Beauty ennen-jälkeen

Kuten luvattua, tein nyt ihan perus beauty-kuvan tiimoilta ennen-jälkeen-kuvasarjan. Minun naamani sijaan saatte onneksi katsella Heidiä, joka uhrasi kasvonsa käyttööni. 

Valaistuksena käytettiin ns. simpukkavalaistusta (kokeilin tätä ensimmäistä kertaa), eli ihan perus pihtivaloa, jossa meillä oli salama läpiampuvan sateenvarjon kera suoraan yläviistosta, ja alapuolella Heidi piteli suurta hopeista heijastinta. 

Tästä lähdettiin.

Meikkauksen jälkeen.

Käsittelyn jälkeen.

Käsittelyn tulos vielä taidokkaasti animoituna.
(Värit näyttäisivät olevan täysin pyllyllään näissä giffeissä, mutta anyways...)

Ja vielä sama zoomattuna.

Näitähän voisi työstää vaikka maailman tappiin asti, ja tässäkin olisin voinut vielä mm. hiuksia siistiä, jos vaan olisi kärsivällisyys riittänyt. Mutta, koska kärsivällisyys ei ihan aina kuulu hyveisiini, keskityin tässä kuvassa enimmäkseen kasvoihin ja eritoten ihoon.

Ihon retusoinnissa työkulku menee yleensä suurin piirtein seuraavasti (käytössä PS CS6): Ensin putsaan suuremmat finnit ja muut "häiriötekijät" joko Spot Healing Brush Toolilla tai Healing Brush Toolilla. Luomet ja muut pysyvät ihon yksityiskohdat jätän yleensä rauhaan, ellei muuta ole erikseen sovittu mallin kanssa. Heidi julkesi kuitenkin tulla kuvattavaksi ilman silmille pomppaavaa aknenaamaa, niin tästä kuvasta poistin luometkin (ne hyvin harvat ja hyvin pienet) ihan vaan poistamisen ilosta. 

Seuraavaksi siloitan Surface blurrilla oikeastaan lähestulkoon kaikki yksityiskohdat pois, minkä jälkeen palautan ihon tekstuuria hallitusti High pass filtterillä ja maskilla. Tälle tekniikalle on olemassa joku hieno nimikin, mutten juuri nyt muista sitä. 

Muutoin käsittelyyn kuuluu sitten vielä mm. dodge & burnia Curvesilla, useita High pass filttereitä ja kontrasti- ja värikikkailuja. 

The Making Of

Here's a little making-of animation to this lazy Sunday evening.

Music: Bill Whelan - Reel Around The Sun (Riverdance)

Make-up with Photoshop

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my thought process of tonight:

Hmm...I feel like taking a self-portrait... 
I could test out what kind of a lighting I can get with my two lamps... 
I really wouldn't want to put on any make-up, although I look like sh*t... 
No worries, I'll add some in Photoshop!



Music: Petteri Sariola - Prime

My imagination stopped working as soon as I'd set the lamps to their places. The final photos look as if they were taken at school, but it was good practice. And it was fun to play with PS after a little break.

You don’t know what you do to me

Paramore – Stop This Song (Lovesick Melody)

I've gone too far to come back from here,
but you don't have a clue
You don't know what you do to me
I've come too far to get over you,
and you don't have a clue
You don't know what you do to me

Can't someone stop this song,
so I won't sing along
Someone stop this song,
so I won't sing

Your lovesick melody
is gonna get the best of me tonight
But you won't get to me if I don't sing

It creeps in like a spider
Can't be killed, although I try and try to
Well, don't you see I'm falling?
Don't wanna love you, but I do

Vintage Effect Tutorial

So, I asked and one of you answered. Here's a tutorial on how I do the vintage effect on my photos.

I posted this once already, but I had saved the video in a bad way so the quality was sh*t. So here's a better one. I recommend you watch it in HD (click the Vimeo-link) and in full screen. :)

I have all this wrapped around in a neat little action in Photoshop, so if you want to use this more than once and don't feel like doing it all manually, I suggest you make an action of your own. When everything is on their own adjustment layers they are really easy to modify to suit different photos.

If you find this interesting and test it on your photos, feel free to post a link to them in the comment section below. I'd love to see what you come up with! :)

Photoshop tutorial requests!

I made a little tutorial (the same as in my previous post, only for GIMP and in Finnish) today using a screen recording software, and I was thinking I could make more. It was quite simple, quick to do and fun. 

So I would like to know if any of you, my dear readers and visitors, have a Photoshop (or GIMP) technique, effect or whatever that you would like me to do a video tutorial on! 

It can be a photo edit of mine that you like and would like to know how I did it, or it can be a photo or a banner/header perhaps on the internet that you saw and wondered how they did what they did, or anything. I absolutely  do not know everything about Photoshop, there is still loads (an understatement) to learn, but I can try. And if I get multiple suggestions (I really hope I do!), I'll choose some that I will do and leave those I know nothing about alone. 

So go ahead and hit me with a comment! :) 

Sweet dreams in black and white

Sonata Arctica - In Black And White (Live)

I've had a whole new inspiration in my Photoshop work after the product photography course I attended a week ago. My use of layer masks has become so much more efficient. I first worked on this in color, but then realized that it actually looked better in b&w. Even though my damaged hair is more obvious....I wasn't made to be a hair model (or any kind of a model for that matter).

Btw, this is my first proper SP with my new camera. It's still quite difficult to get my eyes in focus if I want to 'free' my bangs, but in close-ups like this one it's easy to repeat until you get the results you wanted. 

When bored, open Photoshop!

I haven't had any ideas or inspiration for new photos and I was bored, so I started going through my old photos. I made a few new edits. Tell me how you like them! :)

I've been experimenting with digital double-exposures and this is so far the best I've come up with. This effect is very easy to achieve by just pasting a photo on top of another one. Then just play with the layer opacity and the eraser tool and its opacity.

I used the same flower photo in this one. At first I was going to leave it looking very similar to the first image, but then I tried blurring the flower layer and I liked how it just gave the hints of color to the b&w photo underneath. 

Why I love post processing [Behind the scenes of my self portrait photo shoot]

I was thinking of letting you guys in my self portrait photo shoot tonight. This is what I do whenever I'm bored and want to cheer myself up by creating something cool.

I don't have any fancy apparel for studio type of photography. This is my studio; a white wall, lamp and a tripod. That's all I need to make the magic happen. Oh well, I don't know about magic, but I usually do most of the work with my laptop in post processing so I don't need the SOOC photo to be all ready to be published.

I don't use so much time on PP only because I have to (although that obviously is one of the reasons) but because I really love it. I read all these debates on online forums about whether post processing is 'cheating' or not and I'm baffled. I guess I can't create what I create just with a camera, but so what? Don't tell me that my photographs aren't photos just because they might be heavily processed.

To me, processing is half the fun. Actually, when it comes to SPs, it's more like 80% of the fun, because the actual taking the photo isn't all that interesting to me. Partly because I usually get very frustrated with my not-so-good looks, but eventually I (may) end up with a decent shot. And that is when the true magic starts to happen, so buckle up!

Everything starts with doing the make up and finding the proper outfit. Tonight for some weird reason I ended up with an orange face...Seriously, I look like one of those bleach blond "fashion" teens who have orange fake tans. But I have come to notice that 'normal' amount of make up doesn't show on a photo the way it does in the mirror. So if you want a dramatic make up in a photo, and you don't have all that fancy studio equipment and lighting, you need to go the extra mile and look like a clown in the mirror.

So here's the "real me" :D Just to enhance the 'magical feel of this post'. (This is after taking the photo and I already wiped some of the make up off. So not that orange anymore...)




Then the photo snapping starts and loads of bad shots have to be taken before the decent one.

So this one here on the left ended up being the one I liked the best.
First I started by using a Florabella Photoshop action called Vintage Summer. I first felt a little guilty after purchasing the vintage actions (quite a long time ago), but I admit I do love them.
So, after that I started using layer mask techniques to do different things. The action left my hair looking a little flat, so I copied the original photo layer and placed it above the action layer. I started going over the different layer modes and found a mode that made the hair look more vivid. Then I clicked the Add layer mask while pressing down Alt, and I got a black layer mask and the action layer showed again. I chose a big blurry round brush (no sharp edges) and put the brush opacity in about 40% or so. Then I just brushed over the parts of the hair that I wanted to be more vivid and highlighted. When I was finished, I just right-clicked the layer mask, chose Apply layer mask and merged the mask layer with the action layer. This is a technique I first learned from this video tutorial.

My skin isn't all that perfect so I used the technique I demonstrated in one of my previous posts and made my skin look a little smoother. I also used the patch tool here and there to get the most distracting spots off.
After that I duplicated the  action layer (I always keep the original photo on a bottom layer in case I need to go back to that or copy it) and I used the dodge tool (just highlights and midtones) on my eyes. Then I used a layer mask again to add just that eye effect to the actual picture.

There is a chapter about how professionals sharpen their photos in the Digital Photography book by Scott Kelby so I digged that up and did the final sharpening according to his tutorial. First I had to flatten the image and then go Image > Mode > Lab Color. Then I went to Channels, chose Lightness and then used the Unsharp Mask filter. It basically just sharpens the details of the photo, not the colors.

And that's it! Well I did do some little things in addition to the ones mentioned, but they're not that important. I think the end result is pretty neat. What do you think?

How to achieve porcelain skin in Photoshop

I found this great tutorial by Christopher O'Donnel on how to airbrush the skin in Photoshop with natural results. It's really easy to do and I tried it with couple of my selfies. I usually have an icky greasy and bad mixed skin so I'm a perfect photosubject for testing out this effect. :)

How to achieve porcelain skin with natural airbrushing in Photoshop

Before

After

The timeline of banners

I have had many banners in this blog. I thought I'd post all of them in here now that I've (once again) changed my layout and made a new banner. I love making them and I've made quite a few for other people too. You can go check them out by clicking here.  

I don't know if that's all of them, but these are all I have saved in my computer.

Here are some of the best I've made for others. Clicking the photos will take you to their blogs (they are all in Finnish, though).

New banner!

I made myself a new banner. I have to say I really like it.
I changed the background of the blog so now my banner matches it a bit better.

What do you think? :)

Thoughts

I love editing photos...
I go to this one horse-forum and I put up a thread there where I offered to edit people's photos for fun.
Have a look what I've done so far (The originals aren't displayed.)
Some of them are really good photos too, in my opinion.

Maybe I should start charging for this? :D
And I've been thinking that maybe I should start offering dog-sitter services for people in my neighborhood to earn some extra cash... I dunno. It could be fun. And now that I have a place of my own, I could have them over if someone needed their dog to be looked after for a longer while.