Peek-a-Boo, I See You (Solving Underexposed Faces)

Well, it seems photo editing has become the hot topic for Tutorial Tuesday! After last week’s technique for diminishing shiny skin, Steph sent me a message: “I love this week’s blog post about correcting a shiny face. Do you remember if you have a tutorial about improving a photo that has a face in shadows? I tried searching but didn’t see one. Thanks, Steph“. I don’t think I have done one specific to faces, although we’ve talked about fixing underexposed photos in a couple of ways, by editing in Camera Raw or by copying the photo and changing the Blend Mode to Screen, then copying that new layer as many times as necessary to bring out those details. But there will be times when those methods aren’t going to work. Like when your subject is backlit… 

This gentleman is Mike. He works for JuJu Tours in Negril, Jamaica as a glass-bottom boat pilot. We took a New Year’s Eve boat tour with him in 2014 and I have quite a few photos where I know who I’m looking at but nobody else will. It seemed like a good choice for this tutorial.

I like to do most of my experimentation on a copy layer so that my original is still there if I need to refer to it. So my first step is always to make a Copy layer. CTRL/CMD>J is the keyboard shortcut, but if you’re into working more than necessary, right-click on the background layer then choose Duplicate Layer and follow the prompts.

I want to separate Mike from the sky and now that I’ve figured out how amazing the Polygonal Lasso tool is, that’s what I used here. The trick to making this tool work beautifully for you is to make small movements with your mouse and click frequently to mark your spot.

On the screenshot, I’ve used the word “slowly”. But it only took me about 3 minutes of small mouse movements and clicks to get a relatively clean selection. When I got back to my starting point the tool automatically turned on the marching ants showing me where my selection was.

One drawback to the Polygonal Lasso tool is that you can’t Zoom in and out while you’re using it, so it’s hard to get a perfect selection. So once I have my basic shape lassoed, I use the Selection Brush tool – its icon looks just like a paintbrush with a few marching ants curving above the bristles. This tool lets me add or subtract areas of my selection. I usually use the biggest brush I can for the area I’m adjusting, and I toggle back and forth between adding and subtracting until I get all of my marching ants following the edge of my selection. The controls for this tool are at the bottom left of the workspace.

I Zoom in on areas like this one so I can see as clearly as possible where my ants have strayed.

This photo was a great one for this example, because there aren’t a lot of these sticky spots. Don’t be put off by the time it takes to do this – it’s actually not that bad… maybe another 2 minutes.

The spot where the sunglasses’ temple attaches needed some attention.

For general purposes, perfection is impossible and a waste of time. And in the end, it’s not usually necessary because unless the imperfection is a big one, it’s not going to be the centre of attention, so don’t sweat it!

Depending on your background though, a spot like this might deserve some precision. The sky here is really blown out and I’m not going to change that, but if I had some sort of detail – leaves on a tree for example – that would be visible in that gap, I’d definitely want to add it into my selection.

After I ‘d gone all the way around the selection and adjusted as needed, I Zoomed back out a bit to see how clean the edge looked. On to the next step!

I wanted to separate Mike from the sky – or more accurately I wanted to remove the sky from around Mike. To make that happen, I Inverted the selection: Select>Inverse or CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>I.

With the Copy layer still the active one, I Cut away the sky. Edit>Cut or CTRL/CMD>X

This screenshot is just to show you that the sky is now gone from that top layer, but it’s still present in the original layer (it’s just invisible right now).

Now that Mike was all by himself on the top layer, I used Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights. The default setting for this adjustment is for the Shadows to be automatically decreased by 50% so don’t be shocked! Highlights are default-set at 0% and Contrast is set right in the centre.

I pushed the Lighten Shadows slider all the way over to 100% to really lighten up his face. I Darkened Highlights by 26% and Midtone Contrast was boosted to +28%. All of a sudden it’s almost possible to identify what’s reflected in his lenses.

I’m happy I can see Mike‘s features now, but I think the image is a bit too soft. My favourite tool for fixing that is the Haze Removal menu.

Haze Removal also darkens the image a wee touch, as you can see in the preview below. But it looks good with the default setting so I went ahead and clicked OK.

For all intents and purposes, I could quit right here and it would be perfectly fine. But I’m always going to take it a bit further so I can show you what else you can do with your photos. I think the background is a lot blown out and that’s fixable.

But before we move on to that, I decided Mike still looked a bit shadowy. So I decided to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast just a smidge.

These sliders start out in the centre. I pushed the Brightness slider to 54 and the Contrast slider to 10. Now it’s good.

Just for fun, I turned off the top layer to remind myself where I started.

Okay, on to the sky. I made another Copy layer (right-click>Duplicate Layer or CTRL/CMD>J) of the background (bottom) layer.

With the Copy layer active, all I did was change the Blend Mode to Color Burn. It looks a bit neonish now though.

Quick fix: Decrease the Opacity of the Color Burn layer to 61%.

Then I brought Mike back and Merged all the layers so I could save my work.

I wasn’t totally happy with the finished image though. Mike still looked a bit fuzzy. So I Copied that image layer again so I could add a High Pass Filter.

Here’s why you do the High Pass filter on its own layer. A rule of thumb for sharpening an image this way is that you should only see a hint of colour through the filter. Otherwise you risk having it look over-processed. (I have plans for a really interesting tutorial where you WANT to have an in-your-face look to your photo, but that’s all I’m telling you.)

To see how the filter works, change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

And now you see the photo I THOUGHT I took! I just had to Merge the layers again and save it for later.

Before I go, I want to remind you that you’re in control of your work. You can stop at any point along the way if you’re happy with what you’re seeing. These tutorials are intended to help you understand your software, make it work harder for you without making you work harder to get what you want, and to up your scrapbooking game… while having a little fun along the way.

It’s All a Matter of Taste – Black and White

Well, July is nearly over and I have STILL not managed to get any scrapping done. I thought about it, but that’s as close as I got. We had a crazy-busy week and I think we’re finally (almost) at the end of the big things we needed to do with the house. We have a fence for the dogs, we’re having synthetic turf put down in the yard on Thursday and once I get the plants I dug up from the backyard transplanted, I might be able to relax! Of course, Thursday is forecast to be the second-hottest day of the summer (36°C/97°F) and I’ll be outside shoveling river rock into our son-in-law’s truck. They better bring the beer!

Anyway… I was looking at some back issues of Photoshop Elements Techniques (only available now as an archive) and came across some tips on converting colour photos to black and white to make them look amazing. So I decided I’d check out the options. I’m using Elements 2019, but the tips I’m going to show you are easily found in most versions.

When I took a photography course many years ago, well before the advent of digital photography, my teacher talked about how black and white was THE true art of photography. I tend to agree with that notion. There are so many nuances to black and white photography that just aren’t there in colour images. Digitally speaking, turning a colour photo into a black and white one is easy, but the ART of it is more in the eye of the beholder. So let’s have a look. I’m using a landscape photo I found at Pixabay for my example.

This method is the first one I tried way back in 2006 when I was learning the basics of Elements. Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue/Saturation can also be reached by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>U.

This method has been available in all versions, and so many of us have done it this way. Dropping the Saturation down to 0 removes all the colour. But that’s all.

It IS nice. All the detail in the clouds, rocks and reflections is there.

In all but the earliest versions of Elements, there’s an option to Remove Color in the Enhance menu.

And this is the outcome. I think it looks pretty similar to the desaturated one. Maybe just the slightest bit more contrast.

But then there’s this option… Enhance>Convert to Black and White. This option first appeared in Elements 9. Could this be the WSNH (Work Smart Not Hard) method of choice?

When I clicked on that button this is what came up. Below I’m showing the default settings; it comes up in the Portrait setting with the colour sliders (Red, Green, Blue and Contrast) as you see them. Now, I know you’re thinking, “Colour sliders? But there IS no colour!” Let’s unpack that.

I went through all of the Modes here, looking at where the colour sliders were in their default settings. See if you can see a difference in each of the images as we go along. Newspaper mode looks like this: slightly less Green, a smidge more Blue and marginally less Contrast.

In Scenic Landscape, the Red has been boosted and the Blue reduced. I can see that the image is slightly warmer looking.

Urban/Snapshots mode has somewhat less Red, slightly more Green, a bit more Blue and the same amount of Contrast, even though it seems like the Contrast is a bit less obvious. I think this mode would be great for architectural photos and streetscapes.

Vivid Landscapes brings the mood with it. Lots more Red, a good bit less Green and Blue, same Contrast. And yet…

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Infrared Effect. There’s less Red, a LOT more Green, a middling amount less Blue and the same degree of Contrast. I think I need to take a deeper dive into Infrared… stay tuned!

Okay, so I’ve looked at all the options. I decided to go back to the Scenic Landscape settings and play with the sliders.

I left the Red and Green as is, decreased the Blue a bit and increased the Contrast quite a bit. I like that the rocks look more carved and stark.

So I went with it. The image is a bit harsh, which suits the subject matter. I could just save it like this, but I want to play with it a bit more.

I really like to use the Levels adjustments especially with black and white images. It can be found by clicking Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Levels or with the easy keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>L.

In the default setting for this tool, the sliders for both Input and Output Levels are at either end of the boxes. With the Input adjustment, moving the slider on the left makes the lighting darker, the slider on the right makes it brighter. The centre slider offers a finer adjustment than either of the ones on the ends. For the Output adjustment, the changes are more contrast-related and inverse – the left slider lightens and the right slider darkens.

These are the settings I liked. When using Levels the best way to make them work for you is to watch what’s happening while you move the sliders. That way you’ll know when to stop!

There’s just one more thing I did to this image that I want to show you. As you can see, I added a Copy layer so that whatever I do, my original image isn’t touched. You may wonder why I keep doing more and more, when I have a perfectly useable image already. Well, how better to encourage you to experiment than to do it myself? There’s always the Undo (CTRL/CMD>Z) function! (And I use it a TON!)

I played with some Filters and liked how this one looked, so I clicked Filters>Stylize>Glowing Edges. What do you think happened?

This. This happened. Remember that when you use Filters, you’ll see this screen, with the Filter adjustment panel on the far right. It’s hard to know what it’s going to look like later, but I wanted to have the “glowing” effect to be prominent at this stage.

Here’s the result. So much drama! But it’s a bit on the gloomy side.

So I changed the Blend Mode (naturally I tried several before settling) to Soft Light and decreased the Opacity to 35%. Now I have what Mrs Hansen would call Photographic Art.

Give these methods a whirl and see which one works best for you!

How Can I… Pierce my Paper?

Greetings from the sunny Okanagan! It looks like summer has finally arrived, and the rain has gone away. (That reminds me, I need to water my pots!) I hope your weather is treating you well too, and you can get outside in the fresh air.

Today’s tutorial came from a challenge of sorts from Steph, who likes to see digital methods that emulate paper-crafting techniques. She sent me a couple of images showing a paper-piercing technique and asked if I thought it could be done digitally. Well, of course it can! I just had to figure out how! The image below is from Lisa Addesa‘s blog I’m In Haven. See the areas where she’s punched through her cardstock to add some texture and dimension to her card? How cute is that!

I went through my stash and found a cardstock that’s a similar grey. I could have chosen any colour, but thought it would make easier to see how it works if I used grey.

I thought about what would make the most sense to the most people (and didn’t cost anything) and opted to use a Custom Shape to create my path for punching. You could use a swirly brush, an element from a digi-kit or a hand-drawn path if you wanted to. The default shapes are uh… not what I was looking for!

So I clicked on the triangle at the side of the Custom Shape tool bar and opened up the tool’s menu. Right at the top of the list is an option to see ALL of the custom shapes in the library. And there are a lot.

I found a swirl about 3/4 of the way down the list that looks a lot like the one in the example, so I chose that one. But this technique can be adapted to ANY of the shapes you see here without any difficulty.

I used white as my foreground colour but again, it doesn’t matter at all what colour I used. As long as it shows up against the background, it’s all good. I clicked and dragged out a swirl as you can see. The shape is created on a new, “Smart Object” layer, meaning it can’t be altered in any way in its original state.

I plan to make some alterations so I right-clicked on the layer and chose Simplify Layer.

Now I CTRL/CMD>Clicked on the Layer Thumbnail (that little picture of the layer I’ve circled). That “selects” the edges of the image.

This step isn’t essential, but to avoid confusion I’ll show you what I did. You could just use the swirl as it appears, but this makes it easier. I clicked Select>Modify>Contract and that moves the marching ants that delineate the selected area inward. (Expand would do the opposite and make the selected area larger.)

I just picked a number (10 pixels) and tried it to see if it was a good number. It was, so onward ho!

This step too isn’t essential. You could leave the selected area inside the swirl alone and carry on to the next step. In fact, if I was using a more complex shape, I think I would skip this step altogether. Anyway, I clicked Select>Inverse to move the selected area from inside the swirl to outside.

Then I clicked Edit>Cut (CTRL/CMD>X) and that removed a large amount of the swirl without altering the shape.

See how it’s so skinny now? If I hadn’t Inverted my selection, instead Elements would have cut away the centre of the line, which would work well for the next steps too. I chose the Brush tool, a hard round brush 16 pixels in diameter at 100% Opacity and made some adjustments to the Brush Settings, which I’ll show you in the next image.

My current laptop isn’t as user-friendly with screenshots as my previous one was, and I couldn’t screenshot the Brush Settings menu, so I took the laptop into the laundry room where there’s very little light, and took a photo with my phone. The image shows the Brush Settings defaults. We’re going to adjust only that “Spacing” setting. I ended up choosing 125% as my spacing, but if you want your piercings to be closer together, use a smaller number. Farther apart? Go larger.

But………… before we go any further, Create a New Layer!! Brushes ALWAYS go on their own layer.

The starting point is a matter of preference. I zoomed in a ton and started at the open end. I held down the left mouse key and slowly, slowly followed my swirl path with my brush. The dotted line just appeared as I went along. When I had to stop and reposition my workspace, I just eyeballed the spacing for where the next dot should be and started brushing again from there.

Don’t aim for perfection. If you were actually piercing paper with a needle tool, the holes wouldn’t be perfectly spaced (although these ones are) and they wouldn’t perfectly follow the swirled line. It took me about 10 minutes to work my way around the entire swirl with my “holes” quite close together and my swirl covering most of my 12×12 paper. If I’d just Cut away the centre of the shape, it would have created a grey opening in the white swirl for me to follow. I tried it both ways and it really doesn’t matter with this kind of shape.

This is where you see how important it is to put the brush on its own layer. If I’d brushed directly on the swirl, I wouldn’t be able to turn it off and just have the brush left. At this point the swirl shape layer can be deleted. It isn’t needed any more.

Okay, that’s great. But it doesn’t look like the paper has been pierced. How do I get that? If you read and tried the tutorial on letterpress, you already know! I applied a Bevel Style: click the Style button at the bottom right of the workspace then select Bevels from the drop-down.

The best choice for this technique is the Simple Emboss bevel, the one in the upper right corner. It’s hard to see in the screenshot, but now it looks a bit like Braille.

To get the Bevel to look like a piercing, it’s necessary to change the settings on the Style. Double-click on the fx icon on the brush layer and change the Direction to Down. Leave the size at 21 pixels.

Let me show you what else you can do with that brush on its own layer. You can resize it to whatever size works for you. I like to start with a large image and then size it to suit, which makes it easier to see what I’m doing. (One caveat: if your dots/”holes” are close together when the image is fairly large, they will appear to run together when you shrink the image. So if you think you might want to make it smaller, leave more space between your “holes”.)

And you can copy it, skew it, rotate it and play with it until you have the look you’re after. I know I’ll be doing this on some of my creations!

That’s it for this week. Give it a try!