Photoshop techniques don’t have to be a mystery. All you need is the confidence to play around with some of the filters and effects and when YOU like the result, use it. There is one huge caveat, though. ALWAYS work from a COPY of your original photo, NEVER the original. Storage is now so cheap there is no reason to skimp and feel that you are wasting space by duplicating the original and working on the copy. So please follow that practice and you will always be able to return to the original in the future when you decide you don’t like what you did today, or if you have thought of a new technique to try, or for any one of many other reasons.

Making a copy of the original is SO EASY, here’s what you do. With your original photo file open, go to the top Menu bar and choose File>SaveAs. Simply type in a new name in the window where it says “File Name”, click “Save” and you’re done. Photoshop keeps the newly named copy of your photo open, while the original sits safely tucked away in the directory for future use. Photos coming out of my camera are always JPEGs, and when Photoshop sees you are duplicating a JPEG it will ask you to determine the quality for the duplicate. I always choose maximum. However, I must tell you that I usually do not save the copy as a JPEG. Because JPEGs are compressed every time you save them, at this point I almost always save my file as a PSD. I know that I’m going to have layers in the final photo file, so I bite the bullet and start with a format that allows layering. I typically do not save any file to a JPEG format until I know I am through with all creative work on it. I then use JPEGs for photos I upload to the Internet, papers included in my scrapbooking kits, and so on.

Alrighty then. Below is the “copy” of the original photo I took of Stein and Chach. The pose was darling, but the photo wasn’t exposed enough and I moved the camera and blurred the image. Another lost photo I thought, but WAIT, maybe…

In the image below I applied Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. I set Amount 198%; Radius 34.9 pixels; and Threshold 3. Notice how the mask brings out their features, but also intensified the colors in the photo.

Next I added a Curves Layer (click on the half-filled circle at the bottom of the layers palette). When the Curves window opened, I used the black color picker on the far left and clicked on the darkest part of the photo, which seemed to be the area beneath Chach’s knee. Then using the white color picker on the far right, I clicked around in the photo until I got the amount of brightness I wanted. When I clicked “OK” the Curves window closed and I now had a new Curves layer on top of the layers in my layers palette. You can click the eye icon to the left of the layer to toggle visibility on and off. I play with it to see what a difference the new layer makes to the overall image, and to decide if I should make any adjustments in the Curves. It looks pretty blown-out and bright, and I like the look, but it’s not really what I’m going for here. But, we’ll see what happens as I add some more treatments to the photo. I can always come back and make adjustments if I want to.

I wanted to apply some filters to the combined result of the layers, so I copied all the current layers. I then hid the originals of each layer by clicking on the eye icon to the left of each layer. Then I highlighted all the layer copies that I wanted to merge together and used the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+E, and the newly merged layer appeared at the top of my layer stack. It looked just like the previous illustration, because it really is just a merged copy of all the layers. See….

To this merged layer I applied Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush with settings of: Brush Size 0; Brush Detail 10; and Texture 1. I then applied a Pattern Overlay by clicking on the “fx” icon at the bottom of the layers palette and selecting Pattern Overlay from the Layer Style window. I chose a Burlap pattern and set the Blend Mode to Overlay, the Opacity to 98% and the scale to 101%. Finally, I cropped the photo to capture just the portions of the children’s faces that I thought made the best effect.

Still playing around with the cropping, I thought Stein, in particular, might make a good close-up. I tried two different positions for the close-up, and can’t decide which I really like the best. In the photo that includes most of his face, it is hard to tell that his finger is pulling his cheek down and that is why the eye is somewhat distorted.

In the second attempt, I positioned the crop to show the little hand and finger, but then could not include his ear and more hair in the shot. Now I have to decide which one I like best for printing!

I hope this little tutorial has helped you decide to get creative with your own photos. As long as you are working on a copy of your original there is no reason to hold back! There are so many filters and so many techniques to try with Photoshop you will always find something that you like. In fact, the problem will probably be choosing between your favorite results!

Happy creating!

Love,
DeeDoo