Before/After 2012
We all know the nastiness that can arise under tungsten or fluorescent lighting, especially when shooting with a smaller point & shoot camera. Checking through shots taken in these types of conditions you can often find yourself thinking, "Funny, I don't remember looking like death when these were taken...".
But fear not! Sometimes a 5 minute pass through Photoshop makes an impressive difference.
All I did to this photo was:
- Healing Brush used to 86 the lovely bags under my eyes
- Curves adjustment layer to improve overall exposure
- Minor tweak on hue/saturation adjustment layer (with layer mask to retain colour in lips, eyes and hair)
- quick brush over the skin with low opacity brush tool using the eye dropper to spot match skin tone
- brushed over some of the distracting background elements @ 0% brush hardness with low opacity brush & spot matched colour
- cropped to remove some of the extra arm on the left
- Sharpening filter to 'crisp' it up a bit. Photos are like bacon, usually better when they're slightly crispy
There you have it - from hungover to made-over in 300 seconds or less.
Just like any photoshop project, it's important not to be too heavy handed; or you end up with an image that looks unreal or "Photoshopped". When the tool you've used to try to enhance an image becomes a verb describing the result, you've gone too far.
