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

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

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

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.

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

BEFORE

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)

BEFORE

Again notice the file size is only up to 30.6MB

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

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%”.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Here’s what the layer looked like.

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.

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

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.

You might think that that isn’t much space. I disagree. Considering almost all monitors coming out now are pretty much all widescreen. While most screens are labeled as “widescreen” they don’t have true widescreen resolutions. On true widescreens you loose even more vertical space how ever you do get more horizontal space. The physical layout of the screen makes the potential to see less of the images you are editing.

So as you can tell the Mac Version is actually Lacking compared to the Windows version.

What do you think?

I plan on writing an article later why you might want to do this but since you are here you most likely already know why one would want to to create a mask from a color channel.

Quick Answer:

You can hold down the CTRL and clicking on the Color Channel. Go back to the Image and make a mask from the selection.

In depth tutorial

Anyways let’s get down to it:

1. Open Photoshop and the photo you want work on.
2. You want to make sure layers is visible. If you don’t see it in the sidebar hit “F7”.
3. Make sure you only have one layer.
4. Make a copy of that layer by hitting “ctrl+J”.
5. In the layer you just made click the channels tab. Currently you should be on the layers tab.
6. You will most likely see 4 channels. RGB, Red, Green and Blue. Each Channel can be selected by the displayed shortcut. For example red is: “Ctrl+3”
7. You will notice the picture turn to grey scale.
8. Holding down the “Ctrl” key click on the Red Channel. This will make a selection of ONLY the red channel.
9. You will need to go back to the Layers Tab from the current Channel tab. Click it now.
10. At the bottom of the layers box there are a few different Icons. There is a “link” then “FX” and then a “Circle in a box” icon. This is the “add layer mask” button. Click it.
11. You picture will no longer be grey. You should now have a mask that looked identical to the grey scale image.

After a few google searches I was told that my original hunch was correct about the filters menu. A few more searches revealed that someone could not get their plug-ins working under the 64bit version of Photoshop. Was I running the 64bit version?

I made sure Photoshop was closed and I went to the START menu and found the Photoshop App (32bit). I ran the program and went to filter menu. Sure enough the plug-ins were there.

Note – The reason why I said make sure that “Photoshop” was closed was If you had Photoshop 64bit open and clicked on the 32bit version, it would just bring the existing 64Bit Photoshop window to the foreground.

So if you find that some of your filters are not showing up in Photoshop make sure you are running the 32bit version before getting worried.

1.) First Open the picture that you want to work on.

2.) Make sure Actions window is viewable. If it isn’t you can open it by going to Window file meu, and selecting actions

3.) Click on the Folder Icon at the bottom of the Actions window. Create a new action set. Name it Skin

4.) Click on the new action icon and create a new action called “Skin Softening”.

5.) Click on the Record button. Photoshop will now record EVERY action you do. Don’t mess up!

6.) Hit Ctrl+j to copy layer

7.) Click on Filters Menu

8.) Click on Convert to smart filter

9.) Click on Filter Menu

10.) Click on “Blur” then “Surface Blur”

11.) Select radius of 3 pixel and a threshold of 15 levels

12.) Click Filter and select “Noise”. Then click “Add Noise…”

13.) Pick 2% for the amount, Gaussian and Monochromatic

14.) You will now need to make a mask from the red channel.

15.) Click on the channels section.

16.) Hold down “Ctrl” and click the red channel. This will select everything in the red channel

17.) Click back to the layers section

18.) Click the layer mask icon to make a mask based on the red channel

19.) You can now click the “Stop” button in the “Actions” section.

Now that you have the action most of the work is now done for you. You can apply the action to any other picture you want to soften the skin. You can REALLY make the picture pop by:

1.) Holding down the “ALT” key and clicking on the mask layer you created. This will show the mask in grey scale.

2.) Using a black brush blacken out the eyes and hair as you still want those parts to be crisp. The person will kind of look like a zombie

3.) If you find at any time that there is not enough skin softening you can always click on the noise and blur layers and change the amount. I normally keep the setting the same but I adjust the “opacity” amount by click on the icon at the far right of the layer.

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.