Isn’t this a great shot? This was shot by Heather Barnum of the Intrepid Agency. She’s my agent. Ok, she’s not really my PR agent, I just like to say “my” agent. Heather is a sweet friend. This is her baby daughter L.’s first snow (she’s not much of a baby anymore actually). Heather shot it with a camera phone because that’s all she had at the time. Look at the magic she captured! When she shared it with me, I knew we could take this moment and make it even more.
The following is step by step edit Photoshop Tutorial for beginners and more advanced users as well.
Above is the orginal shot. When I first look at this picture I think what a wonderful moment has been caught here. I want to focus more on the moment and less on the surrounding environment. I don’t want to crop it too much because I want to keep the leaves and the fresh snow.
So now I have this. The picture has a lot grey midtones. Why? Remember, the camera simply can not see what your eye can. It can only see so much information. We use Photoshop to change that. So the first thing I’m going to do is to make a levels adjustment and then add contrast.
So for a review, my steps so far have been this:
1. Crop
2. Go to the top of Photoshop where it says Layers>Duplicate Layer and click. This way if you don’t like your layers, you can throw them away and have your original unchanged. What is a layer? If you don’t know, don’t worry just keep following along.
2. Go to the top left of Photoshop where it says Layers>New Layer Adjustment>Levels>Change Middle point to 1.18 I only change the the middle one this time.
3. Go to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness Contrast>Move slider on Contrast only +20
Next, I’m going change those leaves because they are bugging me. I want the leaves to have more of an autumn feel.
4. Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation> +12
5. Advanced step Layer>New Adjustment Layer> Yellows>Hue> -19
If you want to do more advanced steps you can make selctions with your lasso and feather by 25 px and by using Curves or Levels, bump up dark areas or bring down areas. Remember the eye goes to the area of greatest contrast and we want to do that here.
I circled with brown some of what I darkened and circled with white some of what what I lightened. If this makes you nervous, move on:)
The last thing I did was to add a vignette and a blur. You can add a Vignette, by going to the top of Photoshop Filter>Distort>Lens Correction>Vignette>to whatever number you like. By using the minus, you get a dark vignette. By using the + sign you get a white vignette. Then I added a blur by going to . I erased through to her little face and hands. I will show you how to this in a video tutorial next week.
6. Make selections with lasso to lighten or darken area. Lasso>New Adjustment Layer>Levels or Curves
7. Add vignette. Filter>Distort>Lens Correction>Vignette
8. Add blur Filter>Blur>Gausian Blur
Beginners, I will do a tutorial next week to show you how to use the lasso and use the blur filter. Easy simple and very effective. I added border as I showed you in last weeks tutorial.
So now I have this.
I’ll be here Mondays, Wednesday, and Friday.
