Clear Acne with Photoshop Retouching

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First published at TipSquirrel.com by Janine Smith

Unfortunately, acne’s a normal part of adolescence (and, more often than not, adulthood), one that can be quite embarrassing for the person sporting it. Sometimes, it’s just as painful looking back at photographs and seeing the cursed red spots. My son, Jason, had terrible acne when he was in junior high, until he went to a dermatologist to take care of it. To this day, he’s still embarrassed to see those old pictures. So, even amongst all the discussion out there over whether using Photoshop to manipulate a photograph is good or bad, or ethical or not, maybe it’s not such a bad thing to do a little Photoshop magic on a senior photograph, or clean up a social media profile shot. Regardless of your personal opinion on that matter, I’m going to show you one way to erase a little acne in someone’s life. By the way, the photo I’ll be using for this tutorial is not my son, it’s a stock photo provided by our friends at Fotolia.

 

 The first thing you’ll want to do is to take as much of the red out from the acne and surrounding areas. That will make the actual removal of the blemishes very much easier. To do this, make a Hue / Saturation Adjustment layer. Since it is the red we’re trying to get rid of, set the drop down menu to Red. Now move the Hue slider to the left and then the right – the goal is to find the color that makes the acne stand out the most.

See the rest of this tutorial here

Quick Tip: Reduce Digital Noise with Photoshop

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com 

Photoshop Nut : Janine Smith

Q: How do I Get Rid of Digital Noise?

A: Have you ever had an image that has bits of color in it that clearly shouldn’t be there? I suppose there are all sorts of reasons they may be there (High ISO, low light…), but all some people care about is that they’re there and they want them to go away! When you see a big splotch of red on a blue shirt, it seems the simple thing to do is to do a Hue / Saturation adjustment, use the dropper to select the red and change the hue and saturation until you have a better match, but the truth is if you do that, the selection won’t be red, it’ll be the same color as the color the splotch is on, or blue. So no go on that. Besides, getting the colors to match, even somewhat, would be a pain, especially if you had a lot of photos taken at the same time, in the same conditions. So, the bad news is you can’t make them just easily go away. You can reduce them, though, and do it pretty fast, too.

 Here’s a close up example of a blue shirt with digital noise:

Splotch blast! Now to reduce the splotch: Start by making a duplicate of the background layer. Change the Layer Blend Mode of this duplicate layer to Color.

 

 Now go to Filter > Blur >

Gaussian Blur; start moving the slider over to the right. Don’t pay attention to the preview window, which will begin to blur, rather watch the image itself, which is not blurring, but the colored noise is seemingly fading away.

You’ll know you’re going too far when the image starts to desaturate.

Mask out the areas surrounding the parts where you reduce the noise. There might still be some flaws, but it could be that the remaining flaws are preferable to the splotch!

Coloring with Photoshop – Skin

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com 

Photoshop Nut : Janine Smith

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We’re going to perk things up a bit with a little help from history. First, we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions; what era is our image from and what era’s style do we want to borrow from? Of course, you can color your images any way you like, but personally, I like to borrow styles from the era the image was taken in. For the really old images that may mean striving for a watercolor or pastel look of a hand tinted image and portraits taken in the 40’s may call for the more saturated, glamorous style of that era. I’ll go more into the styles of each era and inspiration at a later date, but for now, since the image I’m working on was taken in the 40’s, you can go online and find an image or images from that era that appeals to you in terms of skin and hair color. You may feel like it’s wrong to borrow an image, but It’s okay to use these images for this purpose – all you’re going to do is sample color palettes, you’re not using the image or reproducing it in any other way. I liked the skin tones in this image of Rita Hayworth so I sampled some of the colors"

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From The TipSquirrel.com Archive : HDR Sharpening in Photoshop

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com
Photoshop Nut : Janine Smith

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I recently put a photo up on Facebook and Twitter that generated a lot of buzz, using HDR Toning in Photoshop as a way to sharpen old photos. I discovered this method while working on the Adobe Prerelease of CS5. Previously I had been using the High Pass filter, but I’ve since pretty much shifted my loyalty over to HDR Toning. Why? It’s a bit more difficult in that you have to make a duplicate of the photo and flatten it, then drag and drop it into the original file when you’re done, but for me it’s absolutely worth the two minutes worth of extra work because of the presets and, most of all, because of the results! People were messaging and emailing me asking me what, exactly, I did for this particular photo. It’s really quick and simple and goes something like this: In the midst of a huge restoration project for a client, I found this really great photo. Apart from the normal age-related damage, it had some problems. The top of the photo had some blurring – maybe due to the wind moving the trees, and it was dark and rather murky, but I love the sun shining through the trees and the two men walking along the snowy road. I’ve used HDR Toning on a lot of photos since Photoshop CS5 came out and thought it might be just the thing to sharpen the photo a bit and really bring out some detail. After I did all the normal restoration bits (specks, dots, spots, etc.), I went to Image > Duplicate. Don’t worry about naming the duplicate image, it’s a throw away, so just hit OK. Working on the duplicate, go back to the Image menu and select Adjustments, then HDR Toning. A pop-up will ask if you want to flatten the layers (assuming you have more than one, and since you hopefully won’t be doing your restoration work on the original layer, I’ll assume you do!). Click Yes. When the HDR Toning dialog box pop’s up, scroll through all the presets. There are a lot of sliders that adjust the Edge Glow, Tone and Detail and the Color; these are great to get to know and to experiment with to see how they can improve your photo, but for right now we’ll just go with a preset. I went with the Photorealistic preset, because I liked the way it sharpened up the trees without that heavy fringing that HDR can cause when not used lightly. The over-the-top HDR look has no place in photo restoration, in my opinion, but it can improve a photo if subtly done. Notice the sun looks pretty bad, but we’ll be taking care of that. After you’re decided what preset to use, click OK to close the dialog box. Making sure the Move Tool is active, drag and drop your HDR toned duplicate layer into your original file. Be sure to press the Shift key before you let go of your left mouse key to drop it into the file, so the new layer is centered. To make things look a bit better, a Layer Blend Mode is definitely in order! As with the HDR Toning presets, scroll through the Layer Blend Modes, find the one that lightens (or darkens if appropriate for the photo you’re working on) the photo enough to see all the detail, while still maintaining, or adding, plenty of contrast. I went with Lighter Color, lowering the Opacity to 70%, because it brightened up the sky in a way I liked. It still needs something, though, so I’m going back to HDR Toning! This is how easy it is to go back for another round or see if something else works better for you; just go back to your duplicate image and hit Ctrl+Alt+Z, Cmd+Opt+Z on a Mac, once to delete the state change and you’re back to your flattened image, per-HDR Toning, all ready to start again! Image > Adjustments > HDR Toning again, and you’re ready to try another preset or move some sliders around. This time, I went with the Default preset because it totally brightened up the whole image! After dragging and dropping this layer into my original file and cycling through the Layer Blend Modes, I decided to keep the LB Mode on Normal, 100% Opacity. It gave it a little more of a rosy glow that I liked and lightened up the details just a wee bit more. When you’re done trying out the HDR Toning presets and sliders and have found a look you love, you can delete the duplicate layer. And that’s really all there is to it! I initially tried all the other methods, Curves, Blend Modes, etc. to bring out the details and make a good photo great, but this worked better and, frankly, was a lot easier! Give HDR Toning a try on your next restoration project!

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