# How'd you do that?



## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

I've learned a lot here over the years, and I know lots of others have as well, so I thought it would be fun to have a Portrait Version of "How'd you do that?"
I'll start, but I hope lots of others pop in with cool things you have learned, and how you do it.

This is a photo I took at an e-session on Saturday. I shoot RAW, so this image already has white balance and exposure adustments. It's definately not the best of the session, but one that has a lot of different things done to it.







and this is the final result:






First, I cropped to the size I know the image will end up being. The power source on the tree was driving me crazy, so I cloned it out first. (I always clone at 40 percent opacity or lower because it gives a much more natural effect.) I always go over a clone with healing brush, as it brings back texture. Ditto with the nail in the second column. Had to go. 

The second part has to be done with extreme TLC. Put the photo into liqufy, and GENTLY shape the bodies into a flattering proportion. Most people don't like their own photos because they are unaware of their true body image.....so make it a bit more pleasing....they will buy LOTS of photos.  Once happy, render, and go back to edit.

The third thing I do, is heal all the skin blemishes on the original image. Then I go back and on a dupe layer and heal out stuff like lines and creases. That looks pretty fake though, so because I'm on the dupe layer, I can go back in and lower the opacity to something realistic, yet appealing.

Then a little dodging on teeth and eyes, each done on their own dupe layer so I can adjust.

The final thing I do, is step back and look at the light. I'm not good enough to nail it in camera yet, but have a couple of cheats in PS.
On their own dupe layers, do overall general dodging an burning. I also use another separate dupe for a Vivid Light burn. Open your layers, and select burn at about 20 percent opacity. In your new dupe layer, you will see a pull down menu where it says "Normal". Play with all the options! I like vivid light, so I use that to draw the eye to the subject. Then, I lower the opacity. Painting with light is fun once you get used to it.

How long did it all take? Under 5 minutes. Huge difference though.
Ok, let's all post a neat trick, 'cause I'd love to learn your short cuts too!


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## Icon72 (Feb 20, 2007)

Excellent idea Elsa. Nice photo as well. I'm definitely subscribing to this thread. I hope it's popular.


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## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

I hope so too Icon!  I get bored doing the same old stuff day in day out.


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## Big Mike (Feb 20, 2007)

Great idea for a thread...I'll try to contribute when I get a change...but it won't be anytime soon, unfortunately.


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## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

Comeon Mike, throw a quickie up there!  As soon as I get done with this e-session, I'll try to do a quickie on catchlights.  But you first!!!!!


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## Tangerini (Feb 20, 2007)

Wow yes!  I love the idea of this thread.  I'm very much a visual person (go figure) and for me it's easier to learn when I'm being showed... so short of me standing over your shoulder this is perfect!


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## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

Tangerini said:


> Wow yes! I love the idea of this thread. I'm very much a visual person (go figure) and for me it's easier to learn when I'm being showed... so short of me standing over your shoulder this is perfect!


 

I hear ya! I'm on a forum where Kevin Kobuta (sp) posts occassionally, and he does all these cool video tutorials. I learned a TON. You can tell me, but without photos, I can't grasp it.


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## PNA (Feb 20, 2007)

Well you just taught me something new.....Liquify, wow.

THANKS!!!

I need to push more buttons to see what they do.

Paul


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## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

PNA said:


> Well you just taught me something new.....Liquify, wow.
> 
> THANKS!!!
> 
> ...


 

Isn't liquify wickedly cool?  It takes a little playing with, but it's killer.  Once you get the hang of that, on big stuff, use Free Transform, and Scale Transform for big stuff.  Remember you have a freeze tool here.  If you don't want something to move, freeze it.  I do this alot with people with large gums to lower the lip line.  I don't want the teeth small, just the big gap between the lip and teeth, so I freeze right at the tooth line.
Liquify and Transform are used CONSTANTLY in commercial photography.  You have never opened a mag and seen a photo where this wasn't used to some extent.  
No wonder we all have f-ed up self images! LOL


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## Stevedevil (Feb 20, 2007)

Sounds like a Good thread so will post this one








Started with this portrait and finished to this ( was a bit quick, could spend a bit more on each process )






1)  Firstly I used the Spot healing, with a brush of 30, and took away all the little moles etc, by holding ALT and clicking left mouse on a good area then release both and click on the blemish / Mole

2)  I then used the paintbrush set at 40, with opacity at 15% to smooth over the lines in the eyes, and to take the glossy look away, like using foundation, again hold the ALT key and left click on mouse, then left click to finely smooth eyes and gloss

3)  Added some eyeliner, again paintbrush, set at size 10, opacity 15%, and just gradually build up black ( but any colour would work )

4)  Added a little eye shadow and cheek shadow by lasooing area over eyes and the cheekbone area, and feather by around 30, then using the hue / saturation adjustment I set Hue -5, Sat +18 Light -23, to give some eyeshadow

PS I used seperate layers for each as then you can add a bit later

5) Lipstick,  again lasoo the lips and feather by 5%, then again Hue / Saturation and I used Hue -6, Sat +25, Light -12 but again you could play with whatever colour you like.

6)  Eyes whitning,  again lasoo the whites and hold shift to add extra lassoos after the first, then you can adjust all white together, then using the curves adjust layer, just added a little up, but you can add more / less as to suit.

7)  Then I made a curves on whole picture, on RGB added a little, then selected RED and added a little red, then chose the paint brush with various sizes and opacity 100, then as long as your still in the curves pallette just wiped out the colour adjustment as just to leave hair 

8) finally used liquify and forward warp to add to the left cheek area as to take away dimple.


Thats about it, took 10 mins, but you could take longer as to get finer results

Cheers

Steve


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## elsaspet (Feb 20, 2007)

Great job Steve!  Thanks for sharing your "how to'!  Awesome!


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## nolatome (Feb 21, 2007)

cool thread gonna get an image and share.  Thanks for the liquify note I think that was the coolest idea I have heard in a long time.


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## Stevedevil (Feb 21, 2007)

Im writing this to get this thread up to where it belongs

Steve


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## Spacy (Feb 21, 2007)

You guys do a great job in changing the photo. I appreciate the helpful tips and just might try them out.


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## Stevedevil (Feb 21, 2007)

Please post some, this is a great thread


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## Spacy (Feb 21, 2007)

I would but I don't really know how to edit! lol


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## nolatome (Feb 21, 2007)

The original is on CD so only had access to this adjusted one.  I shot this with D70 28-80mm.  First made two copies of image.  Opened Layer 0 on all copies.  Adjusted blk&Wht tone in "layer effects" to a green shade.  Thought it went with the half-tone theme.  Then on 2nd copy magnetic lasso'd bride, cut her out, pulled her onto the green copy over herself.  Now that bride cut out was full color.  Then I went back to 2nd copy with the lasso'd bride and desaturated the image (bl&wh)  Then cut out bl&wht bride to put over top of color bride layer, then faded bl&wht opacity till I got the color you see her.  I used this image as background for an album and put full color images on top. This is a cool effect, simple start would be to just make copy image and desaturate on image make layer and drag over original color image, hen adjust opacity of top layer.  Hope you like.  I have been watcching this forum for few days and I like what I see here.


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## Peanuts (Feb 21, 2007)

This thread has me dying to understand how to use the liquify tool. That will have to be my next PS project.


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## Jazz (Feb 24, 2007)

I guess this thread is really a postprocessing thread.  Regardless, its a great idea and I applaud Elsaspet thumbup for starting it.  So heres my contribution.  

  I shoot RAW.  The first photo is with auto adjustments turned ON in the ACR (Adobe Camera Raw).  When I first started shooting Raw, I wondered if the auto adjustments was going to be useful for me.  Answer is nope.  I never use it.  Heres an example of the reason why.  After seeing what auto adj did, I turned them OFF and started fresh.  The exposure was 1/80 sec at 5.6 with fill flash, with the flash compensation on my Nikon SB800 turned to minus 2/3 stop.  The flash is on the hot shoe of my Nikon D200, but is pointed up into a bounce card.

  After processing through ACR, in Photoshop CS2 I switched into cmyk mode (just because Im more familiar with how to get good flesh tones in cmyk than in rgb).  I used the eyedropper to determine that the magenta was too high as compared with yellow, so I used curves to lower the magenta, then switched back to rgb.  Then I used curves to brighten the image.  Im no expert (far from it), but I was taught that curves is the only non-destructive method of color correcting and brightening, as it doesnt discard pixels.  Also, Im more comfortable with curves because we used them in my previous career in the printing business.  While levels gives you (basically) three divisions (hilites-mids-shadows), with curves you can create your own brightness sub-divisions.  Okay, enough of that.

  So I thought, what do I want to do with this image?  Ive got two sisters here, a wedding dress, and lots of light streaming in the window.  I want light, and lots of it.  I want bright happy light that gives a positive and upbeat photo.  Muddy midtones and shadows wouldnt do.  Only thing that bothers me is the direct splash of sunlight blowing out the flesh on the right.  What are you gonna do? Instead of faking a fix, I let it go.

Hope this is helpful.   

1.





2.


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## neea (Feb 24, 2007)

Wow Jazz.
That's awesome.
You can definatley see the difference and advantage of shooting RAW. I've never shot raw (although i dont imagine my films been cooked in anyway. err dont mind me... lack of sleep).
But I definatley know this could NEVER be done with a jpeg and come out looking so fantastic.

Everyones pictures look so great!!!


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## Stevedevil (Feb 26, 2007)

We need some more posts on this please


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## Peanuts (Feb 26, 2007)

Jazz, would you mind giving a short tutorial on your colour balancing with CMYK? I have seen you mention it several times and have been very curious  

Thanks everyone


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## Jazz (Feb 26, 2007)

Peanuts - I'd be happy to.  But it'll be tomorrow before I get it done, as I'm just heading out.


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## lulu (Feb 26, 2007)

This is great, I am new to photoshop and still have lots to learn so please keep posting.


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## elsaspet (Mar 5, 2007)

Great job Jazz.  I'd like to see how you did that too.


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## Big Mike (Mar 5, 2007)

I've been wanting to contribute to this thread...so here it goes.

Here is the original image without any adjustments at all.





As you can see, it's a little underexposed and doesn't have any 'pop'.
I always do my shoots in RAW, so I made some adjustments in the conversion stage.  I increased the exposure and may have given a few small tweaks to some other settings...but not anything worth remembering.  This one is just a sample the I did on my work computer...on my home computer, I use Raw Shooter Essentials and turned up the noise suppression a little bit.  I think the default on the program is none at all and if I don't add a bit, the shots look a little noisy, even at ISO 100.  The important part is that when making the RAW adjustments, I was concerned with the exposure of the subject, not the background.

Once I got the image into Photoshop, the first step is make a duplicate layer.  Then I 'extract' the subject from the background.  There are several methods to doing this.  The Extract Filter is a good one...but for this, I just used the magnetic lasso and traced around the subject.  To make it easier, I make an adjustment levels layer and make it very contrasty.  After the loop is complete, I switch to Quick Mask Mode and use the brush to paint the selection in and out to get it as close as I can.  The spiky hair was the hardest part so I went over it a few times with varying sizes and opacity's.  Then I switch back to regular selection mode, inverse the selection and create a layer mask.  This gives me the backdrop layer so that's what I change the name of the layer to.  To finish this step, I delete the levels adjustment layer. *edit* It probably would have been easier to just use the magic wand and select the white background.  I do that fairly often but I like to switch it up from time to time so I don't get complacent.

I cropped the image...I could have done it before the first step as well.

To get the background how I want it.  I use the healing brush and/or the clone stamp to get rid of the distracting folds in the sheet.  Then I use levels to make the background white.  Then I make the backdrop layer b&w, so that any color cast is eliminated.  Sometimes levels cant make the backdrop look just how I want, so just paint it white with the brush.  If I do want to keep parts of the sheet, I use a low opacity & soft brush and just add a white vignette to the edges.

Now on to the subject.  I duplicate the background layer and name this new layer...Adrien, in this case.  First I see if there is any _work_ required on the subject...blemishes etc.  I think I missed a few spots between his eyes on this one...but I did touch up the bags under his eyes (he probably bumped his face in the last few days).  I also make sure there is one, and only one, catch light in either eye.  Usually, I clone out the fill catch light...but in this case, the main was too high so I just kept the fill.  I usually use the burn tool to make sure the whites of the eyes are nice and bright.  For an older subject, I'd also whiten the teeth at this point.

Then I use a levels adjustment layer, then a curves adjustment layer.  Levels to adjust my darkest and lightest points and curves to add mid-tone contrast.  Sometimes I use adjustment layers for color balance and saturation as well.  The advantage of adjustment layers is that I can go back and fine tune each adjustment without changing the original layer.

Once I have the subject looking like I want, my next step is sharpening.  I tried the LAB sharpening method (found somewhere on this site) but it doesn't seem to play well with a layered image...so I used the High Pass filter technique.  It's basically the same sharpening as UnSharp Mask...but I like it because it's on it's own layer.  I duplicate the Adrien layer and set the blending mode to overlay or soft light, run the High Pass filter with a radius of about 10.  Then I adjust the opacity of the layer to get the right level of sharpening.  Somewhere between 20-60% is usually good.

That should be the final look of the image.  I save it as a PSD (I will have saved along the way as well).  Then I flatten all layers and save a different copy as a JPEG for printing.

I hope I got all my steps in there.  Here is the web version of that image.


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## shachr6 (Mar 5, 2007)

I have one for you how do people make it so the background is totally white, without photoshoping it?


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## elsaspet (Mar 5, 2007)

That is KILLER Big Mike.......Lovelovelove!


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## Big Mike (Mar 5, 2007)

> I have one for you how do people make it so the background is totally white, without photoshoping it?


It's just a matter of putting more light onto the background than onto the subject.  For this shot, I should have had another light or two that would be behind or off to the side of the subject...pointing directly at the background.  That would have really helped to make the backdrop white from the start.


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