How to edit your Instagram pictures with Snapseed

How to edit your Instagram pictures with Snapseed.  It is very easy and it does a proper job.
See this movie how it works:

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Photoshop Quicktip, airbrush skin

Quick and fast way to airbrush the skin

Open your image.

The fist thing we did was cropping the image.

Next step is to duplicate the background twice.  Set the upper layer to the blending mode Overlay. 

Convert the top layer into a smart object

Then go to Filter > Other > High Pass and choose an amount around 15px - 20px (depending on the image you are using) and click OK

Press Cmd I to invert the top layer (ctrl on windows).  Now the image is blurred.  If the amount of blur is too much you can change it anytime, because your layer is a smart object.

Now we add a black mask to the top layer (holding Alt and click on the mask icon in the layer panel).

With a soft white brush we paint over the skin to add the blur. Don't paint over the eyes and the mouth. If you paint over areas where you don't want to have the blur, paint over it with a soft black brush.

Its fast and easy. 

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picture from pixabay

Add a vignette in Photoshop using the Camera Raw Filter

Its easy to add a vignette in Photoshop and their are many ways to do it.  In this short blog we show you way to do it using the Camera Raw Filter.

Open a picture and duplicatie the layer 

Convert the top layer to a Smart Object (Ctrl click on the layer)

Now go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

You can find the vignette functionality in the effects panel

Drag the slider to the left to create a dark vignette and set a midpoint that fits with your picture. Hit OK to leave this screen.

If you are not satisfied with the effect, just double click on the camera raw filter in your layer panel.  Because it is a smart filter the camera raw filter will be opened again and you can change the amount.

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picture from pixabay.com

Photoshop Quicktip, Easy Double exposure

A double exposure can be very difficult when you have to make selections. But here is a very easy method just by using Blend modes.

Open the image 

Open the second image and move it over the first one  using the Move tool (V). Move the layer to the bottom

Now select the top layer and set the Blend mode to 'Screen'  or 'Lighten' .

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picture from pixabay

Photoshop Quicktip, crop a perfect square

In photoshop it is very easy to crop a square.

Open your image and select the Crop tool (C).

Now select 1:1 for a square

You can move the square with your mouse/pen, to crop the picture the way you like. Be aware that your pixels will be removed it the checkbox 'Delete cropped pixels ' is on

Done !

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picture from pixabay

How to remove a tattoo in Photoshop

In real life, it's not an easy feat. But with what I've learned from the guys from Phlearn.com, it's relatively easy to remove a tattoo using Photoshop!

Check out this clip: 

It shows you how to a remove a tattoo. This video shows you how to work with the

• Spot Healing brush tool (J)
• Using the brush tool and sample a color
• Add skin texture
• Working with layers and layer masks
• Overlay blending mode in combination with a 50% Grey fill

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picture from Pixabay.com

Snapseed editing for your cell phone and tablet images

Even though we've got a couple of biggish Canons with equally big objectives, we do still go out there and shoot with our cell phone too. The image quality is actually kind of alright. As it's a bit cumbersome to start editing your cell phone images via Photoshop or Lightroom, I find Snapseed a great app to edit in. 

Snapseed is a free app which can be used for editing your pictures on your mobile and/or tablet. Snapseed was originally developed by Nik Software. Snapseed is non-destructive, so you can always step back during your editing. And you've got loads of options in Snapseed.

So it's just a question of downloading the app and you can edit to your hearts content. 

You've got the possibility to choose an image that's already on your device or you can make a new picture. And you've also got the option to edit the very last image you took. 

When you open an image you'll get a new screen: 

In Snapseed editing, there's 3 important things to remember: 

1. This is where Snapseed shows the histogram of your picture.

2. With the pencil you can start your editing.

3. Behind the three dots you can find more options. For example a step back in your editing.

Let's see what the editing options are by clicking on the pencil:

You can see that there are two parts on this screen:

1. Tools
2. Filters

It's impossible to describe all the functionalities. But let's just check out what Crop does to your image:

You can see that there are a lot of aspect ratios you can choose from. Or you can choose your own by moving the outer edges of your image inwards.  When you're done you can click on check mark.

On the main screen you can see the counter hopped to 1. This indicates that you did 1 adjustment.

Click on the pencil  again and choose one of the filters. In this case I went with Black and White. 

Here you get to choose different kind of looks. After choosing one you click on the check mark. On the main screen you'll now see that the counter shows 2.  

Clicking on the counter will show the layers (the things you did with the image)

One of the best things is that you can work on the whole picture or just work locally. 

In the picture below I did some Dodge and Burn and you can see the mask (where the effect will appear in the image). 

There really are so many options. Just download the app and play around with it.

When you are satisfied with the image don't forget to click on Save.

 

Choose one of the three options and you're done!

Here is my end result of the quick image edit in Snapseed: 

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