Design With a Thought – Design/Marketing Blog

Step 1. Even background. The background is uneven and the light has a weird color to it. Let’s fix this. Pick Eyedropper Tool and Select the pink color of the background. Create a new layer, change the blending mode to Color. Paint over the top bit where the light was yellow. Now it has a nice even color to it.

Step 2. Get rid of the weird line on the top.
That line on the top of the image shouldn’t be there, besides, the model is out of the center of the image, so let’s fix that by cropping the image. Select Crop tool and crop it the same way i did, with same amount of space chopped off on both left and top side of the image, so that we preserve the dimensions of the original.

Step 3. Details matter. Ah, we need to flatten the two layers that we have so it’s easier to work further. Click the top layer and hit Ctrl+E, that merges selected layer with one underneath it. The right side of the image doesn’t look right, it has a vertical shadow, so we should fix that. Create a new layer, set blending mode to Overlay, pick a big soft brush and paint over with same pink color. It brightened up that weird looking shadow. Merge the layers again (Ctrl+E).

Step 4. Colors. I am not happy with her skin color, it looks too reddish and unnatural, here’s a quick fix: Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the main layer. Keep the background layer in, so that u can see the progress at the end. I tried working with Image-Adjustments- Hue/Saturation but it didn’t seem to work as some details were still left reddish. So i’m gona do it my way. Create a new layer and set blending mode to Color. Select black color and paint over the reddish bits on the model as shown on my image. Set the layer opacity to 25%. Merge the layers again (Ctrl+E). The model is now a tiny bit less red. Now let’s go to Image-Adjustments- Hue/Saturation and Set the Saturation to -12 as shown on the image. This will make her skin color more real.

Step 5. Brighten it up. Now go to Image- Adjustments – Brightness/Contrast and set brightness to +6 and same for contrast. This will brighten up the image and improve the look in general. A bit more vibrant.

Step 6. Details. Let’s work on details now. Zoom into the face. Pick Brun tool and set it to Range: Shadows and Exposure to 41%. Now pain following the make up line around eyes as shown on the image, this will make make up look a bit more fresh. Apply to both eyes. Now pick Dodge tool, set Range to Shadows and Exposure to 34%. Pain in the white area of the eye to make it brighter. You can do the same for teeth to make them look whiter as well. Now pick the Dodge tool again, increase the size of your brush ( use { and } on your keyboard, those two are shortcuts for bigger/smaller brush size) and follow the lines of the face and cheekbones, this makes face look thinner.

Step 7. Patch Tool. Now select the Patch tool, draw around the wrinkles on the left cheek as i’ve shown on the image, and then drag it to a clean skin area to replace the texture. Do the same for remaining lines till you achieve result similar to mine. Be aware thou, it has to look natural. This tool can also be handy when getting rid of “dark circles” underneath eyes or shiny bits on the face.

Step 8. Liquify – Face. Now here comes the Cosmopolitan moment of my tutorial hehe. Click Filter – Liquify. (Use my settings for the tool on the right hand side of the print screen) Now zoom into the face and pick Forward Wrap tool, adjust the brush size using same shortcuts, now click on the side of the face and move it in slightly. Do that for both sides. Hit enter or Ok.

Step 9. Liquify – Body. Go back to liquefy tool. Now let’s work on the body. Pick Bloat tool on the left, i find that for waiste line this one works the best, adjust the brush size to similar to mine and just click and hold just outside her waist and see the magic happen. Apply to both sides. This technique is very handy for fine tuning bodies and getting rid of things like muffin tops, etc. You could fix her hair a little using the same tool and in general, this is one of very very useful tools in photoshop to learn.

Step 10. Final Touch Ups. Pick the dodge tool and click on shadowy areas of the image to bring in more contrast. I’ve also painted over her skirt to make it a bit more dark and hide the grain of the photo. Final thing to do is to add sharpness. This is how i would do it for this image. Duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J), go to Filters- Other- High Pass. Set it to about 3.4 or so and after that set the Blending mode of that layer to Overlay. Adjust opacity level of the layer to about 80%.