Eyes – Lorri Freedman Photography

Creating a Glamorous Girl

Above, I have a photo of a model that I had taken in Amherst, MA. This shot is straight out of the camera and needs some work.

The first thing I’m going to do is go into the color balance to correct her skin color:

When the Color Balance dialog box opens up I’ll put in (-6, +2, +13) to take out some of the orange cast to her skin. Then I’ll click OK:

Now I’m going to zoom in close to her eyes. The first thing you look at, for most people, is a person’s eyes. I’ll brighten them up and make them stand out. I’ll brighten the eyes using the Dodge Tool:

I’ll pick a small soft brush and slowly dodge around the whites of her eyes at a low exposure of about 17%. I’ll set the range to Highlight:

See the difference between the left eye that was dodged and the right eye that wasn’t touched yet:

Now that the eyes are done, it’s time to make her lips a little redder so they stand out. For this step I’m going to pick a color that’s already her lip color. I’ll use the Eye Dropper Tool from the tools bar. I’ll click once on her lips to capture the color:

Here, I’ll use a soft brush, and it’s important to have the brush mode set to Color. I’ll use a 50% opacity:

I deepened the color of hers lips and dodged her teeth, and I also dodged the highlights in her lips:

Now it’s time to work on her hair. I’ll pick a bright highlight color from her hair the same way I picked a color for her lips, using the eyedropper tool. Here is the color I selected:

I want the color to be brighter than the color I selected, so I’ll double click on the color that’s in the foreground of the Color Picker box. This will bring up the Color Picker dialog box. There’s a white circle, which represents the color chosen. I’ll just drag it up a little to pick a color that’s brighter. Then I’ll click OK. I’ll adjust the opacity of the brush as I paint around her hair:

The next thing I’ll do is to brighten the image overall. To do this I’ll use the curves:

When the Curves dialog box opens, I’ll just grab the center of the line and drag it up just a little to brighten the image overall. Then I’ll click OK.

The last thing I’ll do is just run the history brush across her lips to make them darker and stand out. I’ll set the history brush one step before the curves in the history palette:

Here are the before and after shots. The fixes are subtle, but make a big difference:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Surrealism – Bringing Fruit to Life

Above is the result of this tutorial.

Here I have a photo of a red pepper. I think it needs a little life. I’ll take it and drop it into Photoshop:

What I need to do is get a photo of eyes and a photo of a mouth. Here I have a photo of eyes that I’ll start with. Family members are good victims for this:

I’ll try to make this as easy as possible. For this project I’ll use the clone tool. So, the first thing I’ll do is select the clone tool from the tool box:

Before I start to do any cloning, I’ll make a new layer to put the cloned eye onto. Click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette:

I’ll rename the layer to “Left Eye”. To do this I’ll just double click on the word “layer” and type in the words “Left Eye”:

Then I’ll click on the eye photo to make it active. I’ll place the clone brush over the left eye, hold down the ATL key on the keyboard to make the selection. One click should do it. Then I’ll click on the pepper photo and start cloning in the eye:

The next thing I’ll need to do is to add a mask to the “Left Eye” layer. To do this I’ll click on the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette:

Now I’ll start painting back the pepper around the eye using the paint brush. It’s important to know the when you’re painting using the mask. Black reveals and white conceals:

Here I painted back the red pepper around the eye using low opacity. I used an opacity of 45% and I left the mode to normal:

Now I’ll follow the same steps to do the right eye:

Here I have a photo of a family member’s mouth. I’ll follow the same steps for the mouth as for each of the eyes:

Here is what the layer palette should look like at this point, and here is the happy pepper. I’m not quite finished yet though:

The next thing I’ll do is combine the layers. To do this without flattening the image, hit CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E at the same time on your keyboard to create a “composite” layer. This will merge the layers together into a copy of the combined layers, leaving the original layers untouched. I’ll name this layer “Merged Layers”:

The next thing I like to do is put the photo into the liquify filter to make the eyes bigger. I’ll make sure that I’m on the “Merged Layers” layer:

Here is the Liquify dialog box:

Once I’m in the Liquify dialog box, I’ll use the bloat tool to puff up the eyes:

I’ll just click on the tool and then hover over the eye. At this point I’ll click on the center of the eye and I’ll be able to see the eye puff up. I just want to puff it up a little, not too much. See the difference between the left eye that I bloated and the untouched right eye. When I’m finished I’ll click OK:

Here is the finished “Happy Pepper” photo:

It’s not over till it’s over. There’s still a lot of things I can do to this image to enhance it. It’s fun to play with filters and other tools to see what more could be done.

So, take photos of apples, pears, bananas or whatever fruit you like and have fun with it. Enjoy!

Changing Eye Color Using Photoshop

Above, I have a photo of an eye. It’s a pretty green eye, but for this tutorial I’ll be changing it to blue.

The first thing I’ll do is hit CTRL-J on my keyboard to make a duplicate layer of the eye. This will allow me to have more control later on. I’ll name “Layer 1” to “eye”. To name the eye layer just double click on the word “layer” and then you’ll be able to type in the word “eye”:

The next thing I’ll do is pick the color blue from the swatches palette:

After I pick the blue color from the swatches palette, I’ll see it in the color picker in the tool box:

Next, I’ll go to the options bar at the top of the screen and change the brush mode from Normal to Color. This will allow the details of the eye to come through:

Now it’s time to paint the eye blue. It’s ok if it’s a little sloppy at first. The next step will fix that problem.

The next step is to add a mask to the eye layer:

Now I can clean up around the eye with the mask using the paint brush. Remember that “black reveals and white conceals”.

The advantage of having a separate layer is that, it’s possible to lower the opacity of the eye color.

Here the opacity is at 100%:

Here the opacity is at 65%:

Here the opacity is at 40%:

I think I like the eye at 40% opacity, so that’s how I’m going to leave it. This is an easy way to change the color of someone’s eye, and you can make it any color you want.
Here is the end result:

Remember when you’re finished to set the brush mode back to Normal.

Enjoy!

Cloning Trick – Clone In a Good Eye Using Photoshop

Above is the final result of this tutorial.

Here, I have a photo of an owl that I took a while ago. It would have been a nice shot if the owl didn’t wink at me. Here’s a trick I learned and I’ll share with you.

The first thing I’ll do is go to the Window menu on the tool bar and click on the Clone Source option:

The Clone Source panel will come up:

I’m going to flip the source of the destination by changing the width value to negative 100 (-100). I’ll also put the value of negative 5 (-5) in the Rotate Source area. Every picture is different so this might need a little trial and error. But try the (-5) first:

Now I’ll go and click on the Clone Tool:

I’ll go to the tool bar at the top of the screen and make sure that I have the Aligned box checked. Also make sure that you are at 100% opacity and the Mode is set to Normal:

Now I will ALT-Click on the center of the good eye. This will become my source. Then I’ll just start to paint with the clone tool over the closed eye. You’ll see that the eye is being painted as a mirror of the good eye. This will make it look completely natural:

Here is the end result.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to put the setting back to their original state in the Clone Source panel.

I hope you like this little trick. You can use this with animals, people, anything. I think it’s very cool. Have fun!