Quick Photoshop Technique – Brightening Images using Blend Modes

Hello and welcome from a snowy London! What the heck is going on with the weather?  I cannot remember a March like this before where it has snowed!

Here is a very quick tutorial for you for you to give your images brightness using the levels adjustment layer and the Screen blend mode.

This is a very basic technique but I have used it on a number of occasions, now.

Step 1
Open the image that you are looking to edit in Photoshop.

Step 2
Click the Levels Adjustment Layer

Step 3
Change the blend mode to Screen

Step 4
Press Command/Control I to invert the white adjustment layer to black and cover the whole image.

Step 5
Select a soft brush and change your foreground colour to white and paint over the areas you wish to lighten.  Should the area you painted over be too bright then just adjust the opacity of the layer until it looks correct.  In this image the left hand side of the image has been adjusted to show you the difference in shade and brightness.

Thanks for stopping by.  I propose to upload a quick video of this tutorial in the next couple of weeks.

This technique can be used for a number of different purposes, especially when whitening the whites of the eyes.  It involves the same steps as this one.

If you would like to leave your comments you are more than welcome in the section below,

Todor
My Website

The Golden Look Technique – Walkthrough

Hi and I hope that you are all well?  Am sitting down in the kitchen typing away and listening to a digital radio station called Smooth Christmas which is really getting me into the spirit of things – as the big day is just over a month away.

Earlier this week I shared an image on the blog which was edited using a distinctive Gold Look that you often see.   Today I would like to give you a step by step walk-through on how I achieved that look.  There are only a few very easy steps, and they all involve the use of 3 Adjustment Layers.

So here you go –

Step 1
Click the Selective Colour adjustment layer and where it says colours select NEUTRALS from the drop down menu.

Step 2
When you have your neutrals showing you need to adjust your CYAN / MAGENTA / YELLOW

-73% CYAN

-29% MAGENTA

+80% YELLOW

Step 3
Now you need to add a little contrast to your image so go back to the drop down menu and change from NEUTRALS to BLACKS.

Step 4
Go to the slider marked BLACK and change the value from 0% to about +15%

Step 5
Now return to your adjustment layers and select the HUE and SATURATION adjustment layer.  But before you press it you also need to press your ALT key.
You will see a dialog box appear and where it says MODE change it from NORMAL to SOFT LIGHT and press OK.

Step 6
Click COLORIZE which is a box to the right of three pipettes.  Once you have pressed this go to HUE and adjust it so that you get quite a warm tone.  My settings would be as follows

33 HUE
25 SATURATION
0 LIGHTNESS

Step 7
In order to adjust the shadows and lighten the very dark areas you will need to click onto the LEVELS adjustment layer.  Now adjust your levels to suit your image.

What I would recommend is that you play around with the settings as I have found that each image is different, so the values I have given you are just a guide – these are the values I used for the image of Mel Mills [click here].

Let me know how you get on with this technique and please feel free to share a link to your images, as I would love to see how you have put this technique to use.

Thanks for reading!

Todor
My Website

Some family pictures I would like to share…

Recently a friend of mine, and a very talented photographer whom I can say is a master craftsman on both film and digital [click here], placed a comment on his Facebook page saying that he should be shooting more of his kids.  This is something that I have been guilty of, too.  Not enough pictures of the kids…  So I have been taking every opportunity to take pictures of the boys.  Here are a couple that I would like to share with you…

All images taken on my trusted Nikon D700 and 50mm 1.4 lens which may as well be welded onto that body!

Thanks for taking the time to drop by.

Please feel free to leave your comments.

Todor

website

Newborn baby photographs

A few weeks ago I went to vist a relative who had recently given birth.  Naturally I had to take my camera with me and take some pictures.

The images were taken on a D700 using either  a 50mm or 135 lens, with the camera set to auto ISO and aperture priority mode.

Thanks for reading!

What to expect in 2012

Following a good 2011 where I have had the opportunity to work with some really exciting new clients, I am pleased to announce that 2012 is looking to be another good year developing nw10photography.

January will see some media press packs being shot for a client, whose details I am unable to disclose at this stage.  Whereas February will see me covering a Batmitzvah for the daughter of one of my corporate clients.  And in May I will be covering my cousin’s wedding which will be held at the 12 Apostles Greek Church and then followed by a reception in Kew Gardens.  I will also be working on a charity project with money raised going to a very worhtwhile cause called Clic Sergent [click here], sharing more instructional videos, and concentrating on more promo portraits.  So it should be a great year!

Here is a video I would like to share by Scott Kelby (I would highly recommend you invest in his training) on processing an HDR image.  Enjoy!

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!

Todor!

Links:-

Scott Kelby

nw10photography

Vienna in Love : More Promo images

Alot of the last few weeks has been spent either studying photoshop techniques, client frame orders, and dealing with a backlog of editing especially images for my main site [click here].

From allthe images that I have added to the site, these two are my favourites –

 

Photo Booth : My neice’s 18th Birthday Portraits

I was asked by my neice whether I would like to take some portraits of her and her guests for her 18th Birthday Party.  Of course I was going to do it! I jumped at the chance, not only as it would be a fantastic memento for her, but also for the experience of it, too.

I was fornutate that the venue had an area we could use.  So I set up my trusted 60″ reflective umbrella and after setting up started shooting! I would say that it was a significant learning curve, as you have to really make sure everyone understands what you are asking them to do, especially as most of my family do not speak English!  So to make it easier for people to know where to stand I stuck a piece of masking tape to the floor.

So here it is, a slideshow of some of the images that I got from the evening.

http://static.animoto.com/swf/w.swf?w=swf/vp1&e=1311442630&f=V2Z4z9hxVYNT2vGzHygI0w&d=352&m=a&r=240p&volume=100&start_res=240p&i=m&options=

Book Review : Scott Kelby’s Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques

Today’s post was going to cover a shoot I was supposed to have yesterday (Thursday).  However, the shoot was cancelled so now for something completely different.

I recently bought a great book by Scott Kelby – Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop.  Absoloutely bloody brilliant book!!  For anyone who has bought any of Scott Kelby’s books you will by now already know that he has a very easy to read style – just like he is standing there explaining it to you in person.

There are six chapters covering eyes, skin, face, hair, lips, and slimming.  At the very end of the book there are three retouches that Scott goes through, and they are 5 minute, 15 minut, and 30 minutes in length.  Each chapter shows different ways of achieving the techniques because as Scott explains each person you photograph will be different.

The other reasons that I love this book is that you can read the chapters in no particular order – however, if you are going to do the last chapter’s retouches it is assumed that you have already read the whole book.  And, there are some FREE downloads for you in the shape of images to work on, and eyelashes for you to use when doing eyes.

All techniques are broken down step by step, and you have screen grabs to help you along the way.

I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to learn about portrait retouching and move away from bought actions.

Here is a short video with Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski talking about Scott’s new book.

Useful Links:

www.scottkelby.com

www.kelbytraining.com

www.mattkloskowski.com

www.lightroomkillertips.com

www.nw10photography.com

A link to a cool photographer : David E Jackson

This week has been a bit of a stressful week for the family, as my mother in law had to go in for open heart surgery, after she had another heart attack a couple of weeks ago. So as you will appreciate I have not been able to do what I would have initially liked for my blog.

However, I would really like to share with you a link to an amazing photographer who is based in the US. I love his portrait work, his style of wedding photography, and creativity.  I introduce to you David E Jackson.

[Click Here] to go to his blog where you will find some great shots as well as the added bonus of the lighting explained in detail.  Recently David E Jackson was interviewed by Glyn Dewis and you can read what he had to say here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoy the link to David E Jackson’s work.

Todor

www.davidejackson.com

www.glyndewisblog.com

www.nw10photography.com

Urban Portrait Shoot

I was recently asked by my long time friend, Natalie, whether I would like to photograph her boyfriend, Jason, and help him build up his modelling portfolio.  Naturally, I said yes and that I would be more than happy to do it.

The plan was to keep local and use some of the local backgrounds that I have recently discovered – in this case I was going to use the front of a disused cash and carry as well as the shutters of a local deli!

The kit that I used was my canon 5d2, 24-70mm lens, softbox, speedlight, and trusted pocket wizards.

We started off using the old cash and carry as the first setting.  Here, I used the softbox.  My camera settings were 1/160th, f4.0, ISO100.  The speedlight was set to 1/8th power.  When taking the shots next to the brick wall I just removed the softbox, and used the bare speedlight firing it into the side of Jason’s head so that some spilled to the side and onto the wall.

**Top Tip** When going for the flash fired from the back of the subject look, always remember not to fire it direct at his/her ears! As you will get red ears, and will not be able to get rid of it, even in post production.  Always get your subject to turn their head to the side slightly (thanks to Glyn Dewis for this piece of advice).

The other setting I used was the green shutters to my local deli (the softbox was replaced). I used the same settings as above and just adjusted the flash-to-subject distance.  As we were loosing light, I was adjusting the shutter speed in order to get more ambient light in.  On a couple fo the shots I had the shutter speed at 1/200, and aperture at f9/11 so that the cloud detail was captured.  However, to compensate I increased thh flash output by 2 stops, to 1/2.

I am really enjoying using off camera flash and lighting techniques.  It gives you the opportunity to try new things and, for me, it adds another dimension to your images. I hope you like the images, and please feel free to add your comments. Also, I have attached the animoto slideshow I did from the shoot – click here.