Photo retouching is a method of photo editing which focuses primarily on the restoration and enhancement of photographs whether the photo is digital or printed. The art of photo retouching has the ability to highlight different details within an image or make up for the limitations of a specific kind of camera. As such, the light exposure, contrasts or color tones can be corrected or played with thanks to photograph retouching. It is important to note though that photo retouching is not simply equitable to Photoshop. Although Photoshop is one of the most common way photo retouching is performed, photo retouching can also be performed with different chemical agents and physical changes made to film before they are printed.

Different Aspects and Benefits of Photograph Retouching:
• Portrait Photos. One of the most common kinds of photo retouching is the kind employed when taking portrait photos. With photo retouching, a digital artist can take a portrait photo and correct any skin blemishes or uneven skin tones. This kind of photo retouching is the secret to flawless images that we see gracing the covers of magazines day in and day out.

• Old to New. When it comes to printed photographs, there is a tendency for the images to lose quality and clarity as time goes by. The photos can also be marred by scratches or color fading due to over or under exposure to sunlight. Photo retouching makes it possible for the oldest photos in the family album to return to their former glory and lustre.

• Colour Splash. Photo retouching has become so advanced that it is now capable of taking the oldest black and white photographs and turning them into coloured images. Despite the fact that it is adding colour to a photograph, there are no sacrifices made to the quality and clarity of the original image.

A photograph is a memory that has been captured in time and meant to last forever. Unfortunately that wasn’t always the case in the past as many photos ripped or faded and were destined to be tossed into the garbage bin. Thanks to photograph retouching, photographs can now be restored and last as long as they were meant to last: to be passed on to younger generations in the years to come.

About Author

http://www.clippingpathspecialist.com
www.clippingpathindia.com
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Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-atiqur-sumon-33499.html

Our gorgeous cover model Amanda Evans, may be reached on ModelMayhem. Amanda’s cover photo was supplied by: Lost For Word’s Photography.

“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”

Finally on March 2010 another beta version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom was released which added features like: New luminance noise reduction, Tethered shooting for selected Nikon and Canon cameras (This helped a lot for compatibility issues and was greatly appreciated), Basic video file support and Point curve. Both the releases of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom version 3.0 were highly appreciated and had awesome market response. The final version was released on June 8, 2010 although it did not have any new functionality added to it, It had added the lens corrections and perspective transformations and had a few more improvements and performance optimizations.

The best thing about Adobe Photoshop lightroom is that it basically focuses on the following features:

• Image collection, review and organization
• Non-destructive RAW and jpeg editing
• Tools and export features regarding slideshows
• Automatic gallery creation and web connectivity

For the above mentioned features Adobe Photoshop Lightroom was appreciated a lot and as per a journal released by Adobe in 2009, a survey result stated that nearly 40 to 50 percent of photographers of all environments prefer Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for editing.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is now so famous that it has more than 100 Lightroom Keyboard shortcuts. So cheers to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

About the Author:- The article is written by RPGKey.com. Looking out for Adobe Photoshop Light room Keyboard Shortcuts? Then your RPG key needs in a wedding environment and need to organize thousands of digital images in various forms with shell scripts and adequate programs. Then you should have wedding photography workflow solution. For more information logon to http://www.rpgkeys.com/

Our gorgeous model Marcella Bragio, can be contacted through ModelMayhem. Marcella’s cover photography was supplied by Ron of Ethereal Pixels Photography.

Adobe Light room is software by which we can easily edit hundred’s of photos within short period of time. RPG designed a wireless Lightroom keyboard for high speed editing using lightroom. This product gives photographers the ability to control the key image editing tools within lightroom without using a mouse. Not only keyboard’s RPG Key’s offering many more advanced software’s, plug-ins, and also services which are friendly user to photographers. It reduces our editing time into half so that we can spend our time in other else like snapping photos.

The features of Photoshop lightroom are image collection review and organization, non-destructive RAW and JPEG file editing. We can create automatic gallery and upload in web. It makes even easier to get your photography tasks done quickly with plug-ins for many specialized jobs and specific steps in your workflow. Lightroom provides extensive and powerful image editing controls. To gain access to additional tools and techniques or to perform highly specialize editing tasks we can use external plug-ins.

Photographers use light room to import pictures and make quick edits. The other software introduced by RPG Key’s is Lightroom beta. It is the software development phase following alpha. When the software is feature complete then generally the lightroom beta will begins. The focus of the beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The software’s which are designed by RPG Key’s are very useful for Photographers, Not only for them it’s useful for those who wants to take photos professionally as photographers also. These are perfect software’s for users who wants to edit photos professionally.

The products and software’s provided by RPG Key’s are convenient and easy to use with available cost. We can take perfect pictures and edit them as per our imagination. The users of RPG Key’s will be satisfied with these products.

About the Author:- The article is written by RPGKey.com Looking out for Adobe Photoshop Light room Keyboard Shortcuts? Then your RPG key needs in a wedding environment and need to organize thousands of digital images in various forms with shell scripts and adequate programs. Then you should have wedding photography workflow solution. For more information logon to http://www.rpgkeys.com/

Our stunning model Eliz can be contacted through ModelMayhem. Eliz’s cover photography was supplied by Ron of, Ethereal Pixels Photography.

I teach a very successful Chroma-Key workshop and I’m always amazed to talk with photographers before our first session. Some of the most common misconceptions I hear over and over are: Never shoot a blonde. The plugins are prohibitively expensive and not very effective, especially when hair is involved. Well, that may have been true many years ago, but no longer… In this tutorial I hope to show you how to obtain high quality results consistently.

Lighting is everything in photography. Lighting on a chroma-key backdrop is twice as important and said to be twice as difficult. As long as you pay attention and meter well, you will find lighting for a chroma-key shot is easy and fun. Nothing more difficult than any other multi-light setup. This should be well within the grasps of any serious amateur or beginning professional photographer.

Flat, even light on your backdrop is essential. I use two Alien Bees 1600′s to light my backdrop. In the past I have attached barndoors and I have had softboxes mounted to my Bees. I believe softboxes did spread the light more effectively at close distances – in confined spaces. However the barndoors makes it easier to move around the studio, so I probably will continue using barndoors when shooting at home. This is not a contest to see who can use fewest lights. If you need to place more strobes on your backdrop, then do so!!

Setting up the studio.

This is the most difficult situation I could dream up; We are shooting in my living room to prove this can be achieved quite nicely in small spaces. The overall room is 9′ x 12′ with ceilings at 7’10″. My backdrop is 12′ long, its 7′ up and 5′ out. I have laid a 4′ wide piece of bright green felt across the front to give my model and myself a little extra safety margin. Kelly is blonde today, so we can dispel the rumors regarding the adverse effects of shooting blondes on chroma-keys.

The first thing I need to do is balance my backdrop strobes. I want the lighting as flat and as even as I can possibly make it. With my flash meter on the backdrop I am aiming towards a reading of f-11. I will walk back to where I intend to shoot Kelly from and make a few test shots to check for dark/bright spots. I can not stress enough flat and even lighting on the backdrop…

The key points is the light on the backdrop with respect to the position of the model, or the light at the model. If I were shooting my model and my main strobe is setup at f-8, I will want the backdrop to reflect back at f-8 while holding my flash meter beside her head. If the backdrop is one full stop under, heavy shadowing will probably occur and you will be left with a mess to clean up by hand. If you are one half stop or more over exposed on the backdrop, you run the risk of tinting the hair or lightly color clothing. I hope you are seeing the key issue here? You’re balancing four strobes, not just the two on your subject. For those of us used to working with complex lighting scenarios, this becomes more of a procedural task. For someone new to studio lighting, this is a great exorcize to stretch your knowledge and skill set.

I love using Glamour lighting on Kelly, but before we go look up lighting patterns, let’s think a minute about the big picture. What we really need to do is mimic the lighting for the scene that we will eventually paste her into. Take a good look at your digital scene, so that we can attempt to match the angles and position of our strobes, to match the sun, etc. I put my stripbox on the floor, angled upwards, this will be my fill. I put my Beauty Dish about 2′ above her angled downwards, this will mimic the sun – my main. I decided to use a second fill, a stripbox behind her to take a bit of the edge off and avoid the harsh dark void on her back.
OK, I made the shot and now we are finished, ready to move on to post processing

Working in Photoshop.

Assuming you have installed the Easy Green Screen plugin, as per manufactures instructions and you have an image open, we are ready to go. To launch the Easy Green Screen Plugin, go to File > Scripts > Easy Green Screen, after it initializes you will be presented with this option screen. I always select: Preserve Max Hair Detail and Yes to edge shadowing. I move the edge shadowing slider to about the center. These are both settings you are going to need to play with in the beginning. Its all relative to your lighting, your model and his/her clothing, your particular computer and it’s operating system may also have some effect. After processing the same image four or five time, I decided these settings worked best for me – on my laptop running Win7/CS5. It is slightly different on my workstation running WinXP/CS4. Play with it yourself, you will find the best setting very quickly!!

HINT: If you are see to much background garbage, perhaps less Edge Shadowing, or a level less then Max, on Preserve Detail for Dark Hair. I like a little shadow myself. With Edge Shadowing, set to No, I did not have any and was forced to draw in some shadowing later in Photoshop… If you have managed to compose an image not requiring a full body shot, shadows will not be as much of a concern. If your subject is standing/sitting in a scene you may need some shadowing. Your digital scene will dictate shadow requirements.

There are several points I want you to notice here:
First: you will notice the plugin duped your original and produced a copy of it. (I love this)
Second: look at the layer pallet and you will see the finished image generated several masked layers.
Finally: lets look closely at the image itself for issues.

Starting with my second point: I do not want to adversely effect the plugin’s output set, because it is so clean. I will need to tweak several areas within the image in different ways. I prefer to work on a dupe of the set and I might as well work with one layer. So I will merge the three masked layers into one new layer, while preserving the originals set. To do this:
A.) Select the three masked layers.
B.) While holding down the the Alt key, click on the little down arrow at the top of your layer pallet to open up the layer properties sub menu.
C.) Next click Merge Layers. Don’t let go of the Alt key before completing this step or you will merge the original layers into one…
Finally; I like to create a group folder and move the originals into it, then turn off the eye ball on the folder, so that i am only looking at the new copy of the merged layer. Before I make any alterations to my new layer, I will link my new layer with the group (GreenScreen). By doing this my new working copy will always retain the same physical aspects and geometric coordinates. Should I need to go back for any reason, the time required will be minimal and the accuracy will be dead on.. Highlight the new layer + the new folder> Right click> Link Layers.

Fine Tuning the Image.

Now we can carefully fine tune our image. I do have a slight green cast reflecting back into Kelly’s blonde hair. I will need to go around the edges and make a color adjustments to 4 or 5 small spots. There are several ways to do this. You can use the lasso tool, I like to make them all at one time, so I will use Quick Masks, then Select/Inverse.
After resolving the green cast in the hair, I will go ahead and touch-up the image as I would normally; adjust the curves, brightness & contrast, color, skin touch-ups as needed, etc. Whatever is the norm for you and your style.
I also noticed a heavy shadow along the bottom of the image. This ‘shadow’ is actually the piece of green felt I laid down under the leading edge of my Chroma-Key backdrop.. I will erase this very carefully before proceeding.

The Final Step.

Finally we are ready to add our digital background. With the layer Add Backdrop selected, paste in your background. If you are lucky, you are finished. I was not so fortunate and will require several adjustments in order to make the image ‘believable’. I see a gray cast or her leg and calf that needs some color. The back lighting I added at the last minute was to high and now I will need to adjust the image in Photoshop.

To make these corrections I will use masked Adjustment layers. To do this:
1.) Highlight the ‘Kelly’ layer in your layer pallet.
2.) Click the little half darkened circle at the bottom, center of my layer pallet.
3.) When presented with the option menu, I selected Curves. I made the adjustment I felt the image needed. The adjustment layer altered the entire image. I only want to shad and darken the back of her head and shoulder.
4.) To hide this effects from the entire image, hold down your Ctrl Key and press I at the same time. This will Invert your mask and Hide All, effects.
5.) Now click in the center of the Curves adjustment Mask. Notice the little frame around the black mask? You have selected the mask.
6.) Now using the white paint brush set at about 20% flow rate, paint the areas that needs to be darkened. To see/hide the effects of this mask, click on the adjacent eye ball on the left side, layer pallet. The effects of your adjustment layer should become obvious.

The beauty of using Masked Adjustment Layers, is that if you go to far, just change to the Black paint brush to add the masking effect back. White – Reveal All Masks, are exactly the reverse. Black paint hides all, white paint shows all. For even more control you can adjust the Flow or Opacity sliders of the layer.

In retrospect I didn’t need the second fill behind my model. I could have saved myself some valuable time, but then you would not have seen my simple method of dealing with it. I’m still pleased with the image and the total time required was about 10 minutes. Granted Kelly has a perfect figure and a perfect complexion. Working with a Pro model who only gives you flattering poses really helps. (my little disclaimer; Your time may very).

Outer Thoughts and Considerations.

The Easy Green Screen, Plugin itself.
In my humble opinion, this plugin is far superior to most all commercial plugins available on the market today. With the only exception being; it only works with Green, Chroma-Key backdrops at this time. I understand Green/Blue Chroma-Key backgrounds are currently under development This plugin is Freeware, but I would strongly encourage you to make a donation to the plugin developer. This will help to ensure it’s worth Damon Bell, time to continue development on this Outstanding Plugin!!

Hair and Clothing Color.
Blondes and Platinum Blondes are the most difficult situations you will have to deal with. Green eyes and clothing can cause issues, but its easy enough to go back to the Mask Layer and unmask any areas the plugin removes during the process. Simply click on the Black – Hide All mask, and using a white paint brush, paint it back in…

The Digital Backgrounds.
There are a zillion considerations you should be aware of when selecting a digital background images. We are only going to discuses a few here, you’ll get the hang of it as you go along. I hope to have a DVD available shortly of my Chroma-Key workshop, where we cover so much more then here.

Where to get the backgrounds; Well, shooting them yourself is a great excuse to get out and enjoy photography! E-Bay has several commercial suppliers, but just like anything from e-Bay you need to be careful what you are buying! Make sure you are purchasing backgrounds with the same or greater resolution then your base – Chroma-Key image.

Licensing Agreements on Digital Background images are another thing you need to pay attention too! Usually – the best, allow full commercial and privet usage rights once you apply your new top image. Not all licensing agreements are the same, know what you are buying! I would not recommend taking images off the Internet for several reasons. First the resolution is to low, we only want High Resolutions images for our purposes. Next it’s my understanding the photographer always retains the copyright (in America) until s/he sells or leases the image rights to you. For additional details on this, consult a competent Copyright Attorney in your area.

Selecting the proper background image is an art form in itself!! All of the tutorials I have read usually suggest you compose your image so that the feet are not in the final image. This certainly helps and may be something you would wish to follow in the beginning..

Well, on behalf of Kelly and myself I hope you have as much fun playing with this as we did shooting it!!

Ciao
~Dave

Thanks so much to my beautiful model Kelly for her time, beauty and grace, shooting this article. To learn more about Kelly click Here.

Almost every one of us, who have digital photo camera, saw “grainy” photos at least once. That’s thanking to colored pixels (so-called grains, speckles) that are present on photos, but do not exist in the reality.

There are several causes why the noise happens to digital photos: long exposure times, heating of the camera sensor, high ISO settings, matrix defects, small pixel size etc. The effect is very frequent to the consumer digital cameras that are built on CCD or CMOS sensors.

Digital noise is very unpleasant artefact that spoils really good shots sometimes. Every shot corresponds to a unique moment which will never happen again, and the only thing we have to do with a cool, but noisy photo is to retouch it slightly to make it perfect.

Does such a post-processing software exist? Yes it does. There are several noise reduction photoshop plugins (for both windows and macOS) specially designed to remove noise grains from digital photographs:

http://www.digital-photography-software.com/archives/27

The utilities allow reduction of (together and separately): luminance noise and color (chroma) noise. Additional options include fading, blurring and sharpening edges.

So, removing of the most unpleasant picture imperfection – the digital noise – is possible and much more easier than one can imagine. Due to modern image processing algorithms, the plugins can work almost automatically, so noise reduction does not require any advanced computer skills from a photographer.

Noise reduction is made easy nowadays.

Aliaksandr Murauski is an owner of Digital Photography Software blog (http://www.digital-photography-software.com) where he publishes real life, problem-based, digital photography related articles and software reviews.

Article source: Expert Articles

I faced a learning curve back in the early days of this technology through trial and error. Today the entire process is simplified through the use of Photoshop , processes and/or plugins as well as stand-alone applications. First lets put the meths to rest and explore the process to a quick and successful digital background swap.

The color Blue or Green makes little difference although green is quickly becoming the trend today. I use both, but also use Black and white more often then not. The original thought was that both blue and green contain less colors that conflict with skin. As cameras progressed in technology green became favored because of fewer conflicts with clothing. Any backdrop can be used with some careful planing it’s sometimes more advantageous to use one over the other, but we will explore veracious situations later in this article..

To Make Life Simple on Yourself, Flat Lighting is Essential.
Flat lighting is essential because shadows on the background will effect your final results. This could give way your look of realism and destroy the effect of the background. If you have practiced for years to never let the light from your main fall onto the backdrop, you will need to retrain yourself. Uneven lighting may result in other shades of the background color, which may not be extracted accurately.

In the diagram to the left you can see how I gridded my Beauty Dish for directional control, then feathered the the softbox to spill directly on my backdrop. I still have dark, harsh shadows falling on the backdrop, so an additional strobe with a 7″ reflector and barn doors is needed. The barn doors are to help with in the reduction of light from hitting the back left of my model. This would be a typical White, Blue or Green screen setup for me. I am not as concerned with shadows hitting a Black backdrop, which I usually use for work intended to be night scenes.

Photoshop is not required:

Before I get into the processes and plugins I use I should point out there are some very effective inexpensive programs that will give you outstanding results without the need for photoshop. While I use Photoshop for my work a Google search for Chroma Key Applications and Plugins should reveal a complete list. I would advise trying several until you find something you are comfortable with.

As I mentioned earlier Photoshop plugins provide a very high degree of accuracy and simple to use. You can remove a background without third party plugins. Removing a background or anything in Photoshop starts by creating a Mask. How accurate you wish to be is dependent on the time you wish to invest in any given project. You should review my Quick Mask tutorial or Google Masking in Photoshop.

What I like about the Plugins is the accessory and detail. If properly lite you can remove the background while leaving a single strand of hair. This would be next to impossible masking in photoshop without a third party plugin.

Adobe recommends Primatte Chromakey 3.0 in the Extension exchange, I have tried it and found it a bit overly complex, but excellent. With the ability to do Black, White, Green and Blue. Its priced at $299.00
I really like (and own) The Green Screen Wizard, it’s simple and very accurate. It has the ability to remove Blue and Green backgrounds. The Photoshop Plugin starts at about $149.99. They also offer several stand-alone versions which are very simple to use.
A friend gave me MaskPro by OnOne from my birthday. This is not a Chromakey plugin, but this Plugin ROCKS! It’s very effective for doing fine detailed masking and background processing work, its a real lifesaver!! What i love about this plugin is you can select the background color to remove or the foreground color to keep. Then you simply erase the other. I have used this on some very difficult and poorly lit images. It took me about one minute longer then the Green Screen Wizard (had I shot on a chromakey).

The Screen itself:

Chroma Key backdrops come in a verity of shapes and sizes. I don’t go anywhere without a 5′x7′ Flexy Blue/Green Chroma Key in the car, because you never know. I use a 9′ roll of green in my Sacramento studio and a 12′ roll of blue in my San Francisco studio. I’m told by some video friends that they prefer green for several reasons. It really makes little or no difference to me, but I seem to prefer the blue for other reasons.

I have found companies that make chromakey body suites, boots and gloves, tape, the possibilities are limitless. As for the digital backdrops. E-Bay has so many its sickening. I usually make my own…

Have fun
Dave

Professional Models used in this article: (from top down) Jessa Garlets and xo Danielle and should be contacted directly for booking inquiries.

© Copyright 2010 GlamModelz Magazine, All Rights Reserved. GlamModelz Magazine and its authors agents and models, are providing information and services on the World Wide Web for educational purposes only. Permission to use, copy and/or distribute documents, text and/or graphics from this World Wide Web server is Prohibited under USA Federal Law.

]]> http://glammodelz.com/glam/digital-darkroom/shooting-with-a-chromakey/feed 2 http://glammodelz.com/glam/digital-darkroom/all-about-chromakeys http://glammodelz.com/glam/digital-darkroom/all-about-chromakeys#comments Sat, 06 Nov 2010 08:00:27 +0000 dave.davis http://californialansystems.com/glammodelz/glam/?p=3786 By: Robert Merritt

Are you sick and uninterested in photographing (plus viewing) the identical old images, over and over again? You’ve heard that “blue screen” is a path to go, but you do not really comprehend it or even know a lot about it? This is all you must understand to utilize it as a photography background!

First…What exactly is it?

You will hear the words “green screen”, “blue screen”, and “chroma key” tossed about and employed to mean the same thing.

Chroma key simply means working with a background that’s one unpatterned, evenly illuminated color. The green and blue tend to be the most common colors. In fact, you could potentially use ANY color – however blue and green are best. I am going to explain why that’s the case in a second.

Chroma key procedures can be utilized for either video and still photography. You photograph someone in front of the blue screen then we later (or instantly with high quality video cameras) you take out the solid color and exchange it using anything you need!

That is the way your local meteorologist does the weather report. They are standing in front of a chroma key and the camera digitally strips it out and puts in the local weather map. They’re watching themselves on a monitor to find out where to point and so on. It can be perplexing and more difficult than you might imagine to be a weather reporter!

Secondly…Why green or blue?

Commonly we employ green and blue since they are the furthest away from the colors found in skin tones. The technique was primarily accomplished by blue, although as the quality of cameras improves, green appears to work more efficiently. It really is easier to strip out of the backdrop, thus most studios are changing to green. However it does not hurt to possess both of them.

One more advantageous advantage for green is that it produces fewer apparel conflicts.

Considering that color is automatically eliminated and substituted, if the model has on a hue of that color (blue) as part of their clothes…it’s always changed. You will time and again see shirts and ties that become amusing appearing holes in the subject – showing through to the brand new background.

It’s even occurred among blue eyes!

Green tends to produce not as much of a clothing conflict, it’s less difficult for the cameras to work with also it’s less difficult to light uniformly.

Flat lighting is vital because shadows on the background will appear in the final result. This could ruin the realistic effect of the photography background. And more, using uneven lighting, you’ll obtain other shades of the color…some of which might not get eliminated accurately.

The three major types of chroma key backdrops are: paper, paint and fabric.

Paint is nice if you have a studio that has a cove and you do all your work there…it’s worthless in case you ever would like to shoot on location.

Paper can be purchased in huge rolls, but is easily torn and continuously needs to be replaced. This tends to get pricey in a hurry.

Cloth tends to live longest and is transportable. Plus material is simple to clean (unclean green screen backdrops do not work well).

Any fabric supplier can offer some material that could accomplish the job. Obtain a little and do some playing around with your photography background, any photo editing program can take out the color. Experiment with it, you will enjoy it! Article Directory : http://www.articlecube.com

Did you have a great Thanksgiving? I sure did with family, friends and more then enough food, but I am still so full I need binoculars to get close enough to see the monitor ? I felt this would be the perfect opportunity to talk about Trimming the Fat. With anything you do in Photoshop there several ways to complete the same task. As long as your happy with the results, you did it right! In the proceeding tutorial I’m going to shot you three methods and discus some of the why’s and why not’s for the uses of each.

In this tutorial we’ll be using 3 new tools
• The Dodge/Burn tool,
• The Clone tool,
• Quick Masks
We’ll be writing more Actions as we did in the first tutorial. If you missed or skipped the tutorial you should review it first HERE. We have added one new tool this time so before we begin this lesion

lets look at the tools we will be using.

Part I

The Straight Reduction;

This first method is probably the most difficult to do right. With a little practice you should have no issues rubbing 20 pounds off the tummy from someone shot someone at this angle. What we’ll actually be doing is playing with light,

Step 1 Selecting & Setting the tools

Notice on the MENU Bar I have already selected the Dodge brush, I’m in the process of selecting the Range that I need to use the tool Shadows and that I have already selected the exposure of 16% and that I still need to change the tool size to something like 40 for this particular job. NOTE: If you will notice the lower right-hand corner of the tool icon itself some of the tools have a little arrow pointing downwards to the right. This is your clue that Mother Adobe has stacked several other functions or other tools beneath the visible icon. CLICK + HOLD on an icon and you can expose the hidden tools. By default the Burn tool was on top so I needed to Click + Hold to select the dodge tool

Step 2 Dodging the shadow

A With my Dodge tool set to the size of about 150 I’ll click once in the center of the darkest shadow area. B. Next I’ll reduce the brush size to about 50 and make two smooth passes from top to bottom. Be careful not to overlap the brush to much. Overlapping creates Hot Spots. C, Finally I will reduce the brush size to about 13 and get in close to her panty line, Before doing so I will reduce the exposure to 10% from its current 16% because I want a little depth in this area. It should appear as those the fabric is creating some shadow area.

Step 3 Cloning Texture

Now we need to add some texture and coloring to the tummy. I have selected a 100px fuzzy brush for my clone tool and set the flow to 26%. To start the process I selected the area I wanted to copy by holding down the [Alt] key and clicking my mouse. The target area is represented by the + and the clone area is the circle area. I move the mouse slowly and smoothly a cross the desired area twice. In effect a 52% clone. I would rather do this process in 2 passes and slightly over lapping my cloned area along the way. This will blend the skin texture smoothly. Had I set the tool set harder at 52% or higher it would have a much courser effect. Whenever you use the clone tool it’s very important to select a target area that will match the Color, Texture and Lighting you wish to achieve when finished. The clone tool, unlike other tools we’re using has the ability to clone between layers. If this image did not have a suitable target area, I could drag another photograph into my layer pallet and make my selection from that. Then return to this layer to apply the clone effect. We just finished our first tummy tuck ;)

Part 2, the Liquid Diet

Weight loss in seconds with Liquify

The Liquify tool is marvelous, It’s quick and easy, not to mention very effective at manipulating photographs in one single process. You can do about anything with it, Tummy Tucks, Fanny Lifts, Boob Jobs, open a Lazy Eye, the possibilities are endless. Liquify is also a resource hog on your system since it works in real time. You had better shut down most of your open programs before attempting to use it on a large image or you’ll soon see the dreaded “Out of Memory” error. Like the old saying “Anything to good to be true” well Liquify has a major downside in that it will smear the pixels. This usually is not very noticeable, but I stopped using it when another photographer told me she downloaded one of my images, blew it up to 500% and could see the pixel smear. If your not worried about people doing this to you, Liquify may just be the way to go.. As with all major processes in Photoshop, I first Dup the original layer and work from the duplicate. If something should go horribly wrong, I have the original to fall back on.

First lets look at the setup and our tools. I’m sure you have noticed the tool pallets are not movable as in Photoshop. They are clustered around the edges of the working window.
From left to right, top to bottom;
The Brushes, the Smear Brush should be selected by default; we’ll skip the other brushes for now and drop down to the little hand. You can use this to move the image around within the working window. This is especially useful when you zoom in close. You can use the scroll bars. Or you can set the percentage size at the bottom, as I do.
On the right top the brush configurations. Other then the actual brush size I usually leave these settings alone. The density is worth noting because you may need to play with density and/or pressure from time to time. The Reconstruct, Restore buttons, are the same as Undo. I always check Show image, you’ll notice in the preceding screen shot the effect of this. By doing so we are able to see the effect of the push with respect to the original image. You should always click Show Backdrops and select Show All Layers, so that you can see how your work affects all layers. Finally in the center you can see the brush outline. Its very important to select the correct size brush to begin with. This is something you will need to play with and get use to. For this Fanny Lift you can see I’m using a 265px brush.

Using the Smear tool takes a little practice and getting use to. You can obtain a softer effect by using the edge of the brush rather then the middle. You can also use the Pressure and Density of the brush to control this.

I hope this helps, enjoy the rest of the weekend! Please feel free to ask questions and comment if you wish. Please stay tuned for Part III coming to GlamModelz.com first!

For this and more tutorials please visit my personal Blog; DaveDavis.me

Ciao
Dave