Saving Face


Like landscape photographer Ansel Adams, master portrait photographer Yousef Karsh was open about the fact that much of his artistry was achieved in the darkroom. (If you aren't familiar with the work of Karsh, also known as Karsh of Ottawa, do a Web search and learn more about one of the greatest portrait photographers of all time.)

You can use many of the techniques Karsh and other film-based photographers used in their wet darkrooms to enhance your digital portraits of people and animals. In this lesson, we'll look at just a few of the enhancements possible using Photoshop.

We'll begin with a picture of a sexy senior citizen I photographed in Italy. The straight-out-of-the-camera shot is too saturated and a bit dark (Figure 2.34).

Figure 2.34.

Tech info: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, Canon 28-135mm IS lens @ 10mm. Exposure: 1/125 sec. @ f/5.6. ISO 640.


Note

Skilled Photoshop folks: Don't panic that I'm not using a Layer Mask for this technique. I know you know that the following technique is often said to be destructive. However, it's easier to understand than using a Layer Mask. What's more, I've used this technique, and some of the resulting images appear in my booksand I haven't seen any difference in the two approaches. I'm also not using Adjustment Layers, to get the point across more quickly. But yes, they are a must, as I stress in a moment.


As a first step, I reduced the Saturation by going to Hue/Saturation (Figure 2.35).

Figure 2.35.


My portrait was now more pleasing, but the man's face was still dark and flat (Figure 2.36).

Figure 2.36.


I wanted to isolate the man's face from the rest of the scene, so I made a duplicate layer by dragging the original layer to the "Create a new layer" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (Figure 2.37). I turned off the top layer by clicking the eye icon next to it in the Layers palette and then clicking the bottom layer to activate it (Figure 2.38). That was now my working layer.

Figure 2.37.


Figure 2.38.


To brighten the man's face, I went to Levels and moved the Highlight slider to the left, just inside the mountain range (which shows the distribution of the highlights and shadows in a scene) (Figure 2.39).

Figure 2.39.


Still working on the bottom layer, I went to Brightness/Contrast (using an Adjustment Layer, of course) and boosted Contrast a bit (Figure 2.40).

Figure 2.40.


I was happy with the enhancements to the man's face, so I selected the top layer in the Layers palette for the next step (Figure 2.41). I used the Eraser tool (press E: Mac or Win) to erase the man's face. Figure 2.42 shows the area I erased; the face is blank because I turned off the bottom layer (by clicking the eye icon). That's a good way to see whether you're doing a good job of erasing.

Figure 2.41.


Figure 2.42.


Here are the results of my enhancements (Figure 2.43).

Figure 2.43.


You may be wondering, "Why go through all the trouble of making a layer and clicking this layer and that layer when you could have used Levels and the other controls to enhance the entire picture?" The next image shows the answer.

Had I made the enhancements to the entire image, the highlight areas (the bright areas of the man's straw hat and his shirt) would have been blown out (overexposed) (Figure 2.44). The message is this: Use layers to isolate the part of the image you want to enhance.

Figure 2.44.


A while ago, I had the color picture of the man posted on my Web site. I received many emails from folks saying that they loved the man's face, but they wished I had posted a black-and-white version of the image. For those of you who feel the same way, here's the picture in black and white (Figure 2.45). (See the section "Black-and-White and Beyond" in Chapter 4 for more on how to create black-and-white images from your color files.)

Figure 2.45.


Enter the Layer Mask

Let's look at another example of enhancements you can make to draw more attention to a subject's facein this case, when the background is distracting. As in the first section of this chapter, I used a Layer Mask: a nondestructive image-enhancement technique. It's more advanced, but it offers the added benefit of letting you undo any mistakes quickly and easily rather than going to the History palette and clicking a previous step to undo an error.

Why did I show you the other technique in the previous section? Some folks have a hard time understanding Layer Masks, as I mentioned, and I figured I'd show you the basic concept before presenting one that's more difficult.

When I photographed this leopard at the Ft. Worth Zoo in Ft. Worth, Texas, I underexposed the file by one f-stop so as not to overexpose the white hairs on the animal's face (Figure 2.46). And the background is distractingespecially the foliage in the circled area, which looks like extra hairs protruding from the animal's face. ("Be aware of the background" is a good photo tip to follow, as noted in Chapter 1.)

Figure 2.46.

Tech info: Canon EOS 1D Mark II, Canon 100-400mm IS lens @ 400mm. Exposure: 1/250 sec. @ f/8. ISO 800.


After cropping the picture, I corrected the exposure by adjusting the Levels. I moved the Shadow and Highlight sliders to just inside the edges of the mountain range of the histogram (a basic Photoshop Levels enhancement) (Figure 2.47).

Figure 2.47.


I wanted to soften the background using the Gaussian Blur filter. To control which area of the file was blurred, I first made a duplicate layer (by dragging the background layer to the "Create a new layer" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette). I clicked the top layer and then clicked the "Add a mask" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (Figure 2.48).

Figure 2.48.


Next, I applied the Gaussian Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) to the image area (the square on the left, not the Layer Mask) on the top layer (Figure 2.49). I then clicked the Layer Mask (the square on the right) on the top layer. If this sounds confusing, remember that you want to apply the effect or enhancement to the image icon in the Layers palette (click it to activate it)not to the Layer Mask icon beside it.

Figure 2.49.


With my foreground color set to black and the background set to white (the default settings), I selected an airbrush from the Tool Bar and began painting out the blur over the leopard's face and body. If I erased into the background, I switched the background/foreground colors (by pressing X on the keyboard) and painted back in the blurred area with white. (This is a standard Layer Mask retouching technique.) Finally, I used the Clone Stamp tool to remove the most distracting branches from the background. Here's the end result (Figure 2.50).

Figure 2.50.


The next time you see a face you want to photograph, think about how you can save it and/or make it more prominent in your picture.




Idea to Image in Photoshop CS2(c) Rick Sammon's Guide to Enhancing Your Digital Photographs
Idea to Image in Photoshop CS2: Rick Sammons Guide to Enhancing Your Digital Photographs
ISBN: 0321429184
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 72
Authors: Rick Sammon

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