Review Digital Camera World 03-12-2014

Digital Camera World

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Lightroom tips: 6 quick tricks for giving your portraits a professional finish Mar 12th 2014, 00:01, by jmeyer Use these surefire Adobe Lightroom tips to remove unwanted blemishes, soften skin and boost eyes to ensure your portraits are the best they can be. More and more lately we're finding Adobe Lightroom is overtaking Photoshop as the program of choice for enhancing our portraits. At first glance, with its emphasis on tonal controls and presets, Lightroom may not seem like the ideal place to carry out detailed work like portrait retouching. However, Lightroom was developed for editing photographs and it's surprising how far you can take an image using a few simple tools and techniques. A big part of retouching a portrait involves making adjustments to different areas of a face, and they're usually the same adjustments every time: we lighten the eyes, soften the skin, boost the lips, sharpen the eye lashes, and tone down any bags under the eyes. All these adjustments can be made with one powerful tool: the aptly named Adjustment Brush. We'll use it here to give our portrait a fully professional finish. Another important (if at times monotonous) stage of retouching is the removal of marks, spots and blemishes. Everyone has them, but what goes unnoticed in a moving person can spoil a static image. In this area Lightroom is still playing catchup with Photoshop, but Lightroom 5 has taken a big leap forwards with the improved Spot Removal tool, which operates just like a brush. SEE MORE: Adobe Lightroom – what every photographer must know about the alternative Photoshop Lightroom tips to give your portraits a professional finish (1-3) Lightroom tips for portraits: 01 Lift skin tones Download our start files and follow along! Drag retouch_before.dng into Lightroom's Library and click Import. Next, head to the Develop Module. In the Basic Panel set Exposure +0.15, Contrast +24, Blacks -17, Vibrance +15. Go down to the HSL Panel. Click Luminance and set Red +22, Orange +20, Yellow +50 to lift the skin.   Lightroom tips for portraits: 02 Enhance the eyes Grab the Crop tool from the toolbar and crop in slightly tighter to the face. Select the Adjustment Brush, and in the Brush settings on the right choose Effect: Iris Enhance. Zoom in to the eyes and paint over both irises. Hit O to toggle a view of the mask overlay. SEE MORE: Lightroom effects – use the Virtual Copies feature to test different looks Lightroom tips for portraits: 03 Soften the skin Click New at the top of the Adjustment Brush settings then set Effect: Sharpen. Paint over the lashes. Click New again and choose Soften Skin, then paint over the lighter areas of skin on the face and arms. Click New again and paint over the lips, then set Contrast +25, Saturation +15. PAGE 1: Lightroom tips to give your portraits a professional finish (1-3) PAGE 2: Lightroom tips to give your portraits a professional finish (4-6) PAGE 3: Final tips for using Lightroom READ MORE 10 portrait photography mistakes every photographer makes (and how to avoid them) How to retouch photos: pro techniques in 10 easy steps Dodge and Burn: how to master one of the most vital photo editing skills How to use Lightroom to reclaim highlight and shadow detail 77 photography techniques, tips and tricks for taking pictures of anything Retro pictures: how to age photos to recreate wonderful analogue effects Mar 11th 2014, 11:51, by jmeyer Discover how to make stylish retro pictures with this simple Photoshop Elements workflow. In this tutorial we show you step-by-step how to age photos in your photo editing software to create on-trend images that recreate analogue effects. Retro effects are very much in vogue at the moment. It seems that, with modern cameras offering us crystal-clear picture quality, the appeal of analogue imperfections have gone through the roof. Those little errors can make retro pictures seem so much more individual. There are lots of ways to age photos in Photoshop, and while it'll take a little longer than instant smartphone apps, the results of your retro pictures will be far more unique. In this retro pictures tutorial we'll show you how to rough up a brand new image by adding a grubby border and dirty texture. We'll also mimic the effects of a light leak by adding orange colouring, giving the impression that light has seeped through the gaps in a cheap camera body to fog the edges of the film. Along the way we'll encounter fundamental Photoshop skills like blend modes, selections, filters and masks. Each stage in our retro pictures workflow remains editable at any point, and once you've done it once, you can try the effect out on any image simply by duplicating the layers. Here's how… SEE MORE: How to make a Cyanotype for an on-trend, retro look How to age photos to create stylish retro pictures How to make retro pictures: 01 Blend the border Download our start files and follow along! Open the three retro JPEGs supplied. Go to retro_frame, then right-click the layer in the Layers Panel (Window> Layers) and choose Duplicate Layer. Set Destination Document: retro_before and hit OK. Next go to retro_before. Click the Blend Mode dropdown at the top of the Layers Panel and choose Screen to blend the border.   How to make retro pictures: 02 Tidy the edges Double-click the lower layer. Rename it and hit OK. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+T, then drag the bounding box to resize the image so it fits the frame. Hit Enter to apply. Grab the Polygonal Lasso tool and set Feather 2px in the options. Click around the edges of the frame to select it, then click the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers Panel.   How to make retro pictures: 03 Paint white edges Set brush opacity to 30%, then paint with a large soft-edged brush around the edges to fade it out to white. In the Layers panel, create a new Brightness Contrast adjustment layer and set Brightness 24, Contrast 21. Then add a Photo Filter adjustment layer – Cooling Filter (82).   How to make retro pictures: 04 Soften the corners Grab the Elliptical Marquee tool. Hold Alt+Shift and drag from the centre to the edge of the frame. Right-click and pick Feather, then set 250px and hit OK. Highlight the layer mask thumbnail on the Blur layer, go to Edit>Fill Selection, choose Use: Black and hit OK.   How to make retro pictures: 05 Shift colour channels Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers Panel. Choose Levels. On Channel: Red, drag the lower left Output Level slider to 220, on Channel: Green drag it to 50 and on Channel: Blue drag the lower right Output slider to 180. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the layer mask.   How to make retro pictures: 06 Mask the colours Grab the Brush tool, set colour to white and hit 3 for 30% opacity. Paint around the edges. Select the top layer, then add a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer. Pick Warming Filter (LBA). Add a Levels layer. Set the midpoint slider to 1.23. Choose Channel: Red. Set black point 61, midpoint 1.18. SEE MORE: Make an Ansel Adams landscape – try this simple workflow for classic black and white images Try other images By keeping each stage of the effect on a separate layer, we're free to vary the strength of each element. If you think the texture or light leak is too strong, simply lower the layer opacity to tone it down. Adjustment Layers also play an invaluable part in our non-destructive workflow, as any tonal changes can be edited at any time. You're also free to try out the effect on different images, simply by copying them into the document, and dragging the layer below all the effects. SEE MORE: Make a composite image in Photoshop Elements – how to use layers to add depth Final tip If you're shooting images specifically to create retro pictures on the computer, try taking a picture with a shallow depth of field as the blur behind and in front of your subject will enhance the retro effect. This does mean you'll have to pay attention to your focusing, however. READ MORE Long exposure cloud movement: how to give a sharp sky a slow shutter speed effect How to replace a sky: Photoshop effects to make your landscapes more attractive Rim lighting: simple Photoshop effects to enhance your landscapes Holga Effect: Photoshop techniques for cool, retro images Fantasy landscape tutorial: how to seamlessly blend images into a dramatic montage

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