Photoshop for Digital Photographers

High Pass Sharpen in Photoshop

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:27:02 +0000

High pass sharpen is one of many sharpen techniques in Photoshop. Pros of the high pass sharpen is flexibility. With high pass sharpen, you can adjust sharpness easily and you can use layer mask to sharpen only areas you want. For more understanding, please follow the step-by-step instruction below.

1. Open your image.

2. Drag “Background layer” over the new layer icon in order to duplicate it.

3. You will get the “Background copy”

4. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

5. Adjust radius and the acceptable level of radius is around 1-5. You just only slide the bar and see the preview. If you use too high radius, your image will look unreal. For this case, I use the radius of 4.

6. Your image will look like this.

7. Go to the layer pallet and change mode to overlay.

8. This is the original image.

9. After changing to overlay mode, the photo look sharper.

10. Not only overlay mode, there are several mode that you may use to adjust sharpness of photos.

11. Change to “soft light” = soften image

12. Change to “hard light” = sharpen image

13. Change to “vivid light” = sharpen image

14. By reducing the Opacity, you can reduce level of sharpness. Sharpen must be applied to each image carefully. If sharpen is used too much, the photo may not look like the real one. It may look like the computer graphic photo instead.

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High Key Black and White in Adobe Photoshop

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:57:38 +0000

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Photoshop to create high key black and white. The process is very simple and you can apply to any photos.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Open your image

2. Go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

3. Your photo will look like this.

4. Select Image>Adjustments>Curves

5. Adjust curve to increase brightness and press OK.

6. Your image look brighter.

7. Go to Layer Pallet and press Crtl + J for Window or Cmd + J for Mac to duplicate a layer

8. This is the duplicated layer.

9. Select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur

10. Adjust radius of Gaussian blur to 40 pixels. Then pressure OK.

11. Change a layer mode to Overlay

12. Your image looks brighter with more contrast.

13. Add layer mask from the layer pallet

14. Select brush from the tool pallet and select black as foreground

15. Mask the dark area by painting black.

16. At the layer pallet, you should see mask like this.

17. This is the final result from this tutorial.

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Create High Dynamic Range Photos in Photoshop

admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:49:55 +0000

This tutorial will demonstrate you how to create high dynamic range (HDR) photos using Photoshop. High dynamic range photos are photos which has more tonal range than normal photos. Simply say that you will be able to see more color tones with this kind of photo.

Let’s learn about basic details.

1. Let’s take a look at this shot.

You can see that there is no detail in the shadow area but the highlight area has all detail. The typical photo looks like this.

2. Before going into details, I want to get you more detail how HDR is created. HDR can be done with several photography programs as Photoshop, Photomatrix, etc. The concept is to merge several exposure values into one photo; therefore, you need take photos with several exposures in order to get a lot of details from shadow to highlight.

- Set your camera firmly on a tripod.

- Take several photos with several exposures as -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 stop. You need at least three shots (under exposure, correct exposure, over exposure) in order to get good shadow and high light detail. For this example, I take a total of 5 shots.

Let’s go to Photoshop.

1. Go to File>Automate>Merge to HDR.

2. The pop up will be show and you need to select “Browse”.

3. Select photos and check the box “Attempt to Automatically Align Source Image”, then press OK.

4. Photoshop initially merge all photos for you. Your result will look like this.

5. On this example, you can see that there are two areas where color is not good due to merging.

6. I get rid of some exposure values (EV +3, EV0 and EV -1.32). This depends on your image. You may not need to do it or you may need to get rid of some like I do. You also can adjust brightness of this photo by sliding the bar located at the top right.

7. Change bit depth. There are 3 options which are 32 Bit/Channel, 16 Bit/Channel and 8 Bit/Channel. You need to select either 16 Bit/Channel or 8 Bit/Channel because they give you more options to adjust the final image. I select 16 Bit/Channel.

8. HDR conversion pop up will be shown. There are four methods for adjusting your image as Exposure and Gamma, Highlight Compression, Equalize Histogram and Local Adaption.

9. Exposure and Gamma is used to adjust brightness and contrast by sliding the Exposure and Gamma bar.

10. Highlight Compression- with this option, you are not able to change any parameters.

11. Equalize Histogram – with this option, you are not able to change any parameters as well.

12. Local Adaption – it is the best option and I recommend you to use it because it has a curve providing more flexibility to adjust brightness/contrast. Moreover, you can change Radius and Threshold as well. Try to play with this option until you feel satisfied with the result and then press OK.

13. This is the final result.

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Color Enhancement Photoshop Action for Free

admin — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 08:09:42 +0000

This is the Photoshop Action for enhancing color. You will get more color tone with this Photoshop Action as you can see in the sample below.

Download the action here. http://www.photoshopphotography.com/uploads/2011/08/Colorful-Enhancement-PhotoshopPhotography.zip

After unzip it, you can load it into your Photoshop Program.

This action is based on this technique, Increase Color Saturation with LAB Color Photoshop.

If you don’t know how to use Photoshop Action, please read this tutorial, How To Load Photoshop Actions.

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Change hair color using Photoshop

admin — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:31:10 +0000

I have not been writing Photoshop articles for awhile and today I would like to share how to use the Photoshop to change hair color. Let’s take a book before/after photo.

1. Open your image.

2. Select the Magnetic Lasso Tool from a Tool Pallet. The reason that I select the Magnetic Lasso Tool because this tool will help you create selection easily.

3. Draw the Magnetic Lasso Tool around hair. This tool will create the path automatically based on contrast between colors; therefore, you will be able to create selection pretty easy.

4. Draw the Magnetic Lasso Tool around and double click to create selection around the hair.

5. Go to Select>Modify>Feather or press Alt +Ctrl +D

6. Input feather value. I use 10 pixels. This step is to create smooth selection.

7. Go to Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color

8. Change mode to Soft Light, then press OK

9. Color pallet will be popped up and you can select color which will be hair color. For this example, I select brown.

10. You will see that you already have the girl with brown hair. However, you need to fix some part of her hair.

11. Go to the layer pallet and select the Layer Mask area

12. Select brush tool and assign white as brush color

13. Adjust its size and opacity. For this step, you may need to trial and error for few times in order to get the right brush size.

14. Please remember that painting white is used to add details. It means that we will paint into some area where hair is not brown yet. On the other hand, painting black is used to hide some details and we use it for some parts which we don’t want brown. For this step, you need to practice using brush and layer mask. There may be few times of trial and error before you get satisfied result. Try to paint until you get a good result.

15. If you want to change colors, you can go to the layer pallet. Double click at the color fill layer

16. Change colors and click OK.

17. This is new hair color.

I wish this tutorial would be helpful for you.

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Cross Process Free Photoshop Action

admin — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:49:09 +0000

I crate the Photoshop action, cross process Photoshop action and I would like to share wit you.

You can see that there are 4 tones in this action. Please feel free to download and use it for your photos.

Download here >>> http://www.photoshopphotography.com/uploads/2011/05/Cross-Process-Photoshop.zip

Once you complete download, you need to unzip the file and load the action into your Photoshop.

Read more about how to load photoshop action –> How To Load Photoshop Actions

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Create Frosted Pixels in Photoshop

admin — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:38:04 +0000

This tutorial shows you how to use Photoshop to crate frosted pixels. You can see the example below.

Please follow some simple and easy-to-follow instructions.

1. Open your image.

2. Go to Layer Pallet and select “Background” Layer. Press Ctrl + J (Win) or Cmd + J (Mac) to duplicate the layer.

3. This is the duplicated layer.

4. Change mode to Overlay.

5. Go to Filter> Pixelate> Mosaic

6. Set Cell Size. For this example, I set at 95 then press OK.

7. Your image will look like this.

8. Go to Layer Pallet select “Layer 1”. Press Ctrl + J (Win) or Cmd + J (Mac) to duplicate the layer.

9. You will get the “Layer 1 Copy”. Change mode to Multiply and adjust Opacity to 75 %.

10. Go to Filter> Stylize> Find Edges. This step will create edges of tiles. In order to see the tile edges clearly, you may need to repeat this filter few times.

11. After applying the filter few times, your image should look like this.

12. Go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur

13. Adjust Radius and press OK. I adjust radius to 7 pixel.

This is final image after processing in Photoshop.

I wish you would enjoy reading this tutorial.

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Crate Your Cartoon Face Avatar

admin — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:12:11 +0000

Today, I would like to share how to create your cartoon face avatar like this.

The cartoon faces are crate by website and how to use it is very simple. Please follow detailed step-by-step.

1. Go to http://www.faceyourmanga.it/homepage_eng.html

2. Select FACEYOURMANGA

3. Click at CREATE

4. Select sex

5. Try to mix and match. There are several options that you can play such as faces, hair sets, clothes, background, glasses, etc. You can try until you are happy with it then press FINNISH.

6. The website will ask you again what you want either continue editing (click CANCEL) or downloading (click OK). I press OK.

7. Add your details.

8. Wait until completion.

9. If your avatar is completely created, you avatar will be sent to your mail within 30 minutes. Actually, I did not wait that long. It took me only few minutes before email is sent to me. Please make sure that you check “junk mail” folder as well because somehow the email is automatically sent to the junk mail.

This is my Avatar.

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Simply Create Duo Tone In Photoshop

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:51:53 +0000

This tutorial demonstrates how to simply create duo tone photos in Photoshop.

Please follow the step-by-step.

1. Open your image.

2. Go Layer Pallet, select adjustment layer and choose Hue/Saturation

3. You will see Hue/Saturation window.

4. Check the Colorize box.

5. Adjust Hue/Saturation/Brightness until you feel satisfied with the result, then press OK. For this example, I use the following parameters

Hue = 5, Saturation = 71, Lightness =0

6. This is the reddish tone.

7. This is blue tone.

8. This is bright yellow tone.

Let’s apply this tutorial to process your photos.

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Dramatic Blending Effect in Photoshop

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 03:14:01 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you how to blend layer in Photoshop in order to add a dramatic and gritty effect. Let’s take a look at the images below and please following these step-by-step instructions.

1. Open your image.

2. Go to a layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer

3. You will get a duplicated layer called “Background copy”.

4. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

5. Adjust radius. For this tutorial, I use a radius of 6.

6. Go to the layer pallet and change mode to Overlay.

7. Go to the layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer. For this time, you will get another duplicate layer called “Background copy2”

8. Move “Background copy2” to the very top the layer list.

9. After moving it, you should see something like this at your layer pallet.

10. Go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

11. Change mode to Hard Light.

12. Your image will look similar to this one.

13. Click at a small triangle icon and select “Flatten Image” in order to merge all layers.

14. Go to the layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer.

15. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

16. Adjust radius. For this tutorial, I use a radius of 6.

17. Go to the layer pallet and change mode to Overlay.

18. Click at a small triangle icon and select “Flatten Image” in order to merge all layers again.

19. Go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correction

20. Adjust amount of vignette. I use vignette of -65. You can adjust the value and see the result until you feel satisfied with it.

21. The effect looks like this image.

I wish this tutorial would help you create dramatic photos.