Tabla de contenidos para April 2023 en Practical Photoshop

Blemish removal is easily done using the Spot Healing Brush, which simply allows you to paint over small spots and imperfections to remove them. It works best for removing small marks from otherwise clean areas, which makes it ideal for retouching spots and pimples from skin. Grab the tool from the Tools Panel, then check the Sample All Layers in the tool options at the top. Make a new layer (so that you don’t make permanent changes to your original image), then zoom in close and paint to remove small imperfections. Use the [ and ] keys to resize the brush tip as you paint.…

A subtle boost to the eyes can make a big difference – but which areas do we change, and which settings are best? To find out, open the image into Camera Raw. Press K and paint to make a mask over a part of the eye (or isolate it automatically with the people masking tools in Camera Raw and Lightroom), then go to the sliders on the right and use the following settings as a guide… 1 IRIS SETTINGS: EXPOSURE +0.35, SATURATION +25, CLARITY +40 Isolate the irises with a mask, then increase Exposure, Clarity and Saturation to boost the area. 2 EDGE OF IRIS SETTING: EXPOSURE -0.50 Use a small brush and paint a thin line around the edges of the iris. Decrease Exposure to darken the area slightly.…

Catchlights are the little reflected highlights we see in a person’s eyes, and they’re great for focusing attention on the ‘window to the soul’. Sometimes catchlights can look a little dull, so try dodging them with the Dodge Tool. For greater impact, try cloning a weak catchlight from one side of the iris to the other. Make a new layer and grab the Clone Tool. Click the Clone Source Panel icon in the tool options at the top. Check Flip Horizontal and/or Flip Vertical in the Clone Panel then Alt-click to sample the catchlight and paint to clone it over the other side of the iris.…

1 OFF-CAMERA FLASH Our off-camera flash here is set to manual mode at ⅛ power and attached to a light stand via an umbrella fitting. The flash is positioned to the side of the subject to deliver soft, directional light over the face, and also serves to emphasize the texture of the frosty fallen tree below our model. 2 COOLING THE LIGHT Our flash is fitted with a ½ Color Temperature Blue (CTB) gel. This cools down the light source, producing blue light over our subject. By setting our white balance to match the cool light hitting the subject, we can make the light in the background appear warmer while still retaining natural skin tones. 3 EXPOSURE AND WHITE BALANCE The camera is in Manual mode with a shutter speed…

The improved AI masking tools in Lightroom and Camera Raw allow you to quickly isolate either a subject or a background. There are buttons for each, so all you have to do is click one, and a mask will automatically be generated for either area. Once done, you can go on to alter either area using an array of powerful tonal tools. These include Temperature and Tint sliders that let you selectively change the white balance in different parts of the frame. So you can experiment by selectively shifting the white balance controls for either the subject or the backdrop. This could serve to correct a mismatch between the two – or instead create one, as we’ve done here by cooling the backdrop, which helps the subject stand out and…

The Skin Smoothing Neural Filter employs AI to smooth skin automatically. It can detect faces and apply a subtle smoothing effect to the skin. While Skin Smoothing is not perfect, it is capable of producing natural-looking results if you can take control… 01 OPEN THE SKIN SMOOTHING FILTER Open your portrait image in Photoshop, then go to Filters > Neural Filters. Toggle on the Skin Smoothing Filter. You can experiment with the Blur and Smoothness Filters too, although these typically tend to have minimal impact on the overall effect. Once done, set Output to New Layer and click OK. 02 REVEAL WITH A MASK Toggle the layer visibility off and on, and you’ll see that the Skin Smoothing effect usually smudges out details in the face. So hold Alt and…

So much of portrait retouching is about isolating parts of the face in order to make targeted edits. The Mask command in Camera Raw and Lightroom helps you out enormously in this regard. It lets you automatically create masks for areas of the face like eyes, lips, eyebrows, skin and more… 01 USE PEOPLE MASKING Open the image into Camera Raw, click the circular Mask icon on the right to open the Mask Panel, and go to the People section. Hover over each facial feature to see an automatic mask generated by the software. Check one or several, then click Create to make a mask. 02 ADJUST THE AREA Once the mask is made, you can use the sliders on the right to alter the area in any way you…

Presets can speed up your workflow by letting you apply a series of settings with a single click. They’ve always been useful for toning effects, but recently they’ve been improved with the addition of Adaptive Presets. These work in combination with the AI Masking tools, so you can make presets that combine with automatically generated masks to, for example, darken a sky or lighten a background. Head to the Preset Panel in Camera Raw or Lightroom, and you’ll find a set of People Presets that do things like enhance eyes and whiten teeth. You can also create your own Adaptive Presets with ease. Simply make an AI mask for a part of the face, alter the area, and click the New Preset icon in the Preset Panel to save it…

If you’ve been paying attention to photography news, you can’t have failed to notice the furore over AI image generation. Generators like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Midjourney make it possible to create artwork from nothing more than a descriptive sentence. This has caused a great deal of excitement and apprehension among photographers, and the way these tools gather and reassemble the substance of existing photos raises real concerns about intellectual property. One thing is certain: we’re entering a new era of image-making. Users looking to experiment with text-to-image generation will find an intriguing new tool within Photoshop Beta. The Backdrop Creator Neural Filter lets you create a new backdrop from a few words. Of course, Beta means it’s not the finished article, but it’s worth experimenting with. Backdrop Creator is…

01 ORANGE AND BLUE These color correction gels are Color Temperature Orange (CTO) and Color Temperature Blue (CTB). They come in different strengths, and you can double up the gels to make them stronger. A full CTO will shift your light temperature from daylight to 3,200K, and a full CTB will shift 3,200K to daylight. 02 DAYLIGHT-BALANCED Here are the effects of the flash without any color gels. Flashlights are daylight-balanced, so they’re roughly the same light color as the daylight, at around 6,000-6,500 Kelvin. By setting our white balance to this amount, the subject’s skin tones look natural, but the backdrop looks dull. 03 FIT A CTB GEL We used a pack of Selens gels, designed to fit neatly over a flashlight with a rubber band. First we used…

Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make. 01 LEVELS This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal…

Frequency Separation is considered by many to be the most controlled method for skin retouching, and it’s one favored by pro retouchers. We’ve included a set of Actions with this issue’s project files that speed up the process for you. Here’s how to use them, then carry out the frequency separation technique… 01 LOAD THE ACTIONS Drag the supplied retouching .atn file into Photoshop to load in the retouching Actions. You’ll find a Frequency Separation Action within the set. Play the Action. When it comes to choosing a blur amount, set a value that only just blurs the fine details of the image. 02 CLONE TO SMOOTH THE SKIN The Frequency Separation Action creates two layers: one called Texture, the other Colour. Highlight the Colour layer and grab the Clone…

If you’re working on a portrait in Camera Raw or Lightroom, setting negative Texture can be very useful for a quick skin smoothing effect. Texture is ideal because it leaves very fine detail alone while smoothing out the slightly less fine detail. As such, it allows you to add a skin smoothing effect without damaging the textures and pores that are vital to a natural-looking result. Try using the Brush Tool to paint over skin, then drop the Texture value. Try combining negative Texture with the AI portrait masking technique from the previous tip to isolate the face skin.…

Single stray hairs can usually be removed with a quick swipe of the Spot Healing Brush, but a thicker tangle of strands (as seen in our Before show below) can make things more difficult. When an area is obscured, you might even have to copy and flip areas from the other half of the face to remove the hairs… 01 USE THE LASSO Grab the Lasso Tool and make a rough selection over the clear part of the face that you want to flip, then press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selected area to a new layer. Press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform the layer, then right-click it and choose Flip Horizontal from the pop-up menu that appears. 02 FLIP AND POSITION Use the bounding box to reposition and rotate the layer into…

Off-camera flash can be wonderful for portraiture. It picks out your subject and gives your shots a unique style. But many of us who use it pay little attention to the color temperature of the light our flash is blasting out. By controlling the color and our camera’s white balance settings, we can create all kinds of interesting effects. Measured in degrees Kelvin, color temperature is a scale for the hue of light, from warm orange shades to cool blue shades. Natural light shifts along the scale at different times of day, from morning warmth to midday cool to sunset warmth again. We can alter our camera’s white balance so white objects appear white in our photos, no matter the color of the light. If we add light of our…

01 SET THE KELVIN VALUE IN-CAMERA When you mix your color temperatures, it’s best to set the white balance in-camera while shooting, rather than leaving it to Auto White Balance. The built-in white balance presets like Shade and Sunny can be a bit basic, so instead set it to K, and try shifting the Kelvin setting one way or another. 02 CHANGE THE WHITE BALANCE IN POST If you shoot in your camera’s raw mode, then you’re free to alter the white balance or choose a preset later on. In either Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can use the White Balance Eyedropper Tool to click on a neutral point in the scene, like a white T-shirt or a grey rock, to set the white balance for you. 03 CHECKING FOR…