Creative Photography Ideas: Using Adobe Photoshop: 75 Workshops to Enhance Your Photographs

By Tony Worobiec

Creative Use of Filters and Further Image Manipulation is an excerpt from Creative Photography Ideas Using Photoshop which presents 75 comprehensive workshops that have been specifically designed for photographers; each offers a clever and creative technique that can be immediately applied.
Creative Use of Filters and Further Image Manipulation workshops focus specifically on using a variety of filters to improve or enhance your photographs in Photoshop. From Blur filters to Find Edges filters, and workshops on creating a ghostly effect, retro comic-book effect or pop art look, this eBook will get your creative juices flowing. The section on further image manipulation will guide you through cropping, different ways to remove intrusive elements, and how to construct panoramas.
Each workshop offers ingenious creative techniques to immediately enhance images in Adobe Photoshop. From basic techniques to more advanced, all guidance is ‘best practice’ and shown via clear explanatory texts, photographs, ‘before, during and after’ manipulations and screen grabs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781446359693

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Creative Use of Filters

It is too easy to become disparaging about Photoshop filters, and there are certainly examples where they have been applied randomly, sometimes with disastrous results. But if applied with care, they really can be used to enhance your image greatly; in this section, we will look at several methods you may wish to consider.

Improving a Portrait using Blur Filters

There will be countless times when an image appears too sharp and requires softening; this is particularly apparent when shooting portraiture, when often every spot and blemish is highlighted, which does not flatter the subject. Gaussian Blur and Surface Blur are both popular Photoshop filters and are excellent methods for softening backgrounds and enhancing skin tones.

Start image. When planning this portrait, I specifically asked the model to wear a black top, which I could set against a dark background; the idea was that his lighter skin tones would appear to glow when set against a low-key background. Despite opting for a large aperture, the texture in the background has proven to be an unwelcome distraction.

Step 1. Open your image in Photoshop and then make a Duplicate Layer. The first task is to make a selection of the background. As there are no obvious colour or tonal variations, there is no need to be too precise. The usual Quick Selection or Magic Wand tools were largely ineffective, so I used the Polygonal Lasso tool feathered by 2 pixels instead. Save the selection just in case you need to return to it later (Select > Save Selection).

Step 2. With the Duplicate Layer active, go to Filter > Gaussian Blur. Which setting you select will partly depend on the size of your file, but start with a pixel Radius of 10, and increase it if you think it helps, although you will encounter banding if you overdo this.

Step 3. With the Duplicate Layer still active, reverse the selection by going to Select > Inverse. With just the portrait selected, go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. This filter has been designed to smooth skin tones, while preserving edge detail. Use the Radius slider to govern the level of blur while using the Threshold slider to determine how far it spreads. The effect can have the appearance of an airbrushed painting, but don’t worry as this can easily be tempered.

Step 4. The task now is to retrieve some of the detail from the original file. Make a white Layer Mask, and with this highlighted, select a small soft Brush tool set to black at 75% Opacity and carefully remove parts of the Duplicate Layer to show detail from the Background Layer. It is important to work on those areas around the eyes, mouth, nose and hair.

Step 5. Eyes often appear a little darker than we sometimes imagine, largely because they are located within a recess. In order to add a little sparkle, make a New Layer, fill with 50% Gray, apply Overlay and then use a soft small Brush tool set to white, in order to lighten the whites of the eyes.

Finished image. Whether you are a fan of filters or not, I would strongly recommend that you consider applying both Gaussian Blur and Surface Blur when working with portraiture. Often the camera can prove unrealistically sharp, which rarely flatters the sitter.

TIP

If you overdo this part of the process, simply change your Brush colour to white and rectify the mistake. You may also wish to slightly reduce the Opacity between the two layers.

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