Chapter 9. Special Effects for Photographers
Side Effects
special effects for photographers
Photo by Scott Kelby Exposure: 0.5 sec | Focal Length: 14mm | Aperture Value: ƒ/22
The name of this chapter comes from the 2009 movie short Side Effects (it’s less than 20 minutes long, which is probably why you can buy it for only $1.99 in the iTunes Store. It’s either that, or it’s so cheap because of its lack of zombies). Anyway, here’s how they describe Side Effects (say this in your best movie voice-over guy voice): “An ordinary guy becomes a human guinea pig in an experimental drug test and meets the girl of his dreams…” Sounds like a pretty typical everyday story. At least the human guinea pig in an experimental drug test part. Anyway, I looked at the movie poster, and the guys in the poster all have this creepy-looking bluish/green color cast that makes them look kind of sickly, but then the female lead’s photo looks fine, with regular-looking flesh tones, and that’s when I realized why this guy thinks he’s found the woman of his dreams. She doesn’t have a creepy bluish/green color cast. I mean, think about it. If all the girls around you had a serious white balance problem, and then all of a sudden you meet a girl carrying around her own 18% gray card, so she looks correctly color balanced in any lighting situation, wouldn’t you fall in love with her, too? Exactly. I’ll bet in the last 10 minutes of the movie, you find out that this guy actually starts an online business for people using dating sites like eHarmony, or Match.com, or HandsomeStalker.com, where he offers to remove bluish/green color casts from your profile photo for a price. Things are going pretty well for him for a while, but then in about the eighteenth minute, the experimental drug wears off, and he finds himself trapped in a dank, dimly-lit room, forced to write nonsensical chapter intros late into the night, until his wife comes in and says, “Honey, come to bed,” but right then, he notices she has a bluish/green color cast, and….
Effects and Presets Galore in Quick Edit Mode
People love one-click effects. They’re quick and simple to use, and they can help give your photos a new look that maybe you hadn’t thought of. In Elements 14, they’ve really taken the Quick edit mode effects up a notch by adding a new auto feature, and now you’ve got a great group of presets that are really just a click away.
Step One:
Open a photo in the Editor, click on Quick at the top of the window, and then click on the Effects button at the bottom right. You’ll see all of the possible effects listed in the panel on the right side of the screen.
Step Two:
Now, it couldn’t be easier—just click on an effect, and it applies that effect to the photo you have open (here, I clicked on the second effect: Tint).
When you click on an effect, you’ll see four other variations of the effect right below the main one. Some are just different levels of intensity of the main effect and some look way different. But it’s easy to experiment by just clicking on them to see if you like what they do to your image. You can always click on another one to reverse the effect and see something else. Here, at the top, I clicked on the Vintage effect, and then at the bottom, I clicked on Sepia Glow (the third variation).
Step Four:
As I mentioned, in Elements 14, they added a new auto feature to Quick edit mode effects. Click on Smart Looks, at the top of the panel, and Elements will automatically apply five different effects to the image based on its color and lighting. Just click on the four other auto variations that appear to see what it came up with. Here, I clicked on the third variation, which applied a high-contrast effect to the image.
Creating a Picture Stack Effect
Picture Stack is one of my favorite Guided edits, because this one would seriously take a ton of time if you tried to do it manually. The idea is to take one photo and make it look like it was cut up into smaller photos with white borders stacked on top of each other. The effect looks pretty cool and is a fun way to show off your photos. Plus, it even goes so far as to add shadows under each photo, so it really looks like they’re lying on top of each other.
Step One:
In the Editor, open the photo that you want to use for the Picture Stack effect. I usually find landscape and travel photos look good here. You can use photos of people, too, but sometimes Elements will cut the photo right in the middle of someone’s face, so you have to watch out when using these. Click on Guided at the top of the window and then, in the Guided window, under Fun Edits, click on Picture Stack (it’s third in the top row).
Step Two:
First, you’ll choose how many pictures you want your photo to be chopped up into. My favorite is 8 Pictures. To me, 4 Pictures doesn’t look like enough and 12 Pictures makes the photo look too busy. The good thing is that you don’t really have to commit to too much at this point. So, click on the 8 Pictures button on the right and Elements will go to work. It takes a minute, but you’ll eventually see your photo cut into smaller square/rectangular pieces.
If you want to see what it looks like using four or 12 pictures, then just click on one of those buttons and Elements will redo the stack. It’s pretty easy to figure out which one looks best for your photo by just trying out each option.
Step Four:
You’ll notice that each photo has a white border around it and, in section 2, you can control the width of that border. I usually go with the Medium setting here—the Small setting is too thin, so I barely ever use it, but the Large setting isn’t bad (sometimes it’s a little overpowering, but sometimes it looks cool). Just like with selecting the number of pictures, this one is easy to experiment with, so click on the three border buttons to see which one you like better.
Lastly, you can change the background color and style (I switched back to eight photos with a medium border here). You have a choice between a gradient or just a simple solid-color background—I usually stick with a solid color. While the default black looks pretty cool, let’s try a white background. Click on the Solid Color button and when the New Layer dialog appears, click OK. In the Color Picker, choose white and then click OK. I kinda like white, because it lets you see the shadows under the photos. It gives the image a little more depth, so each picture in the stack really looks like it’s lying on the background.
Step Six:
When you’ve settled on your background color, just click the Next button at the bottom of the Palette Bin, and then choose what you want to do next with the photo—save it, continue editing it, or share it.
TIP: Edit the Layers
If you choose to continue editing it in Expert mode and look in the Layers palette, you’ll see the behind-the-scenes work that went on. Elements adds quite a few layers to your document. If you’re brave enough, you can go into the separate layers and adjust them. The drop shadows, the outline around each photo—they each have their own layer, so if there’s something you want to change, you can do so right on the layer.
Enhancing Depth of Field (or Faking That 85mm f/1.4 Look)
Depth of field is a great way to really make your subjects stand out from the background by blurring it. Sure, we can do a lot of this work in-camera with our lens and f-stop choice, but sometimes the creative idea doesn’t strike until the photo hits the computer. The Depth Of Field lens effect in Elements will help you fix that, though.
Step One:
In the Editor, open a photo that has a busier background than you’d care for, or just one where you’d like to draw attention to a specific part of the image. Click on Guided at the top of the window, then click on Special Effects at the top, and then click on Depth Of Field.
Step Two:
In this example, we’ll keep the woman in focus and blur the background. You’ll see this effect has two modes: Simple and Custom. Let’s start by clicking on the Simple button. Elements pretty much walks you through what to do in Simple mode. First, click the Add Blur button at the top to simply add some blur to the entire photo. At this point, you haven’t defined the subject yet, so Elements will blur everything in the photo.
Next, you need to tell Elements what parts of the photo you want in focus. So, start by clicking on the Add Focus Area button in section 2, then click in the middle of whatever you want to be in focus and drag outward. The farther out from the center you drag, the smoother your sharp-to-blur transition will be. You can also click-and-drag more than once, as I did here, where I dragged once to get her head in focus, and once to get her body in focus.
Step Four:
Once you’ve defined the part of the photo you want sharp, you can use the Blur slider to add more blur if you want. I dragged my slider to 6 to make the background even blurrier. Now, if you haven’t realized yet, the simple method is, well, simple, but it’s limited because of the way it fades the blur away. Like most things in Elements, however, this effect gives you a simple way and a more custom way to do things. We’ll take a look at the custom method next.
I’ve got another photo open here in the Editor. In this example, the bride, and the column and statue to her right are all in focus, but I’d like to make it so the bride seems like the center of attention. So, once again, in the Guided options, go to the Special Effects, and click on Depth Of Field. This time, though, click on Custom.
Step Six:
The first thing we’ll do here is define our subject (the part of the photo that we don’t want to blur). We did it before using a gradient tool, which didn’t give us too much control, but in the Custom options, we get to make a selection. So, click on the Quick Selection Tool button (by the way, we covered this tool in greater detail back in Chapter 7), and then just start painting over the bride in the photo. Don’t worry if you select part of the background, though, because we’ll take care of that in the next step.
Chances are that you’ve probably selected something you didn’t want to during your first pass with the Quick Selection tool. No sweat. Just press-and-hold the Alt (Mac: Option) key to put the tool into Subtract mode and click on any areas you didn’t want selected.
Step Eight:
The rest is a piece of cake. Just click on the Add Blur button in section 2 to blur everything that wasn’t selected in the photo. Now the bride should really stand out from the background behind her. Just like before, if you want to add more blur to the background, just drag the Blur slider to the right some. If you find the blur is too intense (when using either the Simple or Custom method), click the Next button at the bottom right, then click the In Expert button to bring the photo back to Expert mode, and lower the blurred layer’s opacity.
Trendy Desaturated Skin Look
This is just about the hottest Photoshop portrait technique out there right now, and you see it popping up everywhere, from covers of magazines to CD covers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from editorial images to billboards. It seems right now everybody wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliver it in roughly 60 seconds flat using the simplified method shown here!).
Step One:
Open the photo you want to apply this trendy desaturated skin look to. Duplicate the Background layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Mac: Command-J). Then duplicate this layer using the same shortcut (so you have three layers in all, which all look the same, as shown here).
Step Two:
In the Layers palette, click on the middle layer (Layer 1) to make it the active layer, then press Ctrl-Shift-U (Mac: Command-Shift-U) to desaturate and remove all the color from that layer. Now, lower the Opacity of this layer to 80%, so just a little color shows through. Of course, there’s still a color photo on the top of the layer stack, so you won’t see anything change onscreen (you’ll still see your color photo), but if you look in the Layers palette, you’ll see the thumbnail for the center layer is in black and white (as seen here).
In the Layers palette, click on the top layer in the stack (Layer 1 copy), then switch its layer blend mode from Normal to Soft Light (as shown here), which brings the effect into play. Now, Soft Light brings a very nice, subtle version of the effect, but if you want something a bit edgier with even more contrast, try using Overlay mode instead. If the Overlay version is a bit too intense, try lowering the Opacity of the layer a bit until it looks good to you, but honestly, I usually just go with Soft Light myself.
Step Four:
Our last step is to limit the effect to just our subject’s skin (of course, you can leave it over the entire image if it looks good, but normally I just use this as a skin effect. So, if it looks good to you as is, you can skip this step). To limit it to just the skin, press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E (Mac: Command-Option-Shift-E) to create a merged layer on top of the layer stack (a merged layer is a new layer that looks like you flattened the image). You don’t need the two layers below it any longer, so you can hide them from view by clicking on the Eye icon to the left of each layer’s thumbnail (like I did here), or you can just delete them altogether. Now, press-and-hold the Alt (Mac: Option) key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the top of the Layers palette to hide our desaturated layer behind a black mask. Press D to set your Foreground color to white, get the Brush tool (B), choose a medium-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker in the Tool Options Bar, and just paint over her face, neck, and shoulders (any visible skin) to complete the effect. If you think the effect is too intense, just lower the Opacity of this layer until it looks right to you. That’s it!
High-Contrast Portrait Look
The super-high-contrast look is incredibly popular right now, and while there are a number of plug-ins that can give you this look, I wanted to include this version, which I learned from German retoucher Calvin Hollywood, who shared this technique during a stint as my special guest blogger at my daily blog (www.scottkelby.com). The great thing about his version is you don’t need to buy a third-party plug-in to get this look. My thanks to Calvin for sharing this technique with me, and now you.
Step One:
Open the image you want to apply a high-contrast look to.
Step Two:
Make a copy of your Background layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Mac: Command-J). Then, change the blend mode of this duplicate layer to Vivid Light (I know it doesn’t look pretty now, but it’ll get better in a few more moves).
Now press Ctrl-I (Mac: Command-I) to Invert the layer (it should look pretty gray at this point). Next, go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Surface Blur. When the dialog appears, enter 40 for the Radius and 40 for the Threshold, and click OK (it takes a while for this particular filter to do its thing, so be patient. If you’re running this on a 16-bit version of your photo, this wouldn’t be a bad time to grab a cup of coffee. Maybe a sandwich, too).
Step Four:
We need to change the layer’s blend mode again, but we can’t change this one from Vivid Light or it will mess up the effect, so instead we’re going to create a new layer, on top of the stack, that looks like a flattened version of the image. That way, we can change its blend mode to get a different look. This is called “creating a merged layer,” and you get this layer by pressing Ctrl- Alt-Shift-E (Mac: Command-Option- Shift-E).
Now that you have this new merged layer, you need to delete the middle layer (the one you ran the Surface Blur upon), so drag it onto the Trash icon at the top of the Layers palette. Next, we have to deal with all the funky neon colors on this layer, and we do that by simply removing all the color. Click on your merged layer (Layer 2) to make it active again, then go under the Enhance menu, under Adjust Color, and choose Remove Color, so the layer only looks gray. Then, change the blend mode to Overlay, and now you can start to see the effect taking shape. You can stop right there (I usually do), but if you think you need an even stronger high-contrast effect (hey, it’s possible. It just depends on the image, and how much texture and contrast you want it to have), you can continue on and crank your amp up to 11 (sorry for the lame This Is Spinal Tap movie reference).
Step Six:
Go under the Enhance menu again, under Adjust Lighting, and choose Shadows/Highlights. When the dialog appears, drag the Lighten Shadows slider down to 0. Then, you’re going to add what amounts to Camera Raw’s Clarity by increasing the amount of Midtone Contrast on this Overlay layer. Go to the bottom of the dialog and drag the Midtone Contrast slider to the right, and watch how your image starts to get that crispy look (crispy, in a good way). Of course, the farther to the right you drag, the crispier it gets, so don’t go too far, because you’re still going to sharpen this image. Here, I dragged to +20%. Click OK. The next step is optional, so if you don’t need it, go to the Layers palette’s flyout menu and choose Flatten Image.
Okay, this high-contrast look looks great on a lot of stuff, but one area where it doesn’t look that good (and makes your image look obviously post-processed) is when you apply this to blurry, out-of-focus backgrounds, or ones that already have texture. So, I would only apply it to our subject and not the background. Here’s how: Alt-click (Mac: Option-click) on the Add Layer Mask icon at the top of the Layers palette to hide the contrast layer behind a black mask (so the effect is hidden from view). With your Foreground color set to white, get the Brush tool (B), choose a medium-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker in the Tool Options Bar, and paint over his face, neck, and hair to add the high-contrast effect there. Lower the brush’s Opacity in the Tool Options Bar to 70% (so the effect isn’t as intense), then paint over his shirt. This way, you avoid adding the contrast to the blurry, textured background altogether. Lastly, go to the Layers palette and lower the Opacity of this layer until it looks more natural, as shown here at 60%. Now, you can flatten the layers and sharpen it using Unsharp Mask (see Chapter 10. Here, I used Amount: 120, Radius: 1, Threshold: 3) to finish off the effect.
Converting to Black and White
There are a few different ways to convert to black and white in Elements. You could simply use the Remove Color enhancement, but that leaves you with kind of a blah result. That’s because Elements simply removes the color from the photo and leaves a very bland looking black-and-white image. Plus, there are no settings, so you can’t customize your black-and-white image in any way. Here are two great techniques that create a better looking black-and- white and give you plenty of control to really customize the way it looks:
Step One:
The first technique is simple—pretty much one or two clicks and that’s it. So, open the color photo you want to convert to black and white (yes, you need to start with a color photo), and then go under the Enhance menu and choose Convert to Black and White (as shown here).
Step Two:
When you choose Convert to Black and White, a dialog appears and your photo (behind the dialog) is converted to black and white on the spot (in other words, you get a live preview of your changes). At the top of the dialog is a before and after, showing your color photo on the left, and your black-and-white conversion on the right. Your first step is to choose which style of photo you’re converting from the list of styles on the lower-left side of the dialog. These styles are really just preset starting points that are fairly well-suited to each type of photo. The default setting is Scenic Landscape, which is a fairly non-exciting setting. Since I’m generally looking to create high-contrast, black-and-white photos with lots of depth, I recommend the Vivid Landscapes style, which is much punchier. Go ahead and choose that now, just so you can see the difference.
Whether you stay with the default Scenic Landscape, or try my suggested Vivid Landscapes (or any of the other styles to match the subject of your photo), these are just starting places—you’ll need to tweak the settings to really match your photo, and that’s done by dragging the four Adjust Intensity sliders that appear on the bottom-right side of the dialog. The top three (Red, Green, and Blue) let you tweak ranges of color in your photo. So, for example, if you’d like the grass darker, you’d drag the Green slider to the left. If you want the mountains and sky, which are mostly blue, brighter you’d drag the Blue slider to the right, as shown here.
Step Four:
So, basically, you use those three sliders to come up with a mix that looks good to you. You don’t have to use these sliders, but if you can’t find one of the presets that looks good to you, find one that gets you close, and then use the Red, Green, and Blue sliders to tweak the settings. The fourth slider, Contrast, does just what you’d expect it would—if you drag to the right, it adds contrast (and to the left removes it). I’m very big on high-contrast black-and-white prints, so I wouldn’t hesitate to drag this a little to the right just to create even more contrast (so, personally, I’m more likely to start with a preset, like Vivid Landscapes, and then use the Contrast slider, as shown here, than I am to spend much time fooling with the Red, Green, and Blue sliders. But hey, that’s just me).
So, that technique isn’t too bad and it’s quick and easy. But, if you really want some control over creating a killer black-and-white, and have an extra minute or two, then give this second one a try: Start by opening the color photo you want to convert to black and white, then press D to set your Foreground and Background colors to their defaults of black and white.
Step Six:
To really appreciate this technique, it wouldn’t hurt if you went ahead and did a regular conversion to black and white, just so you can see how lame it is. So, go under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose Grayscale. When the Discard Color Information dialog appears, click OK, and behold the somewhat lame conversion. Now that we agree it looks pretty bland, press Ctrl-Z (Mac: Command-Z) to undo the conversion, so you can try something better.
Go to the top of the Layers palette and choose Levels from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu (it’s the half-blue/half-white circle icon). The Levels options will appear in the Adjustments palette and a new layer will be added to your Layers palette named “Levels 1.” Press X to set your Foreground color to black, then go back to the top of the Layers palette and choose Gradient Map from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu. This brings up the Gradient Map options in the Adjustments palette and adds another layer to the Layers palette (above your Levels 1 layer) named “Gradient Map 1.”
Step Eight:
Just choosing Gradient Map gives you a black-and-white image (and doing just this, this one little step alone, usually gives you a better black-and-white conversion than just choosing Grayscale from the Mode submenu. Freaky, I know). Now, if you don’t get a black-to-white gradient, it’s probably because your Foreground and Background colors were not set at their defaults of black and white. In that case, click-and-drag the Gradient Map and Levels adjustment layers onto the Trash icon at the top of the palette, press D, and then add both adjustment layers again.
Now, in the Layers palette, click on the Levels 1 layer to bring up the Levels options again. From the Channel pop-up menu at the top of the palette, you can choose to edit individual color channels. So, choose the Red color channel.
Step 10:
You can now adjust the Red channel, and you’ll see the adjustments live onscreen as you tweak your black-and-white photo. (It appears as a black-and-white photo because of the Gradient Map adjustment layer above the Levels 1 layer. Pretty sneaky, eh?) You can drag the middle gray midtone Input Levels slider to the right to darken the shadowy areas, as shown here. You can also try dragging the white highlight Input Levels slider to the left a little if you need to lighten things.
Now, switch to the Green channel in the Channel pop-up menu. You can make adjustments here, as well. Try increasing the midtones in the Green channel by dragging the same slider to the right, as shown here.
Step 12:
Next, choose the Blue channel from the pop-up menu, and try increasing the highlights and midtones quite a bit by dragging the Input Levels sliders (the ones that we’ve been using below the histogram). These adjustments are not standards or suggested settings for every photo; I just experimented by dragging the sliders, and when the photo looked better, I stopped dragging. When the black-and-white photo looks good to you (good contrast, and good shadow and highlight details), just stop dragging.
To complete your conversion, go to the Layers palette, click on the flyout menu at the top right, then choose Flatten Image to flatten the adjustment layers into the Background layer. Although your photo looks like a black-and-white photo, technically, it’s still in RGB mode, so if you want a grayscale file, go under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose Grayscale.
Panoramas Made Crazy Easy
Elements has had a feature to help you stitch multiple photos into a single panoramic photo for years now. As long as you did everything right in the camera (shooting on a tripod with just about every auto feature turned off), Photomerge worked pretty well. However, Photomerge is now so vastly improved that you can pretty much hand-hold your camera without regard to the auto settings, and Photomerge will not only perfectly align the photos, but now it will also seamlessly blend the pieces together, even if the exposure or white balance isn’t “on the money.” And, in Elements 14, it was added to Guided mode, which makes it even easier to use. This is very cool stuff.
Step One:
Before you create your pano, choose whether you want to edit it (stuff like exposure, highlights, etc.) now, in Camera Raw, while the individual images are still in 16-bit RAW format, or once it’s a single 8-bit pano. Your call, but I recommend tweaking them now in Camera Raw before you make your pano, so you get the advantages of working with RAW-quality images (if they’re JPEGs, it doesn’t matter when you edit them—I’d just wait until they’re a pano). So, if you shot in RAW, Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) to select all the pano images in the Organizer, and then click on the Editor button beneath the Media Browser (as shown here).
Step Two:
Since these are RAW files, they open in Camera Raw. Click the Select All button at the top of the filmstrip on the left to select all the images, so any changes you make are automatically applied to all the frames. Let’s decrease the Exposure (to –0.50) and increase the Contrast (to +23), pull back the Highlights to –93 to bring back some color in the sky, and bump the Shadows up to +95 to see more detail. Set the white and black points by pressing-and-holding the Shift key and double-clicking on the Whites and Blacks slider knobs. Then, let’s crank the Clarity to +41 to accentuate the texture, and the Vibrance to +38. When you’re done, click the Open Images button.
This opens your images in the Editor. Now, in Elements 14, the Photomerge® options where moved to Guided mode, so click on Guided at the top of the window, then click on the Photomerge® tab up top. Since your images were already opened, you’ll see them in the Photo Bin at the bottom of the window. (Note: You can also open your images here right from the Organizer by going under the Edit menu, under Photomerge®, and choosing Photomerge® Panorama. Each will get you to the same place, but I prefer going directly from the RAW images.) Select your images down in the Photo Bin, and then click on Photomerge® Panorama.
Step Four:
Now that this is a Guided edit, the process is simple. On the right, click on Settings, and you’ll see a few options: Leave the Blend Images Together checkbox turned on. If you have lens vignetting (the edges of your images appear darkened), turn on Vignette Removal (as I did here; it will take longer to render your pano, but will try to remove the vignetting during the process). And, if you used a Nikon, Sigma, or Canon fisheye lens, turn on the Geometric Distortion Correction checkbox to correct the fisheye distortion. Click on the graphic above Settings and a pop-up menu appears (seen here). The default setting is Auto Panorama, and I recommend leaving it set to that to get the standard wide pano we’re looking for. The five other choices all give you…well…funky looking panos (that’s the best description I can give you)—they don’t give you that nice wide pano most of us are looking for. So, let’s stick with Auto Panorama.
Click the Create Panorama button at the bottom right, and within a few minutes (depending on how many photos you’re using), your pano is seamlessly stitched together (as seen here). You’ll see status bars that let you know Elements is aligning and blending your layers to make this mini-miracle happen, and in the Layers palette, you’ll see all the masks it created.
Step Six:
To make your pano fit perfectly together, Photomerge has to move and rearrange things in a way that will cause you to have extra canvas around your final pano. That’s why the Clean Edges dialog will pop up. With it, you can have Elements try to fill in the blank space based on the image—it does an amazingly good job, although you may have to continue editing in Expert mode and use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to finish it off. Or, you can click No, then click the Next button in the bottom right of the Guided window. Click In Expert to go back to Expert mode, then get the Crop tool (C), and drag out your cropping border (encompassing as much of the pano as possible without leaving any gaps).
Now to finish it up. First, choose Flatten Image from the Layers palette’s flyout menu, then sharpen it by going under the Enhance menu, and choosing Unsharp Mask. Pick some nice strong settings (here, I chose Amount: 120, Radius: 1.0, Threshold: 3), and click OK to finish the image (seen below).
Burned-In Edge Effect (Vignetting)
If you want to focus attention on something within your image, applying a wide vignette that acts like a soft light is a great way to do this (which is really just an alternative to the Vignette Effect in Guided mode). What you’re doing is creating a dark border that will burn in the edges of your image. Here’s how to do just that:
Step One:
Open the photo to which you want to apply a burned-in edge effect. Just so you know, what we’re doing here is focusing attention through the use of light—we’re burning in all the edges of the photo (not just the corners, like lens vignetting, which we learned how to fix in Chapter 6 and I usually try to avoid), leaving the visual focus in the center of the image.
Step Two:
Go under the Filter menu, and choose Correct Camera Distortion. When your image opens in the Correct Camera Distortion dialog, if it has an annoying grid over it, start by turning off the Show Grid checkbox beneath the bottom right of the preview area. In the Vignette section near the top, you’re going to drag the Amount slider to the left, and as you drag left, you’ll start to see vignetting appear in the corners of your photo. But since it’s just in the corners, it looks like the bad kind of vignetting, not the good kind. You’ll need to make the vignetting look more like a soft spotlight falling on your subject.
To do just that, drag the Midpoint slider quite a bit to the left, which increases the size of the vignetting and creates a soft, pleasing effect that is very popular in portraiture, or anywhere you want to draw attention to your subject. That’s it!
Creating the Selective Color Effect
Nothing says 1985 like selective color! I say that semi-jokingly in that it’s one of those effects that some photographers are tired of. But, the rest of the world still loves it. It’s basically a way to make part of a photo pop out by leaving it in color, while everything else is black and white. You’ll find it in the Guided mode, along with lots of other special effects. They all work pretty much the same, but we’ll just go over the selective color one here.
Step One:
In the Editor, open a photo you’d like to apply the effect to, then click on Guided at the top of the window. At the top of the Guided window, click on Black & White, then click on B&W Selection.
Step Two:
In the Palette Bin, you’ll see all of the settings you have control over for the effect. The way Guided edits usually work is you start from the top and work your way down, but you don’t always have to use all of the settings there. For this one, click on the B&W Selection Brush button. Playing off the “Guided” name, you’ll see that Elements pretty much guides you along the way.
Here, you’ll start off in Add mode. This means that wherever you paint on the photo, it’ll be turned to black and white (as shown here). You even have a Brush Size option if you need a larger or smaller brush to paint with. Whatever you don’t paint on remains in color. You’ll also notice that it tends to snap to parts of your image. That’s the Elements “smart” brush technology that helps make selections for you.
Step Four:
If you happen to paint over too much of the photo, or Elements doesn’t automatically pick up an edge and turn it to black and white, then just click on the Subtract button and paint the color back in. Here, we want the bouquet to stay in color, so I’m painting the color back in there.
You can also click on the Refine Edge button (you can find out more about how Refine Edge works in Chapter 7), and Elements will help make the edges look more realistic and not so jaggy.
Step Six:
Finally, if you need to get really detailed, then click on the B&W Detail Brush option. This brush doesn’t use any of Elements’ selection technology, though. Instead, it works just like a regular brush and paints in the effect in only the exact areas you paint on. Oh, and one last thing: if you want to see the reverse of everything you’ve done, then turn on the Invert Effect checkbox in the third section, and whatever was in color will now become black and white and whatever was black and white will be in color.
Neutral Density Gradient Filter
One of the most popular lens filters for outdoor photographers is the neutral density gradient filter, because often (especially when shooting scenery, like sunsets) you wind up with a bright sky and a dark foreground. A neutral density gradient lens filter reduces the exposure in the sky by a stop or two, while leaving the ground unchanged (the top of the filter is gray, and it graduates down to transparent at the bottom). Well, if you forgot to use your ND gradient filter when you took the shot, you can create your own ND gradient effect in Photoshop Elements.
Step One:
Open the photo where you exposed for the ground, which left the sky too light. Press the letter D to set your Foreground color to black. Then, go to the Layers palette and choose Gradient from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu (it’s the half-white/half-blue circle icon) at the top of the palette. When the Gradient Fill dialog appears, click on the little, black, downward-facing arrow to the right of the Gradient thumbnail to bring up the Gradient Picker. Double-click on the second gradient in the list, which is the gradient that goes from Foreground to Transparent. Don’t click OK yet.
Step Two:
By default, this puts a dark area on the ground (rather than the sky), so turn on the Reverse checkbox to reverse the gradient, putting the dark area of your gradient over the sky and the transparent part over the land. Your image will look pretty awful at this point, but you’ll fix that in the next step, so just click OK.
To make this gradient blend in with your photo, go to the Layers palette and change the blend mode of this adjustment layer from Normal to Overlay. This darkens the sky, but it gradually lightens until it reaches land, and then it slowly disappears. So, how does it know where the ground is? It doesn’t. It puts a gradient across your entire photo, so in the next step, you’ll basically show it where the ground is.
Step Four:
In the Layers palette, double-click on the thumbnail for the Gradient adjustment layer to bring up the Gradient Fill dialog again. To control how far down the darkening will extend from the top of your photo, just click once on the Gradient thumbnail at the top of the dialog. This brings up the Gradient Editor. Grab the top-right transparent Opacity stop above the gradient ramp near the center of the dialog and drag it to the left. The darkening will “roll up” from the bottom of your photo, so keep dragging to the left until only the sky is affected, and then click OK in the Gradient Editor.
Step Five:
By default, the gradient you choose fills the entire image area, smoothly transitioning from a dark gray at the top center to transparent at the very bottom. It’s a smooth, “soft-step” gradient. However, if you want a quicker change from black to transparent (a hard step between the two), you can lower the Scale amount in the Gradient Fill dialog.
Also, if the photo you’re working on doesn’t have a perfectly straight horizon line, you might have to use the Angle control by clicking on the line in the center of the Angle circle and dragging slowly in the direction that your horizon is tilted. This literally rotates your gradient, which enables you to have it easily match the angle of your horizon. When it looks good to you, click OK to complete the effect.
Getting the Instagram Look
Here’s a quick and easy way to get the wildly popular Instagram app look. Of course, there isn’t just one “look,” because Instagram has like 15 different ones, but this will at least take you in the right direction. One more thing: I know you’re thinking, “Do people really want to learn how to do phone app looks in Elements?” Yup. It’s one of the most-requested effects people ask to learn (don’t get me started). Luckily, it’s easy, and the looks are actually based on classic darkroom effects, so that can’t be a bad thing.
Step One:
Start by opening an image in Camera Raw. One of the trademark looks of the Instagram app is its square cropping ratio, so let’s start there. Click-and-hold on the Crop tool in the toolbar at the top and a list of cropping ratios appears. Choose the 1 to 1 ratio (as shown here), which gives you a square crop.
Step Two:
Drag your cropping border out over the part of the image you want to have the effect (in this case, it’s pretty obvious which part of the image we should keep). Once the crop is where you want it, just press the Enter (Mac: Return) key to lock in your square crop. From here on out, it’s pretty darn easy—I’ll give you some sliders to set, a couple of minor little moves, and you’re there. Let’s do it.
Another trademark part of the Instagram look is that the images have very flat contrast (after all, these are imitating some vintage camera looks), so start by dragging the Contrast slider all the way to the left to –100. Then, go ahead and crank up the Vibrance a bunch to +100. Now, we’ll add a little contrast back in by dragging the Whites to the right to increase the very brightest highlights (here, I dragged over to +55), and bring some color back to the darkest shadow areas by dragging the Blacks slider to the left (here, I dragged it over to –70). At this point, the photo looks kind of yellowish. Not for long, though. Click Open Image to open the image in the Editor.
Step Four:
Next, go under the Enhance menu, under Adjust Lighting, and choose Levels. We’re going to use some different settings in Levels than you may be used to. Under the Channel pop-up menu, you’ll see you have the choice of adjusting the Red, Green, or Blue channels. Don’t worry, though, even if you’ve never used Levels this way before, you’ll absolutely be able to do this, since we pretty much use the same settings all the time. So, first, from the Channel pop-up menu, choose Green. Then, grab the gray Input Levels slider beneath the histogram and drag it to the left to 1.51 (as shown here) to bump up the greens. See, that was easy, eh?
Now that you’ve got the hang of adjusting the Levels this way, choose Blue from the Channel pop-up menu. Grab the same gray middle slider, but this time drag it to the right to 0.53. Then, go to the bottom of the dialog and drag the black Output Levels slider on the left to the right to around 130 (as shown here). This gives the image more of a teal-and-yellowish feel. When you’re done, click OK to close the Levels dialog.
TIP: Add Grain for a Film-Like Look
One of the trademarks of the Instagram effect is a grainy look, and you can always hop into Guided mode and apply the Old Fashioned Photo effect to the image. But, instead of using all of the settings, just click on the Add Texture button.
Step Six:
Now, we’re going to add a fake border. Press Ctrl-A (Mac: Command-A) to select the entire photo, then go under the Select menu, under Modify, and choose Border. For a low-resolution photo, enter a Width setting of 10 pixels in the Border Selection dialog, or enter around 20 pixels for a higher resolution photo like this one, and click OK. This creates a selected border around the edge of your image. Now, we just need to fill it with a color. Instagram gives you the choice between black or white. I usually like black, so just press the letter D to set your Foreground color to black, then press Alt-Backspace (Mac: Option-Delete) to fill the selected area with black. Continue pressing Alt-Backspace and the border will get darker and thicker (I pressed it four times here). When you’re done, press Ctrl-D (Mac: Command-D) to Deselect.
That’s it. If you want a variation on the look we’ve created, in Step Four, after choosing the Green channel, try dragging the gray Input Levels slider to the right instead of to the left to add a red tint to the photo instead. Then, in Step Five, after choosing the Blue channel, drag only the black Output Levels slider to around 118 (as seen here) and you’ll have a whole different style, but one that still has that old look to it.
Fake Duotone
The duotone tinting look is all the rage right now, but creating a real two-color duotone that will separate in just two colors on press is a bit of a chore. However, if you’re outputting to an inkjet printer, or to a printing press as a full-color job, then you don’t need all that complicated stuff—you can create a fake duotone that looks at least as good (if not better).
Step One:
Open the color RGB photo that you want to convert into a duotone (again, I’m calling it a duotone, but we’re going to stay in RGB mode the whole time). Now, the hard part of this is choosing which color to make your duotone. I always see other people’s duotones, and think, “Yeah, that’s the color I want!” but when I click on the Foreground color swatch and try to create a similar color in the Color Picker, it’s always hit or miss (usually miss). That’s why you’ll want to know this next trick.
Step Two:
If you can find another duotone photo that has a color you like, you’re set. So, I usually go to a stock photo website (like DollarPhotoClub.com) and search for “duotones.” When I find one I like, I return to Elements, press I to get the Color Picker tool, click-and-hold anywhere within my image area, and then (while keeping the mouse button held down) I drag my cursor outside Elements and onto the photo in my web browser to sample the color I want. Now, mind you, I did not and would not take a single pixel from someone else’s photo—I’m just sampling a color.
©DOLLAR PHOTO CLUB/IDELFOTO
Return to your image in Elements. Go to the Layers palette and click on the Create a New Layer icon at the top of the palette. Then, press Alt-Backspace (Mac: Option-Delete) to fill this new blank layer with your sampled color. The color will fill your image area, hiding your photo, but we’ll fix that.
Step Four:
While still in the Layers palette, change the blend mode of this sampled color layer to Color.
Step Five:
If your duotone seems too dark, you can lessen the effect by clicking on the Background layer, and then going under the Enhance menu, under Adjust Color, and choosing Remove Color. This removes the color from your RGB photo without changing its color mode, while lightening the overall image. Pretty sneaky, eh?
