How I Edit; A Photoshop Tutorial

Interestingly enough, most of the families I shoot for have Photoshop on their computers, nice cameras and rather adorable children :) So I thought I would throw together a quick tutorial on how to make your pictures look their best using Photoshop. This tutorial was made with Photoshop CS 2, but I tried to use only the basic tools so people with Photoshop Elements could try this too. Click on any image to make the screenshot larger and easier to read.

Today we are going to edit this picture of Lucas. The image below is straight out of the camera (SOOC) it was taken at 4:30 on an overcast day. The sun is behind and to the right of the subject.

First open the selected file in Photoshop. Your screen should look something like this.

Bring up curves. On a PC you do this by hitting Ctrl and M in conjunction. The gridbox seen below will appear. Place your cursor on the grid and make two points as shown below. Pulling the top dot upwards will make your entire image lighter (adjusting the exposure) pulling the lower dot downwards will make the image have more contrast. Adjust your image until you are happy with the results. This will obviously vary with each image.

Next we are going to adjust to the saturation. First hit Ctrl and J, this will make another layer appear. You can see this in the right bottom corner. We will work with this background layer.

Hit Ctrl and U in conjuntion and the screen shown below will appear. With the middle slider (labeled "Saturation" and circled in red below) pull the point towards the right, this will make all the colors in the image brighter. Adjust until the colors appear natural and true to life.

Now we are going to erase the color off parts of his face that are too bright because shadowed areas show more color then needed with this technique. Click on the eraser (shown in red below) then adjust the opacity of the brush the eraser will use (also shown in red) to about 30%. Erase the color off the ears, hair, nostrils and lips as needed. (When the screenshop was taken, this had already been done.) Now, you will close the layers. Go to the tab at the top of the screen called "Layer" open it and select the option called "Flatten layers".

Now, we are going to make his eyes a little brighter. Click on the "Dodge" tool. Then select "Highlights" from the top dropbox, and set the exposure to 5%. Run your tool over the iris of the eye once or twice. Be very careful not to overdo this! Over use of this technique will make your child look possessed!

Now, we are going to make the entire image look sharper. Click on the tab called "Filter" then on "Sharpen" and then "Unsharp Mask". (See screenshot.)

Now blow your entire image up. You can do this by hitting Ctrl and the + button at the same time. Blow your image up to 100%. You will see this value at top of the screen. Now more the sliders for "Amount" and "Radius", move amount to about 100 and radius to about 1.5 (this will vary for individual pictures) at 100% magnification you will be able to tell when you have sharpened too much as the picture will start to look grainy. Less is more here!!! I have deliberately over sharpened in the screenshot. Once you are done hit OK and then use Ctrl and - to back out of the magnification.

Voila! You are done!


Let me know if any of that was confusing and I will try to simplify it for you!

Trio

Of all the age groups I photograph, I think 2 and 3 year-olds are the most unpredictable. Not that they aren't fun little people to be around (some of my favorite subjects are this age) but they are the approximate age that is quickly bored with sitting still and not quite old enough to bribe.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve for clients of this age that I will blog about later for all you parents at home taking notes on how to shoot your preschooler. ;)

However, with this session I discovered one more trick to use. You see, I started the shoot with individual shots of the kids and I started with the two eldest, by the time it was the three-year-old's turn he was raring to go and barreled over to me for his "turn" to start. He did NOT want to be left out of anything the "big" kids were doing!

This is the eldest; lovely Miss Addie.


The middle child is handsome Mr. Zane.

Last, but not least, is Mr. Noah, who was such a breeze to photograph!



I love this picture in black and white as well, but her eyes are such an electric blue that I just had to post the color version.

Bush Library

So, odds are if you live in College Station and have a shoot with me soon I'm going to try and talk you into doing it at the Bush Library. It offers a lot of variety, a lake, flower gardens and pretty cool architecture.

I shot this beautiful family at the Bush Library Gardens and it was a blast! (This is as close to "autumn colors" as College Station, Texas gets, by the way.)


This is Andrew, he's three and likes trains, puppies and cars.

His parents were behind me in this shot and kept telling him to "Smile!" Now, he was smiling but not a particularly convincing one, so he kept reaching up to feel his face to make sure he was still smiling. So adorable.




This picture was an accident, but I really like it! I was shooting Ellen, and Andrew ran up and gave her a hug. Since I had a fixed 50mm lens on the camera, I couldn't zoom out and just got this tight crop of the two of them. They were so sweet together! It was delightful to be around siblings who were so kind to each other and seemed to genuinely like each other.



Miss Ellen was such a self possessed 10-year-old and has some of the prettiest skin of I have ever shot.

Rose Garden

Most of the time the first question people ask me about a shoot is, "Where should we have the shoot? What looks good in pictures?" Of course, there are many answers to that question, but for the most part the background of a image isn't as important as the face that the picture is of.

It helps when the shoot is held in a lovely place, but it's not essential. That said, I was so excited to get to do a shoot in the Rose Garden in Tyler Texas. It's one of my favorite locations and provides pleasing natural backgrounds, and look at the gorgeous kids I got to shoot there!

This is the eldest, Blake, who has the coolest green/hazel eyes. He was a total gentleman and so easy to work with.

This is Lauren who is a total ham! I think she would have been delighted if I blew off the family shoot and spent the entire session just shooting her. :)

This is Kate who, in the interest of diversity, wasn't so thrilled about having her picture made. However, we got some pretty shots of her too, it just took a little more effort.



I adore freckles! I was so delighted when I met Kate and saw her lovely face.




We did get some shots of the entire family as well, but I'm leaving those off the blog so those of you who know this family will still be surprised when you get your Christmas cards! :)