seams like retouching has brought two people to fall in love while being an ocean away from each other. Rosie Hardy and Aaron Nace met on Flickr and started collaborating on image manipulation.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Selecting Using Color Range

2009-01-14T16:14:00.002-05:00

Using your photoshop tools to their maximum capacity is essential when asking your software to improve an image.

I was asked by Chris Crumley (a brilliant photographer out of Virginia Beach, VA) to retouch an image. I didn't really know what to do with the blank space to the left of the image and wanted the model to look "placed with thought" and look lit professionally.

To get the rest of the coral, I used the coral that was already in the image. And I selected it so intricately by using Select - Color Range. Its located in the Select menu up at the top.

After I selected the coral by using the eye dropper, I used the Select - Modify option to contract the selection to get out all the water's blue color from the selection.

I copied and pasted the selection onto a new layer and pressed "command t" to flip the layer horizontally and vertically.

Then I selected the new layer with the coral on it and pressed "command u" to change the hue and saturation of the new coral so it didn't match the color of the other coral so perfectly, to confuse people so they wouldn't think the coral is a copy.

These are the kinds of little nuances that keep people from seeing the retouching done on an image.

See the larger image here!!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: The Tan without the Cancer

2008-12-16T09:07:00.006-05:00

When it comes to winter in Washington, theres a bunch of places you'd rather be. Like somewhere tropical or warm. One way to ease those winter blues is to give your subjects that sun-kissed look without tanning beds or smelly sprays.

Read after the jump to learn how.

Photo Retouching: A Retouchers Dream

2008-12-01T14:35:00.003-05:00

While I was up at Photo Plus Expo in NYC, I took a seminar with Chris Alvanas in which he showed me one of the most useful tools.
Eyelash and Eyeshadow brushes from DeviantArt.com, they have lots of different brushes like this one if you simply search for "eyelash brushed" on the search bar.

How to download located after the break.

Click "download" from the website and it will save the file onto your desktop. You will need to unzip the file (some computers have software for this already installed, but if you don't, you can always control-click (right click) and press "uncompress" from your options.

The next step is to find where the brushed are located already on your computer. You can locate them by clicking on the mac magnifying glass and entering ".abr" into the field.
Jump down to the second or third listing, click on it, and it should show you the path on where that brush lives. Mine says "Macintosh HD > Applications > Adobe Photoshop CS4 > Presets > Brushes" Control-click (right click) and press Open Enclosing Folder which should tale you right to the folder where they reside.

Drag and drop the brush set from your desktop into that folder. Restart Photoshop and they should be in your brush palette.

If you are working on a PC you can watch this video on youtube.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Irresistible Eyes

2008-11-02T14:59:00.022-05:00

There are so many eye enhancing tutorials out there I just thought that I would add one that I learned from Chris Alvanas at Photo Plus Expo last weekend.

Learn How by Clicking on READ MORE

Step One: Select the Iris. You are going to do this through the Quick Mask Tool. Click the button that is being pointed to in the jepg below (or you can press the Q key) to enter into Quick Mask Mode.
Next you will want to select your brush tool, (make sure your color swatches are set to black and white) and start painting. You should be seeing a red film over the area that you are painting.
It is my personal preference not to include the pupil and reflections in the selection because changing the color in those areas will make the eye color look less real.
Now that you have your selection, you need to take a few steps to actually select the area that you want to change. First, you need to press the Q key to exit Quick Mask Mode, then you need to go to the Select Menu and press Inverse.

Now your selection should look like this.

Step Two: Change the color. From your adjustment layer drop down menu, select a Color Balance layer.

Here are the eyes with the color adjustment made.

Step Three: Add contrast and dimension to the eyes. You are going to make two curves adjustment layers.

One where you are going to lighten the midtones (name this later lighten) and another where you are going to darken the midtones (name this layer darken).

Then you are going to option click the mask button on both of the curves adjustment layers on your layer pallet. This will hide both curves adjustment layers so you will not be able to see them. This is what your layers should look like.

With your lighten curves layer selected, paint with white on the mask in the inner part of the iris to reveal the lighter color. This is what your mask should look like.

Now with your darken curves layer selected, paint with white on the mask in the outer part of the iris to reveal the darker color. This is what your mask should look like.

The darken layer on my eyes was a little harsh so I threw a Gaussian Blur on it at about a 3 or 4.
Now I am going to decrease the opacity to around 60%.

Here is the finished image! Congratulations!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Recent Work

2008-10-28T16:38:00.010-04:00

I thought I might show this to you. It's an image that I recently retouched for a client. When they first called and asked me to put a t-shirt on the boy where there wasn't one before, I didn't think I could do it, but I told her I would try and through a lot of trying out different methods, I got it to work! It's not my finest work, but it's not bad for the time I had to do it in (same day turnaround).

So sorry, but for this image there are way too many steps to make a tutorial, but as I teach you more and more techniques, you should be able to guess-timate the tools that I used! Good luck!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Backgrounds 101

2008-10-20T20:34:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, I am tasked with retouching things other than the actual model in the photo. Here, I had to take away the distracting lines behind this hair model. They were taking away too much from the image, as well as add a piece of hair to perfect the hair style!

Click after the jump to see how I did it!

Step One: Use the clone stamp tool to erase the lines off of the image. Because of small shadow differences in the colors, you'll want to choose a reference point that is as close to the part that you are painting over as possible. Use different size brushes and different opacities to make it look more realistic.
Your image should look like this when you have gotten rid of the lines.

Step Two: Select piece of hair. What I did here was to go into Quick Mask Mode (by pressing Q on your keyboard)to select a tress of hair that I could copy and paste into the area where the client wanted filled.

Hit the B button on your keyboard to select your brush tool and paint at 65% opacity.

NOTE: When you are in Quick Mask Mode, your layers will be highlighted in gray, not blue.

When you are done painting in your QM Mode, you can then hit Q again to exit Quick Mask Mode, and go to Select>Inverse to inverse your selection so that the piece of hair is selected.

Step Three: Place hair piece. While you have the piece of hair selected, press Cont/Comd C to copy the selection, and then Cont/Comd V to paste it.
You can then press Cont/Comd T to transform the selection and move it into place. If you work better with the lines hidden, you can press Cont/Comd H to hide the lines. Use your arrow keys to move and adjust the placement of the piece of hair.

Here is the final image again. Congratulations!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Retouching Video

2008-10-16T12:16:00.006-04:00

Heres a clip that will make you chuckle, in the same vein as my last post about the well known star who looks strikingly like a vice-presidential hopeful, I thought I would share this with you.

Thanks to Colbert Report

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Snap-shot to Portrait: Some Easy Steps

2008-10-14T09:39:00.015-04:00

There are some fundamental differences between a snap-shot and a portrait: positioning, eye-contact and most importantly, lighting. We all know that it takes a lot more time to make a portrait than it does a snap-shot, but what happens when you want a portrait, but only have time to make a snap-shot? It's all about the eyes. By simply changing the positioning of the catch light in the eyes, you can create the illusion of off-camera lighting, with only the flash of your camera.

Photo by John Harrington

In this post I will concentrate on the changes you can make to the eyes of a person that suggest off camera lighting when the only lighting was actually a flash mounted on camera.
Step One: Brighten the whites:
This allows for the illusion of more light hitting the eyes. You will need to hit your Q key to enter into quick mask mode. Then paint with the brush tool (the harder your edge, the harder/less feathered the edge of the selection - so use a soft brush). Once you have colored in the eyes red, you will want to hit the Q key again, which will take you out of quick mask mode. Then you will need to invert the selection so you have the eye whites selected (do so using Select>Inverse). Once selected, you can use the mid times slider in the levels or curves window to lighten the whites.
Step Two: Brighten the eye color:
Select the bottom part of the iris with a half moon shape (see step one on how to select the area) and brighten the midtones using levels (Apple L) or curves (Apple M).
Note: If you would like to play around with the color/saturation of the eye color itself, use the Hue/Saturation (Apple U) window.Step Three: Remove the flash reflection:
Every photographer knows that when you take a photo of someone using a flash while they are looking at you, you are going to have a reflection of that flash in the persons eyes. That is a tell tale sign of on-camera flash, and you need to remove that evidence. Use the clone stamp to remove the larger of the two catch lights in the pupil of the eye. I like to use my clone stamp tool at 65% for this and make sure that you sample an area inside the pupil so the colors match.
Step Four: Make your own off-camera catch light:
I tend to use the paint brush tool for this next step. You want to sample the color of the small catch light that we left in the eye, and use that color (or a little lighter) for the larger catch light. Paint in your catch light into both eyes and make sure they match.
Step Five: Blur the catch light:
You will want to then blur the catch light a bit so that you can't tell it was painted into the photo. Blur using the blur tool on your tool pallet.

Here is the final close up of the eyes again: Great Job!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Pay it Forward (cont'd)

2008-10-11T10:02:00.004-04:00

In an effort to improve my blog, I would like to start showing people not just my retouching, but how I do it. I have some questions myself on what would be the best way to show readers how I do my retouching.
As of now, I have two ideas:
Written workflow: I would take screen grabs of the image at different points of the retouching process so that you may see the steps in the process.
Screen video: I could record my movements on the screen so you could see the the steps that I do and how to do them/where to find them.
This is open for discussion. I hope people will tell me which method they would prefer to see and I will start sharing my workflows!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Digital Dentist

2008-10-07T14:34:00.009-04:00

I think that teeth are one of the things that people are most self-conscious about. It's an obsession that I would have to guess originated in the US but is continually spreading, so when I have a client that decides not to smile in pictures because of their teeth, I try to assure them that they can have a beautiful smile post-photoshop.

How It's Done (Click on the images for larger jpegs):
1: Straighten the teeth using the liquify filter.
2: Mask the selection of the teeth (using quick mask or regular mask - use a soft edge).

3: With the teeth selected, go to the Hue/Saturation (Apl U) window. Select the Yellow from the drop down menu and decrease the saturation of the yellow.
4: With the brighten slider bump up the lightness of the teeth a tad to make them look better.
5: De-select the teeth (Apl D).

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Corporate Headshot

2008-09-24T20:58:00.006-04:00

I was recently contacted by a very well known company to do some retouching. I sometimes wonder how far is too far for retouching. Here, I decided to take off a few pounds and make my client look his very best. More examples are located at my Washington DC Headshots Website

Photo by Stephen Voss
ATTENTION: The banding that you see above is a result of animating
the image so that you can see the before and after changes.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Pay It Forward

2008-08-26T09:53:00.002-04:00

I have been fortunate to learn from some amazing photographers and retouchers, and I will always be in debt to them. So one thing that I always try and do is pass on knowledge to emerging people in the business. One of my mentees wanted me to show her some of my tricks. We chose this image and I went through with her as she watched all the steps for retouching an Image. Please tell us what you think?

Photo by Lauren Kasmir

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Flying away - Hair Photography

2008-08-19T15:03:00.007-04:00

I was recently contacted by a Salon in Washington DC that was in need of some photo retouching. One of the hardest things to photograph well is hair photography. No matter how good the photographer/stylist/make-up artist are, there is almost always going to be a need for a retoucher. Fly-aways are that pain in the side of every hairstylist and they will almost always be in the picture no matter how hard you try to avoid them.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Recent Fun Shoot

2008-08-14T12:03:00.003-04:00

Last nights retouching: Up for comments and questions!

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Minding your "X's" and "M's"

2008-08-12T13:40:00.006-04:00

Recently, I got a call to see if I could do something for a client. They needed the "XM" taken out of the background of a portrait to send to another publication. They needed it ASAP, so I gave myself 30 minutes to see if I could complete the task. I did and they were very pleased with the end product.
As you can see from the image, there wasn't much space for me to use the clone brush to fabricate the background, so I decided to create the wall from scratch using lines and the gradient tool.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

DC Headshots - Magic-eye

2008-08-07T13:34:00.007-04:00

Earlier this week, I had a headshot client who had a small problem. When she smiled, her right eye seemed to close a bit. Because I try to keep my clients very happy and satisfied with my work, I took that portion of the photo and liquified it to match the other eye.
Here is the end result.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

DC Headshots: Don't Talk to the Hand

2008-08-06T17:41:00.002-04:00

Recently, I needed to help out a local actor. I took her headshots, and this was one of her favorite images, except for the hand in the photo. She (and I) felt it was distracting, and detracted from her face. I used the clone stamp and the patch tool to remove her hand, while keeping the correct color and tone to the space that I had to create.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Retouching

2008-08-01T15:24:00.003-04:00

Retouching can become a slippery slope, especially when you consider how much retouching can be done to an image. Headshots are supposed to represent the actor that is being considered for employment. But what if the actor's skin leaves much to be desired, or he asks me to make 10 pounds disappear? I usually tell them: "I can do anything in Photoshop that can be done with makeup or avoided by a position change." Here are some examples of my fashion retouching (not my headshot retouching):

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.

Photo Retouching: Details Details Details

2008-06-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

Most of the time, the difference between a successful portrait shoot and a not-so-successful portrait shoot is the details. It's hard enough getting a client to pick their favorite photo of themselves, but when you add misplaced elements to the photo, that can be the difference between the client choosing their favorite image of themselves (where something is misplaced), or their third or fourth favorite image (where something is placed correctly).

What if you could choose the clients favorite image, and change the element of the photo that they don't like? Problem solved!

I chose to select the area of the charm, copy and paste it to another layer, and position it into the right place. Then I cloned in the area where the original charm was.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Retouchers and Retouching Discussion Threads.