Photoshop Assignment: Simple Portrait Touchups

[Camilla and Darwin]

Since there are so many things to do with photo editing, it is very hard for me to narrow down what assignments should be used. However, this is a skill that I think every person should have. Even if you want to keep a portrait very natural and avoid that glamour look, these edits can be very beneficial.

I apologize about this image being slightly blown out in some places on her face. I don't save my original non-edited files after a certain period of time so I just had to work with what I could find.

We will focus on 3 "problem areas". First, the original image. It looks fine, but with some touch ups it could look better:

First the eyes. Now, her eyes are already quite apparent but I feel that most people's eyes could benefit from a bit of contrast and lightness. Enter the levels adjustment layer. First, select your adjustment layer icon in your layers tray, and select "levels"

You will now see this levels panel, and an additional layer on your image

Now, take that white slider on the right, and slide it to the left, until your image looks crazy like this

Don't worry, we will hide all this. Simply hit Ctrl+i, or for Macs, Command+i. This will invert the layer and all this brightness will be hidden. Your layer mask will now be black.

Now, you are going to select a soft round paintbrush, and the size should be at least 1/2 as small as the iris of the eye. Paint the iris and pupil of the eye. You will see the brighter under layer appear where you paint.

Do both eyes. It likely looks to crazy at this point, so lower the opacity of the layer until it looks right to you. When it looks good, go to Layers>merge layers.

Now onto the teeth. You are going to select the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of your tray again, but this time select "hue/saturation"

This will open the hue/saturation panel. You are going to go to the "master" drop down menu and select "yellows"

Now take the saturation slider, and slide it slowly to the left. Now, nudge the lightness slider slightly to the right. Watch the teeth as you do this, and try to ignore the rest of the image. When it looks good, stop. Remember, it's okay if it's a bit too much because you can always lower the opacity later. When it looks good to you, you can collapse the hue/saturation tray by clicking those two right pointing arrows at the top right. Then invert your layer by hitting Ctrl+i or Command+i. Now, like with the eyes, select a white brush that is smaller than the teeth, and paint over them. Adjust your opacity, then merge your layers by selecting Layers>merge layers.

Finally, the skin. For this, you are going to select the spot healing tool. If you are using an earlier version of Photoshop without this tool, select the healing tool. We are now going to remove the blemishes from the skin. I like to choose a size slightly larger than the blemishes. For the spot healing tool, you will simply click over the blemish, and bam, it's gone. :-) If you select the standard healing tool, you will need to alt+click on a healthy part of the skin, then click on the blemish. Remember to check the top tool menu to make sure that you have content aware selected rather than "create texture", it will look much better.

Now you are done! A simple, basic portrait edit. Once you practice a bit, this will go VERY fast.

[Camilla and Darwin]

Ditto. DJ if you could post the original jpegs (or e-mail me the RAW files, even better) that would be helpful!

[DJ & Chance]

Thanks again for your help.  After you worked your magic on the face, I fiddled with softening the background and now really feel happy with giving these photos to her.  Here is one final edited version.

[F, Calla & Luca]

This is terrific. I love her smile, she looks so pleased with her accomplishment.

[DJ & Chance]

First generation college student on her way to medical school.

[F, Calla & Luca]

How wonderful!

[DJ & Chance]

:)  

[Kyoko]

Wow! Very nice!!

[DJ & Chance]

Thanks!  It was a team effort :)

[Camilla and Darwin]

This looks amazing DJ!

[Anne & Mr. Haley]

Great edit. Years ago they used to do tbis with an airbrush.