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! :) 

Kind of a selective coloring with Photoshop

I thought I'd write a little insight to my post-processing work behind my latest horse fair photos. Really simple playing with the masks and it's kind of a selective coloring without turning the background totally black and white. 

All the pictures can be viewed larger. Here we go!

The original photo

I started off by reducing noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce noise > 10/0/100/0) in the background. I used a layer mask so that I could only have the reduction in the background area. The filter reduced too much of the details of the horse and I didn't want that.

After that I used a premade color toning action to make the image a little more interesting (at least in my opinion). But as you can see, the action leaves the area around the horse's eye a little too dark so...

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

Paper + Pencil + YouTube = ?

 

James Baxter How To Draw Spirit Part 1

Part 2

I remember watching that from my 

Spirit - Stallion Of The Cimarron DVD-extras when I first bought it. 

Now I decided to try it out myself so I dragged out my sketch-book and pencils.

It's not half bad if I may say so myself. :)

Making a banner

Check out my short tutorial on making a cool banner over here!

Tutorial: How to make the eyes POP

This is very very simple and neat little trick for creating that 'glassy' and bright look in the eyes. I've personally always wondered how people do this and now I know and I'm gonna share it with you guys. =)

I don't know if this is the best possible example-photo, but this is all I've got atm. This tutorial is only about the effect in the eyes.

Before:


After:


What you'll have to do is:

1. Duplicate the background layer
2. Use the dodge-tool for the eyes: first the shadows, then mid-tones, then highlights.
3. This might make the eyes pretty unrealistic so you might want to adjust the layer's opacity a bit.

There. Very simple. I think it can bring out the little blinks pretty nicely. =)
Hope this is useful to someone else too.

Tutorial for GIMP 2.6 and Photoshop CS4

 I was asked to make a tutorial for the effect I did in this photo:

Now I don't have the exact original photo anymore, but I have similar ones. I'll try to demonstrate this with them.

I processed the photo in GIMP 2.6. This can be applied into Photoshop as well.

1. Open your photo in GIMP/PS.

2. Then go to the curves tool (GIMP: colors > curves / PS CS4: either curves adjustment layer or Image > Adjustments > Curves) and if your photo is as dark as mine then lighten it up a bit by pulling the main curve up.

3. Then adjust the curves. Experimenting is the way to go here. Every picture is different so the same adjustments don't necessarily apply. Here's what I did:

As you can see, I made very subtle adjustments here, but you can go more lomo if you like.

Experiment experiment experiment and stop when you're happy. :)

4. Then I added the texture. I've downloaded it from Flickr from the user called WHEREISHERE.

Without this texture, the effect wouldn't even exist. You can use any texture you like as long as it's a light color. I usually like to use a texture with scratched surface. It creates this fun scratched and faded look.

I flipped it 90 degrees and added it as a new layer on top the photo.

In GIMP you do this by adding a new layer, opening the texture and copy/pasting it on to the new layer. Then scale it to the right size so it overlays the whole photo.

In PS CS4 you open the texture, use the black arrow tool and drag it onto the photo (this only works if you have all the pictures in floating windows) and let it go. It will create a new layer for itself. Then make sure you have the texture layer activated and go to Edit > Transform > Scale and scale it to right size.

5. Then you'll have to adjust the opacity of the texture layer. I first put the layer mode into "Hard light" and then adjusted the opacity into what I thought looked good.

As you can now see, the texture does most of the faded look that I was going for.

6. Then I just added the handwriting with a brush. Just Google "handwriting+brush+GIMP(or photoshop)" and you'll find cool handwriting brushes.

And there you go! All Star effect is all done. :)

Hope this was helpful. Let me know if there's something you don't get. I'll be happy to help!