Wedding Photography Tips for Photographers
Photoshop techniques by Wedding Photography Tips for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop is much more than a powerful software program for editing image
files. It is a virtual digital darkroom, offering more creative flexibility than
a conventional darkroom. Photoshop allows you to work on the image as a positive,
allowing you to view the effect as you create it. Photoshop is also extremely open-ended-—there
are many different ways to do the same thing. As a result, certain techniques talked
about here can be achieved by a number of different means.
Photoshop’s flexibility also makes it open to a wide variety of unique techniques.
If you sit down with six photographers and ask them how they do a fain common correction,
like selective diffusion, you just might get six different answers. Many practitioners
pick up a technique in a book, then another at a workshop they’ve attended—and soon
the technique has become a hybrid, with a slightly different method and result.
The following is a collection of Photoshop techniques useful to (but not exclusive
to) digital wedding photographers.
Background copy layer
Many different creative effects involve using Photoshop’s layers. When you open
an image and go to the layers palette, you will see your background layer with a
padlock icon next to it, meaning that this is your original image. Make a copy of
the background layer by clicking and dragging the background layer onto the new-layer
icon.
Immediately save the image in the PSD (Photoshop Document) or TIFF file format,
which will allow you to preserve the layers, including the original background layer
and background copy layer. Other file formats will require you to flatten the layers,
which merges all the layers into one and obliterates your working layers. If for
some reason you need to revert to the original image, you can simply delete all
layers except your original background layer.
Once you’ve done this, you can continue working on the background copy. Because
you are working on a duplicate of your original, it’s easy to compare the “before”
and “after” version of your image as you work and to revert back to the original
if need be.
Eraser Tool
Once you’ve made a copy of the background layer, the eraser tool allows you to selectively
permit the underlying background layer to show through—good for creating selective
effects.
For example, working on the background copy layer, you can apply the Gaussian blur
filter (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur). This will blur the entire image. To restore
the original sharpness to selected areas, you can then use the eraser tool to “erase”
the blurred background copy layer and allow the sharp background layer to show through.
You can set the eraser opacity and flow to 100 percent to reveal the hidden original
background layer completely, or you can set the opacity to around 50 percent and
bring back the sharpness gradually.
As you work, you’ll probably want to enlarge the image to ensure that you erase
accurately. You can also switch between different brushes, depending on the area
you need to erase. Your selection of a soft- or hard-edged brush, and its size,
will change the sharpness of the perimeter edge of the erased area. A good middle
ground is a small- to medium-sized, soft- edged brush.
This technique is ideal for retouching the entire face and then bringing back select
areas of the face that need to be sharp—the eyes and eyebrows, the nose, the lips
and teeth, and so forth. It also works well with special effects filters, like nik
ColorEfex’s Monday Morning Sepia—a moody, soft focus, warm- tone filter. Simply
perform the effect on the background copy layer, then bring back any of the original
detail you want by using the eraser tool to allow the original background layer
to show through.
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