To start this tutorial, you need two images. One of a pumpkin, and
one of a human. Of course, you can use any fruit/vegetable that you
desire. Both images that I’m using were found at Shutterstock.com.
The Mouth
Once you have your two images, it’s time to begin! Place the image
that contains the face, overtop of the image of the pumpkin. Once both
images on in the same document, decrease the Opacity of the face’s image
to help you better line it up. You can quickly decrease the Opacity to
60% by pressing the number 6 on your keyboard.
Once it’s in place, increase the Opacity back to 100%. Now we need to
isolate the mouth from everything else that came with the image. With
any of the many selection methods that are available to you, create a
selection around the mouth. It can be basic, or super specific. I chose
to use a simple Marquee selection.
When the selection has been created, it’s time to hide everything other than the mouth. This can easily be done with a Layer Mask. At the bottom of your Layers Panel, press the Add Layer Mask button.
Now that a Layer Mask has been added, using a black brush will allow you to hide additional parts of your layer, while a white
brush will allow you to bring those hidden parts back. So with a black
brush, brush around the outside of the mouth, to hide the leftover skin.
At this point, the lips clearly don’t match with the orange pumpkin.
There are many ways you can get around this, including the use of
Adjustment Layers. Let’s start by adding a Hue/Saturation Adjustment
Layer.
You may notice, once you add and adjust the Hue/Saturation, that your
whole image is being change. This is because you need to clip the
Adjustment Layer with the previous layer. This can be done with the
‘clip’ button, which you can see circled above. Once it’s clipped, you
should start to see a more natural result.
Of course, you can continue to add Adjustment Layers as needed. I chose to add a Levels Adjustment Layer, as well.
Remember: All Adjustment Layers come with a Layer Mask, so at anytime
you want to hide/show portions of that Adjustment Layer, you can easily
use your black/white brushes to do so.
The Eyes
For the eyes, you can use the exact same method that you used for the
mouth, which will give you a decent result, but you may still be left
with some visible skin.
In that case, you may want to add a Bevel and Emboss Layer Style, to
give the impression of depth. Here are the settings that I used for the
eyes.
Remember: Depending on the size of your document, you may need to
tweak the settings to get the result that you’re after. Here is what it
looks like after the Bevel has been applied.
And that should do it! Your own human pumpkin, made in Photoshop! Try it out yourself, and share it with the world!
I
really enjoy portraiture. When it's done well, it is very satisfying
and tells a lot about the person in the photo. However, there is always a
little element that is a constant problem for me: fly-away hair,
frizzies, or whatever you call them. They're the strands of hair that
stick out from the person's head and make your photo look a little
messy. Especially with corporate or fashion photographs, they're
practically unacceptable and must go.
I'll be showing you three
techniques that will give you options when tackling those pesky
follicles while keeping the final result natural-looking. As with any
retouching, it's a balancing act of taste vs need while keeping it
realistic. If you go too far, then you'll end up with "helmet hair"
which often looks fake.
Retouching an image is supposed to be done
well and subtle enough that the viewer doesn't notice it. A lot of that
comes from producing the shot properly in the first place, but the rest
comes from good technique and application. So, having your subject
well-groomed or using a hair stylist can be really helpful in reducing
the amount of time and effort needed to fix hair's errant ways. For the
rest, use these three techniques.
Technique #1: Clone Stamp Tool
Clone Stamp is
the Captain Obvious choice for removing heretical hair in Adobe
Photoshop. Simply sample the clean area and then brush over the hair and
make it go away. However, if you've used this tool before, you'll
notice that it has short-comings.
Its main strength is also its
main weakness: it copies exactly what you sampled, pixel-by-pixel. This
can be a problem with textured backgrounds or variations in color or
luminosity. However, with evenly-lit and evenly-colored backgrounds, the
Clone Stamp is awesome. Even
though I used a very small brush size, re-sampled repeatedly and
closely, and used the Lighten blend mode, the Clone Stamp Tool couldn't
handle the gradient.You can further refine your cloning and reduce problematic color/luminosity variations by using different Blend Modes for the brush. I use only three different modes:
Normal
Darken
Lighten
The Normal mode
works most of the time, but sometimes it's too exacting and can be a
problem with backgrounds that have a slight texture. Using the other two
modes can make my changes literally hair-thin. I use the Darken blend mode to retouch lighter hair that's against a darker background. I use the Lighten blend
mode to retouch darker hair against a lighter background. The effect
stops once the hair reaches the same luminosity and color value as the
sampled area. It will leave the areas that already match untouched, so
your corrections are only a couple pixels wide even if your brush size
is many times larger.
Technique #2: Healing Brush Tool
The Healing Brush is a more refined version of the Clone Stamp
tool. It copies the color, luminosity, and texture from the sampled
area over to the target area. It then applies some math and very
seamlessly blends the two into something that looks natural.
The Healing Brush
is great for removing blemishes, pimples, unwanted facial or body hair,
sensor dust, etc. It works better than the cloning technique mainly
because it isn't an exact copy, but smoothly blends the target and
sample areas with the target's surroundings.
Use this tool for backgrounds that are a little more complex or textured -- wherever the Clone Stamp is failing. You can also use it to clean up mistakes the Clone Stamp
has made while preserving the texture. I use it for hair that crosses
the face or is on clothing so that I can be rid of it without losing the
complexities of the skin or fabric.
Again, you can utilize the Blend Modes to further refine your retouching.
Unfortunately, the blending prowess of the Healing Brush
is also a shortcoming. It doesn't do well when your target area is too
close a hard line, such as the edge of someone's head. You'll get a
blurred bleed and it looks messed up. In this case, the Clone Stamp tool may be better suited, adjust the brush's hardness to match the transition. You
can see what happens when the Healing Brush can do when it gets close
to a high-contrast edge. This can happen even if your brush is tiny.
Brush Settings
So,
now you know two tools that zap away errant hair and when to use them,
but we'll go over some common settings I use that get the job done.
Through experiment and experience, I've figured that these tend to
produce the best and controllable results.
I use a Wacom tablet
for maximum control and flexibility, but this will work with a mouse,
too. If you don't own a Wacom and you're doing retouching, then buy a
pen tablet. They start at about $80 (USD) and last a long time. Mine is
six years old.
Clone Stamp
I usually keep the default shape settings, a circle, and use it at 100% Opacity.
I vary the brush's hardness, but rarely go over 80%. In fact, I use
this brush at 0%, 20%, 50%, and 80% increments as I've found it covers
most of my needs. Of course there are times that I'll use a different
hardness setting, but that is case-by-case. And with the pen tablet, I
can vary that further with pen pressure.
Like I mentioned earlier, I utilize different Blend Modes
when I need to. Appropriately matching these different settings to your
situation will result very good cloning and a faster workflow.
Healing Brush
A lot of people would tell you to use this brush with a soft edge. I'm going to tell you to do the opposite. Keep it at 100% Hardness all the time. Additionally, change your brush's shape (Roundness) to a narrow ellipse between 20 and 30%. I also angle it and change the direction, depending on my needs. You can change the angle to adapt to each situation.What these settings do is help the Healing Brush work better by forcing it to re-sample more often and more randomly than a soft-edged circle. Since the Healing Brush automatically
applies blending, you really don't need a soft brush. The results have
been very natural as well as a greatly reduced risk of that edge
blurring I mentioned earlier.
Finally, keep your brush size only
slightly larger than the area you wish to correct, especially with
fly-away hair close to the edge of someone's head or if the background
changes color or luminosity too greatly.
Technique #3: Surface Blur
While
this technique is mainly independent of the other two, it does
incorporate the others for maximum efficacy. It is a really quick way to
remove nearly all that fly-away hair with a single filter effect with
some basic masking. Aside from the processing bottleneck, it is faster
than going over each hair with either the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush.
Unlike Gaussian Blur or the other blurs, Surface Blur doesn't blend the edges beyond it's threshold setting. Surface Blur
considers something an "edge" when there is a significant change in
color and/or contrast. So, things like skin, clothing, and other fine
details will be smoothed, but not the edge of someone's face -- or the
main mass of hair. Gaussian Blur, left, just blends everything together. Surface Blur, right, keeps edges defined.Surface Blur is a great way to clean up a hair edge when you have a gradient background -- where the Clone Stamp
would struggle. It will do a nice job maintaining gradual tonal changes
while keeping hard edges well-defined. Give it a go when you have an
image with a graduated background.
Let's get into the steps for using Surface Blur to clean up hair in your images. Here
is our sample head. Lots of little stray hair and the Surface Blur
technique will do a lot of the work for us. (ISO 200, f/8, 1/160sec,
flash comp +1.3)
Step 1: Create a New Layer
Drag the layer onto the "Create New Layer" icon (Cmd+J or Ctrl+J) so that you don't affect any previous retouching you've done. You can convert this new layer into a Smart Object (Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object) to be able to change your settings without having to reapply the filter from scratch. Converting to a Smart Object is optional.
Step 2: Apply the Surface Blur
Go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur in order apply it. You'll see a preview of the effect at its current settings.
The Surface Blur filter has two sliders, Radius and Threshold. The
Radius determines the amount/strength of blurring. The Threshold
determines the tolerances of what the filter considers to be an "edge."
Going too low with the Radius will give you a halo and going too high
with the Threshold will make you lose your edges.You'lld
to adjust the sliders so that the fly-away hair disappears due to the
blurring, but the main body of hair and hard edges remain quite sharp.
This will take some experimenting and will vary from image to image.
However, I've found that a Radius of 40 pixels and Threshold of 20 pixels gives me great results. As you can see, a lot of the stray hair is gone while the main body of hair is intact.Once
you've gotten the settings pretty close, apply it and evaluate the
results. A lot of the isolated hair should be gone or mostly gone. After
applying Surface Blur, the hairline has been cleaned-up significantly.
The stragglers can easily be handled with the Clone Stamp Tool. (230%
zoom)
Step 3: Clone Stamp Clean-up
There are times when the Surface Blur gets the job done, but often you'll need to tackle the few that got away. With a soft-edge brush, Clone Stamp
those escapees by sampling very close to the target area to avoid
noticeable color variations. I keep my brush no higher than 50%
hardness. Sampling
very close to my target area, I got rid whatever the initial Surface
Blur missed. However, I made sure to try to keep it natural-looking.
(230% zoom)Try not to make the hairline too
clean because then it will look unnatural. You can do a second round of
Surface Blur at lower settings if it could use a little more general
refinement.
Step 4: Create a Layer Mask
Now it's time apply the effect only to the outer hairline. Create a Layer Mask on your layer with the Surface Blur by clicking the "Create Layer Mask" icon. Invert the color of the mask from white (visible) to black (invisible) with Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (PC). This will hide the effect. Create a Layer Mask and then invert (Cmd+I or Ctrl+I) it to hide the effect.Now,
with a hard-edged brush (about 80%) reveal the effect by painting on
the mask with white. Limit the revealing by only brushing over the hair
that need to go away. You don't need to be very precise because the Surface Blur should maintain the edging of the main body of hair. This is what the mask should look like. (100% zoom)
Step 5: Add Noise
Surface Blur usually
removes all the noise (grain) in an image. This lack of texture can
ruin the effect by being too smooth. We'll need to add noise in a dosage
that matches the rest of the image. I
zoomed in to 330% to show in more detail the differences between that
retouched and un-retouched areas. This is difference is visible at 100%
and will be more obvious with high-ISO photographs or under-exposed
images that have been brightened.Make sure you're working the image of the Surface Blur layer and not the mask by clicking on the thumbnail of the layer. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Make sure the layer's image thumbnail, not the layer mask, is highlighted. Otherwise, you'll be adding noise to the layer mask.In the Add Noise dialogue box, turn on the Gaussian and Monochrome settings.
Adjust the slider until the noise pattern and density closely matches
the rest of the image. While not entirely necessary, this small detail
does an excellent job hiding the retouching you've done. For
this image, I applied 3% Noise. It's not perfect, but is the closest
match. At 330% zoom it's really good and when we zoom-out to 100% you
won't notice it.
Conclusion
Before retouchingAfter retouchingWhen
you have a great portrait, sometimes fly-away hair can really be a
pain. While cloning and healing are great, they do have limitations.
Using them in conjunction with the Surface Blur technique can not
only improve your retouching results, but also cut-down on the time and
tediousness of either technique alone.
With practice, you'll be
able to evaluate an image and quickly decide which of these techniques
will be most effective in removing fly-away hair
We’ll start this tutorial by creating an autumn forest scene from two
stock photos. Then we’ll adjust color, shade and light as well as make a
dreamy effect. Later we’ll add the model and do some retouch to match
her with the scene. After that we’ll use two stocks to create lighting
effect. Finally we’ll use some adjustment layers to boost the final
result. You’ll need Photoshop CS3 or newer to follow this tutorial.
Create a new document in Photoshop with the settings below:
Step 2
Open the forest image. Use the Move Tool (V) to drag it into our white canvas:
Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal:
Step 3
To create some depth to the background , go to Filter > Blur > Gassian Blur and set the radius to 6 px:
Step 4
To make some light for the background, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and increase the lightness:
On this Curves layer mask use a basic, soft brush with black color to erase the left:
Step 5
To make the left darker I used another Curves adjustment layer :
On this Curves layer mask use a soft black brush to erase the right to keep its brightness:
Step 6
Open the ground image. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+Option/Alt+Shift+N to make a new
layer. Active the Clone Tool (S) and use it to remove some branches on
the ground:
Step 7
Press Cmd/Ctrl+Option/Alt+Shift+E to merge the background layer and the clone one. Move the merged layer into our main document:
Click the second button at the bottom of the Layers Panel to add a
mask to this ground layer. Use a soft black brush to remove the trees
and blend the ground with the background:
Step 8
Apply Gassian Blur with 4 px to this ground:
On this Filter Mask use a soft black brush to remove the blur effect on the foreground:
Step 9
To change the color of the ground, I used an adjustment layer with
Clipping Mask. Go to Layer > New Adjutment Layer > Hue/Saturation:
Start by opening the photo into Photoshop. To open an image, go to File
> Open. If you’ll be using the same image we used, we recommend
downloading the highest resolution image because we will be cropping it
in the middle of the tutorial.
Step 2
Right-click on the layer then click Convert to Smart Object. This will
convert the layer into a Smart Object which lets us manipulate the image
non-destructively.
Step 3
Before we start, we’re going to add a black layer below the photo layer.
To do this, go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. Select
black as the color then click OK.
Step 4
In the Layers palette (Window > Layers), drag the Color Fill layer to the bottom. Rename the top layer to Photo and bottom layer to Background. To rename a layer, double-click on the text of the layer you want to rename.
Step 5
To begin, we’ll add a gritty photo effect with adjustment layers and
filters. Start by adding a Black & White adjustment layer (Layer
> New Adjustment Layer > Black & White) then change the
blending mode of this layer to Overlay. Feel free to play around with
the settings in the Properties panel (Window > Properties). This is
an easy way of adding a grungy lighting effect and you can try it with
your other photos.
Step 6
Next, add a Vibrance adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer
> Vibrance). Reduce vibrance setting until it just has a hint of
color.
Here’s what our image looks like after reducing the vibrance setting.
Step 7
The adjustment layers gave it a grungy lighting effect but it also hides
the detail and makes the background even darker. We don’t want to the
photo to be too dark because it can blend in with the black background
and make the stripes not very visible. To fix this, we’re going to apply
a Shadows/Highlights adjustment. In the Layers panel, select the Photo
layer then go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. Set the
shadows to around 35% and highlights to around 15% then click OK.
If you look in the Layers palette, you can see that the adjustment was applied as a Smart Filter.
This is because in Step 2, we changed the layer into a Smart Object.
The benefit of using Smart Filters is that you can change the settings
at any time without undoing a bunch of steps.
Step 8
Next, we’re going to add some grain to the photo using the Add Noise
filter – which will be applied as a Smart Filter just like the previous
step. Make sure you have the Photo layer selected then go to Filter >
Noise > Add Noise. Checkmark the Monochromatic option then adjust
the settings so that you get an effect like shown in the image below.
Click OK to add the noise.
Step 9
Next, we’re going to crop and rotate the image. Select the Crop tool
(C) then in the options bar, disable the “Delete Cropped Pixel” option.
This will let us uncrop or make adjustments to the crop at any time.
Crop the image like shown in the image below. We also rotated the image
so that the eyes are more horizontally aligned. This is important
because when we add the stripes, we want to ensure that the eyes are
visible and don’t tilt off the top or bottom edge of the stripes.
Step 10
Now we’re going to add some text to the image. We’re doing this first so
that we know where to place the stripes later. In the Layers palette,
select the top layer so that when you add the text, they all appear
above the top layer. Select the Text tool then add some text around the
image with each line of text in their own layer. The font used below is
Arial.
Step 11
Select all the text layers (hold CTRL to select multiple layers) then
add them to a group (Layer > Group Layers or Ctrl+G). Rename the
group to Text.
Crop the image like shown in the image below. We also rotated the image
so that the eyes are more horizontally aligned. This is important
because when we add the stripes, we want to ensure that the eyes are
visible and don’t tilt off the top or bottom edge of the stripes.
