Archive for the ‘actions’ category

The couple

September 14th, 2009

This is my wife’s old school friend and her husband.  My wife and I have been asked to shoot a wedding next year and so this photoshopping was inspired by that.  I softened skin (maybe a little too much?), brightened eyes and teeth and black and whited the photo, topping it off with a slight brown/bronzish tint. Also, I did not sharpen with my normal process, but tried something a little different.  Please note this picture does not do either before or after justice.  Click for larger version of  after picture.

Make the jump to see how I did it

  • Duplicate background layer and run high-pass filter with a radius of 10 pixels.  Set new layer to hard light blend mode and drop the opacity down to somewhere around 20% or 30%. I just eyeballed it.
  • Ran the Coffeeshop powder room action to soften the woman’s skin, define man/woman’s eyes, whiten man/woman’s teeth (slight).
  • Made a copy of soften skin layer, blacked the mask, and then softened man’s skin.  I then dropped opacity of the new layer quite a bit.  I only wanted a slight softening on his skin.
  • Used Black and White adjustment layer.  I was going to use the tint feature, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted, so instead I…. 
  • Created a new layer.  Filled it with #94715c and then dropped opacity to 34%.  I wanted only a slight tint.
  • Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer with eyeballs selected to brighten them slightly

 If you like my pictures, you can buy them at Imagekind or just browse them at Flickr.

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Posted in actions, black and white, coffeeshop, eyes, high-pass, people, powder room, skin, teeth, tint

Cutest little baby face

September 10th, 2009

This has to be about the most photogenic baby there is. He’s the son of a friend of mine. I’ve taken many pictures of him, but this time I wanted to be sure to bring out his big, blue eyes. The best way, I figured would be to make sure everything else was colorless. I also wanted to soften the slight splotchiness of his baby skin.

Make the jump to see how I did it

Here’s how I did it:

  • As always, convert image to LAB color and sharpen only the Lightness layer using Unsharp Mask. Then return to RGB color mode. (PS action here)
  • Add Levels Adjustment layer (midtone = 1.05, highlight=204) to increase contrast/brightness
  • Run the Coffee Cup’s Powder room action to soften the skin, define the eyes and brighten whites of the eyes.
  • Hue/Saturation layer to remove color (Move saturation slider all the way to the left)
  • Zoomed in and painted with black (round, medium-soft brush) on the Hue/Saturation layer to prevent the black and white effect from affecting the eyes, thereby keeping them and only them in color.

Final product on Flickr

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Posted in actions, baby, black and white, eyes, hue/saturation, levels, mask, powder room, selective color, soften

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