Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | Photoshop

This Photoshop tutorial is a little odd coming from me considering I rarely wear make up and have been known to put deodorant on in the car, forget to shower, rub my head on my dog’s butt, roll on the cafeteria floor, etc. I really could go on for a very long time, but I digress. This tutorial is geared towards those of you with etsy shops who model your own jewelry or clothing etsy. We all know that the picture is a big factor in the sale, so why shouldn’t you have the best picture you can?

First, get a picture that you want to edit. I found this old photo of myself from last year. I don’t know why I took it. I assume it was vanity. Oh yeah–most of these pictures are clickable so that you can see a larger image.

Let’s begin with blemishes. I have two zits on my chin. To remove them, I’m simply going to use the healing brush tool. It’s the bandaid located in the toolbar, left column, fourth from the top. At the top, you need to change the size of the brush so that it’s about the size of what you want to fix. Then, find an area of skin close by and and alt+click it. Now, go to the zit and click and drag the brush over it. Magic! It’s gone! If a bit of it exists or if it didn’t quite cover up, keep experimenting with different sizes/areas until it goes away.

Now, it’s time to remove bags under the eyes and wrinkles! This next tool is really awesome. We’re going to grab the patch tool. Just click and hold the healing brush on the tool bar and you’ll see the patch option. Make sure source is selected at the top. Now, lasso the arrow around the bags or wrinkles. When you’ve lassoed it, drag it to a nearby area of skin that you want to copy.

Presto! Dark circles are gone!

Time to smooth out the skin. There are longer and better ways to do this, however this is fast and produces decent results. Go into the filters menu, down to blur, and select surface blur. Below are the settings I used, but you’ll need to experiment and see what works for you:

Be careful not to overdo it. It’s a good idea to have someone nearby to make sure that you still look human. Unfortunately all I have is the cat. You may notice you’re a little too smooth. That’s easily fixable by adding some noise from the filter menu. I added 1.5%, uniform, monochromatic. Sometimes in pictures I appear very pink, so I slightly adjusted the hue (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation). You can also lasso any areas that you want to change and adjust them individually that way.

Finally, my eyes were a little dull so I decided to brighten them up. Create a new layer (shift+ctrl+n) and call it eyes. Now, grab the paint brush and choose a color that’s similar to your natural eye color, maybe a tad brighter. Hey, we want these items to sell, don’t we? Start painting on top of your eyes in the new layer. Only paint over the iris. If you have a small area to work with, adjust the size of the brush accordingly. Once you’re done, change the layer from normal to overlay in the layers palette. I decided to reduce the opacity because I looked a little freakish. 26% seemed about right for me, but it really depends on how bright of a color you chose to begin with. The top eyes are my dull, dingy ones. The bottom are my brand new blues!

And now, drumroll please!

Before

After

I don’t think I went too crazy, right? Ok, maybe I did a little…but trust me, I could have gone waaaay further. It’s a slippery slope playing with your appearance in Photoshop. Be careful…

And just for kicks, here I am at the beach with kitty!

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Photoshop

A tool I use for just about every banner and shop ad I make is the lasso tool in Photoshop. This tool allows you to get rid of the messy background and just cut out the image you want. Within photoshop, you have three options: lasso, magnetic lasso, and polygonal lasso. The standard lasso relies on you clicking on your image and then dragging around the item you want to select. The magnetic lasso is a clever rope–you drag around the item and it attempts to find the edges of what you want to select. My recent favorite, however, is the polygonal lasso. Rather than just dragging around an object, it creates straight lines and you click to make a line in a new direction. What’s very nice about this tool is that you get to choose what’s selected and you don’t need a steady hand like the regular lasso requires. So, let’s get started. You’ll need an image with a background that you wish to remove. Here is my roommate’s cat stealing my yarn. He’s on my roommate’s rug. I hate the rug and want it gone. The cat can stay.

First, we need to blow up this picture so we can get precise lines. Go into the view menu and click Fit on Screen. If it’s still not big enough, use the magnifying glass to zoom in a bit.

Now, select the polygonal lasso tool. It’s on your toolbar, left column, second from the top. You need to click and hold the icon in order to select the correct lasso:

Once you have the tool selected, click ones on the edge of the picture you want to select. Then, follow the edge of the picture until it curves. When you see a curve coming, you’re going to click right before it and then angle the line against the new border. Each red dot you see below represents where I made a new click. You’re basically drawing an outline around the cat using only straight lines. Don’t worry if your object has a lot of curves–you can even draw a circle with straight lines. Go geometry!

As you’re doing this, be very careful not to double click. If you do, Photoshop assumes you’re done and you won’t have your entire selection. Really, be careful. If you should make a mistake and click in the wrong spot, simply hit backspace as many clicks as you want to revert to.

Once you’ve reached the end, click on the very first point you made and your selection will have a moving outline. Go into the edit menu, hit copy, and paste it into a new document or on top of another picture. This will automatically create a new layer of just that image. If you took a little background with it, don’t worry. That can easily be cleaned up with the eraser tool.

Kitty is pretty dull, so I decided he needed to visit the beach. Enjoy kitty!