This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:42 am and is filed under Photoshop, The Basics of Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Sometimes you’ll look at a photo and think, “Gee, I wish I could tweak this photo, and then it would be perfect.” With Photoshop or similar photo editing software you can change anything you want in a photo. Here are the basics to making your photo perfect.
Skin Imperfections
Pimples. Zits. Bruises. Scars. No matter what the skin problem, they can all be removed with Photoshop in just seconds. Your subject can have the flawless skin of a movie star and no one has to know it wasn’t natural.
Simply select the cloning tool from the toolbox. Now, at 100% opacity, pick a place of origin that is close to the imperfection, but is perfect looking. Choose a brush that will work best for the size of the imperfection. Cover the imperfection with the cloned skin.
Take a look at the example. The little girl has beautiful, perfect skin…except for the circles under her eyes. The cloning tool was used to select the peachy colored skin of her cheeks and the cloning tool covered the circles with a medium sized brush. The second photo shows the perfect skinned results.
The place of origin may have to be changed to different spots if you are covering a big area. Also, if your edges seem not to blend very well, take opacity down to 50%.
Extra Objects
Have you ever taken a photo and then realized there was a really ugly object in an otherwise perfect picture? Here is how to zap that object.
With the eyedropper, select a color that is right by the object. Then, with a paintbrush, paint over the object. This technique works really well to blot out aircraft, power lines, and radio towers in landscape photos.
If this looks a bit odd, take the cloning tool and match the area to its background with the technique used for perfecting skin, above.
Redeye
Who hasn’t had a photo ruined by red spots on their subject’s eyes? There is a simple solution, though. Just select a very small round paintbrush and black paint in Photoshop. Magnify the photo until the eyes are quite large. Now, set the opacity to 50% and cover the red. Presto! No more redeye!
With Photoshop there’s no reason to trash a photo ever again. Just practice these tips and you will have fantastic photos every time.