by David Peters
Want to get rid of that nasty shine that you get taking pictures? Well now you can, follow these easy steps: Let’s start with a great, overlooked trick. After opening the image, open the same image again in a new window. In Photoshop, choose Window ->Arrange -> New Window. In Elements choose View->New Window. This allows you to view one window zoomed in for detail work and the other window at 100% so you can judge the effects. Using the magnifying glass tool draw a box around the area of shine. Make the box big enough to also show a fair amount of un-shiny skin. Select the Clone tool. At the top of the page select Mode: Darken and use the slider to set Opacity at 50%.Using the Clone Tool, select an area of un-shiny skin by putting the circle over the area and holding down the Alt button while left-clicking the mouse. To best match skin tone try to select the area of skin closest to the shine. Quick tip, to easily resize the Clone Tool circle simply use the bracket keys, [ and ] - much easier than moving your cursor back and forth between the photo and the Size slider. Now simply click on the shiny area and watch the magic happen. You’ll have to experiment a little for best effect, and for larger areas be sure to resample the un-shiny skin frequently. In the zoomed-in image the effect might look too obvious, so you’ll need to keep an eye on the 100% image to track your progress. Notice the difference on the tip of the nose, the cheek, and above his eye.
Color Model: When you hear the term color model we are referring to the method from which we define or classify the color we are to work with. Examples of such are RGB, LAB, CMYK, etc. Color Space: A color space is simply a variation of your color model. For instance, within your RGB framework some common variations are, sRGB, Adobe RGB, and so on. Some of these spaces are better for display e.g. sRGB and Wide Gamut RGB while other color spaces are more suited to printing e.g. ColorMatch RGB and Adobe RGB. Now, it is important to note that every device in our workflow utilizes it’s own unique color space. Meaning, while your monitor, scanner, and printer will base their color spaces basically on what we can see their actual gamut (range of colors) will differ. This is where we lose our consistency across devices. This is the problem we must attend to.
Adobe’s Photoshop is the number one choice digital photo editing software application among today’s professional photographers, graphic artists and web designers. It is not only the best but easier to work with than you might think. Many shy away from Photoshop because there are intimidated by the complexity. With the help of a good Photoshop tutorial you can begin to learn Photoshop within minutes and be on your way to restoring those old photographs and preserving your family’s memories for year to come. There are less expensive digital editing applications but the problem is that they often have very limited capabilities when it comes to doing high quality digital photo restoration. Those cheaper digital photo software packages often utilize a one size fits all approach to photo restoration and they just don’t have the functions to deal with all of the types of damage you may encounter in renewing your old photos.
To use the dodge tool, select it in the toolbox, choose your settings in the options bar, pick a brush from the pop-up palette, and drag in the image to lighten the chosen tones. This tool has an effect on click, but does not do any additional work until it’s moved (unless you click the airbrush button). However, repeated stroking over the same area does have a cumulative effect. If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
The spot healing brush made its debut in Photoshop Elements 3, but now an enhanced version of it is available in Photoshop CS2. The spot healing tool is different from the existing patch and healing tools in that it does not require you to make a selection or define a source point before using it. As you can see in the screen shot above, Photoshop CS2’s spot healing tool has more options than the version in Photoshop Elements 3. You can select a blending mode for the healing, and choose between proximity match or create texture. You can also sample all layers which allows you to use the spot healing tool on a new layer for non-destructive editing.
Photoshop is the dream machine for all photo enhancers and designers. Not only can you make any portrait look perfect, you can do it easily and convincingly once you know how. It’s always a good idea to make a new layer, an exact duplicate, of your photo before you ever start the enhancement process. That way, if you decide you need to undo several steps, you’ll always be able to quickly undo. Click “Layer” in the horizontal menu bar, click “Duplicate Layer,” then click “Ok.” Onward to the teeth-whitening.
Tons of people are using photoshop, but what aren’t they using it for and should? Restoring Old Photographs. Have a look through that old family photo album - the really old one from up in Grandma’s attic. Inside there are probably a few photos from way back when that haven’t stood the test of time so well. They’ve got cracks and tears that really spoil their appearance. Scan them into Photoshop, and then set to work with the Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, and Patch tools. The Healing Brush in particular is a great tool for this purpose as it samples data from one part of the picture and blends it in with what’s already there. Correcting Mistakes. We’ve all done it: Had an attack of “finger over the lens syndrome,” or got too close with the flash, so our subjects suffer from “red eye” and look like extras from a horror movie. Use the crop tool to salvage something usable from your obscured photo, and the enlarge wizard to blow it up to a reasonable size. For “red eye” and “pet eye,” use the eyedropper tool to sample color from around the iris, and a brush to paint away the red.
