Touch up

Here is what I started with an 8bit RGB file.

I started by cropping out the outer edge of the picture and did a bit of touch up in levels


I felt like there was too much green in the picture so I used color balance to add more Magenta


I used the spot healing brush, patch tool and clone stamp tool to fix the blemishes on her face


Up next I used the magic wand tool to select the background and duplicated a layer of the inverse so I could do something about the background.


Added a gradient layer behind the layer above.

The edges were really nasty so I added a layer mask and started working on the photo some more.

I felt like the gradient layer wasn't mixing very well so I changed the gradient colors and added a bit of noise.


Then I decided to paint her sweater a different color with another layer, blend mode: color (nondestructive).


Then I brought more detail to the image by creating an overlay highpass layer.


Unsharpmask and faded it @ 85% luminosity

Result,

I felt like her eyes weren't "popping" as much so I used the dodged tool and worked on her eyes for a bit and this is what I got.

That's it for now :)

Airbrush Pt.2, Using pen tool & paths

Here is what I started with,


I drew a path around the face and painted it.

After that I decided to make paths around the eye balls and painted them green

Made paths for the hair and painted it blue,

I felt like there were too much blue so I mixed it in with yellow,

I selected the head and hair and select inverse, color balance and added color

Till next time!

Airbrush - Painting B&W Image

I started with this image,


I felt like there were too much gray so I played with the levels, clipped the highlights a bit and lighten the black output levels

Created a sepia tone with color balance,

Now I'm ready to paint my image with a Wacom tablet (first time using it :))

I chose a color of 225:191:92 to paint my image with (trying to achieve an "oak" color). I started by painting the tree trunks

Oops, I forgot to change my blending mode to color, here we go,

I felt like the color was over saturated for a b&w image so I lowered the opacity to 30% and gave it another shot,

A few minutes later...

Now it was time to paint the sky. I learned something VERY cool today! When using the magic wand tool, I went to 'Select-->Grow' (to expand my area of selection via magic wand tool), 'Select-->Similar' and the whole sky was selected!! So I tried to get a cyan color for the sky and filled it in with a color mode layer,

Again I felt like there were too much colors so I lowered the opacity to 25% and gave it another shot!

Now it was time to paint the leaves, I had 2 colors, a green for my foreground color and a yellow-ish green for my background color (x to switch back and forth). I started painting the leaves green.

I felt like there was too much green for my liking so I decided to paint over it with my yellow-ish green color. Here's a 50/50.

And the results,

Now I felt like the image was too boring so I decided to try out a gradient. (Linear gradient)

It actually came out pretty interesting. I gave it another shot to see if I can get a sunset look...

Not really? oh well .. haha. Now I went at it again with a Radial gradient and I made a sun!

I felt like the colors were too strong so I faded it a bit. (Edit-->Fade Gradient)

That's it for today :). Have a good weekend guys!


I decided to do one more with a lens flare (suggested by Jeff Wu) :)

Touch up

Today, I've decided to touch up a photo in Photoshop CS4. Here is what I started with,


I started by removing the spots in the picture with the clone stamp/spot healing brush tool.


Then I started to work his Face/neck structure.


Removed the white spot in the upper right hand corner. I did this by using the magic wand tool to select the white spot, then expanded the selected area by 1px. I moved the selected area to the right and duplicated it back to it's original spot. And "fine tuned" the area with the patch tool.


Up next was his suit. I achieved this with the clone stamp tool and the patch tool.


After this was done, I zoomed out to 100% and started thinking what else I can do to this photo. I felt that my eyes were drawn into the white sign (lower left corner) so I decided to clone that out.


Here is a before/after side by side comparison.