Living Locurto - Free Printables, How To DIY Ideas, Crafts & Party Ideas.» Photoshop Tutorials

I Heart Faces Fix-it Friday

Amy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:07:44 +0000

It wasn’t until I started I Heart Faces and got into photography that I realized most photos you see are NOT straight out of the camera. I knew there was airbrushing, blurring of the backgrounds and switching of heads involved because I had done that in my graphic design business. It was the actions, overlays and textures that I didn’t know about.

Photographers these days have a lot of tricks to make photos look better. That’s why we started Fix-It Friday, where you take an ordinary photo and give it that WOW factor. It’s fun to see what a bunch of people do to the same photo!

This is the original photo that was submitted this week. It’s a great photo, but a little muddy looking and has a really cool tone to it.

Here are some edits I made in Photoshop. I won’t go into details, but basically I tilted the photo so his head was straight, gave it a warmer tone, sharpened his eyes and mouth, then added those cool light dots we call “Bokeh” to the background. If you watch movies, you’ll notice them everywhere in the background!

I recently met Patti Brown who has the coolest textures and overlays. She gave me her Kaleidoscope Collection to try out and I love the Bokeh overlays because I can’t always get that to work in my photos. I think this middle photo is my favorite…

Go visit I Heart Faces to see what our awesome contributing photographers did to this photo, then add your own. It’s so fun!

Have a great weekend! – Amy

Be sure to join Amy on Facebook for more fun!
Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

Before and After Photo Edit

Amy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:55:19 +0000

I’m a contributor this week at I ? Faces for Fix-It-Friday.

This is the before shot:

I pictured it with that Shabby Chic look, so here is my after shot:

I use Photoshop CS4 for photo editing. If you want to see directions on how I did this. Head over to my contributor page and also check out all the other contributor’s edits. It’s fun to see them side by side.

You can also participate yourself and add a link to your fix. We encourage everyone to play along!

Happy Friday everyone!!

-Amy

Photoshop Tutorial – Skin Retouching

Amy — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:01:20 +0000

I wanted to let you Photoshop users know about a fast and easy I ? Faces video tutorial I did along with Rita from CoffeeShop. It’s about how to make you look young and beautiful! Uh oh… now you know my secret of why I never age:-)

This is my friend Janet (right) and her lovely sister. Aren’t they cute? This is a surprise for them!! Sorry I’m blasting your face all over the internet girls, but you’re just such good models! Look how good you look…

See Rita’s tutorial and my videos over at I ? Faces!

While you’re there, be sure to enter to win a custom made Blurb Book!

The Blurb Book giveaway ends Monday night. Heads up for Living Locurto readers… we’ll be having another GREAT giveaway Friday that you won’t want to miss:-)

White Sky Photoshop Tutorial

Amy — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:18:48 +0000

I really like how this icy tree in my backyard turned out against the white sky. I thought I would share with you how I made this happen. Because remember… I’m not a great photographer and have an old Canon point and shoot camera… I just know how to do tricks:-)

Here it is straight from the camera. It was raining and turning into ice on the trees. I was fascinated with how white the sky looked. But the photo I took did not capture what it really looked like in person. Mmmm, probably because I didn’t even go outside. This was shot through a very dirty window from upstairs! ha.

First, cropped some of the bottom limbs out of the photo. I then opened Levels and moved the far right Input Levels slider toward the black until the gray was gone from the sky. This turned the entire sky white which I loved, but the tree was still kind of bla.

To make the tree pop. I used the Pioneer Woman’s Define and Sharpen Action. (these actions are free) I could have probably done this well enough by sharpening it myself, but the actions are super easy. I did end up sharpening it a little more to my taste.

I then opened Levels again and clicked on the Set Black Point dropper. I found a light gray part of the tree and hit the dropper on that point, this then made the tree all black and much more dramatic.

I then deleted a branch that was bugging me in the bottom right corner and walla!

I think it looks like a vector image now and would make a great background image for note cards or stationary. Stay tuned to see what I do with it!

***Don’t have Photoshop? Then try the online version here.

Check out other sky photos here.

Have you seen our new photography sharing site?

This week is the first I ? Faces photo contest! All levels of photographers welcome. You have until Wednesday night to link your photos. Winners will get their photo displayed on our home page! Head over there now to click through 100 awesome links!

Super Baby- Photoshop Tutorial

Amy — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:02:02 +0000

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, NO it’s Super Baby!!!

I received a lot of good response from my last Photoshop tutorial, so I thought Super Baby would make another great lesson.

This is the photo straight from the camera. His Super Dad was holding the cape! Look at his arms… they were in perfect super hero flying position.

Directions on adding a sky background:

1. Duplicate the background layer to create a 2nd layer with the original photo. (I like to have my original photo in my document in case I mess up!)

2. Now make another layer and put in the middle of the other two layers. This will be the sky layer. Add a stock photo or create your own sky by filling the page with your choice of blue, then click on Filter , Render, Clouds. Here is a sample of what this would look like. I have great shots of clouds, so was able to drop in one for my Super Baby photo.

3. Now go to your duplicate layer of the original photo (the one on top). Make sure your Paths window is open. Create a New Path. Then click on the pen tool and start outlining your subject. One trick I use is to hold down the command/apple key to curve the path to my liking. (I’m on a mac- not sure what the PC key is for this trick.) There are lots more tricks for this tool, but not enough time to go through them all on this post. More on that later:-)

4. After you have outlined your subject, command click that path layer. This should select your path.
5. Now that your subject is selected (highlighted), click on Select, Modify, Contract. Enter 1 pixel. This will ensure you don’t get any background in your selection.
6. Now click Select, Feather. Enter 1 pixel. This will make your selection not look so cut out and fake. You may even have to try 2 pixels. Play around with this.

7. Click Select, Inverse.

8. Hit Delete. This will remove the original background and the sky should show up because that is the layer underneath.

9. I like to go around with the Erase tool and erase any original background that is showing up. For this shot, I cloned out Super Mom’s fingers on his belly.

10. Now you should end up with this! Thanks for being such a cute subject little Super Baby!!