A year ago, our friends Tim and Kellen had a beautiful baby girl, Marley. A few weeks ago, Kellen flattered the heck out of me when she asked me to do Marley's first-birthday photoshoot. We did the shoot this past weekend, and despite a few tears from Marley, we got some excellent shots.
Editing them has been a huge learning process for me, but a fun one. I edit all my blog photos, certainly, but the process is fairly simple: correct exposure/white balance/noise/etc in Photoshop RAW, then switch to Photoshop and crop, sharpen eyes and hide undereye circles, remove any blemishes or what have you on my face/clothes, and finally run a few sharpening actions I made. The whole process takes about two to five minutes per photo.
Portraits, and especially baby portraits, present different problems. Babies often have red and/or splotchy patches of skin, and they also can have cooler skin tones than adults. And because they often have such striking eyes, they demand a little extra work to bring out the best of that feature.
I've learned a lot about editing with layer masks in the past few days, and have streamlined my process quite a bit, but it still takes me 10-15 minutes per photo to make it look just right. (If you're wondering, that process involves the same edits in Photoshop RAW, a crop if needed, same eye sharpening/shadow correcting, then a Vibrance mask on the eyes, a Hue/Saturation mask to reduce any redness in the skin, another Hue/Saturation mask at a reduced opacity to lighten the skin a bit, Pioneer Woman's Warming action at a reduced opacity to warm up the skin, and then any fancy edits like black and white, select color, sepia, etc. Let me know if you'd be interested in a tutorial on this process!)
Kellen has been kind enough to let me share a few photos of her sweet baby here on the blog. I'm totally open to critiques to improve my process/technique. Let me know what you think!
(I know, I know...select color is a little dated/cheesy, but people still like it and frankly, it's fun to do. Sue me :P haha)
I think this is my favorite shot of the whole day, maybe because it kind of happened on accident. Marley had been crying, but saw the mirror in my lens flash when I snapped a shot. It intrigued her, so she started laughing and crawling toward it, getting her face right in the lens. I was scuttling backwards, one-handed, on my butt and snapping furiously the whole time. As it was happening, all I could think was, "These are either going to be awful or freaking amazing." I loved this shot so much, I gave it a few other special treatments:
I like desaturated shots in general, but this one doesn't do it for me. As Matt said, "It's a shame to remove any color at all from those bright, gorgeous eyes!" And he's right.
What about you? Have you ever shot portraits or baby photos? Do you have any tips or tricks?
Hello all and happy Monday! Did you have a lovely weekend? I suppose I can't really complain about mine, although as always it feels like it was just too short. How's that petition for a four-day workweek coming, amiright?
Anyway, I'm coming at ya today with a Photoshop mini-tutorial of sorts. As I was editing the photos from our bouldering trip last weekend, I came across a few that turned out just horribly. I hadn't taken the time to adjust my settings, and as a result, my subject was completely dark and noisy, while the edges of the photo were in full light. Fortunately, I was able to fix it in about 30 seconds, thanks to the wonderful magic of Photoshop's RAW editor.
Original photo, as viewed in Photoshop RAW.
If you have this same issue, you can easily fix it yourself. You just need the following:
1. A RAW photo file that's too dark. (This won't work on JPGs, folks, which is why you should ALWAYS put your DSLR on RAW mode.)
2. Photoshop CS5 or later with updated RAW plugins.
Before I delve into this, I want to talk a little bit about camera settings and why your photo might be too dark. If you look at the settings in the top-right corner of the screenshot above, you'll notice that I was working with a f/5 aperture and 800 ISO settings. The ISO might be a tad high for outdoor shooting, but given the amount of shade I was dealing with, it isn't the worst mistake in the world. Regardless, if I had even bumped it up to 400, I would have had less issue with noise. My real problem was my shutter speed, which was 1/2500 s. While a fast shutter speed was vital for catching all those action shots, this was a bit too fast for the light level I was dealing with under that rock.
TL;DR: My ISO was too high, which resulted in a grainy (noisy) image, and my shutter speed was too fast, which resulted in a dark (underexposed) image.
So. Here's how I fixed it in post-processing.
First, I adjusted the Exposure slider to lighten the entire image. I then adjusted the Highlights slider down, to fix the glare on the properly-lit folks in the foreground, and the Shadows slider up, to further lighten the background of the image and the climber on the wall.
Next, I zoomed in on the climber to check the grain. The best way to do this is to pick a face or patch of vibrant, solid color (like her clothes), preferably something within the formerly dark area, and zoom in to 100%. See how grainy that is? That's the noise created by my high ISO. Back when I had CS4, I would have just had to deal with this for the most part. But CS5 and CS6 have some truly amazing noise reduction tools, so that's what we're looking at next.
In the Detail tab (the icon that looks like two triangles), you'll find the Noise Reduction sliders. First I bumped the Luminance slider up, then the Color slider. (The Color slider may not be necessary for every image, and to be honest, I'm still figuring it out. Just play around with it to see what works for your image!) I didn't touch the Luminance Detail, Luminance Contrast or Color Detail sliders for now. So now my noise is gone, but the image looks a tad soft/blurry.
Enter the Sharpening sliders! I increased the Amount slider and decreased the Radius slider just a tad, then bumped the Luminance and Luminance Detail sliders up a touch to compensate. (I forgot the arrows on this image. My bad!)
Zoomed out, you can really see the difference in the entire image. Here's the original again, for comparison:
And there you have it! A quick and easy fix for underexposed and/or noisy photos, as well as a little lesson on why you should always shoot in RAW mode, not JPG!
Now, a quick question for you: Did I jump the gun by not providing definitions of RAW/JPG files? Or are you already familiar with the differences between the two? Sound off in the comments and I'll write a little addendum to explain, if it's needed!
Ok, so last week I ran out of daytime to finish up this idea of "Photoshop makeup." And here we are! Today we're looking at some minor teeth whitening, which is especially useful when you shoot indoors; the yellow light can really wreak havoc on your pearly whites. I'll also show you a quick one-step solution for tiny problem spots, like a pimple or in this case, my nose ring. (The end of it sometimes pokes out of my nose a tiny bit because the post is too long. It's so annoying.)
So here's a little before-and-after for you. On the left, you'll see what looks like a booger coming out of my nose. I promise you, it's just my nose ring. (As if that's somehow less gross??) You'll also notice that my teeth on the left look a bit on the dull side, so I brightened them up in the final product. And of course, I've done my under-eye-shadow concealer trick from last week as well.
Ok, now let's get to editing. We talked last week about how important it is to create a new layer from your original image, in case you make mistakes. I didn't get a screen grab of that process, but I did it.
We'll start with fixing the nose ring. Just select the Spot Healing Brush tool from the bar on the left. Make sure it's "Spot Healing" and not plain old "Healing." The former automatically selects correction colors based on the surrounding tones, whereas the latter makes you select the colors. Basically, the Spot Healing Brush is a one-click wonder. Choose a brush size that's slightly larger than the area you want to correct — you'll remember from last week that this is done either by right-clicking or via the dropdown box in the top left of the window. Then just click the offending spot, and it's gone!
Now, on to the teeth. Using the Magic Wand tool, select just the teeth in your picture.
While the teeth are still selected, use Command+J (Control+J on a PC) to create a new layer of just the teeth. In the photo below, you'll see the circled layer on the right side appears to be blank. That's just because the teeth are almost the same color as the background and are harder to see.
Open the Hue/Saturation panel (Command+U or Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation from the menu bar up top). Take the Saturation down a bit — you want the teeth to look slightly gray.
Next, increase the Lightness. Your teeth should look a bit too white at this point, and that's okay. We want them to be a little exaggerated.
Adjust the Opacity slider for the teeth layer (see the circled bit in the image below). I find that sometimes, it helps to zoom out of the image a little to help you get an overall view of what the final product will look like. There are no hard-and-fast rules for this; just slide it until it looks right to you. This blends the original color of the teeth with the edited color for a more natural look.
Zoom out all the way to check your overall look and adjust the opacity again if needed. When you're ready, select all three layers, right-click and select "Merge Layers" to flatten the image. (Or hey, click "Flatten Image" or "Merge Visible." Pretty much the same all around, I believe.) Make absolutely sure you're happy with your image at this point, because once you flatten, you can't really go back!
And that's it! So tell me: Anything else Photoshop-wise that you want to see tips on, so far as "makeup" goes?
Hello all! You may or may not remember a few weeks ago, when I posted my first Makeup Mondays bit revealing that (gasp!) I use Photoshop as an after-effects "makeup" of sorts. And I promised a tutorial. And then I promptly dropped the ball. Well, here we are again! Hooray! Today I'm going to show you how to banish dark undereye circles and whiten teeth; two easy tricks that will make your photos look much nicer. Unless of course you're some kind of demonchild who doesn't ever get undereye circles, in which case, TEACH ME YOUR WAYS!
Ahem. Anyway, on to the 'tute. First, we'll look at the eyes, or rather, just under them. (Apologies for the grainy quality here; I have no idea what happened. Hopefully you'll get the picture.)
As with all Photoshop projects, the very first thing we do is make a new layer via copying the background layer. I use Command+J (Ctrl+J on a PC) to do this, or you can use the Layers panel on the right.
While working in the top layer (1 in the image above), I select the Eyedropper tool (2) and click a nice light patch of skin on my cheekbone or just under my eye (3). The color picker (4) shows that I grabbed that color.
Then I select the Brush tool (1) and Ctrl+click (or right-click) to bring up the brush settings (2). I adjust to the necessary size and turn the hardness all the way down. (You can also make these adjustments from the brush settings drop-down menu in the top-left of the bar above the photo. But I have right-click enabled on my Mac and I just think it's easier.) Next, I set the brush's opacity (3) pretty low. I like it around 15%, but do whatever works best for you. Then I just carefully paint over my shadows until they're erased to my liking. You don't want to go overboard, or your face will look like it's made of plastic. (Note: if you have rosacea or anything like that, this tip works great for evening out skin tone!)
Once you have the perfect look, you just have to merge your layers. Select both, right-click either and select "Merge Layers," "Merge Visible" or "Flatten Image." (If you do either of the last two, you don't have to select the layers first.) A word of caution: Make ABSOLUTELY sure you like the look of your cover-up, because once you merge the layers you're done! You'd have to start from scratch to make other changes.
Voila! Photoshop-as-concealer. I was definitely going to do the teeth today as well, but then my lunch break (when I wrote all of the above) ended adn now it's 10 pm and I have some work to do before bed, so...to be continued? Sorry guys :(
So a while back, my dear friend Ally made a sweet comment on a post of mine. It was about makeup and how it gives some women a huge advantage. And it made me laugh, because she implied that what I post on the blog is largely natural. And it's not. Which got my gears turning, and made me decide to start a little mini-series that I'm going to call "Makeup Mondays."
I wear a fair amount of makeup, mostly to hide the constant dark circles under my eyes. They're there no matter how much sleep I get. Thanks, genes. And while the makeup I wear goes a long way to hide them (more on that another week), they're usually making an appearance by the end of the day, when I take my photos. So I have another "makeup" trick up my sleeve: Photoshop.
I know it's a bit controversial to Photoshop one's appearance in pics, and I promise, I don't do any of the crazy making-myself-skinnier things or whatnot. I basically use it as an after-affect makeup application. I'll clean up the circles under my eyes, and sometimes whiten my teeth a touch if the lighting makes them look bad. In the interest of full disclosure or what have you, I've decided to present a few comparisons:
The image on the left is unedited, while the one on the right has my circles touched up. (It also has my standard clarity edits, which I swear I've posted about, but I can't find. If I do find that post, I'll update. UPDATE: Here it is.) You don't have to look very closely to see the difference.
The other edits I do involve minor cover-ups, like if I have a major breakout, and slight teeth whitening. I really only need the latter during indoor shoots, when the lighting is a bit on the yellow side anyway. Below, you can see where I did that, and where I fixed an annoying little thing where my nose ring was sticking out of my nose and looking like...well, you know. Gross. I also, of course, lightened under my eyes.
So there you have it. That's how I use Photoshop as makeup, so to speak. Stay tuned in future weeks for tutorials on how to do these tweaks, makeup tips and overviews of which products I like best.
What about you? Do you use Photoshop to tweak a few facial flaws? Or do you prefer to go au natural? Do you feel strongly about using Photoshop this way? Sound off in the comments, I want to hear what you think!
Hi all! So today I'm doing something kind of new to Verbal Mélange. It's a photography tutorial, specifically a Photoshop one. I mentioned the other day that I'd do a tutorial for lightening blown-out windows when shooting interiors, but I got a little feedback from a bloggy friend saying she hadn't worked in Photoshop Layers much...so I thought I'd start with the basics.
So. Here we go. For this tutorial, I'm working with a photo from the Color Run last weekend. Emily shot it with her iPhone (or maybe I did? I'm not sure), through a plastic bag. It was overcast, and the bag desaturated the color quite a bit, so it was a pretty dreary shot. Here's the before and after:
As a disclaimer, I'm using CS4 for my edits. If you're running a different version, commands might vary slightly...but it shouldn't be too off. Anyway. To start, I opened up the image (a JPEG) in Photoshop. The first thing I did (and the first think you should always do) is create a new layer of the original image with Command+J (or by right-clicking the layer in the Layers window and selecting "create duplicate layer"). That way, if you reeeeeeally screw something up, you always have the original handy.
Next, I made sure the new duplicate layer was selected by clicking it in the Layers window. The selected layer is highlighted blue in the window, as you can see in the above photo. I opened the Levels editor (Command+L or Image>Adjustments>Levels in the menu bar) and tweaked those. I bumped up the white (the slider on the far right) a tad to brighten the whole image, then bumped up the midtones (the middle slider) quite a bit to adjust the grays in the image.
Next, I opened the Hue/Saturation editor (Command+U or Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation). I left the hue alone, but increased the saturation to brighten all the colors.
Be careful not to overdo it on the saturation here. We'll adjust the color clouds individually in a bit. If you go overboard on saturation, your skintones will look like this:
Next I used the Magic Wand tool (shown in the toolbar on the left, or just type "w" on your keyboard) to select the color clouds. Make sure you use the "add to selection" function along the top, so each click adds to the selected area instead of changing it. If the wand is grabbing too much space and selecting things you don't want, try adjusting the tolerance (also at the top) down a bit.
I selected all the color clouds, and realized that I had some of the peoples' hands/faces selected as well. De-selecting them with the Magic Wand would have taken forever, so I entered Quick Mask mode by clicking the circle-within-a-rectangle button on the bottom of the toolbar at the left. Quick Mask turns the not-selected areas of your photo red. You can then go in with an eraser and paintbrush to fine-tune your selection.
I adjusted the size of the eraser as needed using the drop-down menus at the top (you can also right-click to pull up the drop-down menus wherever your cursor is), and erased all the people out of my selection. I didn't worry too much about being perfect, because everything is so colorful a few little bits here and there wouldn't show up.
When I was done, my finished Quick Mask looked like this. See how only the color clouds are selected?
I turned off Quick Mask by clicking the same button again, and used Command+J to create a new layer that includes only the selected color clouds. You can see it in the Layers window here:
If you click the eyeballs next to each layer, you can hide them. I did that here to show you just the color-clouds-only layer:
Then I un-hid the other layers and re-opened the Hue/Saturation editor. I bumped up the saturation on the color clouds layer even more so it would look the way it did at the actual run. (Okay, maybe the color is a little more intense. I couldn't help myself, hehe.)
Finally, to keep the image from looking too cartoonish, I adjusted the opacity of the color cloud layer. This helps to blend the rest of the edited layer and the color cloud layer by allowing a little of the edited layer to show through. I just adjusted the slider until it looked right.
A note on layers: The order they appear in the Layers window is the order they're stacked in the viewer. So my original, unedited layer is at the bottom of the list and is therefore completely hidden, because the edited layer is overtop it with 100% opacity. The color cloud layer has a lower opacity, so although it covers the edited layer, a little bit is allowed to show through. Does that make sense?
So there you have it! A pretty easy process, despite all the words you see above ;)
Now, does all that make sense to you guys? Sometimes I'm pretty bad at explaining procedural things like that. Let me know what you thought of this tutorial in the comments, please and thank you!
And now, the final guest blogger for my little vaca! I'm technically home today, but our train came in (or, should have come in, as I'm writing this a week in advance) around 5 am, so I'm likely dead asleep right now. Or unpacking. Either way, I'm in no place to blog, so Loren of Halcyon Days is filling in. Her style is so unique and fun, and this girl has some mad Photoshop skills. So that's what she's here to talk about!Hello Verbal Mélange readers. This is not Emma because she is on vacation, probably doing something awesome. I’m Loren from over at Halcyon Days. When Emma asked for some guest posts and I gladly volunteered because she is super cute and I adore her blog. I wanted to put together a quick Photoshop tutorial, because while I am a beginner chef and photographer, I am sometimes paid money to work with Photoshop. I majored in Computer Graphics in college and now work as a Multimedia Programmer. I’ve seen a couple blogger ladies lately lamenting their lack of Photoshop skillz so I thought I would run through a couple basics. (If you don’t have access to Photoshop you can use GIMP, it’s open source, free, and does 95% of the things Photoshop can do, although I will not be providing screen shots for it.)First: Any time you edit a photo you’ll want to make a duplicate layer before you start editing (just in case something dumb happens). You can right-click and select ‘Duplicate Layer’ but I like to drag my layer and drop it onto the ‘New Layer’ button because that names it for me.For Very Basic Color Corrections
Photoshop has a handy dandy “Image > Auto Contrast”, “Image > Auto Tone” and “Image > Auto Color”. Depending on your photo these can work really well. The “Auto Contrast” basically adjusts your photo so that the darkest color is pure black, and the lightest to pure white. (So not always 100% effect it’s super simple and easy for photos that are only slightly off.)Better contrast/brightness correction
For slightly better correction and control over levels in your images use the Image > Adjustments > Levels Window.
The graph here shows the Image Histogram, which represents and how the luminosity in your photo are spaced. (This photo has a lot of midtones and darker colors, fewer lighter ones.) It shows you two sliders for the “Input Levels” and the “Output Levels”. You can set these numbers or use the sliders. The top sliders set the input luminosity in your photo. The rightmost slider will now become white and the left controls the black. The middle slider will adjust where the 50% mark lies and can be used to adjust the overall lightness/darkness of the photo. Normally these are set at 0, 1, and 255 but I’ve changed them to make the photo appear as below. The bottom Output Levels will set the new output darkest and lightest color. You generally won’t need to change this but it set the reset the darkest color to black and the brightest to white. You can adjust the levels of each color separately from the Channel drop down menu, which can help you create some cool vintage effects. 
The most complicated (and best levels) can be set with the Image > Adjustments > Curves. The graph in this window shows the same as the histogram as the levels window. If you click the diagonal line you can add a point that can be moved to change the output levels. The Channel drop down works the same as well, and each separate color has its own curves. This menu gives you much more control over the output/input levels than the Levels window. I wish there were a foolproof method to editing the curves but the best way to learn to edit these is through experience. The “Preset” drop down will show you a couple different types of curves that you can edit to fix your photos. Here are the final curves from my example image. Very small changes in this window can make a big difference.Tips:
For both windows if you have something perfectly black and/or perfect white in your photo you can use the eyedropper tools to set everything. This is an easy way to white balance a photo when possible. (Because I never remember to white balance my camera.)Once you have altered the curves or levels you can’t edit them. An easy way to edit multiple photos the same way is to use the “Actions” window to record your selections and use those actions on your other photos.I hope this has been helpful. I know that I just tried to pack in a whole bunch of information into a short 700-word post. I’ll try to hang in the comments to clarify anything that was confusing. Emma is, I’m sure, having fun and will be back soon for your regularly scheduled Verbal Mélange posts!
