Project 1 Tut 6– Shadows & Highlights

Original

Shadows & Highlights Adjustment

Project 1 Tut 5– Fast Skin Smoother

This tutorial is for use with protraits for smoothing skin and is enhanced that it can be caputred in Actions to be usesed repetively and save time.

Fast Skin Smoother
Source: 'Digital Photographer's Notebook' by Kevin Ames found in Photoshop User Magazine, June 2011,  pp. 82-83.

Before

After

Project 1 Tut 4– Change a Photo to a Sketch

How to change a photo to a Sketch

Source: Photoshop Users Group – Subscription required.

Here is a copy of the video insturction and below is my shorthand transcript of the steps. 

• Open an image.
• Make a duplicate layer – Cmd J
• Desaturate the layer – Cmd U
• Make a duplicate of the Desaturated layer – Cmd J
• Inverse the Layer – Cmd I
• Use a blending Mode of Colour Dodge that will or almost cancel out the Desaturated Layer and the Inverse Desaturated layer (which is the selected layer). The image should be totally white or almost there may be some stray marks but that is OK.
• Convert the active layer to a smart filter by going to Filter > Convert to Smart Filters, a message will come up to saying the layer is being converted to a smart object – click OK.
• [Note when we go to use some of the filters they may be greyed out. That is because they can only be applied to 8-bit image. To change to 8 bit go to Image > Mode > 8 bit]
• Choose Filter > Brush Strokes > Spatter it will open a filter screen to make adjustments on using the sliders. Click OK. (By applying it to a smart object you will be able to go back and make adjustment – a non smart object would have to be deleted and you’d start all over again.)
• If you want to edit the effect double click on the spatter in the layer effects area to open the effects panel and make your changes.
• You can again open the effect panel and at the bottom you will see an eye with the name of the effect you are using. Below that there is a button on the bottom of the page next to the Trash that if clicked will allow another effect layer to be added. [In my example I’ve used Splatter and Cross Hatch as described in the video.]
• Once happy with the sketch you can make a duplicate of the Background Layer Cmd J and drag it to the top of the layer stack and reduce the opacity to 20-30% to get an even better effect.

Project 1 Tut 3 – Masking with Channels

Masking with Channels 

Source: Planet Photoshop: Masking with Channels by Corey Barker (video)

http://layersmagazine.com/planet-photoshop-masking-with-channels.html#more-15548

My orginal image and extracted masked image - I've used a blue background so the masking shows up better. 

Here is a low-res snow photo from the web that I tried to use this technique on and had better results. Results are still not as good as the tutorial but with practice it can be perfected and as Corey says it is less time consuming than trying any of the other masking tools which don't work in this type of situation. I did find when trying to locate test photos the background has to have a simple background.

This is my attempt to provide a transcript of the video clip that will allow us to complete the task without having to keep returning to the video for instruction.

How to mask for complex images with simple backgrounds. The video shows a snow boarder in the air with lots of small flakes of snow scattered all over that he want to keep. 

Go to windows and ensure Channels is open.

You edit in an alpha channel so it is done visually. Extracting hard to get parts of the photo. Most standard selection tools won't work. 

Open Channels and find the most contrasting to the subject and the background -RGB channels. For an alpha channel you need it to be straight black and white but inevitably end up with grey. 

Black will be the unselected area and white the selected area. 

Toggle to the selected channel and we are going to use a feature of PS that most people ignore or are afraid of because of the complicated menu. Go to image menu and select Calculations. We are going to uses calculation to darken up the grey areas. There are three sections. The Source will stay the same, as we want it to apply to the image we are working on. The Layer will be the background and the channel will be the channel we selected with the most contrast and the blending will be Multiply to change the background from grey to black. The result will be a new channel. Click OK and in your channels there will be a new channel called Alpha 1. 

Now invert the alpha1 channel Cmd + I to make it easier to work with. 

Now press Shift Delete - go into the fill window in use Black and in the Blending area set it to Overlay. What this will do is ignore white area and other areas will be forced to black. It can be done a second time if necessary. 

Select the brush tool small brush, hard edge and change blend mode on the brush tool to Overlay. then we can paint with black in the area. There may some areas that are too light and you will not be able to paint them. When that happens you can change the brush blend mode to normal and paint - be careful as now the brush will paint on the white areas. 

In the alpha channel any area that is white is going to be your selection and grey partially selected and black unselected. So we want to invert the image again Cmd + I. It was easier to paint with black and define the edges is why the image was originally inverted.  

The background area may still have some grey in it. Use levels to move the dark slider in to make it black and click OK on the curves. Now ready to extract. Go to layer panel.

Unlock the background layer - drag padlock to trash. Go to Select and Load Selection loadsthe alpha channel as a new selection and click OK. Click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers. 

To see how good the selection is add a new layer underneath and give it a fill colour. It should be nicely extracted. You may have to do some fine tweaking using the paintbrush in normal mode black background to clean up some areas. 

Poject 1 – Tut 2

Tutorial 2 – Increasing Contrast in the Iris

Source: Professional Portrait Retouching techniques for Photographers using Photoshop by Scott Kelby, 2011, Published by New Riders

All text and images © Scott Kelby

This is a very simple tutorial using Blend Modes and Layer Masks. Images are available online allowing me to download the image, I’ve cropped the original full face image to just concentrate on the eyes. Downloads can be found at:

www.kelbytraining.com/books/retouching

Starting Image:

Finished Image:

Instructions

(click on page to see larger text)

Exercise 4 – Colour theory 2

	Imaging 2
f	Exercise 4 – Colour Theory 2
Names	Paul Livingston
	§       This is a formative assessment instrument §       You must be rated ‘Competent’ in this assessment item.
Tasks	1.     Start Photoshop and open the document you created in Exercise 3. ·       What is the keyboard shortcut for opening an existing Document? Cmd + o 2.     Change the Blending Mode of the layer Group to ‘Pass Through’. 3.     Make the background layer the working layer by selecting it in the Layers palette. 4.     Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the top half of the image. 5.     Use the Paint bucket tool to fill this area with Black. ·       What is the keyboard shortcut for this tool ? g          6.     Change the Blending Mode of the ‘Red Circle’ layer to ‘Lighten’. 7.     Do the same for the Blue and Green Circle layers. 8.     Select the Move tool. ·       What is the keyboard shortcut for this tool ?             v          9.     Turn on the ‘Auto-select’ option and set it to ‘Layer’ (Not ‘Group’). 10.  Drag the three circles so they all overlap each other. 11.  This simulates the     Addative                        Colour System. 12.  Rename the group of circle layers to indicate this. 13.  Add a text layer (using white text) saying ‘<name> Colour System’. 14.  Select the group of circles in the layers palette. 15.  Duplicate the group using ‘Layer -> Duplicate Group …’. 16.  Use the Move tool with ‘Auto-Select’ set to ‘Group’ to drag the new group to the bottom half of the page. 17.  Change the Blending Mode of the this group to ‘Difference’. 18.  This simulates the     Subtrative                      Colour System. 19.  Add a text layer saying ‘<name> Colour System’. 20.  Save the document as ‘Ex 4 – Primary_Colours.psd’

Exercise 3 - Colour Therory 1

	Imaging 2
f	Exercise 3 – Colour Theory 1
Names	Paul Livingston
	§       This is a formative assessment instrument §       You must be rated ‘Competent’ in this assessment item.
Tasks	1.     Start Photoshop and create a new document with the following properties :- ·       Name : ‘Ex 3 – Primary Colours’ ·       Size : A4 @ 300dpi ·       Colour Mode : RGB / 8 bpc ·       Background Colour : White 2.     What is the keyboard shortcut for creating a new Document ? Cmd + N 3.     What is the size of the image in :- §       Megapixels -            8.7       Megabytes 24.9  4.     Set the foreground colour to Red (ie R 255, G 0, B 0). 5.     Select the Ellipse Tool (not the Marquee tool). What is the keyboard shortcut :- u 6.     Draw a circle with the Ellipse tool approximately 6cm in diameter (about 1/3rd of the page width) – display the rulers and use Preferences to set the units to cm . ·       Which key forces the ellipse to be a circle ?            Shift key 7.     Change the layer name to ‘Red Circle’. 8.     Duplicate the layer and ·       change the colour to green and ·       change the name to ‘Green Circle’.          Note: To change the colour click on the colour button on the option bar immediately after duplicating the layer, or double click on the layer in the Layers palette. 9.     Duplicate this layer and ·       change the colour to blue and ·       change the name to ‘Blue Circle’. 10.  Select the Move tool. What is the keyboard shortcut ?   v 11.  Turn on the ‘Auto-select’ option. 12.  Spread the three circles across the top of the page with a small space above them (they may overlap a bit – that’s OK). 13.  Fit the image to the screen (ie so the whole page is visible). ·       What is the keyboard shortcut for this ? Cmd + 0 or double click Hand Tool 14.  Go to Full Screen Mode – ‘View -> Screen Mode ->Full Screen Mode’. ·       What is the keyboard shortcut ? There is none 15.  Stare at the centre of the middle circle for 20 seconds, then look at the white area below. You will see an after image. ·       What colour are the after images for each circle ? Circle After Image Colour Red White Green Pink Blue Orange 16.  Select all three layers in the layers palette. 17.  Group the three layers together by selecting ‘Layer -> Group’. ·       What is the keyboard shortcut ? Cmd + G 18.  Select the group in the layers palette containing the three circles. 19.  Change the ‘Blending Mode’ for the group from ‘Pass Through’ to ‘Difference’. (We will be looking at Blending Modes later, so don’t worry if you don’t understand them now). 20.  Stare at the centre of the middle circle for 20 seconds, then look at the white area below. You will see an after image. ·       What colour are the after images for each circle ? Circle After Image Colour Cyan None Magenta Green Yellow None 21.  Save the document as ‘Ex 3 – Colour Theory.psd’ 22.  What is the size of the .psd file on disk ? 24.9    How does this compare to the image size you recorded in step 3 above. Exactly the same size.