December 27th, 2006
Photoshop your way into their hearts
Whatever Tiffany, so you celebrated Christmas, babies are cute, Santa talks with a Texas accent, FASCINATING. But what about the photo tips? Aren’t those the real meaning of Christmas? Besides, don’t you owe us since you told us to turn off our flash and now we did and all of our holiday pictures are too dark and it’s all your fault and now all our Christmas memories have been ruined, you selfish prostitute?
Fair enough.
First, a couple of general notes:
- The internet is already full of excellent advice from people who are way smarter than me and who can tell you all about the technical side of photography, how to use your F-stop and photon settings and how to attain an ISO 9000 rating and what happens to your camera’s Flux Capacitor if you drive it 88 miles an hour. And there are good tutorials and books out there on how to use Photoshop. So I’m just going to share some of the
cheater tricksrefined techniques that I use to improve my own images. These are things I learned while working as a graphic designer, not necessarily while doing the work I was supposed to be doing but still. - Don’t stress or let any of this stuff make you feel dumb. Most digital cameras are hugely complicated and Photoshop is an overwhelming thing that few professionals ever fully learn. The best way to be able to use both is to simply assign yourself a single task and try to do it. Every time you get stuck, jot down the question that is stopping you. Then dig up the answers to all your questions, and get back to it.
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HOW TO ADJUST THE LIGHTING IN YOUR PHOTOS LIKE YOU MEAN IT
Part two of… three I think? Four tops.
STEP 0: Sucks to be a Mac user.
First, if you’re on a Mac you need to do this annoying little thing that experts call “setting your proofing mode or whatever”. If you’re planning to print the finished file, then go on to the next step and forget I said anything. The default is print. If you’re planning to share or view the finished photo on screen, you need to go to View>Proof setup> and change it to RGB yadda yadda. Everything will look brighter and less saturated.
I know that was an annoying step but it took me two motherfucking years to figure out why my images looked so washed out when I went to “save for web”.
But wait! What if you want to post your photo on your web site and then send a print out to grandma? First of all, depending on the type of web site you are operating, your grandmother doesn’t want to look at that filth! What is wrong with you?
But honestly the only way I’ve found to handle this is to use “save as” to create two copies of my file: One is set up for web, and the other for print. Sucks. This is what is known as the ultimate suburbanite problem.
STEP 1: Create several duplicate layers.
It’s easy! Everybody! Layer>duplicate layer.
Create three duplicate layers of your original image - name the bottom one: “bright as hell” and name the middle one: “light adjusted”. Name the top one Larry. Hide the top two layers (Light Adjusted and Larry). How do you hide them? To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye - click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.
STEP 2: Reveal hidden details.
All kinds of cool details can hide in the shadows. This is especially true if your photo is on the dark side, so I like to check before I get too far into editing a picture in case there’s any details or things I want to pull out of the shadows. Here’s how to do it:
2A. Click on the layer that you named “bright as hell” in step 2.
2B. Go to image>adjust>curves. If you aren’t familiar with the curves tool, there are great tutorials out there… but really all you need to know for this step is: See the diagonal line? Click somewhere towards the bottom of that diagonal line and drag it violently upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright. Click OK.
Click the diagonal line…
…and drag it upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright.
2C. Now look - there are lots of details in his hair that we couldn’t see before, and look! Pants.
2D. We’ll come back to this layer in a minute. Mentally set it aside for now.
STEP 3: Create a nice, normal light adjusted layer.
3A. Now click on your “light adjusted” layer. Here’s where that curves tutorial would really come in handy. Basically what you want to do here is make your whites look white and have everything else fall in line and look normal based on that. I usually just grab somewhere near the top of the line and tug upward, making the whole image a bit brighter. Then I tug the darks down a teeny bit, just so they don’t feel left out.
Play with the curve, watching the skin tones of your main subject or your main focal point change with the changes you’re making. A more gentle curve is going to give you more natural-looking results. Sharp weird funky things in the curve is going to make your photo appeal to my brother who, while not a stoner, does have a great appreciation for things that look totally trippy.
STEP 4. Reveal the hidden details (for real this time).
I love this step a little too much.
4A. Click on your “light adjusted” layer in your layers palette.
4B. Choose the eraser tool. Select a nice-sized airbrush, set to maybe 50% strength. Whatever’s comfortable for you.
4C. Erase away the too-dark areas, revealing! The groovy details on the too-bright layer beneath!
4D. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)
4E. Congratulate yourself on now knowing one of the true secrets of the universe. Aren’t you fancy?
STEP 5: Turn into a total obsessive nerd about your photo.
But wait! The skin tones look nice, but now we’ve lost this cool detail in the curtains. Those things weren’t cheap you know. I mean, they were, but I love them and… anyway. What do you do if different areas of your image seem to need different levels of light adjustment? You can use the same technique from steps 1-4 to pull in details that are getting lost in the highlights of your photo.
5A. Cry because you are officially a huge nerd for noticing or caring about this level of detail.
5B. Remember Larry? The darkish layer from Step 1? Click on the layer named Larry. Better, name it something relevent to your photo like Curtains or Clouds or Wet T-shirt.
5C. Adjust it, this time looking only at the cool IKEA curtains (knopp inez curtains, pieces, $14.99) or whatever area of your photo you want to bring out. Make it a little brighter or darker as needed, but not so bright that you lose the cool details. This layer will be darker than your “light adjusted” layer.
5D. Move Larry underneath “Light Adjusted”. Click on the Light Adjusted layer.
5E. Erase away the curtains from Light Adjusted, revealing the lovely adjusted Larry layer underneath.
5F. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)
STEP 6: Make the eyes stand out
When you take pictures of people, the eyes are everything. If the details of the eyes are lost in a muddy shadow, you’re throwing away much of the impact of your photo. Use the same technique described above to bring out the details in your subject’s eyes.
6A. Create three layers: 1 called “Super Freaky Bright Eyes”, 2 called “Eyes Erased”, and 3: called “Normal”.
Hide the top two layers (Eyes Erased and Normal). To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye - click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.
6B. Click on Super Freaky Bright Eyes. Go to Image>Adjust>Curves, and make this layer freaky bright. It won’t look natural at all, but that’s okay for now. You’re after as much of the detail in the iris as possible. Click OK.
6C. Sharpen the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. To do this, go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Slide the slider to 100 or so and click OK.
6D. Saturate the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. Go to Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Slide the saturation slider to the right a bit.
Here’s the resulting Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer, after curves, sharpening, and saturation:
6E. Now click on your Eyes Erased layer. Select the eraser tool, zoom in and! Erase the eyes. The result will look creepy as hell:
6F. Click on the top layer, called “Normal”. Adjust the opacity of this layer to reveal some of the freaky brightness underneath. Like this:
Slide the opacity thingy back and forth until the eyes look natural. Here’s the final result next to the original. Closer to what Nicolaus’ eyes really look like:
This trick is even more dramatic and effective when your subject has blue or green eyes.
STEP 7: Bring out textures
This will be quick because I’m being ousted from my perch on the couch. There’s a tool! Called the BURN tool. Or maybe it’s the dodge tool. Shit. It’s this one:
Click on it. Set it to burn shadows at between 8-10%.
Now brush over areas of your photo to see what it does. It should darken the creases of clothing, bring out the texture in woven fabric, leaves, grass, hair, fur, etc. It’s a subtle thing, but it can really add depth and cool professionalness to your photos.
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My kids are pouring dry cereal all over my lap, so I’m going to stop here for now. You should have a nicely lit image, but this was written by someone who was being pelted with cereal so probably some of it doesn’t make sense. Please leave questions in the comments.
And! Coming soon! Color adjustment for emotional impact and converting to black and white. Ooooh and how to deal with graininess (short answer: add more natural light when you can. When you can’t, then use Photoshop tricks to work around the grain. Either by blurring, converting to black and white, and/or giving in to the grain and adding enough other graininess that the grain looks deliberate.)
December 27th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
You finally did it. You made my brain explode all over my monitor. I will never get this cleaned up. Thanks. :p
December 27th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Woooohoooo! Step 5F just made my day. I’ve been meaning to ask how you do that for like months and now I know! Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)
December 27th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
You rock.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I will have to print this off so I can read it as I’m using it.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Ooh, more educational stuff. If I were using my own computer right now, I’d be editing photos all over the place. Thanks!
December 28th, 2006 at 12:43 am
Oh My Effing God. THANK YOU.
You are even more an idol now than ever. *bows before*
December 28th, 2006 at 9:09 am
You are definitely not selfish. You might just be the most kind-hearted prostitute on the internet! Thank you for sharing your gifts with us! I am so empowered. No longer will I be the sucky mom who crappily documents her children’s lives.
A printable version of your tutorial would be fabulous. I’d have paid for it! Seriously. You could write a manual and bazillions of people would buy it! So one question. I’m way at the beginning. My camera doesn’t have a little running man. Just letters for settings that mean nothing to me! ;)
Thanks again!!!
December 28th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Ooh, ooh, thanks! I’m going to print this and then play with pictures of my niece. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go back to work until mid-January…
December 28th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Next you could talk about masks instead of just erasing the layers…
December 28th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
I didn’t understand a single word of that, but it all sounded great!
I did get a new camera for Christmas, so I guess I’ll have to take time to figure all of that out…lol
December 28th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Oh my god. Step 0.
Thank-you. I’ve been looking for information on that for so long, I thought I was going crazy.
December 28th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Wow finally, a real useful Photoshop tricks list
Well done and thanks for quality content!
December 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Very good tips, thanks for sharing….
I’m off to try this… :)
December 28th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
These are wonderful tips! I would spend at least an hour trying to figure this out, and you have provided the exact steps necessary. I’ll be back for more tricks! :)
December 28th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
If you don’t want to have to change the Proof Setup every time (and aren’t particular about color profiles), see these instructions.
December 28th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Excellent, excellent resource. Much appreciated!
December 29th, 2006 at 3:30 am
I always appreciate free tutorials and the hard work poured into them. Please take these comments with ease, as they’re meant to help improve your skills, not attack what you’ve done. I’ve spent many years retouching and working with graphics in general so I thought I’d enhance your tute with a little polish.
Not to knock your tutorial but I have to say that this technique is effective but definitely not what you should do for adjusting photos professionally. Some of your steps are useful to a beginner, such as your brief intro to curves and adjusting a photo to it’s various components of darks, midtones and highlights but, erasing your image would be a major mistake.
The right thing to do when adjusting your image is to never erase! Now maybe you can’t see the errors in the image on your monitor but I assure you they’re there.
One glimpse on a high-end monitor or in my instance a mac laptop, and you’ll see that if you tilt the screen a few degrees, you can see all the bad ghosting of erasing you did. This is compounded with the fact that you merged the layers and can’t undo the problem. If you don’t have another monitor capable of showing you the problem, use the levels tool to bring your midtone slider (the center grey triangle) all the way to the left, into the blacks. Voila! You will see all these artifacts that shouldn’t be in the image.
Why is this important? Not everyone is going to have the same monitor as you and you can be sure, that if you use this technique at work and you show an art or creative director, they’re going to spot it and you’ll be in the hot seat. This is also a problem if you were viewing the image on digital projectors or as I mentioned previously, high end monitors, possibly by someone standing over your shoulder. That angle would be sure to give the details away.
All your work should be done with layers using layer adjustments and masks. This way, you’re never destroying data and you can go back and constantly adjust the way your image looks.
While the entire technique will be too long to post in a comment and without pics, here’s the basics:
For every section that you want to erase, make a copy of the original image and make a selection around the area you want to save, being very precise. You would normally make this with the pen tool, creating a path and creating a selection from it. You can also use the lasso, magnetic lasso or the poly lasso too. I’d recommend creating the selection at about 200% zoom to really be sure you’re being accurate. Then, while the layer is selected, use the quick mask button at the bottom of the layers palette to mask that area. The button looks like a rectangle with a hole cut out.
Once this is done you’ll have basically the same effect as erasing but if you need to adjust the area, it’s easy, just click on the mask and paint with black to make the image visible and white to mask it out. You can soften the edges by simply using a soft brush with black or white to simulate your soft erased edges. This way, you can be sure you’re not going to have small things like ghosting or artifacts ruining your image because this technique lets you see what you’re masking out. You see the black and white image of your mask and it’s easy to revise.
The last thing is to use layer adjustments. Just follow the same technique- select an area to adjust and this time use the layer adjustments button at the bottom of the layers palette (black and white circle). Select the adjustment type– either levels, curves or whatever and then when you’re done, you’ll see your adjustment layer and the mask that is affecting it. If you like it then great but, if not or if you ever need to, you can just double click the layer and the adjustment properties will open again and you can redo your adjustment. Is that easy or what?
Ok, I know that was long but I hope you will find it helpful. Happy new year!
-Kevin
December 29th, 2006 at 4:43 am
I think it’s much easier to use the “Convert to profile” and use my calibrated screen profile before saving for web. All colors looks great after that.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Wow, look how many people read here and never comment. Maybe you should write a book. It could be something like Photshop for Cool Arty-Pants People. People love to read techy books that have a sense of humor.
Of course, I’d buy a book that’s about Nicolaus and his take on life. :)
December 29th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Kevin very good feedback, thank you!
December 29th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Excellent tutorial, I learned a lot from that, and I also learned a lot from Kevin’s post above.
One extra point - you have told people to turn off their flash (quite right), but many cheaper cameras wind the ISO right up in dark conditions, so you get horrible graininess when you start lightening things. Luckily there is a solution - use noise-reduction software, which can be magical in its effects. I use a program called Neat Image Pro, but I’m sure there are a heap more out there if you get googling.
December 29th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Chazkim - Yes, excellent point. Grain honestly doesn’t bother me… I used to scan film prints and I always kind of liked the warmth of a bit of grain from higher ISO film (for example here http://www.electricboogaloo.net/images/nic.jpg)
But noise… that weird funky flourescent-looking grainy grain… is annoying. I looked into using Neat Image awhile back but it wasn’t available then for Macs. I’ll have to look for it again. Thanks for the reminder!
March 17th, 2007 at 9:39 am
very GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
http://www.ushareing.com
June 1st, 2007 at 4:56 am
I am smacking my ass with glee, thanks! I just got CS and whew, it’s a lot more fancy pants than the old crap I was using (too cheap to upgrade…) JOY!
September 13th, 2007 at 3:35 am
thank you for the tips and tricks,
i tried them out immediately.
i hope you can bring more.
thanks,
mimi