<![CDATA[Castler Media - Digital Design Tips Blog]]>Tue, 25 Jun 2024 03:55:17 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[Photo Touch-up Challenge: Esther Honig]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 03:15:33 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/photo-touch-up-challenge-esther-honigEsther Honig's simple invitation from her "Before & After" project was this:
"Make me look beautiful."
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The article can be found HERE.
Another can be found HERE.
And here's the link to her Website.
Setting my own feminist ideals and philosophical discussions on "what is beauty" aside, I found the challenge to be intriguing, and saw this as an opportunity to display my skills while having a little fun.

I did not know of this challenge until after the results were posted, so I did not submit any edits, but according to the article, her challenge was taken up by forty photo editors in over twenty-five countries, with a wide range of results.

Below is my own interpretation, as would be seen if she were to come to me as a client.

Original

Basic
• To start, I brightened the whites of her eyes using the Dodge tool, and enhanced her irises using the Burn tool. 
• I, then, did a faint touch-up of her lips by duplicating them and adding a Color Overlay before dropping the opacity to 28%. 
• In order to ease the bags under her eyes, I duplicated her face, smoothed the bags completely, then adjusted the opacity down to 60% to allow part of the natural lower-eyelid to show through.
• Next I smoothed her skin and cleaned up her blemishes using a combination of the Stamp tool and the Spot Healing Brush tool. I left the freckle on her cheek because I believe beauty allows for imperfections.  I opted not to enhance it like some do as a "beauty mark," because, frankly, I don't find those attractive.
• Admitting to a mistake: broadening her shoulders. My hope was that it would make her look less dainty, but it resulted in her looking a little more man-ish than intended. 
• I finished up by cleaning up her fly-aways. The simplest method was to separate her from the background and adding a Radial Gradient in its place. The most difficult section was the hair over her ears, which required careful use of the Stamp tool.

Next, I took it a little further by adding some "makeup," and enhanced a couple extra features.

Basic

Basic+
• Starting, again, with the eyes, I changed her eye color to a blue-green by adding a Color Overlay, changing the Opacity to 36%, and changing the Blend Mode to Screen.
• I darkened her lips simply by changing the color of the Color Overlay to a darker red.
• I then added blush on both her cheeks and her T-zone, used a Gaussian Blur to blend it into her skin, and took the Opacity to 20%.
• Finally, I changed her hair from brown to a dark auburn by using Select > Color Range, then adding a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, selecting Colorize, and adjusting the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness until it looked natural.

The final comparison can be seen here:

Original

BaSIC+
Thanks for joining me for this tutorial.

If you have any photos you'd like touched-up, don't hesitate to bring them to me. I'll give you a great deal.
Brian Sheets
]]><![CDATA[Top Photoshop Tips: Let Textures Shine Through]]>Sat, 10 Aug 2013 05:58:12 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/top-photoshop-tips-let-textures-shine-throughPress Command+J (PC: Ctrl+J) to make a copy of an image layer. Set the blend mode of the bottom layer to Multiply and the top layer to Screen in the Layers panel. Now when you place the two layers on any background, you can adjust the Opacity of those two layers to allow the texture of the background to show through.
Tip by: Pete Collins
Photoshop User Magazine -- 13th Annual Top 100 Photoshop Tips -- Pg 49
October 2012
Before we start, I'd like to thank Adam Benner, of Eye of the Lens Photography, for contributing one of his photos to this tutorial. We hope to highlight more of his work in the future.
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The above photo is the original, RAW version. To see Adam's HDR version, along with many other beautiful photos, click on the link provided above.
Along with choosing a photograph, I also had to choose a texture to place behind it. I chose the one below for the "aged" look.
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Just as the instructions said, I duplicated the original photo and changed their blend modes, then adjusted the opacity of the Screen layer to where I thought it looked good. Here's the result:
Picture
Unfortunately, the result was more of a dirty look than aged, so I wanted to try something a little different. Something more.
After a brief search I came across the image blow, on the left.
Gradient-Warm
I loved this as soon as I saw it, and I knew I wanted to use it in this tutorial. 
Gradient-Cool
This is simply an inverted version of the previous image. To invert an image, press Command+I (PC: Ctrl+I)
The hope was that the "Gradient-Warm" image on the left would give it a "dusk" feel, but it wasn't quite what I wanted., so I inverted the image to the "Gradient-Cool" just to see how it would look. Still, it wasn't quite what I wanted, so I had the idea to combine them, and give them each their own blend mode.
I also played with the ordering and blend modes of each different layer to see what I felt would give me the most pleasing results. What I ended up with was this:
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The combination, I feel, gives this a more genuine feeling of age, as if taken on a film SLR in the mid-70's, developed, and stored in a shoebox in the attic.

The following (top layer, down) is how I came to this:

Original image: Screen blend mode
Texture layer: Multiply blend mode
Gradient-Warm: Multiply blend mode
Gradient-Cool: Screen blend mode
Original image (duplicate): Normal blend mode
Just for good measure, here are all three versions, side-by-side, for a quick reference.
Original image
Original tutorial version
Aged tutorial version
Thank you, again, for taking the time to view my tutorial, and a very special thanks to Eye of the Lens Photography.

As usual, we'd love to know what you think.
Also, if you have anything you'd like to see us do (from the Adobe Suite, to photography in general), send us a message and one of our experts will address it.
Brian Sheets
9/Aug/2013
]]><![CDATA[Top Photoshop Tips: Faked Lens Flare]]>Mon, 15 Jul 2013 01:54:25 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/top-photoshop-tips-faked-lens-flareIf you want to fake lens flare in an image, drag a layer of blurred-out lights on top of your photograph (they will appear just like blurs or highlights from the bokeh of a lens). Then, change the blend mode of the blurred lights layer in the Layers panel to Overlay, Soft Light, or Hard Light. The type of blend mode will depend on the underlying image and the desired effect.
Tip by: Lindsay Adler -- www.lindsayadlerphotography.com
Photoshop User Magazine -- 13th Annual Top 100 Photoshop Tips -- Pg 47
October 2012
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With permission from Maarius Dennis, one of our team members, and the owner of MAAD Photography, along with his lovely model/wife, I selected the above photo to illustrate this tutorial.

To start, the only touch-up I did was on the eyes to ease the red-eye effect in the pupils. I'm not sure if I could explain it, but the Red-Eye Tool in earlier versions seemed to be much more effective than in CS6. To compensate, I spent a couple minutes using brushes and masks to get us to this:
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Yes, it's subtle, but it does make a difference. Factors I've learned need to be considered are: which blend mode will be used, and the color(s) of the lights being used as the lens flares.

I won't show all the variations I played with, as I did in the previous tutorial. Instead, I've chosen to display just one of the blurred lights in all three blend modes.

Overlay

Soft Light

Hard Light
So as to not distract too much from the true subject of the photograph, I added a radial gradient mask to keep too much of the light from infracting on her face.

The thumbnails don't do much to exemplify the differences, but a closer inspection of each (or better yet, your own experiments) will help you get a better idea of which blend mode, and why.
Brian Sheets
15/July/2013
]]><![CDATA[Photoshop Q&A -- Vibrance vs Saturation]]>Sun, 30 Jun 2013 23:55:43 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/photoshop-qa-vibrance-vs-saturationOnce again, we return with a Photoshop Q&A, this one answered by Rafael "RC" Concepcion.
What's the difference between Vibrance and Saturation? I never really know when to use which.
Saturation will saturate all of your colors evenly as you move the slider to the right. It doesn't make any considerations for the image. Vibrance, on the other hand, is a more intelligent way to saturate. As you increase Vibrance, colors in areas that are undersaturated will be saturated. Oversaturated colors will be left alone, and any colors that are in a skin tone will generally not be touched. I tend to use Vibrance on any picture that I want to "pop" in terms of color that has a person in it. If there is no person present, I'll always give Saturation a try first.
Article by: Rafael "RC" Concepcion
Photoshop User Magazine -- Photoshop Q&A -- Pg. 114 
September 2012
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After reading through the tutorial I began my search for a photo I could apply these features to. The photo you see above is of my beautiful wife before we met, which was taken by our mutual friend (who happened to introduce us), Amberlee Eddington Hildebrand of Mariposa Photography. To get a better idea of what I was working with, I asked her a few questions. Keep in mind that this shoot took place over ten years ago, so I was pleased that she remembered as many details as she did. Below are her responses:

Camera type: my old memiya film SLR
Lens type: no clue
Camera setting(s): as far open as my aperture would go to compensate for having no light meter and a shutter speed that maxed out at about 200
Photoshop treatment(s) (if any): no photoshop. This is the raw shot.

Note, also, that this is a scan of an original photograph, so there are visible artifacts.

Because of the simplicity of the tutorial, there's not much to say about my methods, so to keep things interesting I've provided some variations on both Vibrance and Saturation. Be aware that exact comparisons can't really be made. Saturation allows for a wider range than Vibrance, so to be able to display comparable images, I had to multiply the Vibrance effect by two.
+50 Saturation
+100 Vibrance
Out of curiosity I played with the negative range and was very pleased with the results.
-50 Saturation
-100 Vibrance
Something to keep in mind is that Saturation can be found in a few ways: Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, or by pressing Command+U on a Mac (Control+U on a PC), but also by going to the Vibrance dialog box: Image > Adjustments > Vibrance. These two Saturation options are not created equal, as illustrated in the examples below.
+100 Saturation
Hue/Saturation Dialog Box
+100 Saturation
Vibrance Dialog Box
The Hue/Saturation dialog box provides a wide variety of options that include defaults, color schemes, color selection, and lightness. Over-all, it's a great tool and should not be overlooked for Vibrance every time. 
The Vibrance dialog box is simply comprised of the Vibrance slider and the Saturation slider. 
To wrap up this tutorial I wanted to show how the two, combined, could look when separating the model from the background. There are thousands of possible results, especially if you combine Saturation and Vibrance with the other options available. For this, however, I used only the Vibrance dialog box.
Picture
In this case, the negative range was more inspirational to me than the positives. I started by cutting her away from the background so they could be treated separately. I applied a -40 Saturation and left the Vibrance at 0, then cleaned up the artifacts on her skin and shirt. For the background I cranked up the Vibrance to +100 and brought the Saturation down to -50, then cleaned up a couple artifacts there as well.

I hope this tutorial was as enlightening for you as it was for me. I know I'll be using it more often in the future.

If there's anything any of you have wondered about for Photoshop, send me a message and I'll address it in the next tutorial.
Brian Sheets
30/June/2013
]]><![CDATA[Photoshop Q&A -- Simulated Line Drawings]]>Sat, 25 May 2013 19:04:45 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/photoshop-qa-simulated-line-drawingsToday seems like a good day to do another tutorial, so I selected one I've wanted to do for a long time.
In this one, Photoshop User Magazine writer, Larry Becker, answers questions posed by NAPP members.
I've tried to use some of the filters in Photoshop to convert photos into simulated line drawings. Unfortunately, those line drawings never seem to turn out "basic" enough. Stylize>Find Edges comes close, but it's still not quite simple enough to look like a plain pen-and-ink drawing. Is there an easy way to convert a photograph into a line drawing that's just a bit more primitive looking?
There's one method I use from time to time which creates a simple line drawing from photos but it's kind of hidden. Start by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate the Background layer (so that you have something to go back to if it doesn't work right). Next, choose the command Filter>Blur>Smart Blur. At the bottom of the dialog that appears, there's a pop-up menu called Mode. Choose Edge Only from that list. Now just move the sliders for Radius and Threshold until you get the kind of line drawing you're looking for. When you click OK it creates white lines on a black background. If you'd rather have black lines on a white background, just press Command-I (PC: Ctrl-I) to invert the layer."
Article by: Larry Becker
Photoshop User Magazine -- Photoshop Q&A -- Pg. 118
December 2011
Composite by: Brian Sheets
25/May/2013
As always, I read through the article to get a feel for the end result. Larry's example was a stylish kitchen with bay windows. Rather than copying his example, I opted for a park setting. In addition, I wanted to go a couple steps beyond the example and make it look like a watercolor painting. 
Following the instructions was simple, right up to the Radius and Threshold sliders. With as much depth and variation in color, it was difficult to find a happy medium. Ultimately I duplicated my efforts and combined two versions of the lines. 
Next was the sunset. The clouds were much like the trees, but the "god rays" needed a softer outline. Rather than duplicating, like I did with the trees, I used a Mask with a 50% Opacity to soften the lines.
After combining the images, to finish off the water-color look, I placed a white layer  over the top and adjusted the Opacity.

I'd love to hear back from you and see what you do with it.

- Brian
]]><![CDATA[Photoshop Tips - Image Composite Blend]]>Fri, 24 May 2013 03:59:31 GMThttp://www.castlermedia.com/digital-design-tips-blog/photoshop-tip-image-composite-blendThank you for joining me for this brief tutorial. Today we're learning about blending image composites, also known as "making collages look good."
Let's get started and see what Photoshop User Magazine writer, Colin Smith, says about the topic.
"Whenever you create a collage of images from different sources, they can sometimes look a little fake because of slight variations in color and tone. Maybe you're combining photos taken under varying lighting conditions and at different times of day, as well as adding 3D objects and illustrations--these can all look a little bit different. A trick I use to pull everything together is to create a Solid Color adjustment layer at the top of the layers stack in the Layers panel. I then change that layer's blend mode to Color and reduce its Opacity. All of this results in a more matched-looking color to the entire composition. It also adds a bit of mood."
Article by: Colin Smith
Photoshop User Magazine -- Photoshop Tips -- Pg. 111
May/June 2013
Composite by: Brian Sheets
23/May/2013
To start out, of course, I read through the text to get a feel for what I could expect of it. Colin's example was a composite of a cloudy sky, two airplanes, and a farm. Not wanting to be a copycat, I chose to composite a car and a model. My inspiration? My son was watching Disney's "Cars" this evening, and what better to decorate a car with than an attractive model? 
Knowing I was going to be displaying my work, I chose a model with a difficult background just to show off my skills a bit more. One of these days I'll do one of these tutorials on Selections for you.
So I had the car and the model chosen. Some of the things I had to take into consideration, on top of Colin's mention of color,  tone, and lighting, were varying file sizes, pre-existing crops, and angles.
Before beginning to follow the instructions in Colin's tutorial, I made the following adjustments:
• Gradient Mask above and below the car
• Circular gradient from the center of the 
• Magic Wand selection of the model
• Resize of the model
• Puppet Warp to get the model's position to better match the shape of the car
From there, I proceeded to apply the Solid Color adjustment layer, changed the blend mode, and reduced its opacity. Then, to finish it off, I cropped the image and saved it as a JPEG.

Thanks, again, for taking the time to learn and play with Photoshop.

If there's a topic you'd like us walk you through, please leave a comment. You can also follow the "Contact Us" link at the top of the page to send me a private request.
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