Jared Heinrichs

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How to smooth skin using highpass in Photoshop

I’ve been really enjoying my online Photoshop course. One technique I thought I’d share from the video was how to smooth out skin in a photo using Photoshop. I will be using Photoshop CS4 to do the demo. I am pretty sure this how to will work with almost any version.

  1. Copy the picture you are working on to a new layer using CTRL+J
  2. Rename the new layer to “Soft”
  3. Go up to “Filter” Menu
  4. Click Other
  5. Click “High Pass”
  6. Adjust the sharpening mask just a bit so that the thinks like the eye outlines are there and maybe a bit of skin details
  7. Click Ok
  8. Remove the color in the shark mask by going into “Image” drop down
  9. Click Adjustments
  10. Click “Hue/Saturation”
  11. Take the saturation glider and move it left to “–100%”
  12. Click Ok
  13. Still working on the Highpass layer Click on the Layers Tab and select a new blend mode
  14. Select “Soft Light” or “Overlay”. Softlight usually works best.
  15. You will notice that the screen is no longer grey and your picture looks a bit crisper.

Now I am going to stop right here. You have probably looked back up at the title and said “I thought this tutorial was on smoothing the skin not sharpening the detail!”. Stick with me. We need to inverse the sharpening.

  1. Hit the shortcut “Ctrl+i”. This will now smooth out the picture instead of sharpening things

You will notice things like the skin look great. Pores and blemishes are not so apparent. Things like the eyes and the hair are not crisp enough. To resolve this we will use the color range selection tool to select mostly just the skin. To access the “color range” tool go to:

  1. Select Drop down
  2. Color Range…
  3. Click on the skin with the eye dropper
  4. Select “localized Color Clusters”
  5. You will need to experiment but you will most likely need to decrease your range quite a bit and the fuzziness should be about 34%.
  6. Click the “+ Eye Dropper” button.
  7. Click on the skin areas. If you are finding that it is selecting too much at a time decrease the range value.
  8. Make sure to only click on the skin. Do not click on the hair, eyes, mouth or the contour of the nose.
  9. Click on the the “- Eye Dropper”. Click on any hair or other features other then skin that might have been selected.
  10. Click "OK”
  11. There should be a selection created on the picture
  12. Click on the “add layer mask” button right beside the “FX Layer” button

This will have create a pretty good starting location for your mask. The next few steps will be making sure all the area’s that you don’t want softened are completely black. You might need to “whiten” the areas that might need more softening.

  1. Make sure you are still on the Mask of the “Soft” layer.
  2. Make sure that your brush colors are black and then white.
  3. Click on the brush tool
  4. Make sure that the front color is black
  5. Make sure that your brush opacity is at 100%
  6. Using your brush go over the hair and the eyes.
  7. Use a large brush for the hair
  8. Use a smaller brush for the eyes and other detail work.
  9. Switch the forground color to white
  10. Switch the opacity of the brush to 60%
  11. Go over the skin to make sure all of it is selected. Avoid the outer area of the nose and mouth.
  12. You should now have a good mask.
  13. Check to see if the skin is soft enough

If the skin is still not soft enough there is some other techniques you can use now that you have a good starting point.

  1. Click the Background layer
  2. Hit “Ctrl + J”
  3. Move the newly created layer to the top of the layers.
  4. Rename the newly created layer to “Soft 2”
  5. On “Soft 2” we need to apply the “High pass again”. See above how to do that.
  6. It remembers your last selection.
  7. Bump up the number quite a bit higher like 4.8 pixels.
  8. Click Ok
  9. Again remove saturation like we did before.
  10. Click “Ctrl+i” to inverse the picture.
  11. On the layer tab select “Blend Mode” and select “Softlight”. If you use overlay instead of “Softlight” it will make the softening even more apparent.
  12. While holding down “Ctrl + Alt” grab the mask from the “Soft” layer and drag it onto the the layer you were just working on.
  13. Both layers should now have the exact same mask layer.
  14. Only the skin should have the second softening effect applied to it.

I usually at this point like to group all the layers except for the original layer. To do this:

  1. click on “soft” layer.
  2. Holding down the shift key click the top most layer.
  3. Hit “Ctrl+G” to group them.

If the softening is too much click on the group opacity slider and take it down a bit. Play with it till you think the results are perfect.

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How to sync two folders and copy the NTFS file permissions with robocopy

This post will cover how to copy all the contents of a folder one one server (server1) and copy it to another folder a different server (server2). It will also make sure that the NTFS permission will stay intact.

One server1 make sure that you have robocopy in the same folder as the script or in the Windows path. In my case I put it in the C:\Windows\system32 directory. You can download robocopy from here.

This script will make sure that there is no pre-existing mapped drive. It will connect to server2 and map z: to the share we want to copy. It will then call robocopy and move all data from itself to the external server share. The “/sec” switch is key for retaining the security of the file permission. The script will create a log file that you can check things after you are done.

net use z: /delete



net use z: \\server2\data





robocopy.exe C:\data\ z:\ /sec /S /XO /R:3 /W:5 /LOG:C:\MANAGEMENT\LOGS\robocopy.txt


 


Hope you enjoyed this post on how to sync two folders and copy the NTFS permissions with robocopy.


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How I setup my Netbeans templates


This post will be all about how I setup my templates in Netbeans. Please feel free at the end of the post if you have any other suggestions or ideas on improving the work flow. The first thing I do when I go into the template manager is change the HTML, CSS templates. I also add a Reset CSS and HTML 5 template as I pretty much use them in every project I use. *NOTE* I am assuming you have read my first part of this series How to customize your Netbeans template files. Most the work will be done in the template manager and I won’t be going over how to open/edit the template files.


How I setup my Netbeans templates


Let’s first start with HTML Files:


    

  1. Click on HTML Files and hit rename button.
    2. 

  2. Rename it to “HTML 4 File”
    3. 

  3. Click the “Open In Editor”
    4. 



There are two extra lines I add. The “reset.css” and “default.css”. files.


<#assign licenseFirst = "<!--">



<#assign licensePrefix = "">



<#assign licenseLast = "-->">



<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">



<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">



<html>



  <head>



    <title></title>



    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=${encoding}">



    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen">



    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" media="screen">



  </head>



  <body>



    TODO write content



  </body>



</html>


 


The next template we will need to create. It will be for HTML5. Don’t worry it’s not very hard to do. 🙂


We are going to have to create a folder. From here on in I will refer to it as the the custom template directory.  You can put the template directory anywhere.The code you will need to paste will be at the bottom of the steps list. 


    

  1. Open My Computer
    2. 

  2. Go to: “C:\Users\<user>\.netbeans\” *Note* replace <user> with your profile username
    3. 

  3. Create a folder called “custom templates”
    4. 

  4. Copy the code at the end of this section and paste it into an brand new file.
    5. 

  5. Save the file as html5.html in the Custom Templates folder.
    6. 

  6. Inside Template manager make sure you are in the “Other” folder
    7. 

  7. Click “Add…” button.
    8. 

  8. Select the HTML5.html file you just created. Press Ok.
    9. 

  9. Single click the new template.
    10. 

  10. Hit the “rename” button.
    11. 

  11. Rename the template “HTML5 File”
    12. 

  12. You now have create your first customized template 🙂
    13. 



 


<#assign licenseFirst = "<!--">



<#assign licensePrefix = "">



<#assign licenseLast = "-->">



<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">



<!DOCTYPE html>



<html lang="en">



  <head>



    <title></title>



    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=${encoding}">



    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen">



    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" media="screen">



    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/html5.css" type="text/css" media="screen">



    <!--[if IE]>



    	<script src="javascript/html5.js"></script>



    <![endif]-->



  </head>



  <body>



    TODO write content



  </body>



</html>


We are next going to create reset.css, html5.css, html5.js. Copy this code and save it into blank files in the template folder. Save each file accordingly:


image


reset.css


/* RESET CSS FILE */





html,body,div,span,applet,object,iframe,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,



pre,a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code,del,dfn,em,font,img,ins,kbd,q,s,



samp,small,strike,strong,sub,sup,tt,var,dl,dt,dd,ol,ul,li,fieldset,form,label,



legend,table,caption,tbody,tfoot,thead,tr,th,td



{border:0; outline:0; vertical-align:middle; background:transparent; margin:0; padding:0; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;}





* {margin:0; padding:0; }



a img { border:0; }







/*



This is called the clearfix "hack" to prevent container from colapsing



in on itself when all the elements inside are floated elements.



Make sure to add --[ class="container" ]-- to any object that you



don't want to colapse.



*/



.container:after { visibility: hidden; display: block; font-size:0; content: " "; clear: both; height: 0; }



				   





/* start commented backlash hack \*/



* html .container   { height: 1%;     }



.container          { display: block; }



/* close commented backlash hack */







/* Easy way for me to float items */



.floatleft 	{ float:left;       }



.floatright 	{ float:right;      }



.floatmiddle 	{ margin: 0px auto; }





html5.css


header, section, footer, aside, nav, article, figure {



	display:block;



}


 


html5.js


// For discussion and comments, see: http://remysharp.com/2009/01/07/html5-enabling-script/



(function(){if(!/*@cc_on!@*/0)return;var e = "abbr,article,aside,audio,canvas,datalist,details,figure,figcaption,footer,header,hgroup,mark,menu,meter,nav,output,progress,section,summary,time,video".split(','),i=e.length;while(i--){document.createElement(e[i])}})()





Now that these extra file are created, we are going to create 3 new templates in Netbeans.


    

  1. Open Netbeans Template Manager
    2. 

  2. Click “Add…” button
    3. 

  3. Select each file and click ok
    4. 

  4. Rename the file to something a bit more descriptive
    5. 



image 


The only thing you will have to remember going forward is that in the templates I have taken for granted that you will you my folder structure convention. You will have to create both a “css” and “JavaScript” folder in the same location where the file is. In both of those folders you would need to use the template to easily create the needed CSS or JavaScript files.


Now that you have those templates created you could just as easily create templates for things like jQuery. I hope this post will help eliminate the mundane and boring setup we all go through on each file we create!


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How to customize your Netbean Template files


Have you ever wondered how you could change your Netbean IDE Template files? It’s actually quite easy! This will be post one of two. This first post will go over how to make minor tweaks to your template files. The second post will cover my recommendations on how I setup my Netbean Templates.


How to customize your Netbean Template Files


You won’t believe how easy it is to edit the template files. Here’s the steps:


    

  1. Open Netbeans (Duh!) 
    2. 

  2. Click on the “Tools” drop down menu 
    3. 

  3. Select “Templates” 
    4. 

  4. This will open the “Template Manager” window 
    5. 



Once this Netbean Template Manager is open the only confusion I can see you running into is finding where the HTML and CSS Templates are located. As you will see from the screenshot the files are located in “Other” while PHP files are located in their own section.


 Netbeans Template manager   


To edit the template file just click to select the template and then click the “Open in Editor” button. Once you have made the necessary changes just click the save button or hit “Ctrl+S”.


Again please check out the next article where I share my customizations that I recommend to help save time.


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How to install brushes in Photoshop CS4


I downloaded a bunch of brushes for Photoshop off the internet and was having a hard time installing them. The reason I was having issues was I was used to just double clicking the file and having Photoshop automatically install them. An example of this simple install is with action files.


Photoshop brushes must be installed by manually copying/installing them. The location of the “manual install” directory for Photoshop brushes is located here:


    

  • C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Presets\Brushes
    • 



 


image


Hope this article helped you install your brush into Photoshop CS4.




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