Psdtuts+

Retouch a Bland Model Portrait in Photoshop

Kevin Stohlmeyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:00:14 PST

Sometimes retouching a portrait can be really tricky, specifically when dealing with model portraits. In this tutorial, we will be retouching a particularly difficult shot in which the subject has no makeup or dramatic lighting to emphasize the shot. Using Photoshop, you will be able to add makeup, repair flaws, and add some drama to this shot. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

Model (iStockPhoto)
Background (iStockPhoto)

Step 1 – Selections

The first thing I want to do is remove the model from her background. Using Photoshop CS5 newly enhanced Refine Edge controls, this should be a snap. First make a selection using the Quick Select Tool. Be sure to have the "Auto-Enhance" feature checked in the Options Bar before you begin. This tool is brush based, so you can adjust the size as needed, but be sure to stay INSIDE your subject. Do not overlap the brush into the background or the next step will not be as effective.

Step 2 – Refine Edge

After you have completed the initial selection, click the Refine Edge button in your Options Bar (or right-click on your selection to pull up the menu). First, scroll through the View pull down menu at the top and choose a view that works for your shot (I chose the Black background). Then go to the Edge Detection portion of the dialog box and check "Smart Radius". Slide the Radius control about 1/2 way up the slide value and review your image (below is a before/after shot).

If necessary, you can also use the Refine Radius brush tool to overlay the edges of the hair to bring out even more detail. If you notice that the Refine Edge commands are eating away at parts of the model (shoulders, clothes, etc) click and hold down on the Refine Radius Brush to reveal an eraser tool (Erase Refinements Tool) that can erase the results. You can also lower the Radius slider value to pull back the details if needed.

After you have an adequate selection, go to the Output module and choose to have your image output to a New Layer with Layer Mask. This will preserve the original image and give you a new, masked layer to work with.

Step 3 – Retouching Skin Flaws

Now with the image on it’s own masked layer we can begin to retouch the skin and flaws in our model.

First off is any skin blemishes. Using the Spot Healing tool, we can quickly repair any acne, scars, dark spots, etc. from the skin. Use this tool ONLY for the blemishes as we will use other tools later on for other areas. This is an important first step as it will give us clean resources to utilize later on with the eyes, hot spots, etc.

Step 4 – Removing bags under eyes

Next, we will tackle the eyes. The eyes are one of the more difficult parts of the image, because the flaws are normally in very tight proximity to the lashes and other features that can affect our healing tools.

To get into these tight spaces, we will be using the Patch Tool (found under the Spot Tool button). Make a selection around the bottom of the eye and then drag the center of the completed selection into the cheek below the eye. Clean up any stray eyelashes using the Clone Stamp tool. We do want to remove the lashes on this model because they are so thin. If you feel your particular model has good eyelashes, feel free to leave them in. Above you can see the results on the right side.

Add a layer mask to the retouched layer. Erase under the eyes with a 30% opacity eraser to bring some contours back to the eyes. Be careful, erasing too much will remove all the retouching results.

Step 5

Now we need to tackle the eyebrows. The eyebrows on this model are thicker than we want, so I am going to reduce the thickness using a very simple (cheat) technique.

First, start by making a selection of the upper half of the eyebrow. Be sure to grab as much of the forehead as possible. This image is difficult with her bangs moving into our field of play.

Then copy the selection using New Layer Via Copy (Cmd + J Mac/Ctrl + J Win).

Next, move the eyebrow layer down covering up her original eyebrow until you get a rough thickness that works.

Clean up using the Eraser and Clone Stamp Tools, blending in the original eyebrow with the new overlap. Repeat these steps for the other eyebrow.

Step 6

If there are any hot spots on your model, use the Patch tool to surround these areas and drag into a clean area of similar skin texture. The result will not completely remove the highlight, but it will blend the area gradually into the rest of the skin.

Step 7

(If you did not have to remove eyelashes in your image, you can skip this step.) Adding eyelashes can be difficult unless you have an Ace in the hole. Mine is to utilize a set of Eyelash Brushes. These can easily be found by searching "Photoshop Eyelash Brushes" on the Internet. There are several to choose from (many free, some pay). Load your brushes using your Brush Preset Panel and going to the pull down to "Load Brushes".

Use the Brush Panel to control the angle and size of your brush. Be sure to paint on a NEW LAYER so you can control the opacity and color independently.

Step 8

Finally we are going to add some digital makeup. This is as simple as it can get. Create different layers for each area of makeup you apply (cheeks, eyes, lips, etc.) and add in color by painting at 100% opacity with a soft brush. This is going to look silly, but it will help us map out where the makeup is going. Be patient and don’t panic.

Now after a slight freak out, select each layer and change it’s blending mode from Normal to Multiply and reduce the opacity as needed. As you can see, the results are much improved from before:

Step 9

Finally we are going to adjust the hair and add some pop. Start by making a selection of the existing hair. Create a new blank layer and fill with a brown color. Again this is going to look odd before it gets better, but trust me it does get better.

Next change your layer blending mode from Normal to Overlay.

This is a little too intense, but we can drop it down if needed using opacity.

Step 10

Finally, Adjust the eyes using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. First, make a selection of one eye using the elliptical marquee tool. Then add the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Adjust the one eye to your liking. Then using your paintbrush tool (set to Black 100% opacity) paint in the other eye on the Adjustment Layer’s mask.

To finish the image, drop a backdrop behind your model and viola! A retouched model.

Final Image

Here is the final image. With just a few enhancements, you can take an ordinary shot to something that pops using these simple techniques. Enjoy!

See the Next Version of Photoshop Live

Grant Friedman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:03:32 PST

Recently, the Photoshop team has been publishing some sneak peeks of what they have been working on for the next version of Photoshop. Later this week, Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes will be in New York City for a series of live sneak peek events. This will be a great opportunity to see for yourself what the Photoshop team is working on. I’ll be attending and would love to see you there if you’re in the area. The details for the event are below.

Thursday, February 9 Event Meetup

Hosted at the School of Visual Arts with special guest SVA alum and pro photographer – Sarah Silver. Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Ps Sr. Product Manager, will demo.

Saturday, February 11 Event Meetup

Hosted at pro photographer Sarah Silver’s NYC studio. Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Ps Sr. Product Manager, will demo.

Create a Chewing Gum Packaging Design in Photoshop – Tuts+ Premium Tutorial

Tim Kyde — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:00:31 PST

In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Tim Kyde will explain how to create chewing gum packaging in Photoshop and Illustrator. We will begin by showing you how to create print-ready artwork and then how to render that artwork as a mockup that can be presented to clients. If you are looking to take your packaging and print design skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

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Tuts+ Premium Members can login now for instant access to this tutorial. Membership to Tuts+ Premium gets you access to hundreds of exclusive premium tutorials, top selling ebooks, in-depth courses, member forums, and much more. To learn more about Tuts+ Premium, Take the Tour or Join Today.

The Work of Tony Aubé

Grant Friedman — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:55 PST

When compositing photos in Photoshop, sometimes the story you tell can be just as important as how well you combine the images. Frequent Psdtuts author Tony Aubé is not only good at combining the images he uses, but he is also great at combining them in an emotional way. Let’s take a look!

Ever Belonging Seaheart

In this piece, it is clear that this ship is in trouble. Will the ship’s crew make it to land safely or will they be smashed against the rocks?

Maiden’s Prospect

This maiden is waiting for her prince. Will the suitor on this ship be the one?

David and Goliath

This climber has a tough, if not impossible journey ahead of him. Will he be successful at climbing the face of this mountain?

Awaiting Summer

In this apocalyptic piece, Tony explains how to combine several photos to create a panoramic image in Photoshop. Then he explains how to turn that image into a snowy apocalyptic wasteland.

Red Silk

In this piece, Tony explains how to create an Asian-inspired scene using several photos.

Toscane’s Skies

This composite shows a person enjoying what looks to be a beautiful day, atop a large hill or mountain. In this piece, you get the impression that this person is reflecting upon a major life event. You can see the steps Tony took here.

Returning Home

This rider is almost finished making the long journey home to his castle.

Hitoban Musumegokoro

In this piece, Tony depicts a sleepy Asian-inspired town using several stock images. This image is also available as a tutorial.

Quick Tip: Create a “Transfarmers” Text Effect Using Layer Styles in Photoshop

Erasmo D'Onorio De Meo — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:58 PST

In today’s quick tip tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a cinematic “Transfarmers” Text Effect using the layer styles. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

Step 1

Make a new .PSD document, 1000 x 500 pixels, RGB color, 100 dpi and grey background (color #33333). Create a new layer and fill it with brushed metal pattern from tutorial assets section (any metal texture will do though). Now using the Blending Options, fill this layer with a Light Blue color and set the blending options to “Overlay”. Finally if you want you can add a gradient that include several white and grey tones, with a bright area in order to create a better effect for the background.

Step 2

Now create the text using this font: Transformers Solid. Use these settings: 70 pt – Anti-Alias: Sharp. Now rename this text: “3D”. Then go in the menu Layer > Layer Styles > Blending Options and use these settings:

Step 3

Duplicate the text and rename it “Base”. Right click on his layer and click to “Clear Layer Style” or in the Styles Palette click on the first style “Default style (None)” (It’s the same thing). Now move this text slightly to the right in order to create a “pseudo 3D effect” with the text below (Look the Step image). Then go in the menu Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options and use these settings:

Step 4

Duplicate the text “Base”. Right click on his layer and click to “Clear Layer Style”. In the Blending Options menu on the right set the fill to 0%. Now and use these settings in the menu Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options:

Step 5

Your text effect is almost completed. Now we have to create a text reflection. Insert all 3 levels of the text effect in a group. Duplicate this group. Right click on it and click to “Convert To Smart Object”. Right click on it again and click to “Rasterize Layer”. Then go in menu Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Now move it as the image shown and then with the Eraser Tool delete as long as you want in order to create a realistic reflection. Finally to make the text effect nicer I added some sparks with simple brushes and color lights with soft brushes.

Conclusion

Now your text effect is completed!

Create a Sci-fi Scene Using Advanced Shading Techniques in Photoshop – Tuts+ Premium Tutorial

Wojciech Pijecki — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:00:38 PST

Applying the right atmosphere and lighting to your artwork can be a tricky task. In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Wojciech Pijecki will explain how to create a mechanically enhanced subject, in a sci-fi environment, using advanced shading techniques in Photoshop.

This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members. If you are looking to take your photo manipulation and retouching skills to the next level then take the tour to find out more!

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Photoshop CS6 Introduces Background Save and Liquify Performance Enhancements

Grant Friedman — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:29:24 PST

We recently showed you the first sneak peek of Photoshop CS6 by Senior Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes. Today, Photoshop Product Manager Zorana Gee released a new video showing even more features of CS6. In this video Zorana will explain two really nice enhancements to Photoshop; Background Save and some performance tweaks to Liquify.

The first feature that Zorana shows is Background Save. This is a feature that many users have been asking for. It will allow you to save your file and then continue working while the file is being saved.

Another fantastic feature that Zorana demonstrates is a performance tweak to Liquify. If you’ve ever worked in Liquify, you know that you can’t expand your brush beyond 1500 pixels. This is frustrating if you’re working on a really big image. In this video, Zorana works well beyond 1500 pixels. In addition, the Photoshop team has also improved the performance of Liquify so that it doesn’t tile. You can now use Liquify in real-time with no lag.

Use Layer Comps in Photoshop to Improve Your InDesign Workflow

A.J. Wood — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:30:45 PST

Layer comps are a great way to organize content inside Photoshop files. They allow you to save multiple design ideas in a single PSD while reducing the need to create duplicate layers. As you’ll see in this tutorial, layer comps can flow from Photoshop to InDesign making your workflow even more efficient. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

Nitexpress Party Flyer

Best of Tuts+ in January 2012

David Appleyard — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:00:26 PST

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

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Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

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The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

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Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

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An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

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Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

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Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

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Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

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Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

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Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

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Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

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Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

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Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

HDR: Love it or Leave It?

There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

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Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

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Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

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Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

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Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

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SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

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Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

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Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

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Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

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Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.

Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

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Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

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Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

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An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

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Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

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The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.

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PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

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Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

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The Photoshop Team is Looking for Their Next Evangelist

Grant Friedman — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:02:34 PST

The Photoshop team is looking for their next evangelist. They just announced a contest asking for Photoshop users to submit their own hidden gem tutorial, and we would like the winner to be a Psdtuts+ reader or author! A hidden gem video needs to explain a lesser known feature or workflow of Photoshop. Each video would need to be 2 minutes or less and would need to mention “hidden gems.”

To see more examples of what a hidden gem video would look like, take a look at Bryan O’Neil Hughes’ series. The winning entry will win a trip to Photoshop World. For more information take a look at this post and the video below. Rules are listed here. Good luck!