Do you want to hit the ground running with your new camera?

When using Photoshop Elements to edit portraits or family photos, just about everyone wants to know  how to make the eyes pop.  Here are my favorite tricks for PSE (but they work in full Photoshop as well).  Lots of them even have Lightroom equivalents.

The most important tip for editing eyes is to be gentle.  Use low brush and layer opacities.   Your final photo should look natural – we don’t want to make it obvious that we’re editing.  There is nothing worse than ALIEN EYES!

Ready?  Here goes:

1. Remove red veins in the eyes using the Spot Healing Brush tool.  Remember that if you have Elements 9 or Element 10, you can click and drag over bigger blemishes with the Spot Healing Brush tool.  With PSE 8 and earlier, you can only click over small spots.
2. What eye tutorial could be complete without mentioning dark circles?   Remove those dark undereye circles by using the clone tool set to the Lighten blend mode.
3. Add contrast to the eyes by duplicating the background layer or stamping visible (as I did below).  The change the blend mode to soft light.  Add a layer mask to hide this adjustment from everything but the eyes.
4. Dodge the whites of the eyes to lighten them.  Reduce the opacity of the brush and dodge the iris to brighten it.  Use on catchlights too, to pop them.
5. Burn the pupils (if necessary), the rim of the iris, the eye lashes and the lash line.  To create a dodge/burn layer for steps 1 and 2, add a new black layer.  Fill it with 50% gray and change the blend mode to soft light.  Paint in white for dodging, paint in black for burning.  Your brush opacity will be on the low side.  Additional information about this eye-enhancing technique is available here.
6. Which brush tip should you choose for the above steps?  I use the stipple dense brush for brightening the whites, and a soft round for everything else.  Don’t forget that you can select the same brush ends for the Healing Brush and the Clone tool (I usually keep mine on soft round).
7. Need serious help with the eyelashes?  Look for a free eyelash brush.  Obsidian Dawn has some on Deviant Art.  Just make sure to turn the opacity way down so that they look natural.
8. Saturate the color of the iris, just a bit, using a Hue/Saturation layer and the layer mask.
9. Use the Liquify tool set to Bloat to make the eyes look bigger and more open.
10. Sharpen just the eyes.  The High Pass method is great for eyes, because it adds extra contrast.  Hide the sharpening from everything except the eyes with a layer mask.  And yes, you should still go back and resharpen the entire image before printing.

Remember, most photos won’t need all 10 steps here.  The quickest  method might be to start with an action like MCP’s Eye Doctor and then just do the fancier steps like liquifying and vein removal.

For my edit, I started with the spot healing brush tool on my skin, and then ran MCP’s Skin Cast Blast and Magic skin from the Magic Skin collection.  Next, I edited my eyes using these layers – the %s in the layer name are the opacities of the layers:

I used a super close up of my eyes for the examples in this image.  Note how I didn’t remove all the veins, or all the dark circles?  This is what I meant about being natural.  No one has perfect eyes or skin, and most photos aren’t going to be this close up.  These imperfections are only going to enhance your photo.

You guys have heard me talk about Photovision before, right?  This is my favorite photography video series.

Every other month, I receive a DVD from them with 3 or more hours of content.  Several professional photographers are featured on each DVD, doing things like:

• setting up shoots and posing clients
• post-processing their images
• describing various aspects of their business, from marketing to getting started to sales.

I put these videos on my Ipad and watch them while I work out.  I have also had a couple of viewing parties with photographer friends where we pop some popcorn and talk photography.  Either way, I learn tons – this is one of the best learning tools I’ve found for photography  - especially for shoot set up and interacting with clients.

Those of you that subscribe to Photovision know that they had a contest last year for people that referred new subscribers to them – a drawing for a Canon 5D Mark ii.  And I won it!!!!

I found out just a couple of weeks ago and have been playing with and learning this new camera ever since.  I am beyond excited, so I’m sending this post to Photovision as a big huge THANK YOU!

Are you interested in joining the Photovision fan club with me?  You can watch free previews of the 2012 series on their website.  And, you can purchase all the 2012 videos for only $49 using coupon code VOD.

Textures and overlays are a great tool for adding oomph to a photo, hiding distractions, and even adding atmospheric effects.  You can get much more out of your textures if you know how to modify them to suit your needs.

My daughter was being a real champ at posing a couple of weeks ago, and I got this shot of her pondering the big blue sky.  Or maybe she was thinking about the cookie I bribed her with.  Regardless, I got this shot:

This is one of those shots where you just can’t capture the blue sky and get good exposure on your subject’s face.  I underexposed her face just a bit, thinking it might help get just a bit of blue, but I would have had to underexpose a lot more to make that work.

Usually, I don’t mind blown out sky in situations like this, but this time, I decided to repair it in Photoshop Elements.

To begin the edit, I added a levels adjustment layer with midtones moved over to 1.31 to correct the underexposed face.  And I moved blacks up to 19 to remove some of the haze.

Consistently good focus in my photography is something I’m always working on.

When I take photos, I look at the back of my camera for feedback on focus as well as exposure.  Some (rude) people call this chimping.

Of course, you have to zoom way in to verify that focus is good on the camera display.  And you never really know until you see the photo on your computer, right?  So getting this feedback on your focus is a time consuming process.

But after all these years, I just learned that my camera will show on the display exactly where the focus point was.  How cool is that?  No need to zoom in.  If you intended to focus on an eye, but instead focused on the forehead, you’re going to see this right away because there will be a red box or dot on the forehead.

In the photo above, do you see the red box just to the right of the arrow?  That is my camera telling me exactly where focus was achieved.  (Of course, it doesn’t look sharp on a phone photo of a camera display, but the doll food under that red dot is actually quite sharp.)

Do you want to set up AF Point Display on your camera?  Here’s what it looks like on the Canon 7D menu:

And below is the Canon 5D Mark ii menu.

This feature is available on the Canon 60D also, so I suspect that it might be a standard dSLR feature.   You would find it under one of your Playback menus.  Look for AF Point Display.

Nikon shooters, is this available on your cameras?  I would love to know how to set it, if so.  I did a quick google search and looked through the manual for the Nikon D300 but didn’t see anything like it.  I’m sure I’m just not using the right search terms – its’s probably called something different.

Thanks to my friend Lindsay at Sunflare Photography for teaching me this awesome camera setting.

It occurred to me last week when writing about color curves in LR 4 that I have never done a tutorial on this blog about using the color channels in Levels to fix color casts.  So here goes!

(This tutorial comes in part from my eBook, Ready, Set, Actions!  Check it out if you’re interested in an entire eBook just about Elements.)

You can use levels to correct white balance issues, tone down skin that’s too red, fix reflected color casts (using a layer mask) or even to edit creatively to add a color tone.

In this image, I wanted to reduce the red tones showing up in the baby’s skin:

The first step is to add a levels adjustment layer by clicking on the half-black half-white circle at the bottom of the layers palette:

Some thinking is involved for this next step.  There are 3 color channels in Elements:  Red, Green and Blue.  Each of them has an opposite:

To increase one color, you decrease it’s opposite.  So, in the photo above, to offset the red I’m going to increase the cyan.  To do that, I pull down the pick list in the Levels Adjustment dialog that says “RGB” and select Red.

I focus on the midtone slider to make these adjustments.  That’s the gray triangle in the screen shot above that has 1.00 underneath it.

If I move the midtone slider to the left, the number gets higher and Reds increase.   If I move it to the right, the number gets smaller and the Cyans increase.  If the Cyans increase, that means the Reds are decreasing.

Read that again if you need to.  Elements is not a software that could be called “intuitive.”

Once the whole color opposite thing clicks, this really is pretty easy.  You can adjust just one color channel or all three, just by selecting the ones you need from the RGB pick list.

And, if you have a reflected color cast – like a green shirt reflecting up onto someone’s face – you can use this color channels method to fix it.  Use Levels to fix the color, and then mask it in to only the places where you need it.

It’s about time I wrote up a tutorial on that, dont ya think?  Enjoy!

If you want to read more about what I do with Levels in Elements, download the first chapter of my eBook, Ready, Set, Actions! from Texas Chicks’ Facebook page.  It’s free!

My photography inspiration for the week is coming from the Fly Guide again.  Last week, I shared my favorite photos as part of an exercise from the Fly Guide.  This week, I worked on an assignment to document my life and household and help me identify who I am and what I truly love.

I’ve decided to share some of my photos from the Fly Guide with you, but I do need to say that this book is much much more than photography prompts.  So, even though I’m sharing my photos with you, I’m not talking about the journaling, the discussion, or all the other wonderfulness that make the Fly Guide.  I don’t even think Angie Warren, the author, knows I’m writing here.

My intent is not to replace the Fly Guide or to convince you to buy it.  I just want to share my photos with you, and maybe some inspiration as well.

I have lots of photos of our home from working on A Week in the Life for the past two years.  This week, I was really feeling the need to document and celebrate just my office.  I have a new desk that fits the space so well, and gives me so many options for organizing.  I feel creative and productive just by sitting at the desk now!

Nearly everything worth knowing about me is represented somewhere in these photos.

What could you take photos of around your house that would identify who you are and what you love?  What a great gift this would be to your kids as they grow up.  It would be direct insight into you were in addition to being a mom.

This is a great project to work on if you need more about you in your scrapbooks or photo collection.  Plus, it’s an easy way to practice.  Household items don’t wiggle and they’re easy to pose!

If you have photos that represent you, I’d love to see them.  Link to them below or post them on my Facebook page.

 

 

My source for paper for my home printer paper has been Red River Paper for a couple of years now.

You Texas Chicks old timers might remember a series of posts on print quality that we did a couple of years back with Drew Hendrix of Red River Paper.

• Editing on a laptop, fine art paper
• Working space:  Adobe RGB vs. sRGB
• Prints are too dark

Even if you have read those posts already, they’re worth a re-read.  They contain lots of good info about how to make your prints look their best.

I use Red River’s papers for tons of reasons.

• First off, the customer service is speedy and responsive.
• 2nd, they carry scrapbook sized paper – 12 inches wide.  That can be hard to find.
• 3rd, well, yes, they are another Texas company.  And a small business at that.
• The Red River website is full of good info about getting great prints.  Check out Red River’s 12 tips for getting great prints in 2012.
• And finally?  My prints look great on them.  They match the quality of the Epson paper that the printer manuals recommend and they often cost less.  And they’re way better than the cheap stuff I buy from the office supply store when I’m desparate.

So when Drew asked me about advertising on Texas Chicks, I was proud to say yes.

What are my favorite products?

• Ultra Pro Satin – a good luster finish that costs less than comparable Epson paper
• Arctic Polar Satin – luxury luster.  Can you tell that I’m a luster girl?
• Green Pix Warm Tone – size 10×7 for notecards that I print from home.  Love this especially because it’s made with recycled paper!  You can use this for the notes created by my free action.

• Anything 12×12 – lots of options, including 3 double sided choices.  What could be better for digital scrapbookers?

Even if you don’t need printer paper right now, read Red River’s 12 tips for getting great prints in 2012.  You’ll learn something good, I promise!

Lightroom 4 has just been released in beta version and it rocks!  While LR 4 won’t completely replace Elements, it sure will be a time saver if you use it together with PSE.

One of new the features that I am particularly excited about is the Color Curves function.  For those of you that use Elements, this is similar to using the color channels in Levels to fix color casts.

What?  You don’t know how to do that in Elements?  That feature is explained in detail in the first chapter of my eBook, Ready, Set, Actions!  You can download the first chapter for free by liking my Facebook page.

Fixing color casts via Curves gives you more options than using White Balance alone.

Users of full Photoshop use Curves, rather than Levels to to adjust these color casts, and to create gorgeous color effects.  Full Photoshop users have an extra dimension of changes to apply in Curves over the users of Levels in Elements.  Elements users, this is another reason why Lightroom and Elements make such a good combo – no reason to buy full PS just for the sake of curves.

Plus, anything that gives you one less reason to take a photo from LR into PS or PSE is a big timesaver.

However, it’s not immediately obvious how to access color curves in Lightroom 4.  This is what you do:

In the Develop Module, open the Tone Curve panel and click once on the Edit Point Curve button in the lower right corner.

This will will put endpoints on your curve and allow you to select a specific color channel.

Click on the letters “RGB” to select a specific color channel.

You are now ready to adjust the amounts of each color in your photo.  Need more info on how to do that?  Download that first chapter of my eBook to learn about the theory of color correction.  And I’ll write up a tutorial specific to Lightroom soon.