July 24th, 2009Sometimes when I make the blueprints, I tend to go overboard and almost exaggerate the edits so you can see what I did. For this one I wanted to do a super realistic, natural edit. Thank you to Jill Ellison for this adorable picture.
This little girl looks so cute with her sweet curls. Here is what I did to give her a little glow, slightly better coloring and a sparkle to her eyes using a few Photoshop actions and a few manual adjustment layers.
Step 1 – Ran MCP Color Burst from the Complete Workflow.
Step 2 – Did a manual Hue/Saturation Layer – selected Blue channel – and then Cyan channel, Took opacity of each down to about –65% to reduce colors in the whites of her eyes. Inverted mask. Painted back on the mask with a white brush on the eyes to get rid of the cast.
Step 3 – Ran MCP Magic Powder from the Magic Skin action set – set opacity to 36% (just wanted a light smoothing).
Step 4 – her skin had a touch too much blue and magenta – so I ran Magic Skin’s Skin Cast Blast – activated the Bye Bye Blueberry layer at 100%. Masked back the shadow area with a 30% brush as the shadows did not need that much of a correction.
Step 5 – Ran MCP Crackle from the Quickie Collection action set.
Step 6 – at this point I noticed that the shadow areas were getting lost on her shirt and hair. So I did a levels layer and adjusted the output slider to 25. This was a tad too much so I lowered the opacity of that layer to 85%.
Step 7 – cropped.
If I had more time, I may have extracted the tree and replaced it with the background. I would have preferred that over the tree behind her. But at least the drop got rid of the hand and arm coming at her head.
25 Comments
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9:04 amJuly 24th, 2009
Looks great!!
9:05 amJuly 24th, 2009
This is great, thanks! Would you consider doing a tutorial on how to best remove a “background”?
9:11 amJuly 24th, 2009
Diana – I have thought about doing a tutorial on it but it can be a complicated process depending on the background and contrasting with the subject.
It is something I avoid at almost all costs due to time. The best thing to do is plan ahead in camera. Extractions take a LOT of time unless against a simple backdrop of green screen.
There are 3rd party software to help aide in extraction too. But for photoshop, it is a combination of the selection tools to isolate the subject from the background.
Jodi
10:02 amJuly 24th, 2009
Wow, how could you mess up with a pic of that little cutie pie? Seriously tho, thanks for sharing your workflow.
10:21 amJuly 24th, 2009
Great edit! Thanks for sharing this info! Takes an otherwise good picture and really makes it stand out.
10:28 amJuly 24th, 2009
Thanks Jodi! I LOVE your blueprints!!!
11:17 amJuly 24th, 2009
Wonderful, I love the blueprints too! What a difference this made on this pic! Great job.
12:48 pmJuly 24th, 2009
WOW! Jodi that sure made a big difference. I love your actions and use them a lot of the time. I think I need to get more LOL….
12:58 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Jodi, when you ran Crackle and Color burst do you run at 100% unless otherwise noted? This turned out beautiful!
1:03 pmJuly 24th, 2009
I LOVE that! I’ve been trying to get that glow look but just didn’t know how to get that. I had a hard time following what you did. Do you happen to have an action that does that?
1:49 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Thanks Jodi, thanks for sharing
2:41 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Cathy – when I run and do not say a % – I run the default – so not 100% unless that was the default.
Missy – the steps are listed with the blueprint – most of it was using actions. But a combination of things lead to the outcome – not just one step.
3:48 pmJuly 24th, 2009
I love it. She’s beautiful!!
4:06 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Great blueprint as always…thank you!
5:04 pmJuly 24th, 2009
I love this! So natural looking and still so beautiful!
5:38 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Thanks, Jodi for answering my comment. I guess I’m a little slow.
I’m a visual learner, so maybe you could do a tutorial about “the glow” sometime? That is, if you run out of things to teach! Thanks for all your help!
5:50 pmJuly 24th, 2009
The blueprints are my favorite……I love to know how to work on a picture using actions, and curves, etc. It also makes me want all the actions you have!!
I, too, would love a tutorial on removing the background.
Thanks for everything.
6:06 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Thankyou,that was a super tutorial,really helpful!
7:50 pmJuly 24th, 2009
This blueprint actually helped with with some proofing I was working on today. Thanks for sharing Jodi. I have your Quickie Collection. Is the Quickie Color comparable to the Colorburst in your Workflow? If not, what is the difference?
Thanks!
11:26 pmJuly 24th, 2009
Amazing as usual! Love to see what you use & try it on my own. I would have never thought to run crackle after running colorburst … I usually choose one or the other … you results make me want to try them together! I’m with Diana … would love to see you change the background on video … I learn so much from those tutorials! Thanks for sharing!!!
1:52 amJuly 25th, 2009
Oh my. What a cutie. Adorable as can be!
10:34 amJuly 25th, 2009
Just fabulous! Thank you for your clear explanations – they’re great!
2:05 amJuly 26th, 2009
Hi Jodi,
I’ve been dying for this tutorial! I followed until I got to: “Inverted mask. Painted back on the mask with a white brush on the eyes to get rid of the cast.” When I try it on my own photo, nothing happens, but then again I don’t really understand how the mask removes the cast. What causes that hazy cast to begin with? I would looooove one of your videos that shows you actually doing this.
PS. Your site is the A #1 site for learning how to improve one’s photos. Thank you!
6:59 amJuly 26th, 2009
beautiful edit jodi!! thanks for another great blueprint!
3:46 pmJuly 27th, 2009
I second the background extraction tutorial. Maybe something simple for the tutorial that you could easily do?