Creative photography, PS tutorial removing bra strap /gray hair roots

creative photography, senior photography, family photography

 

Blog 8

 

Today we are working on a Photoshop tutorial that teaches about removing unwanted items in a photograph.  Creative photography, both amateur photography, and professional photography, all require some Photoshop.  An important distinction to know is that if this was a final edit for a photo a customer bought, it would have other post processing done at the same time.  I have broken this down into bite size pieces so it is easier to understand.  I have not done the complete PP (post processing).

 

So let’s begin. 

 

Step one:

 

Open image, make a copy of the background layer, (ctrl J), second step is to make selection around the bra strap, use the lasso tool.  The reason we want to select the area is because the healing brush tool will use areas of the dress and make the patch blurred with white because the healing brush tool samples areas around the brush stroke made with the tool.   This is the same reason we will also use the clone tool to fix the area on top by her hair. Notice the dark shadow; as the bra strap goes up towards her shoulder, that shadow will contaminate the fix with dark pixels.

 

So the creative photographer in you should be asking me why use the healing brush tool and not just clone the whole fix out.  You can, but when you learn how to use the healing brush and the trick I am going to teach you, you will be amazed at how quickly you can just paint over the strap.  You will paint with the healing brush up to where the stray hair goes over the strap.  If you zoom in super tight, and make your brush smaller and smaller, you could do almost the entire fix with the healing brush.  Remember the healing brush will sample adjacent pixels and if those pixels have a large shift in darkness to lightness or opposites in color it will contaminate the fix.  If we can use a bulldozer instead of using a hand shovel then we will save time.  That is the answer; this is going to make PP for creative photography easy and fun!

 

Step Two:

 

Now I want you to save your work, ctrl S, and then open a new file ctrl N.  Make it 4 x 4 at 72 dpi.  Go to Edit fill and choose 50 % gray and fill, then go to Edit, Define pattern and save this gray image as a pattern.  I called mine middle gray.  Close this image, you do not need to save it.  It is now in your patterns and this is a real life saving pattern.  We can do so, so, so much with this, just wait and see how much we will use it as you learn my tips and tricks!!!!

 

Now go back to your image. You are working on a copy of the original file.  Choose healing brush tool (it is the seventh tool down on the tool bar), mouse over and click the small black triangle to see all the tools in that tool box.  (Also by holding down the shift key and hitting the short cut key for that tool, (in this case it is the letter J) and each time you hit J the tools change as you rotate through them.  Pick the healing brush tool and set it to pattern, not clone.  Go into the pattern box on the tool bar and find the middle gray pattern you just made (see this is where we add creative to the creative photography).  Chose that pattern, now make a brush tip as big as the bra strap.  The short cut to change the brush size is ctrl bracket.  Left bracket and the brush tip becomes smaller. Right bracket and the tip becomes bigger.  Paint up to the hair with the brush tip about a quarter inch from the stray hair.  You will know if you go too far because it will go from a perfect fix to a goofy looking blotch if you get the hair pixels information along with her skin.  Remember for most of you this is your first time you have done this or used this tool so it may seem strange to you, and it may seem awkward at first, but after a few times you will never ever go back to cloning if the healing brush can and should be used.  Remember also that CS5 users have the advantage of “content aware”, which means you have super human strength and agility. You are a legend in the making!!!

 

We will use the clone tool to finish off the bra strap, and heal any rough areas that were kind of blotchy.  This whole step took less than three minutes to do, maybe five if you need to make the pattern.

 

How to do yellow teeth:

 

Open a saturation layer, change from Master to the yellow color, take that saturation handle, drag completely to the left, fill the layer mask with black, go to mask and select the invert button, brush tool 100% opacity and set to the color white paint over Moms teeth. Ctrl S to save your work.  You must be in the layer mask on the saturation layer; a white picture frame appears around the mask if the layer mask icon is selected.

 

Step Three:

 

Create an empty layer use the eyedropper tool (I short cut key) and sample some of the reddest part off moms hair, I choose camera right below her glasses, set your brush blending mode,  and your layer blending mode to color, then pick a soft brush, paint over any gray hairs, drop the layer opacity to about 25 – 30 %, then select filter blur, Gaussian and blur this layer slightly 10 – 15%, Ctrl S (get in the habit of this, wait until Photoshop crashes on a 2 or three hour lesson or project and you didn’t save as you go!!!!) you will never forget again.  Use the eraser tool (E short cut key) and remove any color that slipped into her face or back ground.  Ctrl S to save.

 

Use the Ctrl, Alt, Shift (hold all three down) and hit the letter E, this makes a composite of all the open layers, and now Ctrl S, pick your dodge tool set to midtones and about 20 % strength, select a small tip from the dodge tool bar and go over each eye, to add a little pop and brightness, Ctrl S and you just did a major retouch in minutes, while the clone tool Photoshop user is still cloning!!!

 

We will see you soon as we all look for the light, to see the light and become better amateur or professional photographers in our quest to become better creative photographers.

Michael Knapp

 

Photon Writer