Alright, if you're an avid reader this will be the post for you, because i'm going to explain step by step how I enhanced this picture!
1. I always like to start off using the patch work tool. That honestly is my favorite way to rid any unwanted blemished or imperfections quickly and efficiently. What you do is select your area and then drag it off into a clear area and it takes that clean area and puts it onto your unwanted area and makes it look smooth and perfect! So I did her face, a couple of red spots on her arms, and her back. The thing that you have to be careful with when using the patchwork tool is to not use it on the edge, and be careful when you're working with shadowed areas.
2. Next under the adjustment panel, I used the levels tool. Some people prefer to use curves to lighten, brighten, and contrast an image and sometimes I use curves, but levels is my personal preference. Levels focuses on your white and black points of an image and curves is mainly for the brightness and contrast, which both go hand and hand. I did just a little tweaking because this image was pretty bright to begin with!
3. Liquify is a super popular filter in photoshop that lets you push, pull, rotate, reflect, pucker, and bloat the pixels of any image! In other words, make some one skinny, lips larger, hair bigger, etc! I never like to use this feature drastically, the main place I used this filter was on her hair to give it a fuller look and on her back to give it a little more of a curve! This filter really is magical.
4. Now it's time to play with colors and enhancing! I started by giving her body a little more of a tan to match her face! I selected her back and arm and simply used an orange warming filter to give her skin an even tone!
5. As for her facial enhancements hardly anything needed to be done after the patch work tool was used! But I did want her face skin to look a little more even and smooth so I went to filters and created a layer with a gaussian blur. This trick makes the entire image blurred... and that my friends is where layer masks come in! I used a soft black brush on my layer mask to bring back the intensity of all the areas besides her skin. Making her skin look smooth and flawless and the features bolder than ever! I adjusted the opacity just so it didn't look too over done.
6. Time for those gorgeous blue eyes! Honestly, nothing really needed to be done to them, but it always helps to do a tweaking! I started by very subtly whitening the white parts of her eyes, including the catch light! Then I went in and darkened the darks, like the circle around her eye, the liner, the lashes, and her brows. And vuaa-lahh! There you have it, eyes you cant look away from!
7. By this point the picture looked like it could be complete. But I thought it needed a little saturation! The background was beautiful as is, but I think every picture needs a good pop of color! For this I used a photoshop Action i've had for what seems like forever called "Like A Painting". What this action does is super saturate the image and give it a blurry dreamy feel that is honestly the prettiest thing to watch unfold! Then I simply created a layer mask and used a black brush with medium hardness and just colored right over the subject leaving the background bright and beautiful!
8. A little sharpening and I had my final product! I absolutely love how this photo turned out! And I am eager to do more tutorials (maybe even via video one day) so you don't have to do so much reading!
Leave me a comment on my Facebook page (Hazel Winds Photography), or under this post with any questions or comments! Or you can always email me at kelseytkinsman@gmail.com
As for now, I am currently trying to plan my first ever big SPRING photo shoot and have it be the launch of my photography business. Until then, I want to start doing more creative things with photoshop and my pictures, maybe a 30 day photo challenge?
-K
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