Getting the red out … digitally

When a subject looks directly into the camera and the camera-mounted flash fires, the result is often red-eye. This result is caused when light (such as a flash) bounces off the blood vessels at the back of an eye, and it gives the subject a spooky vampire look. Among the many ways to minimize this problem is with the Red Eye tool, nested in the Toolbox with the healing and patch tools. Zoom in and drag a small rectangle over the iris and pupil to watch the red disappear, leaving the natural highlights and a perfect eye. As you see to the right in Figure 9-1, the default settings are good for typical cases of red-eye.

The Red Eye tool finds red and not green. For green-eye (in photos of animals), for too-bright white reflections from eyes, and for those times when you’re not happy with the performance of the Red Eye tool, you can use the Camera Raw filter. The Red Eye Removal tool in the Camera Raw filter offers Pet Eye, as shown in Figure 9-2. You can also use the Brush tool to remove red eye or green eye problems.). Set the foreground color to black; on the Options bar, select the Normal blending mode and an Opacity of about 75%. Use a brush diameter just slightly larger than the pupil and a brush hardness of about 85%. Click once and evaluate the result; if necessary, reduce the Opacity to 20% and click again.

Here’s one more red-eye/green-eye trick: Use the Sponge tool to desaturate, followed by the Burn tool (Midtones, 25% exposure). The Sponge tool is nested in the Toolbox with the Dodge and Burn tools.

The digital fountain of youth

In Chapter 6, I show an example of using the Dodge tool to fade wrinkles without removing them completely. Photoshop, being a complex and capable animal, has lots of other ways to minimize or eliminate wrinkles. Among the most powerful tools for this job are the Healing Brush, the Spot Healing Brush (especially with the Content-Aware option), the Patch tool (also with the Content-Aware option), and the Clone Stamp.

Both the Healing Brush and the Patch tool work by copying texture from one area to another. You can, for example, overlay smooth skin texture onto a wrinkled area, smoothing the wrinkles while retaining the area’s general tonality and color. To work with the Healing Brush, Option+click (Mac)/Alt+click (Windows) the area from which you want to copy texture, and then click and drag over the area that you’re fixing. When you select the Aligned option from the Options bar, you maintain the relationship between the point from which you’re healing and the area over which you drag. No matter where you move the cursor, the source point retains the same distance and direction. When repairing areas of a face, however, you might find it easier to deselect the Aligned check box. Every time you release the mouse button, you start over from the same source point. By using short strokes, you can heal from the same source area to any area of your image.

The Spot Healing Brush works much like the Healing Brush to repair and replace texture. However, instead of designating a source point by Option+clicking/Alt+clicking, the Spot Healing Brush samples from the immediate surrounding area, which makes it perfect for repairing little irregularities in an area of rather consistent texture. The Content-Aware option for the Spot Healing Brush makes it a “smart” tool — it looks at the surrounding area and tries to replicate both the texture and the content.

To work with the Patch tool, make a selection with the Patch tool (or with any of Photoshop’s selection features) and then drag with the Patch tool. Depending on which option you select from the Options bar, you can either select and drag the damaged area to a good area (select Source from the Options bar), or you can select a good area and drag to the damaged area (select Destination). You can use both the Healing Brush and the Patch tool to apply a predefined pattern, too. That can be handy for adding a texture where one doesn’t already exist in your image.

Like the Healing Brush, you Option+click/Alt+click with the Clone Stamp to set the area from which you’re copying and then paint over an area to make a change. The Healing Brush copies texture, but the Clone Stamp copies pixels, completely replacing the area over which you drag. (That is, of course, subject to the blending mode and opacity that you select from the Options bar.) Like the Healing Brush, the Clone Stamp offers the Aligned option. Outside the eye in Figure 9-3 shows a comparison of wrinkle reduction using the Clone Stamp (set to Normal and 100% Opacity) and using the Healing Brush. (If you use the Clone Stamp to repair skin, reduce the opacity and make sure to select a source area that has similar skin color and lighting.) Also on the Clone Stamp’s Options bar, you have the choice of working on the active layer (ignoring pixels on other layers), working on the active layer and the layer immediately below (which you’ll choose when you add an empty layer to hold your cloned pixels), or using all layers in the image (helpful in layered images with areas of transparency and adjustment layers).

Dieting digitally

You can certainly use the Clone Stamp tool to reduce a bit of a bulge at the waistline or below an upper arm, but you might find it easier (and more natural-looking) to make a selection and rotate the outer edge inward a bit. Take a look at Figure 9-4. Although this subject hardly has what you’d call a “spare tire,” that bit of extra sticking out above her skirt isn’t particularly flattering. Make a selection with the Lasso tool that includes some of the background and some skin (or shirt or dress). Copy the selection to a new layer with ⌘  +J/Ctrl+J. Press ⌘  +T/Ctrl+T to enter Free Transform (or choose Edit ⇒ Transform ⇒ Rotate). Drag the point of rotation (the little crosshair symbol in the middle of the bounding box) to the top of the bounding box, and then position the cursor slightly outside the bounding box and drag to rotate. When you’re satisfied, press Return/Enter to accept the transformation and merge the layers with ⌘  +E/Ctrl+E. (With complex backgrounds, you might need to do a little cloning to even things out.)

When working with double chins, your best bet is usually to minimize rather than eliminate. Putting a skinny neck under a fleshy face looks unnatural. You can certainly tuck in the sides of the second chin a bit by using the rotate method, but rely on the Burn tool to darken. By darkening the excess flesh under the chin, you make it appear to be in shadow — and, therefore, under the actual chin. (See Figure 9-5.) Use the Dodge tool or the Clone Stamp (if necessary) to hide any creases or wrinkles associated with the excess chin. Redefine a natural-looking jaw line and chin — but once again, remember that the result must not only be acceptable to the client; it must also look natural.

When working with the Burn and Dodge tools, don’t forget to reduce the Exposure setting on the Options bar — 15% to 20% is plenty strong for this type of work. You’ll also want to juggle between Highlights and Midtones (the Range setting on the Options bar) when creating an artificial shadow on a double chin with the Burn tool. Zoom in when doing this sort of work, but also open a second window via Window ⇒ Arrange ⇒ New Window for [filename] to keep an eye on the overall impact of your changes.

You can use the Filter ⇒ Liquify feature to push, pull, twist, pucker, bloat, and otherwise manipulate pixels into the shape and position you need. There’s really nothing more powerful when it comes to reconfiguring a figure. In Figure 9-6, you see how leveling off a beltline with Liquify is sometimes all that’s needed to restore that trim-man-she-married look. And a little touch-up with the Healing Brush or Dodge and Burn tools can eliminate the wrinkles in the shirt, helping improve the overall appearance of the image by reducing distraction. (Chapter 15 has full info on using Liquify.)

De-glaring glasses

Although hindsight is usually 20/20, many people need spectacles. Unfortunately, those eyeglasses can be a photographer’s nightmare! The reflections off glass are usually specular highlights — that is, areas of pure white with absolutely no detail in them. To properly evaluate flash reflections in eyeglasses, open the Info panel and move the cursor through the area. If you see a noticeable variation among the RGB values in the Info panel, you might be able to restore the area with the Burn tool.

If the Info panel shows RGB values of 255/255/255 or close to it, the area has no detail. Zoom in close and use the Clone Stamp tool to copy over the area from another part of the image. In severe cases of glare, you might need to copy from another photo of the same person. When possible (say, in a portrait sitting), try to take one shot of the subject without eyeglasses, just in case.

Whitening teeth

Teeth generally aren’t truly white (unless somebody has spent a lot of time and money getting ready for a portfolio shoot). Instead, you see shades of ivory and yellow in teeth, but they don’t necessarily have to be unattractive or distracting shades of yellow. The Sponge tool is great for desaturating teeth, moving them from yellow to gray. Use the Dodge tool to lighten teeth. From the Options bar, set the tool to Midtones (not Highlights) and an Exposure of perhaps 30% for front teeth. Paint over each tooth individually, making sure that you don’t eliminate the shadows that differentiate the individual teeth. Then switch to Shadows and lighten those molars visible in back. Don’t overdo it — remember that folks who don’t make their living in Hollywood or on TV generally don’t have snow-white teeth. Figure 9-7 shows normal people teeth, “improved” normal people teeth, and Hollywood teeth. Balance your judgment with the client’s needs.

Decreasing digital noise

If you shoot Raw, reduce noise in Camera Raw, as described in Chapter 7. If you shoot JPEG, apply Camera Raw as a filter or use the Reduce Noise filter (under the Filter ⇒ Noise menu). As you see in Figure 9-8, Reduce Noise does a very good job of neutralizing the random red, green, and blue pixels while preserving detail in the image.

Notice that Reduce Noise also offers a Remove JPEG Artifact option. When saving in the JPEG file format, you compromise between image quality and smaller file size. The smaller the file, the greater the likelihood of compression damage to your image. That damage generally shows itself as visible lines between blocks of pixels measuring eight pixels square.

You’ll also find the Color Replacement tool very handy for noise reduction, especially in areas of rather uniform color. Option+click/Alt+click right in the area to set the foreground color; then simply paint away the digital noise. As you move from area to area in your image, Option+click/Alt+click to pick up a new foreground color.

Eliminating luminance noise

In addition to the red, green, and blue specks of digital noise, you might face luminance noise, the bright and dark specks sprinkled throughout your photo. Under the Filter ⇒ Noise menu, you can find the Despeckle command. No dialog box appears and you have no options to choose from. You simply run the filter two or three times. For more challenging noise, try Photoshop’s Blur ⇒ Smart Blur filter or work with the Camera Raw filter. (If Smart Blur is grayed out in the Filter ⇒ Blur menu, convert the image to 8-bit color through the Image ⇒ Mode menu.) For supreme control over blurring, Smart Blur even lets you enter fractions for both the Radius and Threshold values (as shown in Figure 9-9).

Removing the unwanted from photos

Perhaps the easiest way to remove something from an image is to crop the photo, that is, cut off that part of the picture as explained in Chapter 4. This technique is easy enough if that piece of litter or whatever happens to be at the edge of the image and cropping won’t ruin your composition. (Of course, picking up that piece of litter and disposing of it prior to taking the photo is the best solution.) When you must cover up rather than crop out, consider the very powerful Content-Aware option for Edit ⇒ Fill.

Content-Aware Fill analyzes the pixels within a selection and compares them to pixels elsewhere in the image, and then re-creates the area within the selection. (Making selections to isolate part of an image is discussed in Chapter 8.) In Figure 9-10, the waterfall within the selection is both natural and normal. However, it does visually water down (pun intended!) the message of “Motion: Horizontal and Vertical.” With a single waterfall, the single railroad train is better balanced.

When you’re not satisfied with Content-Aware Fill, undo and try changing the size of the selection, perhaps including a bit more (or less) of the surrounding image. You can also use the Clone Stamp tool to do some touching up after using Content-Aware Fill.

If Content-Aware Fill is picking up areas of the image that aren’t appropriate for the fix, try this:

1. Make a selection of the area you want to remove.

   Generally speaking, you’ll use the Lasso tool, but any selection tool or command can be used.

2. Hold down the Shift key and select the pixels you want to use to replace the problem area.

   The Shift key adds the new selection to the existing selection. This selection should include an area of “good” pixels that’s somewhat larger than the area of “bad” pixels you want to replace.

3. Copy to a new layer.

   Use the keyboard shortcut ⌘  +J/Ctrl+J to put the selected pixels on their own layer.

4. Reselect the problem area.

   This can be a very loose selection, including some of the transparent pixels around the problem area. Select only the problem area, not the pixels you want to use for the repair.

5. Choose Edit ⇒ Fill with the Content-Aware option.

   Only the unselected pixels on the new layer will be used to replace the problem area.

You can also move something in your image to a new location to create a new look in the shot. As shown in Figure 9-11, copy the entire image, reposition it, use a layer mask to hide parts of the upper layer, and clone to remove anything not needed on the exposed areas of the lower layer. In Figure 9-11, the background layer is copied and moved upward (after using the Image ⇒ Canvas Size command to expand the canvas), and a layer mask hides everything except the boy, his racket, and the ball. On the lower layer, the boy is cloned out. (The look of surprise from the boy in the red hat in the background is simply a fortuitous coincidence that seems to add credibility to the adjusted image.)

The Edit ⇒ Puppet Warp feature, like Liquify (presented in Chapter 15), enables you to very easily produce complex distortions in an image. Here’s the workflow I recommend for most jobs using Puppet Warp:

1. Make a selection of the area of the image you want to alter.

   You can use whatever selection technique works best for the part of the image that needs to be selected — Lasso tool, Color Range command, or any of the selection tools and techniques described in Chapter 8.

2. Copy to a new layer.

   Use the keyboard shortcut ⌘  +J/Ctrl+J to put the selected pixels on their own layer.

3. Remove the selected pixels from the lower layer.

   Hide the upper layer by clicking the eyeball icon to the left of the layer name in the Layers panel. Click the lower layer in the panel to make it the active layer. Clone or copy/paste or use Content-Aware Fill over the selected pixels using the techniques in the preceding section. (This stage of the workflow is shown to the upper right, next to the original shot, in Figure 9-12.)

4. Make the upper layer visible and active.

   Click in the eyeball column to the left of the upper layer’s name to make the layer visible, and then click the layer name or thumbnail to make the layer active.

5. Activate the Puppet Warp feature.

   Choose Edit ⇒ Puppet Warp.

6. Set pins.

   Click in two or more places along the axis that you want to change to set anchor points known as pins. If you’re manipulating an arm, you would generally place pins at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. When manipulating a leg, place pins at the hip, knee, and ankle.

7. Select your options.

   On the Options bar, choose a mode. Normal is usually appropriate, Distort enables you to change perspective while dragging pins, and Rigid helps maintain special relationships. You can also change the density of the now-visible mesh and use the Expansion slider and field to expand or contract the content within the mesh.

8. Drag the pins and accept the warp.

   Click a pin to make it the active pin; drag as desired. You can switch among pins as often as necessary, and you can remove a pin by clicking it and pressing Delete/Backspace. To the right on the Options bar, you’ll see three buttons that remove all pins, cancel Puppet Warp, and accept the transformation. When you’re happy with the new look of your “puppet,” click that third button or press the Return/Enter key.

Eliminating the lean: Fixing perspective

When you take a photograph at an angle, perhaps shooting upward at a building, you get foreshortening (also called keystoning), with the upper part of the subject shrinking into the distance. If you shoot Raw, you can work with the Camera Raw Transform tool (see Chapter 7). If you shoot on a recent-model high-end DSLR, Camera Raw may show a custom profile created for your camera/lens combination to correct many lens-related vagaries. You can use the buttons and sliders below to fine-tune the adjustment if necessary. Generally speaking, if you want to work with Camera Raw, you do so before opening the image in Photoshop. However, you may find it convenient to use Camera Raw as a filter (perhaps as a Smart Filter with a Smart Object so that the adjustments can later be readjusted).

With JPEG images, as an alternative to using Camera Raw as a filter, Photoshop’s Filter ⇒ Lens Correction does a great job of fixing perspective. If Photoshop can determine the make and model of your camera and lens, the Auto tab may have a great correction. If not, in the Custom panel of Lens Correction, drag the Vertical Perspective slider to the left to correct images shot from below, or to the right for shots from above. In Lens Correction, as shown in Figure 9-13, you can also adjust horizontal perspective, barrel distortion (when the center of the image bulges out), pin cushioning (when the center of the image bulges in), and chromatic aberration (blue/yellow or red/cyan fringing along edges), as well as add a vignette.

Before entering Lens Correction, double-click the layer named Background in the Layers panel and rename the layer or click the Lock icon to the right of the layer name. Use Image ⇒ Canvas Size to add some empty area all around the image. That way, you won’t chop off any of the photo when dragging the perspective sliders. Notice in Figure 9-13 that a generous amount of extra canvas was added, which can easily be cropped off after correcting perspective.

You can also use Photoshop’s Edit ⇒ Transform ⇒ Perspective command, but that usually produces some foreshortening of the image, requiring you to scale it upward a bit afterward. The Perspective Crop tool (nested in the Toolbox with the Crop tool) can also fix perspective. For best results, position the four corners of the bounding box on visible corners of something in the image that should be rectangular or square; drag the side handles outward to expand the bounding box to encompass your image. Press Return/Enter when you’re done.

Also found in the Filter menu is Adaptive Wide Angle, another way to compensate for vagaries of specific wide-angle and fisheye lenses. When Lens Correction’s Remove Distortion slider isn’t enough to correct barrel distortion, try Adaptive Wide Angle. If the camera model and lens information can be read from the image’s metadata (it will be shown in the lower-left corner), the Auto adjustment is applied. When the camera and/or lens is unknown, can choose from the other adjustment options (shown in Figure 9-14), which you use to manually adjust the image.

Rotating images precisely

While it’s certainly possible to rotate an image while working with the Crop tool and the Lens Correction filter, you have another, very precise option. With the Crop tool selected, try the Straighten button. Click the button, then in the image window, click and hold down the mouse button (or trackpad or whatever you’re using) and drag a line along something in the image that should be vertical or horizontal.

Buried under the Eyedropper in the Photoshop Toolbox is the little-known Ruler tool. Generally, you use it in conjunction with the Info panel or Options Bar to find distances and angles in your image. You can also use it to make sure that you apply the exact amount of rotation needed for your image. Select the Ruler tool, drag it along any line in your image that should be vertical or horizontal and then choose Image ⇒ Image Rotation ⇒ Arbitrary. The angle of the Ruler tool will already be waiting for you in the dialog box, so you need only click OK to precisely rotate your image.

One final thought for this chapter: When you come across an image that requires more fixing than you have time for, or one with such severe luminance noise that smoothing removes too much detail, or just a problem photo in general, make sure that the image is in 8-bit mode (check the Edit ⇒ Mode menu), and head for the Filter Gallery. It’s amazing how many flaws you can hide with a few artistic effects. Creating an artistic rendering of an image is often preferable to deleting a lousy photo. Blur away the noise and add a canvas texture with the Texturizer filter. Blown out highlights? Try the Colored Pencil filter. (Read more about the Filter Gallery in Chapter 15.) When faced with lemons, think of the Filter Gallery as your own personal lemonade stand.