Photoshop Tutorial 2

8/9/2019 Photoshop Tutorial 2

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Removing or softening flawsThere are many ways to remove flaws from the skin; however, I like to use the clone

tool. I do not use the clone tool to remove and replace the skin but rather in a special

way that will allow me to work slowly to hide the flaw or blemish on the skin. Thebeautiful young lady pictured here is typical of teenagers in that hormones may cause

zits or other eruptions on their skin that are unsightly. As a photographer it is our job to

lessen that and make the model look their best. You will note on the neck of this young

lady a rather large skin eruption. This is not a normal mark and one that I am sure she

wishes were not there.



On the tool bar on the left hand side of the workspace is the clone tool. Click on this

tool. Now go to the mode setting at the top and select a soft brush that is near to or

smaller than the blemish. Move to the right and click on mode, setting it to lighten.

Move to the right and set the opacity to around 12% and the flow rate to 100% or less.

You are now ready to begin hiding the blemish. Find a good patch of skin near the



blemish, position your brush on it, hold down the ALT key and click your mouse once.

Now begin to soften the blemish by doing a click and hold while going over and over

the blemish. You will note that it begins to lighten. Continue until the blemish is gone. In

the center of the blemish it is lighter than the surrounding skin. Set mode to darken, ALT

click on the good skin and repeat the process above to darken this lighter area. The

blemish is now gone as shown in the image. You might also note that I have lightenedsome of her permanent moles and fixed other light or dark areas using the same

technique described above. I generally do not totally remove permanent moles on a

models face.



[edit]

Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections



The end of nose is a particularly onerous place for reflections and burned out highlights

as you will note on the model above. Removing them is just as simple as removing a

blemish. The difference is that you set the clone tool mode to darken. Select a patch of

skin with the appropriate color and do an ALT click. Now go over the highlight until it

looks good to you. Be careful not to go too far a field from the highlight itself as you can

make the nose look flat in that area instead of rounded as it normally is. If you make amistake, it is simple to go back a step in the history palette and redo that step. Don’t

hesitate to switch between darken and lighten if need be. At this stage do not worry if

everything is not perfect as the Gaussian blur will take care of minor imperfections in

your work.



[edit]

Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it



Much of the information in this part of the tutorial was gleaned from Scott Kelby’s great

book entitled The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, which I recommend highly

to everyone new to Photoshop.

I will attempt to keep the "how to" part of this tutorial as detailed as possible so that

those new to Photoshop will be able to follow along. This is an advanced technique sostay with me. First thing to do is to open the picture that you want to apply the Gaussian

blur to. Create 2 additional layers of this image in the Layer’s pallet. An easy way to do

this is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the J key twice. You should now see three

layers of the image. Hide layer 1 copy by clicking on the Eye icon next to it in the layers

pallet. Highlight the middle layer by clicking on it and your layers pallet should now look

like this:

In the drop down box on the Layer’s pallet change the blend mode from Normal to

Darken. Next go to the menu at the top of the screen and click filter/blur/Gaussian blur

and then apply a 35 pixel blur to the image. Don’t worry that your image looks bad atthis stage.



On the Layers pallet, click on the little Eye icon beside the middle layer to hide this layer

and then click on the top layer to make it active. Now change the blend mode fromDarken to Lighten by clicking on Lighten in the drop down box. Next run a 50 pixel blur

on this top layer (Filter/blur/Gaussian Blur).

After you have applied the blur, click on the middle layer to make it the active layer

and then lower the opacity to 30%. Hide the background layer from view by clicking on



the Eye icon beside it and then create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer Icon

at the bottom of the Layers pallet. This icon is on the bottom right just next to the little

garbage can. When the new layer is created click and drag this layer to the top of the

stack as shown.

Next, hold down the Alt Key and with your mouse go to the top and click (hold) on

Layers and while holding the mouse button down go to the bottom and release the

mouse button over Merge Visible as shown here.



This creates a flattened version of your document in the new layer. In the layers pallet,

make the background layer visible with the Eye icon and hide the two middle layers by

removing the Eye icon from them. Make sure the top layer is the active layer and then

lower the opacity to 37%. This is a subjective adjustment and you should set it at thepoint that your image has the right amount of blur to suit your taste. All that is left now is

the removal of the Gaussian blur from the hair, eyes, eyebrows, lips, jewelry, clothing

and anything else that you don’t want blurred.

Click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer pallet (third from the left). Insure

that your foreground color is set to black. You can change the background/foreground

easily by clicking on the small x while watching it change on the leftmost tool pallet.



Select a soft edged brush from the tool pallet and paint over everything that you do

not want blur on (eyes, mouth, hair, etc.). Generally this is everything except the skin.

Change the size of the brush so that it is easy for you to do that without getting over into

the skin. Your layers pallet will now look like this.

At this point you may flatten the layers and discard the unused layers (Layers/Flatten

Image). If you feel a little touch up for the brightness of the image is needed, do that

with levels or Brightness/Contrast.

[edit]

Spot Sharpening

Select the spot sharpener from the tool pallet on the left hand side of your screen andquickly go over the eyes, mouth, and anything else that you want sharpened.

Applying a final sharpening is up to you but in any event do not over sharpen. Watch

the eyelashes and hair especially so as not to create artifacts or halo's. Here is the final

product:



Don't be intimidated by this tutorial, once you run through it a few times it is quite easy.

One last caution, it is better to error on the side of too little blur than too much. It is easy

to make the skin look plastic and unnatural. The goal is to accomplish the softening but

yet not have it noticed. If you remove all traces of texture to the skin you will have failed

for most types of portraits.



Vector art is REALLY popular at the moment. Everyone is making vector art. It's not hard

to do and you don't need to be able to draw to create it. Be warned though, vector art

does take a lot of time and patience. Especially if you want to create OUTSTANDING

art.

In this tutorial I hope to shed some light on how to make vector art and more

importantly how to make really great vector art with Adobe Photoshop.

In order to even start to think about doing this tutorial YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO USE THEPEN TOOL. If you don't know how to use the pen tool just do THIS TUTORIAL first, (it's not

hard honestly).

To see a better sized version of the finished vector just click HERE

I suggest you read through the entire tutorial before you begin...

The Set Up

First you need to choose the image that you are going to vector. Make sure you REALLY

like the photo that you are starting with. You are going to be looking at this image forhours and essentially your vector image will be similar to this photo. Lots of people do

vectors of their favourite musicians and actors as a sort of tribute. I think this is a great

idea because hopefully it motivates you to actually finish the thing and do a good job.

Just be careful when you are selecting the image that you are going to vector...it must

be a decent size so that you can zoom in and still see lots of detail. Anything smaller

than 600 x 600 pixels isn't going to be much good at all. Bigger IS better in your selection

of the photo to turn into a vector.



Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate thebackground layer twice.

Turn off the visibility of top copy.

Working on the middle copy desaturate it (Ctrl + Shft + U)

Next Posterize this layer. Image >> Adjustments >>Posterize...

Set the level to approximately 9 and click OK.

Rename this layer "Posterized"

Your layer palette should now look like the one shown left.

The posterized layer is only there as a rough guide for when you get stuck. (Personally I

always find the nose to be a little difficult and use the posterize layer to help me).

Please please please don't use it to create your vector. If you do, your resulting imagewill be BLAND, BORING and LACK ANY ARTISTIC MERIT!

Turn the visibility ON for the "Background copy". This way you will just see the path and

colour won't get in the way.

Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shft + N)

Make sure it sits below the "Background Copy"

Select the mid tone shade for skin. Grab the pen tool making sure it is set to create

Shape Layers (see image below). Trace around the face making sure that you close the

path..

Once a shape layer is complete I like to turn ON and OFF the visibility of top

"background copy" layer just to compare the two. Your layer palette should look the

image shown below. Notice that I like to lock layers once I am happy with them so that

I don't accidently move them.



I like to create the large blocked out areas next.

Trace the outline the hair. As a rule you should make the initial shade (the base colour)for the hair the darkest. You will then build up layers of lighter and lighter colours/shades

from there.

Once you are happy with the layer, put it into a set called "hair" and lock it. I like to be

organised so rather than naming every new layer in a vector I like to organise them into

sets...like "hair set", "eyebrow set", "sleeve set' etc.

From the image below, you can see that I have blocked out all the main shapes and

organised my layer palette.

This vector is a little unusual in that her hair is going to be absolute black so I used this

layer to also form the absolute areas of black on the face too.



That's the basic set up all done. Now it's time to start forming the features.

Forming the Features

There's no set order in which to create the various features. I like to work on specific

area until it's done and then move on. Having said that though, I always notice a little

something to tweak once I'm working on another area...

I used a grand total of 316 layers to form this Bjork vector so obviously I can't show you

every step by step layer, but I did make an animated clip of the layers. It's 16 hours

worth of work condensed down to 1 minute...don't blink or you'll miss some layers. If the

video below isn't working try CLICKING HERE (or come back tomorrow).

What follows next is a breakdown of some specific areas with some tips thrown in. I'll

start with the eyes because I always like starting with the eyes. They are definitely one of

THE most important areas.

THE EYES (well actually, eye in this case)

As you see, by comparing the original photo eye to my vector eye, I definitely didn't

create exactly what was in the original photo. It's very important however to pay

attention to the reflective quality of the eye. I've used several layers here to make it look

semi-life-like and I work super zoomed in. Also you'll notice I used a pretty vivid violet

colour under the eye...this really just adds interest to the vector.

Never use pure white for the eyeball. It will just look weird! If there is white anywhere on

the eye it will be in the reflective highlight.

1. Put in the basic shapes of the eye. Note I used Layer Style Inner Glow on the iris layer.Make sure the pupil is round by using the eclipse tool.

2. Add in eyelashes (mine look a bit like cockroach legs ha ha). You can create multiplepaths on a single path layer. I find a faster technique for shapes like this is to just create

one and then duplicate it, altering it with transform and using the convert point tool.

3. Add in the highlights etc. You can see that the highlight has it's opacity lowered so

that the layers below show through. By adjusting the opacity of your layers, your vector

will have a greater complexity...it will appear like there are more layers.



Skin Shading

When building up the light and dark areas make sure your shape layers have a low

opacity (around 15%). By layering up the shape layers, you are going to create a more

complex looking vector.

Look at the face and start picking out patches of colour/tone and create shape layers.

Pointy, funky shapes are great..you don't need to follow the image exactly. A littleabstraction from the photo is what is going to create an outstanding vector.

Look at the layers in the image below, you can see that many of them have a low

opacity and interact together.

Don't get put off if your picture looks a bit terrible to begin with...just keep adding layers!

Just because you are colouring skin don't think that your colour palette has to be all the

same either. Infact, the use of various colours/tones is going to make your picture go

from average to great. The above image shows some of the colours I used to form the

skin, with varying opacity (not including lips etc). As you can see there's a bit of variety

and my final vector is quite tame.

The image below shows the shape layers that form the nose.



The Mouth

Below is the finished mouth. Just like the eyes, avoid using absolute white for the teeth.

You can see how the lips are made up of overlapping layers, with their opacity altered.

In some layers I have adjusted the Mode also, just for some variety.



That's about it. You just need to do this same procedure for the entire image. Zoom in to

the photo and look for patterns/shapes and recreate them!

Don't merge or rasterize your shape layers. As long as all your layers are shape layers

then you have a vector piece of art...That means you can scale the original psd up anddown in Photoshop and it will remain perfect and unpixelated!! The final output will NOTBE a vector file (it will be a rasterized jpg etc), to output a vector file you need to use

Adobe Illustrator.

To see a better sized version of the finished

Bjork vector, just click HERE

Learn by Example

There is so much rubbish vector work on the

net but rather than point out all the flaws of

others work (and possibly recieve hate mail)

I'm going to show you what I THINK makes

great art. Hopefully by doing this, you will

pick up a few tips for your next vector.

The Scanner Darkly poster, shown left, of

Keanu Reeves is a prime example of great

vector work. What makes it great?

1. Funky Shapes I can't stand the boring result of just using

Posterize and making shape layers exactly



like that. It really doesn't hold any artistic merit. Definitely create a posterized layer but

only use it as a ROUGH guide for when you're a little stuck. The funky shape layers of the

face, on the poster shown left, are really great. Particularly around the eye area. You

can see that the artist has abstracted the form of the shape layers but kept it so you

can definitely see that it is Keanu Reeves. The shape layers also follow the form nicely of

the underlying facial muscles.2. Colour

If you use the colour picker to select your vector colour palette, from the original photo,

then the result will be bland and boring. Never ever ever just use the original photo

colours. Strong colours work well for vectors, as you can see in The Scanner Darkly

poster. It's great to try to get some really random colours or shades worked into your

vector too. That way when you look at the zoomed in region of the vector it really does

seem to be a bit of a mess BUT when you look at the whole image it looks great.

3. Number of Layers

I don't see the point of creating a super realistic vector that looks pretty much like the

original photo. Again I think this is boring and dull. I don't like to see 60 layers forming the

gradient of a cheek. Rather, I prefer to see the vector image as having distinct layers.

In summary any vector that looks really strange when you zoom in and makes sense

when you zoom out is an OUTSTANDING vector! The only other advice I'd like to repeat

is to take your time.



The most important is first step, it is a base of HDR Photoshop effect. Use

command image > adjustment > shadow/highlight and set up values:

shadows amount: 50%, tonal width 45%, radius 41 px; High-light amount 83%,

tonal width 76%, radius 1120px;

Duplicate layer "base" and set up its layer blending to Color Dodge. This

blending gives picture strong colors and cause that light areas turn into

pure white. In next step it will be repaired by another layer blending.



Do the same thing as in the second step, but layer blending is set up

to Linear Burn now. You can see big black area in picture, it has to be

eliminated. Set up foreground color to black and use command select >

color range, tick off invert option (we want everything except black parts),

fuzziness should be set to around 100. Now click on red marked icon, new

layer mask will be added and black will dissapear. There are some ugly

artifacts in the picture, to remove them, click on layer mask and use

Gaussian blur filter.



Fourth step is easy, it profits from third step. Just duplicate layer "linear

Burn", set its blending toOverlay, select layer mask and press ctrl+i (invert).

This blending darkens too much light shadows and raises contrast. As you

can see in this HDR Photoshop tutorial, Layers and its blending is very

powerful tool.

Now it's time to adjust picture look, try to experiment with layer opacity.

Optimal values are about 40% for layer "Overlay" and 55% for layer "Linear

Burn". Whole HDR Photoshop tutorial is based on experimentation.



Set up foreground color to white and use command select > color range

with fuzziness set up around 100. "Crawling ants" will appear around light

areas. Duplicate "base" layer and move it up, then click on icon add layer

mask. Select layer mask and soften it by Gaussian blur filter.

The last step colorize picture into red tones. Click on the red marked icon,

select from menu gradient map and make a gradient according to the



model at the bottom of picture. If you don't have an experience with

gradient maps, there is a shorttutorial. After you are done with gradient

map, load selection from layer mask of layer "light", invert it (select > invert)

and click on add layer mask icon. Set up blending of layer "colorize" to hard

light and finally set opacity to 72%.

I use some other adjustmenst to achieve HDR look. For example I fill white

areas by photoshop generated clouds - filter > render clouds. If you have

a question, feel free to ask in forum below.

You needn't do manually all this steps again and again , much easier is to

use HDR Photoshop action, which do the all work for you.

See Photoshop effects offer

Another photos adjusted in the same way:







Old halftone print effect

Download and open this photo in Photoshop. Now we are going to increase the overall

contrast of the picture by burning it a bit. Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS…With

this image we are going to set the INPUT LEVELS to 60 / 1.00 / 220 . But this is only for this

example. Choose the best settings for each photo.

In this step we are going to give the photo an illustrated look with some graininess togive the illusion of an old and bad quality paper. It is not a realistic effect, it is just some

distortion to the image to help us achieve the final look. Go to FILTERS > ARTISTIC > FILM

GRAIN . In this case we are going to use: GRAIN: 4, HIGHLIGHT AREA: 0, INTENSITY: 10. Try

different settings for different photos.



Duplicate the layer and name the new layer HALFTONE

In this step we are going apply a halftone pattern to the image to give the final old

comic book printing effect. Go to FILTER > PIXELATE > COLOR HALFTONE. Set MAX

RADIUS: 4 and leave the rest with the default values. Press OK and then go to

the LAYERS PALETTE and set the BLENDING MODE to DARKEN.



Adding comic book elements to the picture

The effect looks nice so far. It is not a realistic old comic book effect, it simple resembles

that look. To make it more real, now comes the fun part. We are going to add some

unique elements that are very popular on comic books and strips

Select the HALFTONE layer and set a STROKE LAYER STYLE of WIDTH: 20px , POSITION:

Inside and COLOR: # F5ECE1.



Add a new layer and draw a small rectangle at the top left of the frame of the image.

Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it orange. An orange to yellow gradient looks

better. Draw another rectangle, a bit larger this time, on the lower left corner of the

frame. Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it white. The final result should be like the

one below:



Lets add a border to the image: Add a new empty layer above the layer containing

the rectangles we created in the previous step. Select the RECTANGLE SELECTION

TOOL from the TOOLS PALETTE. Draw a selection from the top left (right inside the frame)

to the bottom right border of the image.



Go to EDIT > STROKE, set WIDTH: 4px, COLOR: BLACK, LOCATION CENTER and press OK.

DESELECT the current selection and go to FILTER > BLUR > BLUR MORE. Then apply a

small distortion usingFILTER > DISTORT > RIPPLE… (Amount 20%, Size Medium). Now, lets

sharpen the stroke a bit with FILTER > SHARPEN MORE and there you have a nice

simulated hand drawn border.



Adding captions using a comic book font

To add captions to the photo you can use any font you like, but only using fonts

specially designed for comic books you will be able to achieve the desired look.

Download the free font Digital Strip and install it. At the end of this article you will find a

lot of free and commercial comic book fonts and resources.

Using the Digital Strip font you’ve just downloaded, type a date on the top orange

rectangle. Play with the first letter of the text by adding a stroke, a shadow and a bright

contrasting color.

Then write a caption for the photo at the bottom white rectangle. Highlighting some

words in bold also looks good.

And that’s all. Your image should look similar to the one below:

Click on the image to see a larger and uncompressed version.



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Photoshop Tutorial 2