Jared Heinrichs

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Apr 7, 2012 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

Why you should use adjustment layers instead of duplicating an image

Before you duplicate a layer you should always ask yourself: Can I do the same thing with adjustment layers. I’d say almost 90% of the time when using blend modes you’d be better off using adjustment layers instead of duplicating the layer and then applying the effect.

Here’s an example of what not to do. This is a video tutorial on You Tube showing you how to whiten eyes and teeth.

Obviously I don’t have the same images so I took a picture of my son and apply the same effects plus one more to make the eyes pop even more.

Here’s the picture without any editing. The whites in the eyes look a bit drab. The actual file size of the image on disk was 2.32MB. Opened in Photoshop it becomes 28.8MB

image

If I were to make a duplicate layer look at the file size increase!

image

Now if I remove the duplicate layer and apply a curves adjustment layer to the image look at the change! It’s identical!

image

If you apply the screen blend mode you will see the exact same effect as you would have if you applied the screen effect to the duplicated layer. Let’s do it now.

image

As you can see the blend mode also doesn’t add any size to the image.

Much like the video shown above if you make a black mask on the layer. (Hides everything) and then pain in the effect by using a white brush you can apply the screen blend mode to only the parts you actually want to use.

AFTER

image

BEFORE

image

All the changes only added .9MB in total.

One more thing you can do to really make the eyes pop is by adding a little contrast. Again you can do it with blend modes. Softlight generally gives good contrast results that you can dial back.

Apply a Warming filter Adjustment layer (85) to the image and then apply the blend mode “softlight”. Below is a Before and After of the Softlight applied above the screen blend mode layer.

AFTER (END RESULT)

image

BEFORE

image

Again notice the file size is only up to 30.6MB

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop

Oct 27, 2011 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to darken the exposure of only the lightest areas of a photo

Here’s an Advanced Photoshop trick that might help you out one day. The trick allows you to target only the most over exposed sections of the picture. This will ensure the rest of the tone and quality in the rest of the picture remain intact.

Once you have the picture in question open click on the Channels tab (normally bottom right hand side in Photoshop).

image

Holding the Control key down double click the “RGB” layer. I’ve marked with the screenshot with a red “X” where you should click. This will allow you to select ONLY the lightest areas of the picture.

Hit “Ctrl+J” to take the selection you just made and make a copy of it to another layer.

If you click back to the “layers” tab select “Multiply” to darken these areas. If the effect is a bit much you can adjust the “opacity” to your liking. In this example I pulled the effect back by setting the opacity of “86%”.

image

If this doesn’t bring back enough detail and you want to darken things a bit more just make a copy of the top most layer. Keep copying the layer until you get the image exposure where you want. Hope this helps!

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop

Dec 27, 2010 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

FREE Photoshop 3D Training guide for your iPad

I was reading some forums on 3D training in Adobe Photoshop. I stumbled on a real gem! A woman who works for Adobe released a FREE eGuide on Photoshop 3D training! If you are reading this blog entry on your iPad all you have to do is click this link:

Download FREE Photoshop 3D Training Guide

And Tell your iPad to download and install the app. It’s an app but they could have really made it an ePub book. The detail is great and if you are wanting to learn more how to work with 3D in Photoshop I highly recommend this iPad resource.

The app is around 94MB I believe.

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop

Dec 1, 2010 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to make a half face before and after head shot

before-AfterI really didn’t know what to call this post. The best I could come up with is: “How to make a half face before and after head shot”. I am doing this post because Delila seemed to think it looked pretty cool and there were a few people that commented on how I took that photo.

Some people thought I just cut off half the mustache and then put a line on the picture. Other people thought there was some Photoshop magic where I some how aligned half my head to another picture of half my head and combined the two pictures.

No one has guessed correctly yet. Basically I had two photographs taken. I tried getting Delila to take them at very similar focal distances, lighting etc. Even that the first picture was taken 6:00pn Nov 30th and the second picture was taken before going to bed. You might think that lighting alone might have made things hard enough let alone that it’s almost impossible to duplicate the same smile or facial features.

Here’s the two pictures that I used for this little mock up.

picture1-mustachepicture2-no-mustache

*Note* – Please don’t try to laugh. It was for a good cause Winking smile

One thing I used that I find really helps is a Wacom Tablet. I just have a Bamboo which is the smallest and cheapest of the tablets. It does have pressure sensitivity which is REALLY nice!

The first thing I did was look at the  two pictures. The right hand side is a tine bit bigger picture then the left side picture. I figured if I could just mask in the left side mustache then I would get the best results since my eyes were not aligned etc.

Here’s what I did:

First thing I wanted to do was to get my skin tone to look similar in the right side. It’s got a bit more red in it as well as more mid skin tone color.

picture2-no-mustache02

I made the tones a little light by using curves to brighten the picture. I masked out (hid) what I just did with the curves. Using a white paint brush I painted on the black mask. By painting white I slowly brought in the coloring where I needed it. I used my tablet for all custom tweaks.

Below I pasted the mustache picture overtop the image I was just working on. Because I wanted to try and align things up I took the new layer and made it transparent so I could use the arrow keys to align things up.

picture2-no-mustache03

I chose getting the eyes and mouth aligned up as close as possible. After that is done you need to bring the mustache layer back to 100% opacity. Once there you need to apply a black mask of nothing to the mustache layer. Again it won’t look like there is even a layer there. Next you need to use a white paint brush and paint in where you want the mustache to be.

picture2-no-mustache04

Here’s what the layer looked like.

image

Since I look absolutely crazy here I decided I just put a line down the middle to hide and “mistakes” I had made. I then added the words to the picture as well.

picture2-no-mustache05

That my friends is how I created the half face, before and after picture.

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop Tagged With: How To

Aug 8, 2010 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to use quick mask mode in Photoshop

You need to hit “Q” key. Then select the brush tool and make sure that you have the foreground color set to “Black”. You might also want to set your brush to about 75% opacity.

Go to your picture and just “paint on” the quick mask. Once done hit the “Q” key again to get out of quick mask.

This will select everything BUT what you wanted. Now hit “Ctrl+i” to only select what you painted. Then hit something like curves. Photoshop will make a mask for you on that layer.

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop Tagged With: How To

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