Improve your Photoshop skills

Watching Youtube movies is still one of the best thing to improve Photoshop skills.  But the best way is to do it yourself.

I started with this picture

I wanted to change the colors of her lips and the colors of her eyes.  And i wanted to have the possibility to change the colors anytime during the project.

First i changed the colors of her lips using a Hue and Saturation Adjustment layer.  I changed the colors and made the mask black.  I painted with white over her lips to make them purple.

Then I added a second Hue and saturation Adjustment Layer to change the colors of her eyes.

At least I added a Curve and a Black and White Adjustment Layer.  (For more contrast)

Oher things you can do is to change the background color but this time I didn't do that.  I made a stamp visible Layer and move the first and last layer to a new document. With those two layers I made an Animated Gif to see the Before and After.

If you want be better with Photoshop the only thing to do is practise, practise and practise. Youtube has tons of movies to help you. Have fun.

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picture from Pixabay.com

Creating your own artwork by making colourful silhouettes

Are you ready to rock some artwork? 

Because in this post I'm going to show you how to make an artwork of a portrait in different colours.   

This is how it works: 
1. You've got it, it all starts with opening a picture in Lightroom

2. Crop the picture so you end up with just the head in the image3. Go to Image > Adjustment > Treshold

4.Go to Select > Colour hair and select the hair

5. Create a new empty layer

6. Click on Solid colour in the Adjustment layer panel

7. Pick a color

8. Deactivate the background layer

9. Create a new document and fill it with white

10. Select the layer in your document with the face and move it onto the new document. With Free transform (Cmd T) you can scale it.

11. Duplicate the layer twice (Cmd J). Select the layer(s) and move them (so that you see the 3 faces next to each other)

12. Change the color of the hair by double clicking on the solid color adjustment

All that's left now is to flatten the image and voila! You're done! 

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Turning your pics into pencil sketches using Photoshop CC

An easy and fun action in Photoshop: turning your picture into a pencil sketch in Photoshop. It's very easy and fun to do if you ask me. 

1. It all starts with opening a picture in Photoshop

2. Duplicate the background (Cmd J)

3. Desaturate the new layer (Cmd Shift U)

4. Duplicate the layer. (Cmd J)

5. Invert the layer using Cmd I. Now you've got 3 layers and it looks like this.

6. Change the blend mode of the top layer (the inverted layer) to Color dodge.

7. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur (with the top layer still selected)

The more blur you add the more details appear. So find a radius that you like for your picure and hit OK.

You can color it with the original photo. 

1. Make a copy of your background (Cmd J)

2. Put this layer on top

3. Change the Blending mode to Color

You also can add a Gradient layer and add some colors

Here is another example

Cool feature right? Have fun experimenting and see you in the next blog!

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Tonality Pro for awesome B/W images

We promised a while back that we'd tell you a bit more about converting your images to B/W. In a previous post we talked about one way to convert to B/W in Lightroom. Today we're gonna tell you a bit more about using a plugin like Tonality Pro or Silver Efex Pro

Before you get all carried away, do bear in mind that Tonality Pro is a product for MAC, not for Windows. Tonality can be used stand alone, or as plugin for Adobe and Apple products. It also supports RAW. 

It all starts with importing pictures into Lightroom. When your pictures are in Lightroom you have to decide which picture(s) you want to convert to B/W. Choose a picture you want to convert. Personally I always like to do some small adjustments in Lightroom before I transfer to Tonality. But that's entirely up to you as the artist. 

To transfer your picture, right click on the image and choose Edit in... > Tonality pro

Let's take this image for example: 

I just added some contrast, did the shadows and highlights and my black and whites in Lightroom.

Once you choose Edit in Tonality Pro, a screen appears where you can choose to work with a copy or just work with the original. I always work with a copy: 

Click on Edit and your picture appears in Tonality Pro and is converted to B/W:

You've really got tons of possibilities in Tonality Pro!

Presets

A lot of presets you can choose from, for example HDR Cold Silver

If you don't want the effect in the whole picture,  you can decide where to use it using the brush. It works the same as working with brushes in Photoshop, you can change the size, opacity and softness of the brush.

Just brush where you want to create the effect: 

And ofcourse you can also work with Selective Coloring by using presets like for instance Bleached Drama.

Layers

I really love that Tonality Pro has the possibility to work with layers. 

This gives you the possibility to have for example different presets on each layer as well as dodge and burn on every layer.

You can turn off a layer and reduce the Opacity. This works exactly the same as in Photoshop.

And you'll recognize the panel from Lightroom: a panel with items like Color Temperature, Tone, contrast etc.

I find the clarity and structure panel really helpful:

You can add clarity, structure and micro stucture to your global image or do it locally, using the brush. With the Erase Mask you can turn it off. Using the layer panel, you can check out where you'll see the effect is working. It works in a similar fashion as layer masks in Photoshop.

And when you're done with the processing in Tonality, just click on Apply and your picture will be reimported into Lightroom. If needed you can do some more processing there, that's all up to you.

I love Tonality Pro. I think it's a great product and really effective in making stunning B/W images. 

If you wanna have a go, just download the trial version and play around with it. The guys from Macphun are really awesome in their Youtube films if you wanna find out more about the product. 

The best way to learn ofcourse is just do it yourself. Don't be afraid to try! 

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Using textures is easy!

I think it's fun to experiment. Finding out more about Photoshop, seeing what works and what doesn't really work so well. 

This post is about another one of those fun experiments: using textures and blending them in Photoshop. 

Let's take for example this picture:

I took this picture during a photo workshop . It's an OK picture, but for the purpose of this tutorial I'm gonna play around with textures a bit. Using Google it's easy to find some free textures: 

The issue with these is that more often than not, these are pretty small files to work with. And when you're using the picture for commercial purposes, there might just be an issue with copyright. You can ofcourse also buy textures online. For example Serge Ramelli has a bundle with some really great textures. 

Then again, why not have some fun with creating your own bundle of textures? Grab your camera and look around. I'm sure there's some pretty great textures to be found around you, both inside and outside. And there's the advantage that these are big files with high resolution. 

So I took this shot right outside our frontdoor. I'll be using this shot in this tutorial. 

How to incorporate the texture into your image: them?

1. Open a picture in Photoshop
2. Open the texture in Photoshop
3. Move the texture with the move tool into your picture. You now have a picture with two layers.
   
4. When both layers are active, you will just see the texture. 
   
5. Now change your blending mode to, for example, overlay. But you can also try Soft light or another blending mode. Just choose one you like.
                                     
   
   
6. The part of the picture where you don't want to have the effect of the texture should be masked out. Add a mask and paint with a black brush on the part you don't want to have the effect of the layer 
   

By unlinking the texture with the photo (by clicking on the chain) you are able to move the texture into another position. 

 

Bear in mind that you have to make sure to select the texture when you move it 

You can add more then one Texture and also use different blending modes. You also can reduce the Opacity of the layer when you think the effect of the layer is too strong.

I added a second layer and added a layer mask and voila, this is the end result: 

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