There are plenty of instances where a perfectly fine photograph can use some love by retouching and enhancing. Today’s tutorial shows you how to do just that and gives you some really useful techniques to accomplish your goals to make a photo seem more vibrant. The best part about this tutorial is that there is a tasteful use of these tricks. It doesn’t seem like any part of this tutorial is over used or enhanced past the point of believability. Below are my notes. Press play and follow along:
- Select hair
- Select and mask at top menu bar
- Refine the selection
- Create group
- Make a mask
- Apply curves layer mask
- Create a curve
- Hue saturation / add saturation
- Select skin tones
- Select and mask
- Add feather
- Create new group
- Select a medium skin tone
- Fill section with color
- Color blending mode
- 70% opacity
- Make mask totally black and brush back in color where there’s blotchiness
- This evens out the skin tone
- Add curves slightly
- Create eyes group
- With curves brighten the shit out of the image
- Vibrance / add saturation
- Black out mask and brush in the iris with a 20% brush opacity
- Lower opacity 80%
- Do the same thing for lips as we did for the eyes
- Select clothing punch it up with curves
- Select background
- Darken with curves
- Feather a bit
- Lighten skin tones a bit with curves
- Brush in more darker hair tones with color blend mode lower opacity
So there you have it. Action Item: take a photo that isn’t part of this tutorial and apply these techniques to that photo. In the comments below, share the link to the project and let’s get some chatter going. Thanks for reading today’s tutorial. Also in the comments below, let me know if there’s something you’re struggling with your design projects. I’d love to help any way I can.
–Aa
