Here is a list of helpful Photoshop tutorial links that I have benefited from in the past. I’m going to not just post the link but also how each has helped me or what elements I’ve taken from each tutorial and applied to some of my photos. I actually rarely follow each one to the “T” and shape each tutorial to match my photo. I find that in the purest form, the results of these tutorials usually give a really unreal look to a photo so I either target a certain area to apply the effect to, or I really tone it down. (click the title of each paragraph to be linked to the appropriate page).
Let’s start with this one because I think it’s the most informative out of all of them. Start reading from “Back on the Editing Path” as that’s when it finally gets into the ins and outs of what he does in Lightroom to prepare the photo for Photoshop.
This is pretty much exactly how I dodge and burn. Normally I’ll have separate layers for the hair, clothes, face and misc. so it won’t be just one but I also add about a 20-30px blur to make the light and dark spots much smoother. Follow the instructions on page 3 and don’t pay attention to the masks or anything, just pay attention to the dodging and burning itself. It takes practice but don’t forget to use the Gaussian Blur at the end to make your touch-ups softer.
This one is good for when you want a more dark and gritty type photo. I pretty much just use steps 2-5 and play with the strength via opacity sliders or mask off certain parts. For instance, if I want the person unchanged then I’ll mask them off so that I get a gritty background (paint black in the layer mask). Here’s a good example of when I used this technique:
This also works with Saturation. It’s a bit confusing but give it a try and see how it works for you. Basically, just like saturation, you want to effect the parts that don’t have good contrast or saturation and not the parts that already do. Otherwise, you’ll get blown out, iridescent colors or parts that are just way too intense.
Here’s one that I’ve fiddled around with a bit but never really used. I more just got ideas from it on how to manipulate colors. I think this one has a bit too much red in it so make sure you get the skin tones right before trying this one or your person will probably look like a tomato. Either way, I would probably add more yellow and desaturate just a hair.
This one isn’t really HDR and I must say that I haven’t used this one in it’s entirety but it gives you a few tools to play with like the highlight/shadow adjustment that I think is the most useful, if not one of the most useful tools in Ps. Tip: To achieve a more realistic photo, slide the radius slider further to the right and the amount slider closer to the left hand side for both shadows and highlights.
Along with this tutorial [link] you can learn how to create rays of light for your photo. I used this technique in my recent Chikorita photo below. In the second link, I used steps 7-11. I didn’t make my rays of light too prominent as I thought it would look a bit too fake but if you look closely you can see that they’re there.
I actually use this technique a lot. One way to “take it to the next level” is to set the layer with the high pass filter on it to either “overlay” or “soft light” (I usually use “soft light” so that it’s not so harsh) and then apply (about) a 10-20px Gaussian Blur to it and lower the opacity. It gives good definition and clarity without looking too harsh.
I don’t go NEARLY as far as they do with this but it shows the basics. I pretty much just use the Spot Healing Brush on spots that show obvious blemishes. Now, before everyone goes “ZOMG how could you change a person’s face?!?!?”….. Well, most of what I do is just taking out blemishes and zits that people usually try to cover up with make-up anyway. Think of it as make-up after the fact. Granted, they make it look ridiculous in this tutorial but you can get a good idea of either how to to it to the extreme or just to do it mildly and more realistically.
If anyone can figure out how to make this look as good as this person does it, please let me know. I tried really hard and I just couldn’t do it!!!
This one is pretty nutz but I just thought it was something cool to share and could give you some good insights into how to do some things. Maybe you can use parts of it in your photos.
Another crazy one that I use just for inspiration. It’s really tough to do but again, maybe there are parts that you can use in your photos.
Well, that’s it for now. Hopefully some of this will help you out. There are a few more things that I’ll post soon about Ps but those are gonna be more difficult for me to write down since I need to get screen shots and figure out how to put preset color files on here for you to download. Enjoy and please let me know if there are any questions you have or help you need!
