The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 31 docx

Step Two: This is a Lab color move, so go under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose Lab Color as shown here.. Now, before we start working in Apply Image, here’s a little background:

The name of this chapter comes from the 2009 movie

short Side Effects (it’s less than 20 minutes long, which is

probably why you can buy it for only $1.99 in the iTunes

Store It’s either that, or it’s so cheap because of its lack

of zombies) Anyway, here’s how they describe Side Effects

(say this in your best movie voice-over guy voice): “An

ordi-nary guy becomes a human guinea pig in an experimental

drug test and meets the girl of his dreams…” Sounds like

a pretty typical everyday story At least the human guinea

pig in an experimental drug test part Anyway, I looked at

the movie poster, and the guys in the poster all have this

creepy-looking bluish/green color cast that makes them

look kind of sickly, but then the female lead’s photo looks

fine, with regular-looking flesh tones, and that’s when I

realized why this guy thinks he’s found the woman of his

dreams She doesn’t have a creepy bluish/green color cast

I mean, think about it If all the girls around you had a serious white balance problem, and then all of sudden you meet a girl carrying around her own 18% gray card, and so she looks correctly color balanced in any lighting situation, wouldn’t you fall in love with her, too? Exactly I’ll bet in the last 10 minutes of the movie, you find out that this guy actually starts an online business for people using dating sites like eHarmony, or Match.com, or HandsomeStalker .com, where he offers to remove bluish/green color casts from your profile photo for a price Things are going pretty well for him for a while, but then in about the eighteenth minute, the experimental drug wears off, and he finds himself trapped in a dank, dimly-lit room, forced to write nonsensical chapter intros late into the night, until his wife comes in and says “Honey, come to bed,” but right then, he notices she has a bluish/green color cast, and…

Side Effects

special effects for photographers

Step One:

This technique works best on photos

that are kind of flat and drab If you

apply this to an already colorful photo,

it will pretty much take the color right

over the top, so choose an appropriate

photo whose color needs some serious

pumping up (I’m going to totally resist

the urge to use a Saturday Night Live

reference, like “We’re here to pump—

you—up!” Oh rats, I just did it, didn’t I?

My bad)

Step Two:

This is a Lab color move, so go under

the Image menu, under Mode, and

choose Lab Color (as shown here)

This is a totally non-destructive move

(moving from RGB to Lab color and

back), so don’t hesitate to jump over

there whenever you feel the need

Punching Up

Drab Colors

Using Lab Color

Okay, so why isn’t this in the color correction chapter? It’s because this isn’t color correction We’re not trying to make colors look as they did, we’re punching up the colors big time so they look better, more vibrant, and more contrasty than the scene really looked when the shot was taken It’s totally a color effect and what you’re about to learn is a much simplified version of a Lab color technique

I learned from Dan Margulis, master of all things color The full-blown technique

is found in Dan’s amazing book Photoshop LAB Color.

Step Three:

There’s no need to head over to the

Channels panel, because you’re going

to be doing your work in the Apply

Image dialog So, go under the Image

menu and choose Apply Image Now,

before we start working in Apply Image,

here’s a little background: You know

how we have layer blend modes (like

Multiply, Screen, Overlay, etc.)? Well, in

the Channels panel, there is no channel

blend mode pop-up menu like there is

for layers in the Layers panel, so to get

channels to blend using blend modes,

you use Apply Image to apply a channel

to itself When the Apply Image dialog

appears, by default the blend mode is

set to Multiply (which always seems too

dark), so to get to the starting place for

our effect, change the Blending pop-up

menu to Overlay, as shown here As you

can see, it looks pretty sweet! If anything,

Overlay mode may make your photo

look too vivid and contrasty, but we’ll

deal with that soon

Step Four:

The nice thing about using Apply Image

is that you get at least three different

“looks,” and you simply have to choose

which one looks best to you (they look

different depending on the photo, so

you have to try all three) By default,

you’re seeing the full Lab color channel

(that’s seen back in Step Three), so once

you’ve seen that channel, then click on

the Channel pop-up menu and choose

“a” (as shown here) to see how the “a”

channel looks blended with an invisible

copy of itself in Overlay mode It

cer-tainly looks better than the original, but

I don’t think it looks as good as the Lab

Step Five:

Now try the “b” channel by choosing

“b” from the Channel pop-up menu (as

shown here) This channel usually adds

more yellow and warm tones to the

photo (as seen in the example here) In

fact, if you want to make an outdoor

scene instantly look like a fall color scene

somewhere in the Northeast, convert to

Lab Color mode, choose Apply Image,

switch to Overlay mode, and simply

choose the “b” channel—voilá—instant

fall colors Now, back to our project: in

the example shown here, it’s very yellowish,

and if you like that look—you’re done—

just click OK If not, continue on with me

Step Six:

So far, you’ve seen the photo blending in

Overlay mode (which is a pretty punchy

mode), using the Lab channel, the “a”

channel, and the “b” channel Personally,

I like the Lab channel by far, and if you

feel it’s the best of the three, but think

it might actually be a little too “punchy,”

then change the Blending pop-up menu

to Soft Light (as shown here) This is a

more mellow mode than Overlay (how’s

that for a New Age explanation), and

if Overlay is too intense for you, you’ll

probably love Soft Light I don’t mind

admitting that I probably use Soft Light

more than Overlay It’s probably from

burning incense and sitting in the Lotus

position (by the way, I have no idea what

the Lotus position is, but it sounds painful)

Step Seven:

There is another way to go if you think Overlay is too intense, and that’s to use the volume knob Well, I call it the volume knob, but it’s actually the Opacity amount (which appears just below the Blending pop-up menu) The lower the opacity, the lower the amount of the effect In the example shown here, I switched back to the Lab channel, chose Overlay

in the Blending pop-up menu, but then lowered the Opacity to 80% The After photo below was done using those same exact settings

TIP: Creating an Action

This Apply Image trick is a great thing to record as an action But once you create

it, go to the Actions panel and click in the second column, beside the words “Apply Image” (a dialog icon will appear), and then when you run the action, the Apply Image dialog will appear onscreen for you

to try your three choices Once you make your choice, click OK, and the action will continue, and will convert you back

to RGB

Step One:

Open the photo you want to apply

this trendy high-contrast portrait effect

to Duplicate the Background layer by

press ing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) Then

duplicate this layer using the same

short-cut (so you have three layers in all, which

all look the same, as shown here)

Step Two:

In the Layers panel, click on the middle

layer (Layer 1) to make it the active layer,

then press Command-Shift-U (PC:

Ctrl-Shift-U) to Desaturate and remove all

the color from that layer Of course,

there’s still a color photo on the top

of the layer stack, so you won’t see

anything change onscreen (you’ll still

see your color photo), but if you look

in the Layers panel, you’ll see the

thumb-nail for the center layer is in black and

white (as seen here)

Trendy Desaturated

Portrait Look

This is just about the hottest Photoshop portrait technique out there right now, and you see it popping up everywhere, from covers of magazines to CD covers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from editorial images to billboards

It seems right now everybody wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliver it in roughly 60 seconds flat using the simplified method shown here!)

Step Three:

In the Layers panel, click on the top layer

in the stack (Layer 1 copy), then switch its

layer blend mode from Normal to Soft

Light (as shown here), which brings the

effect into play Now, Soft Light brings a

very nice, subtle version of the effect, but

if you want something a bit edgier with

even more contrast, try using Overlay

mode instead If the Overlay version is a

bit too intense, try lowering the Opacity of

the layer a bit until it looks good to you

Step Four:

Fairly often, you’ll find that the person’s

eyes really stand out when you see this

effect, and that’s usually because it brings

the original eye color and intensity back

(this is an optional step, but if your subject

has blue or green eyes, it’s usually worth

the extra 15 seconds of effort) It’s just

two quick steps: Start by clicking on the

Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the

Layers panel Then get the Brush tool (B),

choose a small, soft-edged brush from the

Brush Picker up in the Options Bar, press X

to set your Fore ground color to black, and

paint right over both eyes (not the whites

of the eyes—just the irises and the pupils)

This will seem kind of weird, because since

you knocked a hole out of the eyes on this

layer, you’re now only see ing the eyes on

the B&W layer below it, but you’re going

to fix that in the next step

Step Five:

To knock the exact same hole out of the

B&W layer (which means there will be

“eye holes” knocked out of the top two

layers, so you’ll see the original eyes from

the Background layer), just

press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key, click

directly on the layer mask thumbnail

itself on the top layer, and drag it to the

middle layer This puts an exact copy of

the top layer’s layer mask on your middle

layer (as shown here) Now you’re seeing

the original full-color unretouched eyes

from the Background layer Pretty neat

little trick, eh?

Step Six:

Now flatten the image by choosing

Flat-ten Image from the Layers panel’s fly out

menu The final step is to add some noise,

so go under the Filter menu, under Noise,

and choose Add Noise When the Add

Noise filter dialog appears (seen here), set

the Distribution to Gaussian, and turn on

the Monochro matic checkbox (otherwise,

your noise will appear as little red, green,

and blue specks, which looks really lame)

Lastly, dial in an amount of noise that

while visible, isn’t overly noisy I’m

work-ing on a very low-resolution version, so

I only used 4%, but on a high-res digital

camera photo, you’ll probably have to

use between 10% and 12% to see much

of anything You can see the before/after

at the top of the next page Beyond that,

I gave you some other examples of how

this effect looks on other portraits

Step Seven:

Here’s another example using the exact same technique, and you can see how different the effect looks on a completely different image I particularly love the almost bronze skin tone it creates in this image Very cool stuff Turn the page for more examples

TIP: Don’t Add Too Much Noise

Be careful not to add too much noise, because when you add an Un sharp Mask

to the image (which you would do at the very end, right before you save the file),

it enhances and brings out any noise (intentional or otherwise) in the photo

ANOTHER TIP: Background Only

I once saw this effect used in a motor-cycle print ad They applied the effect

to the background, and then masked (knocked out) the bike so it was in full color It really looked very slick (almost eerie in a cool eerie way)

Before

After

Step Eight:

Here’s the same technique applied to

a photo of a woman, however I didn’t

knock out the eyes because her eye color

was pretty subtle Instead I lowered the

Brush tool’s opacity to 50% and painted

over her lips on the top layer, then copied

that layer mask down to the B&W layer

(just like before with the eyes—same

technique with the mask) Without doing

that, her lips looked pretty cold, and this

way the subtle 50% pink looks right with

the rest of the photo

TIP: Vary the Opacity

Here are a couple of variations you can

try with this effect: If the effect seems

too subtle when you first apply it, of

course you could try Overlay mode as

I mentioned earlier, but before you try

that, try duplicating the Soft Light layer

once and watch how that pumps up the

effect Of course, you can lower the

opac-ity of that layer if it’s too much Another

trick to try is to lower the opacity of the

original Soft Light layer to 70%, which

brings back some color with almost a

tinting effect Give it a shot and see what

you think One last thing: wouldn’t this

be a great effect to apply as an action?

Oh yeah—that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!