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photoshop tutorials

How’d You Do That? :: Textures on Portraits

December 11, 2009

in photography tutorials,photoshop tutorials

I did a quick and dirty texture post last week, and it covers the basic BASIC ways to use textures. But if you want to use them on portraits, there are a few additional steps you want to keep in mind so the texture doesn’t go over the skin and look weird.

No doubt, there are times when textures look fine over skin, but I personally prefer to erase the texture over the skin.

For the sake of time and space, I’ll go through the first few steps w/o screenshots, because they are the same as in the original texture post.

I’m going to start with this image …

This one is special to me because she is running to see her daddy who just got home from work. And I *adore* the light. While it was shot using a wide open aperture, the house in the background is still not obscured enough for me, so I’m going to use a texture to really bring her out of the background.

1. download picture & process as desired (I do all of this in Lightroom)

2. import picture into Photoshop (I use Elements 5.0)

3. import texture, re-size and drag it over the image

4. choose blending mode of your choice (I almost always use either overlay or soft light)

5. change opacity to whatever you desire

I used Florabella Textures – Reverie b&w in Overlay mode @ 100% opacity

Now is when it becomes a little different for portraits. As you can see above, the texture makes Emma’s dress and pants look a little dirty, so I want to erase the texture over her.

There are various ways of doing this, including using the magnetic lasso tool to go around the subject and then erasing the texture that way. But I am really bad at using the lasso tool (shaky hand syndrome, lol), so I just erase freehand.

6. while you have the texture layer selected (it is very important that you have only the texture layer selected!), then select your eraser

7. make sure that you have the soft mechanical brush selected – the hard brush will leave a very obvious mark where you erase whereas the soft brush will make your erasing blend in

side note: you can use whatever size eraser brush that works best for the photo that you are working on – if you need to adjust the size as you are working, the “{“ and “}” keys make it smaller or larger (I just learned this shortcut a while ago and use it CONSTANTLY!)

8. change the opacity of the eraser to suit your needs – for this image, I used 88% but I normally use around 30% and go back over it where needed. depending on the photo and the texture, if you use 100% opacity to erase the texture, it may look a little weird. just play around with that until you find what works for you.

9. then, start erasing over the part that you do not want texturized! again, make sure you only have the texture layer selected – you are erasing the texture, NOT the image!

10. once you are satisfied with it, flatten the image and save it out. or add another texture, if you so desire. and then pat yourself on the back – you’re done!

A couple of points …

a. once you have erased over the part of the photo you don’t want texturized, keep the texture layer selected and then play around with the blending modes – it’s fun to see the different things you can do with whatever textured area remains!

b. I almost always use black and white textures for my portraits because they don’t change the overall color tone of the image, and then I use the fun colored ones for my landscapes or other images. If you find a texture that you would love to use for a portrait, but it’s green or brown or some other color that just doesn’t work for the image, convert the texture to black and white first. You’ll still have the awesome texture, but it won’t mess with the color of your photo.

c. obviously, this technique isn’t reserved for portraits only – I’ve used this technique for a coffee cup, a flower, etc. the sole purpose of this technique is to add a texture without covering the subject matter.

Please post a comment here or email me if you have any questions. I don’t consider myself a texture guru or anything, so please feel free to add a comment with your suggestions or tips or tricks.

{ 5 comments }

how’d you do that? general textures

November 24, 2009

in how'd you do that?,photoshop tutorials

Confession time!! It seems like I confess a lot of my photographic shortcomings on this blog, so I will probably NEVER make it as a professional photographer … but here comes another confession.

I started using textures because my camera has horrible horrible horrible noise control. Anytime I put my camera over ISO 200, I have noise.

Bad noise.

Lots of noise.

Noisy noise.

So when I discovered textures, I did a jig simply because it covers the noise!! But then textures can also completely change an image. It can change an image’s meaning and tone. It can make something happy become very dreary. It can turn a blurry image into something artistic.

And here’s my very non-professional tutorial on adding textures to images using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I’m currently using 5.0 because I just don’t have the extra money to upgrade to the latest version, so if I can do it in 5.0, anyone can do it!

I’m going to skip the processing, because it doesn’t really matter how you process an image in order to use textures. In that case, I’ll start with an image that I’ve already processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

I am going to use some of my recent favorite textures by Patti Brown / Kaleidoscope to demonstrate, but I’ll add a list of some of my favorite places for free textures at the end of this post. The pro to buying textures is that you are getting the original image, so you will always have it. I find myself using a texture I found online and then not remembering where I got it — the textures that I buy are always there. And easier to look through.

1. Open the image in Photoshop.

2. Open the textures that you want to use … in this case, I am using the following Patti Brown textures:
1. Vintage Dream Burst – Dream Collection
2. Vintage Dream Sequence III – Dream Collection
3. Dustclouds – The Gallery Collection
4. Seafoam Vignette – The Gallery Collection

The following steps are completely open to interpretation. What I do is solely based on how it looks, and it will look completely different on another image. The fun part of textures is the playing around to find something that looks good.

3. Simply drag the first layer you want to use onto the image.

I actually don’t like drag-sizing the texture to fit the image, so I re-size the textures based on the size of the image, and I always go over by about 10px. Simply put, if my original image is 800px x 600px, then I’ll resize the texture to 810px x 610px before I drag it onto the original image.

4. Change the “blending mode” for the layer – I usually use either “overlay” or “soft light” as my two main blending modes.

5. Then, change the “opacity” to suit your desires. Sometimes, you can leave it at 100%; sometimes, you may only need it around 20% – it’s all about personal preference here.

6. Rinse and repeat for the rest of your layers.

I used the following combinations:

1. Vintage Dream Burst – overlay @ 80%
2. Vintage Dream Sequence III – overlay @ 50%
3. Dustclouds – overlay @ 40%
4. Seafoam Vignette – soft light @ 70%

Once you get all of your layers on there, you can go back and change the blending mode and opacity for each layer to create different looks.

Just go to your layer control box, select the texture you want to change, and then make your adjustments. It’s fun to play around.

You can also “hide” each texture to see how the image looks with or without that texture. Just click on the “eye” next to the texture in the layer control box.

When you’re all done with your layers and happy with how they look, then you can “flatten image” and save it out.

There is a whole different method for using layers on portraits, so I’ll cover that in a different post. It involves a lot of erasing the texture over the skin since you usually don’t want someone’s face looking bumpy or scratchy.

I’ve already sang the praises of Patti Brown’s textures, and I really love Florabella textures as well, but here are just a few of my favorite places for free textures.

Flickr
Les Brumes
Pareeerica

Web
Grunge Textures
Deviantart

Enter to win a set of Patti’s amazing textures at I Heart Faces!!

{ 8 comments }

from start to finish

October 21, 2009

in how'd you do that?,lightroom tutorials,photoshop tutorials

I’ve had many people ask me to share my processing techniques for my images. Funny thing is, I don’t really do the same thing every time, and most of the time, I just play until it looks good. So it’s hard to just say, “Well, I did this and this and this.” But for you … I will try. ;)

Note: I process all of my images in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 5.0

So we’re going to start with this image …

I know what you’re thinking. Um, dude? That’s blurry. Well, yes. I decided to use a particularly bad image to show you how drastic just a few changes can be. But I actually like the movement in this picture since she’s running around so carefree. I think it adds to the image.

It really does work. You’ll see. (Don’t go scrolling down to see, yet — be patient!)

We also have that horrible blownout light across the top of the image, and it’s just not composed very well AT ALL.

I’ve been a little obsessed with square crops lately, so I did that, purposefully keeping Jessie in the shot, because our dogs rarely get camera time these days, poor things.

Then, I just applied my “in shades of brown” preset.

Without just giving away my “formula” this preset basically warms up the image, adds a little green tint, bumps up the exposure, bumps down the saturation, and then split tones it with some tan highlights and light purple shadows. Among other things.

But. It still isn’t “right.” It looks like it’s just blurry, ya know?

So this is where textures come into play. I love textures. I love how they can totally add a completely different element to an image. It’s a whole other layer, both literally and figuratively.

On this image, I stuck with Florabella Textures, which were recently featured on I ♥ Faces. She has done some amazing things with these textures, and I can almost guarantee I’ll find the texture(s) I want when I open up my Florabella folder.

I used …
antique square in overlay mode @ 100%
champagne square in soft light mode @ 100%

I also copied the background image and put it into multiply mode @ 50% because the 2 textures had lightened it up significantly.

And then I added the creamy white border to add an even more vintage flair, kind of like those old polaroids.

After all the textures are added, and the image meets my approval, I just go to layer -> flatten image, then select -> all.

Image -> Resize -> Canvas Size

With these settings …

By the way, this is also a great way to add a black border without cutting into your image.

And here is the final product …

It’s amazing how much difference a little crop & texture can do to an image!

And here you all thought I was a decent photographer. ;)

{ 5 comments }

rounded corners tutorial

June 12, 2009

in lightroom tutorials,photography tutorials,photoshop tutorials

You’ll notice in a lot of my pictures that I use rounded corners — I love the retro feel and uniqueness.

Uniqueness … is that a word? I’m not getting a spell-check notice, so I guess it is. Cool.

Anyway, I have a few people ask me how to get rounded corners, so I’m going to give you three ways to put rounded corners on your pictures.

The first way is the easiest … Picnik. It’s a {mostly} free online photo editing program — I say {mostly} because you can do a whole WHOLE lot for free. Or you can pay a small fee to have even more editing options. But the rounded corners option is free …

Anyway, it’s listed under the “Create” tab as a “Frame.” You can adjust the radius to make it either a little rounded or a LOT rounded.

The second way is also quite easy if you have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Just go to the “Develop” section, and then to “Vignettes — Post-Crop”

amount: +100
midpoint: 50
roundness: -90 (you can adjust this number to make it less or more rounded)
feather: 0

If you are putting the image on a black background (like a photo blog?) then just set the “amount” to -100.

And finally, this is how I do it in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Now, I don’t have Photoshop CS because I chose to purchase Lightroom instead. I honestly don’t know if it’s the same in Photoshop CS, but I’m sure it’s close enough.

step 1: open your image …

step 2: choose the “rounded rectangle tool” under shapes

step 3: set the radius to 90px

You can change that number to make it more or less rounded – I almost always use from 90px to around 94px.

step 4: draw the rounded rectangle around the entire image

It doesn’t matter what color the rectangle is, because you’re going to fix that in the next step

step 5: set opacity to 0%

step 6: while still having the “rounded rectangle tool” selected, right click on the image and select “make selection”

step 7: make sure you have “feather radius” set to 0px and check “anti-aliased”

step 8: go to “edit” on the menu bar and select “copy merged”

step 9: go to “file” and select “new -> image from clipboard”

step 10: save it and you’re done!

Now. Go have fun making rounded corners!! I love taking pictures and applying vintage’y presets or actions and then using the rounded corners … it takes me back to my childhood pictures.

{ 6 comments }

photo editing from a dummy

February 4, 2009

in cloth diapering,photoshop tutorials,pictures,project 365

images are not here due to a url change a while ago … will try to get these re-uploaded soon!

A week or so ago, Sarah asked me how I got this picture of Emma to look like that, so I thought I’d walk through a typical “photo editing” process for me.

Let me preface by saying that I am not very good at it. I am still learning every day. I am constantly Google’ing “blahblahblah tutorial” for whatever I’m trying to do. I read articles and books, and I still don’t “get it” most of the time. I am most definitely NOT a professional by any means. I just really enjoy taking pictures, and out of the hundreds I take, sometimes I get a half-decent one. And thank goodness for Photoshop Elements and Picnik for making them look pretty good.

This probably won’t be a regular segment of my blog, because I really just play around more than anything, and I have no idea what is going to look good until I’m done with it. I truly have no idea what I’m doing.

For today’s lesson (hee) I’m going to use my picture from today’s Project365 – the theme is “Bokeh Wednesday” {in layman’s terms, bokeh is the blurry background of a picture} – so I went outside while E was napping and snapped this picture of my neighbor’s tree with their green shrub in the background to give it that green bokeh.

This is SOOC (straight out of the camera)

Not horrible, but not wonderful, either.

So I opened it up in Photoshop Elements and did the following …

1. Created new levels adjustment layer – I just moved the little slider around until I was happy with the results.

2. Duplicate background layer – and put into Screen mode. Change the opacity to 35%.

3. Duplicate background layer again. Drag the Tint Blue on top of the new layer (it’s under Photo Effects)

4. Put into Overlay mode – change the opacity to 75%

5. Flatten image and save.

Now, I went ahead and uploaded it like it is for my Project 365 – you can see it here.

But then I played with it in Picnik – I applied cross-processing (my favorite!) and then rounded corners.

Now, if you don’t have Photoshop, don’t sweat it. Ignore this entire post and head on over to Picnik — it is a great GREAT photo editing website, it’s easy and fun, and you can do SO many things to your pictures.

xo

{ 0 comments }

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photoshop tutorials

How’d You Do That? :: Textures on Portraits

how’d you do that? general textures

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rounded corners tutorial

photo editing from a dummy

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