Chapter 4: Image Makeover

One of the most important aspects of good picture editing is also very simple: you need to have a plan. And to have a plan, you need to have an idea or a vision of how you want your picture to look after it has been edited. Having a logical plan, therefore, is almost as important as knowing how to execute that plan in order to create great results. Not surprisingly, this requires some forward thinking and a reasonable knowledge of the tools at your disposal.

At a basic level, this plan might simply be to see your picture appear brighter and more colorful than the underwhelming drab-looking RAW file that you see in Photoshop Elements's Camera RAW window.

Because of its relative simplicity, this kind of plan is relatively easy to accomplish quickly and effectively using any of the amazing Photoshop Elements' global tone-changing tools or instant-effect presets that we looked at in Chapter 3, The Basics of Image Editing.

In this chapter, we will look at specific examples where an image needs editing and describe the processes used to make it appear more impressive. The chapter begins with a relatively simple brightness and contrast makeover that escalates to more ambitious levels of complexity, culminating in the last example, which involves bringing together multiple images and text into one document

In this chapter, we are going to look at several quite different image makeovers:

• Basic and creative workflows
• Makeover one: brightness fixing
• Makeover two: brightness, contrast, color, and simple retouching
• Makeover three: fixing incorrect color and simple retouching
• Makeover four: perfecting a portrait using the skin-smoothing tool
• Makeover five: heavy portrait retouching
• Makeover six: combining three images and adding text to create something from nothing

Basic edit workflow

Editing any image requires us to follow a certain process. Here, I will explain the steps that are needed when you're converting an unedited image into a final product:

1. A good portion of the editing process can be applied in Camera RAW, but if you're editing a non-RAW file, such as a .jpg, .tif, .png, or .psd file, I recommend the use of the Levels tool (Ctrl/Cmd + L, for Windows or Mac respectively) because it's used to improve the contrast and brightness first. Once the file is closer to being perfect, you will get a better idea of how the color and sharpness might appear.
2. The second step is to adjust the color, again using one of the many enhancing tools that are available, if you think the image requires it.
3. The final stage is to sharpen the image according to how it's going to be used. Images destined for social media are somewhat easier to sharpen because what you see on your computer monitor screen is similar to what you see once the file is uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, 500px, or Flickr. And besides, if it's uploaded and that media channel's preferences change the resolution or the compression, thereby producing a poorer version of what you edited, it's quick enough for you to re-edit the file and apply a different amount of sharpening to suit that particular host's display particularities. In print, this is a little more complex as the sharpening benefit can be lost somewhat through the printing process. Experience can help a great deal here, especially in a commercial printing environment, but if you are printing at home on an inkjet machine, make a test print and re-edit where needed.

Creative edit workflow

Once you have gained confidence in being able to control the color, brightness, clarity, and sharpness of your image output, it's time to consider something a little more creative.

Once the tones in the file are looking the way you want them to, it's also time to consider the onerous task of cleaning up the subject using one of Photoshop Elements' amazing retouching tools. This might be a simple operation of perfecting skin tones by covering up tiny blemishes, scratches, or color inconsistencies using the Spot Healing Brush or it might be something a little more ambitious where objects in the foreground or background need removing or at least covering up to prevent them from dominating the subject.

Before you get too involved in this kind of advanced retouching, it's important to ask yourself if, by removing a certain object, the composition will change noticeably. If this is the case, you may want to camouflage that object by simply dulling it down, rather than removing it entirely.

Sometimes, these questions are very hard to answer before you actually start the editing process, which can lead you into unnecessary complexities. This is why we're going to learn to develop a structured editing workflow—a plan might save you heaps of time and, more importantly, frustration.

Makeover example one

In this example, we are just going to use Elements' basic brightness and contrast tools to make this underexposed image appear more appealing.

Problem: There are dark, gloomy tones and poor color reproduction.

Solution: The best tools to fix this issue are Instant Fix in Organizer or Effects in Quick Edit mode.

Outcome: I want to make the highlighted flower image as light and as colorful as it was when I took the snap:

It's often a bit disappointing when you open an image for the first time in any application and discover that the snap you thought was pretty good looks dull and murky (there's an entire row of them in this screenshot).

Though this is frustrating, it's certainly normal. What we see on the camera's LCD screen is rarely what we see on a computer monitor, more's the pity. Why? This is partly because we are not necessarily paying a lot of attention to the screen when we're in the field, plus looking at an LCD in bright light is hard at the best of times, which is why reading the histogram is so much better. It might also be because the monitor is not calibrated (see the Screen calibration section in Chapter 2, Setting Up Photoshop Elements from Scratch, for information on how to calibrate your screen).

Note

A quick word about calibration. Although I have covered this topic in Chapter 2, Setting Up Photoshop Elements from Scratch, it's very important to state that not all computer screens are the same—in fact, there can be a huge brightness and color difference between one model of display and another. Many monitor models are designed for gaming, widescreen movies, or other confusing preset viewing modes, or they might just be very hard to calibrate. It's especially tricky with smaller devices, such as laptops and other mobile devices, or when you're trying to balance the output from a PC with the output from an Apple Mac. For most younger photographers, accurate color displays might not be such an issue because everything might be published online, but if you ever wish to move into publishing and the print medium, it's of massive importance.

Photoshop Elements provides numerous ways to fix a dull file like this in its Quick, Guided, and Expert modes. In the example of the grossly underexposed flower, I chose one of Elements' excellent range of presets from the drop-down menus on the right-hand side of the screen in Quick Edit. These are very easy to use and fast, and unless the original is disastrously under- or overexposed, they produce good results at the click of a button—two clicks if you want to save it.

Note

A preset is really like an editing recipe. It usually involves several changes to the image, such as brightness, color, contrast, and sharpness, all wrapped into one easy button click. Some presets can be modified while others are designed to be a like-it-or-leave-it option. There are usually plenty of others to try if the one you initially chose does not take your fancy.

We have all taken images like this flower shot—it's too dark for any practical use, but help is at hand using Elements's Quick Edit mode presets:

The makeover in this first example is simple: to make the file look how we remembered it in the field. In practice, these presets are sometimes a bit hit and miss, but as you can see, there are plenty from which to choose.

Makeover example two

In this example, we will move on to editing a RAW file that is very dark and displaying poor color. It will also require some very basic retouching to remove a series of sensor spots in the sky area.

Problem: As in the previous example, this RAW file is very drab, so much so that I pretty much ignored this shot for months. On closer inspection, I realized it has a great deal of creative potential. The reason I snapped this massive iceberg was, well, because it was massive and had an amazing inner blue color. The weather was cold and heavily overcast with a hint of color in the far distance, just above the horizon.

Solution: Use the Basic and Detail sliders on the right-hand side of the Camera RAW window to edit the picture back to perfection.

Outcome: I wanted to brighten the entire scene and really bring out the color in the ice, the tone in the sky, and the details in the iceberg. Essentially, I wanted to add some more drama to the following seascape:

Here's a good example of why I really don't like to rely on Camera RAW's Auto Correction tools.

Sometimes, these instant-fix type tools work well, but I find that a lot of the time, they never do quite enough—or they might do too much—which means that you have to find an alternative fix, and that wastes time. It's far better to use the tools that are going to get it right from the start—then, everyone should be happy.

Here's my version, edited using the workflow that was described in the previous section:

Adding brightness and contrast will always give the image a boost visually—it's going to stand out 100% better than not adjusting it at all (but only if it needs adjusting in the first place). In this example, I brightened the highlights and whites, then darkened the shadows, which usually gives an image a greater feeling of depth.

Because the tones are now cleaner (with less murkiness and more brightness), I can now appreciate any color enhancements that are made to the frame using Saturation, or perhaps the Vibrance slider.

Most would be happy with this result, but I went on to adjust the sharpness and reduce the noise, as shown in the following resulting screenshot:

This is a sharpened version (RHS). What usually happens in a file that's both underexposed (as this was) and shot using a relatively high ISO setting is that you see more noise. The more it's sharpened, the more the noise becomes noticeable.

This frame shows my choice of sharpening. The noise is still noticeable, but, with the Unsharp Mask, is restricted to the edges of contrast in the shot.

To activate the mask, hold the Alt/Opt key when moving the Masking slider—it displays the black-and-white mask on screen. Note that everything that turns black is protected (not sharpened). Everything that's white in the mask takes on the sharpening that you add via the sliders. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once the right setting is chosen, you can limit the negative side of too much sharpening by limiting the sharpening effect to just the bits that are important.

Unfortunately, once the image has been sharpened you might see more digital noise appear in the shot. It's an annoying part of digital photography, but Elements has the tools to remove or at least minimize the deleterious effects of this visible noise. Let's move on and take a look at how the Color and Luminance noise reduction filters work.

To temper the often very aggressive-looking sharpening action, I have added both Luminance and Color noise reduction to this example.

Like most things digital, how far you go with these sliders is controlled by what it looks like on screen, but also by what it might look like once it's output. Concern about publishing the image online is a no-brainer because once the image has been uploaded to a website, blog, or social media, it gives instant feedback. If you've done too much sharpening or noise reduction, you can simply redo the sliders and upload again.

Printing poses a slightly stickier problem in that the print process itself literally absorbs some of the harshness of the Unsharp Mask because it's ink being sprayed onto an absorbent surface: paper. Images that are destined for print therefore require a little more sharpening—almost to the point where it looks like too much on screen—in order to get a satisfactory result. I generally advise sharpening about 25% more than you might be comfortable with to compensate for this softening effect. To make matters even more complicated, different paper stocks produce quite different sharpness results because they absorb ink at different rates. Always test your prints when you can before committing to a commercial print job.

Often, it's a good idea to walk away from the computer to give your mind a rest before finalizing any edits. When I took a good look at this particular image file, I realized that I'd gone a little too hard on the colors:

The following image shows my final look in Camera RAW. I think the color is a little hot, so I can either reduce the intensity using the Saturation and Vibrance sliders here or do it once the retouching has been finished in Elements's Expert edit mode:

Interestingly, Camera RAW doesn't have any local retouching tools (it does in Photoshop CC). So, once the editing was completed in Camera RAW, I clicked the Open Image button on the bottom right-hand side of the Camera RAW window to bring the now-edited file into Elements's Expert mode.

What you can see in the previous screenshot, circled in red, are sensor spots, which are out-of-focus blobs that are created by dirt or, more likely, moisture on the filter that covers the sensor. They are a part of the digital process and are sometimes not noticeable until the image contrast has been edited (increased).

I could spend $60 and get my Canon to the nearest service center for a clean or I could use the Spot Healing Brush to get rid of these eyesores.

This click-and-move-on brush tool is awesome as it replaces the blemish with new pixels copied across from the adjacent image area. It's like magic—all you have to remember is to keep the brush size approximately the same or a little larger than the problem areas and bingo, one click and the problem is gone, as you can clearly see in this final edited example here:

The Spot Healing Brush is a legendary tool, one of the best features to arrive in photo editing software for years. It's ideal for removing specks of dust, dirt, and blobs, all with the click of the mouse. It's easy and very effective:

The Burn and Dodge brushes control local brightness. They allow the user to paint in darkness or lightness, respectively.

What's more, each of these tools can be set to operate in a specific tonal zone only, namely highlights, midtones, and shadows, making them the perfect tools for adding local contrast (burning the shadows a bit darker and making the highlights a bit lighter). I also used a very large-sized Burn brush in the sky to darken the already (slightly) dark sky a bit more in order to give it a more stormy look.

To make a final decision about the accuracy of what I have edited, I find it a great help to come back to the edited file after a few hours, or even overnight, to see if I still feel the same way about what I have changed.

In this example, I felt that the color had been increased too much, so I used the Hue/Saturation feature to reduce the intensity of the blue/cyan tones, and I am now happy with the result.

Makeover example three

Example three takes on the task of perfecting the color of an image, along with a slight brightness and contrast tweak.

Problem: Oftentimes, once an image's brightness has been improved, the contrast looks a bit flat, and so that too requires attention. But in this example, it's the color cast that's the most unflattering aspect of the image.

Solution: We shall use the White Balance tools to fix the inaccurate color, as well as the contrast-fixing capabilities of the Levels tool.

Outcome: Recreate the lighting and the color to give the image a more natural feel.

Skin Tone Fixing: The following is a press shot of Dr Angela Merkel, one of the world's most recognizable global leaders, sourced from Wikimedia. The color is wrong; it has a green-cyan color cast:

I'm not sure if this is the photographer's fault (perhaps the White Balance is set incorrectly), but this is unlikely if you have the credentials to be so close to someone so important. It's more likely a result of environmental color. Merkel looks as though she's standing in a room that's tinted in this color, so it's affecting everything else, including the skin tones. Note that incorrect color tends to be most visible in the mid-tones, so if the mid-tone grays are not 100% gray, you'll know there's a color-cast issue. Whatever the reason, it's not a very realistic color, and it needs to be fixed.

Possibly the hardest thing for beginners starting out in the confusing world of image editing is deciding what exactly it is that's wrong with any image, if anything.

I spent several years as a color printer in a commercial lab, so I find it relatively easy to identify color problems, while others don't. It's a complex process that requires experience. What's important to remember is that Photoshop Elements is an RGB application (displaying a mix of red, green, and blue). The opposite colors to red, green, and blue are cyan, magenta, and yellow, so if the image is a bit greenish-cyan, I'd need to add the opposite colors to correct it. In this case, adding a bit of magenta and red should do it.

One shortcoming of Photoshop Elements is that it doesn't have as many specific color-tuning tools as you'd find in Photoshop CC. That said, we can first try to fix the problem using the Auto Color Correction feature. As you can see in this screenshot, it didn't work—in fact, it made the image a lot worse:

Dr Merkel will not be amused!

On my second attempt, the aptly named Remove Color Cast tool did a good job of making my subject's color appear a lot more realistic. One click on something that is supposed to be white, mid-gray, or black in the image and the cast is gone—mostly.

This feature is essentially the same tool as the three White Balance eye-droppers we sometimes use in the Levels tool, but instead of white, gray, and black eye-droppers, there's only one. Your job is to identify one of those three tones in the image and click it. In this instance, I clicked on the chancellor's (white) tee-shirt and the color immediately looked significantly better. Because this process works by resetting the pixels to white, gray, or black (depending on which color is clicked), I also tried clicking in the shadows up her sleeve to see if it might produce a better result. Because the shadows are not 100% black, the color correction was not as effective as the tee-shirt sampling.

Having locked that result away as a win for this semiauto tool, the image now needs a tiny contrast adjustment (darker shadows) to make it perfect:

As I thought, on closer inspection, although the Remove Color Cast tool has done a good job of removing most of the greenish-blue tint, the image now lacks a bit of contrast. The whites in the image are not really very white, but more to the point, I can see that the black areas are not really true blacks either, making the image appear a bit flat, or lacking in contrast.

For contrast, Levels (as shown in the following screenshot) is certainly the go-to tool for fixing this (don't bother wasting your time trying Auto Contrast) as it is so easy and immediate. As you can see in this screenshot, in its Input Levels scale, I merely pushed the shadow slider a little to the right (outlined here in red) to darken the shadows, effectively boosting the contrast:

An alternative to Levels is the simpler-to-use Brightness and Contrast tool (you can find it by going to Enhance | Adjust Lighting | Brightness and Contrast) but while being quite effective, it's just a slider, and does not give you the added advantage of being able to read the histogram, as you are using Levels:

Having got the color close to realistic, I can now examine the rest of the shot for possible problems. The only thing I can do now is remove that background line that seems to cut right through the figure.

To remove this line, I can do either of the following:

• Paint it out using a similar color that will be selected from the wall.
• Use a retouching brush to select, copy, paste, and blend pixels from the immediate vicinity of the line.

The drawback of using the Brush Tool is that you'll have to select the exact color to cover up the line, much as you would if you were in the same room armed with a tin of paint and a brush. This technique will work perfectly in this example because the tones in the wall are all the same. Let's get started:

1. Choose the brush from the Tool Bar (press the B key or locate it in the Draw section of the Tool Bar). Make sure it's the Brush Tool, not the Impressionist brush or the Color Replacement brush.
2. Hold the Alt/Opt key and click in the picture to select a matching color, and then paint over the line to cover it up. To get a smooth result, use a soft-edged brush that is set to a lower opacity (such as 45%). You'll have to use more brush strokes, but as it's effectively watered-down paint, your brush marks will be invisible. As you get near the hard edge of the red jacket, change the brush tip from soft to hard to avoid bleeding color into the figure, as you can see in the preceding screenshot.

Probably the best option is to use the Spot Healing Brush (that's the band-aid symbol on the Enhance section of the Tool Bar):

Note that there are two versions of this: the Spot Healing Brush and the Healing Brush. I used the former, with its options set for Proximity Match. Funnily enough, the tool works best with a hard-edged brush. Even when I dragged the cursor over the edge of the red jacket, it painted the wall the right color and ignored the red. It's a brilliant bit of intelligent software.

Elements's Healing Brush Tool is also a great retouching/blending tool; its main difference from the Spot Healing Brush is that you have to specifically elect where it copies from by holding the Alt/Opt key and clicking in the source area first. The Spot Healing Brush simply copies from the pixels immediately around the brush edges.

Makeover example four

In this example, we are going to see how easy it is to smooth over a person's skin tones, basically making them look 100% better using nothing more than a feature new to Elements 2020 called Smooth Skin.

Here's how easy it is to get a great look in only a few seconds:

1. Open the image.
2. Find the Smooth Skin feature under the Expert Edit | Enhance menu.
3. Add the desired amount of smoothness to the portrait.
4. Use the Before and After slider to judge how much smoothness to apply to the picture, then click OK and your portrait is done (see the following screenshots for image comparisons).

Because this tool employs Adobe's artificial intelligence algorithms, something that's way above my pay grade, I can only sit and watch this amazing feature produce impressive results. Exactly how it works remains a mystery to me, although it's clear that the feature first analyzes the picture to check whether there's a face it can isolate. Angled portraits and side views don't work—your subject or subjects must be more or less facing the lens, as they are in this family group:

In the preceding comparison, you can clearly see that the before and after examples (the top and bottom screenshots respectively) present a big difference—the setting was pushed to maximum softness in all three faces. Smooth Skin can also be used to reduce the grittiness of excess noise.

This is a good new feature, enabling you to add softness to more than one face in each snap. Click the circle to make it active, set the softness value, and move on to the next face. It's a good new feature in my opinion, but it lacks a few features:

• The preview window's size is not adjustable.
• The softening effect is only visible in the preview window, so it's hard to be precise.
• You have no control over the exact bits of the portrait that are softened.

As you can see in this female head shot here, the softening effect (on the right) is an effective look that's easily created with the least amount of effort:

Interestingly, this technology is also incorporated into the Perfect Portrait feature located in the Guided Edits | Special Edits section. This feature has gone from strength to strength with the Skin Softening look, but also Contrast Increase, Remove Blemishes, Whiten Teeth, Brighten Eyes, Darken Eyebrows, Adding a Glow, and Slimming Down, if there's a body in the shot:

In the example of the young lad on this page, I used most of the tools on offer in the Guided Edit window, including Remove Blemishes (that's the Healing Brush tool), mostly to remove some of the scarring on his forearms to produce this cleaned-up version that you see here:

Makeover example five

In this exercise, we are going to attempt to create perfect-looking skin tones by retouching a portrait using the Spot Healing Brush.

Problem: The client has poor skin (acne) and needs good publicity head shots for their new job.

Solution: Use the Spot Healing Brush tool and the Healing Brush tools to remove all signs of skin imperfections.

Outcome: Produce a professionally retouched portrait.

Photoshop Elements has two Healing Brushes. The Spot Healing Brush effectively copies pixels from just outside of the brush shape (called the Source area) and pastes them into the brush area (the Target area) while blending and matching the tone of the outside pixels with those on the inside. It's simple, easy to use, fast, and very effective.

For the best results, try to keep the brush about the same size, or a little larger, than the affected area. Too big and it will copy unwanted detail into the target area, as well as good pixels:

The Healing Brush, on the other hand, has very similar actions to the Spot Healing Brush, but you have to select the source area first. You can do this by holding the Alt/Opt key down, clicking in the source area (where the good pixels are), then moving the cursor over the damaged area (in this example, the acne damage), and clicking again to paste and blend the Source pixels over the Target pixels.

Because it's essentially a blending tool, it matches the tones in the target area, even if the source area is much darker. But it also copies texture, so if you select hair, for example, and then paste the pixels over a smooth skin tone area, although the tones are matched, the hair texture remains. Avoid doing this for obvious reasons!

Although quite obvious, these are the target areas of concern. When retouching, it's important to remember not to remove marks and skin areas that the subject was born with, such as moles, freckles, and birthmarks.

If you do remove these things, you'll be changing the character of the person beyond recognition. Even if a person's face is wrinkled, it's usually best to soften the wrinkles but never remove them entirely because, in doing so, you remove evidence of their fallibility and life experience. In this case, less is definitely more.

In the following screenshot, I have highlighted the Spot Healing Brush mode in the Options panel. From here, you can set the tool options, choosing from Proximity Match, Create Texture, and Content Aware:

Proximity Match analyzes the pixels around the area being retouched, identifies the best pixels to be sampled, and uses those to cover up the pixels in the damaged area. This is software black magic, but it works. Use a small brush where possible.

The Create Texture mode generates a texture by creating new pixels with which to cover the blemishes. In this example, it doesn't work because the retouched pixels are too smooth and look retouched.

Content Aware is an intelligent mode where Elements tries to reproduce the shadows, lines, and shapes that have been sampled from around the brush shape. This sounds more like software black magic, but in reality, it functions more or less perfectly. Whoever came up with the algorithm for this feature is a genius as it has revolutionized the effectiveness of this program's retouching tools.

As you can see in the following screenshot, the black blob is actually the Healing Brush being moved across the blemish area. It remains dark like this until the mouse is released, and then the magic happens. You should use the click, drag, and release technique on all irregularly shaped areas that need a retouch:

The larger the area that's dragged over, the longer the software and computer takes to calculate the sampling and pixel retouching:

Release the mouse and the Spot Healing Brush does its thing. This is the easiest of all of Elements's retouching tools to master, and once you've done it, you'll be happily retouching everything!

Larger objects are much harder to remove from images than small ones with this tool. For the big stuff, you'd need to use the Clone Stamp Tool, or even make a large selection, and then copy, paste, and blend it into position (this is difficult).

Another click-and-drag action produces a dark area, which identifies the area covered in this one action so far. Release the mouse button and the skin damage is mostly gone:

Operating tips

If you try to repair an area that's too close to something totally different in nature (such as jewellery against skin tones), you'll find that Elements might blend the hard-edged metal with the skin tones. If this happens, either use the Healing Brush and direct the Source area well away from the problem pixels or use the Clone Stamp Tool.

Retouching is almost impossible with the image sized to just fit the main edit window. Get into the habit of enlarging the screen image to 100% or higher so that you can see what you are doing. Use the handy keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl/Cmd + + or - to zoom in and out.

Here's the final version. I healed all of the major blemish areas, then went back over the entire image magnified to 400% (hold down Ctrl/Cmd and press + to enlarge the image. Use Ctrl/Cmd + - to reduce the image size and Ctrl/Cmd + 0 to fit the image in the window) to retouch some of the color inconsistencies that were created by the skin condition and the mixed lighting sources:

By going in close and repairing all of the really small blemishes (and we all have them), you create a far smoother overall effect:

Tip

Another way to fix up color inconsistencies is by going to Enhance | Adjust Color | Adjust Color for Skin Tones. Use it to warm up or cool down the color, then apply a degree of tan or blush to the image.

Makeover example six

This example is more of a re-creation than a retouching exercise, taking three different images and blending them together using the Spot Healing Brush, the Eraser Tool, and the power of Layers.

Problem: Combining different images can be problematic.

Solution: Exploit Layers (including Layer Blend Modes, Layer Opacity, and Simplifying Layers) to combine the images and text, and use the Eraser Tool and various brush settings to help to blend the images' pixels together convincingly.

Outcome: Blend three images and some text together to make it look like a professional promotional TV poster.

In this example, I wanted to combine several images to make up a digital illustration, something that only works if you combine the right elements together:

We'll look at adding two images together, then manipulating how they interact by simply erasing bits from the upper image in the layer stack (in this case, it's a free stock illustration of a vampire). You'll learn how to work with Layers, Layer Blend Modes, and Layer Opacity, and how to use the Type Tool. On top of that, you'll be using the now-familiar Levels and Hue/Saturation features to make the two layers appear the same color and Contrast so that they look like one image, not two different pictures sourced from entirely different places.

Open the images—in this example, I have three: a medium resolution illustration of a vampire; a picture of a cathedral crypt in the UK; and a textured plaster wall saved to my ongoing textures library. You can see all three images by clicking (to open) the Photo Bin (arrowed). It really pays to also have the Layers panel open at all times so that you can monitor which layer it is that you are currently working on:

Open images are always tabbed at the top of the screen (as indicated by the arrow in the following screenshot). The lighter-colored tab indicates that that image is the one currently at the front, and is therefore obscuring the other two open images. You can bring a different image to the main window by either clicking another tab or by clicking its thumbnail in the Photo Bin.

To add one picture into another, select it first, copy that selection, then find the host image and paste it into that file. It's a simple process; however, if you have never done this before, there's a faster way. With the picture that's to receive your pasted image open in the main screen (that is, the crypt image), use the handy Move Tool (press the V key or click the tool icon in the Tool Bar, which is in the top left-hand corner in the Select part of the Tool Bar) and click, hold, and drag the thumbnail from the Photo Bin into the main window (marked with an arrow in the following screenshot):

If the resolution of both images is the same, then the one being pushed into the base picture might cover it entirely. Use the Move tool to click and drag it slightly to the left-hand side of the main screen. Note that the image has little squares called handles in the corners and midway along each edge. Click and drag one of these corner handles to resize the transferred image so that it's larger or smaller. Clicking the midpoint handles doesn't work as it will only distort the proportions.

When you push one image over a second like this, Elements creates a Smart Layer. If you want to apply any kind of color or tone change to that layer, the Smart Layer has to be simplified first. You will be obliged to do this by Elements as soon as you try to make a tone change anyway, or you can simply right-click the layer panel and choose Simplify Layer. It's easy:

To check whether this automated copy-and-paste operation has worked, look at the Layers Panel (highlighted in yellow in the top right). You should see two layers. The top layer is the image just copied into the base layer—it's highlighted in blue. This indicates that it's currently the active layer. If I were to open and use Levels, for example, then any tone change made would only affect that layer. As soon as you click, hold, and drag one of those corner handles (outlined in red in the main window) to stretch the active layer smaller or larger, the Accept/Reject symbols appear. If you like the new size, click the green symbol to accept the change. If it's not right, click Cancel or click, hold, and stretch the handles again. In the Layers Panel, you'll see the image thumbnail change shape as you resize it in the main window. I wanted the figure to be mostly on the left-hand side of the composition so that we could still see the vaulted ceiling and the window at the back of the base image. Lucky for me, the vampire illustration already had most of its background removed.

Brushes play an important part in any retouching process, however simple or complex. Photoshop Elements ships with around 300 different brushes—these range from hard-edged brushes to brushes with fuzzy edges, square edges, ragged edges, and many more. You can also go online and download hundreds of special-effects brushes from Adobe or third-party websites and use these for special projects (see Chapter 8, Advanced Drawing and Painting Techniques, for more information on using custom brushes). These brushes work with all of the retouching, painting, drawing, erasing, and graphics tools. Besides having a mind-boggling range of brush types to choose from, Elements also allows you to change the brush Opacity and Size. With any brush-based tool engaged, right-clicking in the main window will open the brush menu):

Tip

To choose a different brush tip, right-click anywhere on the image or head over to the tool's Options panel. This opens the screen we can see in the preceding screenshot. Grab a corner to stretch it to its full size. Note that there are different brush menus: Default brushes, Assorted brushes, Calligraphic brushes, Square brushes, and many more. Most Elements users never get past the Default brushes.

Choose the Eraser brush, then select a soft-edged brush tip (indicated by the long red arrow in the following screenshot) from the pop-out brush palette, move it over the image layer you want to work on (short red arrow), and click. It removes all of the pixels in that vicinity. If the opacity of the tool is reduced, say, to 50%, you'll have to click twice to remove all the pixels. Operating at a reduced opacity is one of the better ways to edit images because your actions become less obvious. Brush size can assist or hinder retouching. If it's a large, soft-edged brush, its erasing action will extend far beyond the apparent edge of your brush. Start erasing well away from important parts of the image first—in this case, the figure. I gradually removed the dark pixels of the shadow on the base of the vampire layer:

Tip

To make it easier to see what you are erasing, I suggest turning the bottom layer (the base layer) off.

Do this by clicking the tiny eye icon located to the left of the layer thumbnail. When it's off, the eye has a red line through it, and if you can't see the eye, you can't see the layer either. Clicking it a second time removes the red line and the layer becomes visible again. The checkerboard effect that's shown in the background indicates layer transparency; it's still part of the layer, but there are no pixels in it.

Here, you can see that I have now turned the background layer back on by clicking the eye icon a second time. I also clicked the bottom layer in the panel, thereby making it the active layer (highlighted in blue). I think that the background layer is a bit too warm (yellow/red). Due to this, I thought the saturation needed to be reduced considerably so that it was closer to black-and-white than a realistic color. To achieve this, I simply used the Hue/Saturation tool (Ctrl/Cmd + U, or go to Enhance | Adjust Color | Hue/Saturation) and pulled the Saturation slider way over to the left-hand side, effectively reducing the color intensity by around 75%. The background now looks like it's closer in tone to the top layer, but it's still too light:

To make the background image appear closer in tone to the vampire image, I darkened it using the Levels tool, pushing the mid-tone slider to the right (pictured) to make all of the tones in the frame a little darker. Sometimes this simple action makes all the difference to the illusion that this is a single shot rather than an assemblage of different images cobbled together.

Now, the background and foreground elements are beginning to look like they were shot in similar light, which we know they weren't:

Tip

If you like the idea of creating your own multi-image art, special effects, and complex projects, it really pays to start your own collection of textures, skies, clouds, fonts, brushes, masks, and more. All of these can be used to refine the illusion that what you are looking at is not a collection of mismatched stuff downloaded off of the internet, but rather a complete image with synchronous and continuous tone.

I deliberately didn't erase all of the pixels from the vampire layer's shadow because I wanted to see how it merged with the background tones first—in fact, it's so dark that you can't see it at all. Problem solved!

I think the vampire layer, which is clearly an illustration, has more contrast than the background, so, by clicking from background layer to the vampire figure layer, I used Levels a second time to lower the highlight brightness. That's what the lower Output Levels scale is used for (shown with an arrow in the following screenshot).

Shifting that right-hand slider to the left lowers the highlight density. The left-hand slider, when moved to the right, lowers the density of the black tones. Note that some care must be taken with these Output sliders. If pushed too far, the image loses all of its contrast and can appear flat and uninteresting. But used sparingly, it's a tremendous way to bring contrast back to acceptable levels.

Tip

Erasing, painting, drawing and retouching can be quite tricky because it's not easy to draw with a mouse—it's a bit like painting with a bar of soap—but if you practice, it will become easier. One option is to try drawing with a graphics tablet, a device that emulates your mouse actions, but with a cordless pen, which makes the process feel a lot more natural and easier to control. Most tablets can also be programmed to use keyboard shortcuts and perform other functions, making them a very handy accessory if you spend a lot of time and effort using the brush-based tools in this program.

Now that the background has been desaturated and the vampire layer has had the contrast lowered, the illusion is taking shape. Let's add text. Elements has a feature called the Horizontal Type tool, which is used to add text to any image. Press the T key to access this tool or mouse over the Tool Bar and click the T symbol.

It's not the easiest of tools to use. Click once anywhere in the image and you'll see a blinking text insertion point, like any normal word processing program. Clicking once adds the text insertion point, while typing immediately after puts the text into the document to the right of that point; however, if you click, hold, and drag the cursor across the image first, a text box is drawn (highlighted in red in the following screenshot). If you let go and start typing, the text entered will be restrained by the box edges. Click-and-drag one of the text box corner handles to make the box smaller/larger:

Tip

You will also note that, as soon as you type in the document, a special Text Layer appears in the Layer panel. By default, it picks up the Foreground color, black, but if you need a different colored text, a different point size, leading, or style, then all of this can be changed from the Type Options panel.

Text, by default, starts as black - or whatever was previously set in the Foreground Color Picker (the upper square of color at the bottom of the Tool Bar). If that color is not what you require, select the text first (double- or treble-click inside the text to do this), click the color palette, and choose a more appropriate color:

Tip

Note that, if your picture is sized to 72 dpi (as many files are when they come straight out of the camera), then when you click on the image, the text insertion point might be very small and hard to see. Open the Image Size feature and, without resampling the entire file, change the resolution to 300 dpi, click OK, and save before trying the text again. At 300 dpi the text should appear at a more reasonable size. Note that there's little to be gained by setting the resolution higher than this (to make the text larger) because 300 dpi is the default print resolution.

When text is selected, its color—in this example, red—inverts, which is why it looks a bit weird in the previous screenshot. Note that everything you can do with text in a regular word processor can be done in Elements. It's a little fiddly to get right at first, but you can use features such as left/right/center justification, leading, and point size to add to the design of any individual text layer:

I ended up choosing a gothic typeface called Deutsch Gothic to match the mood of this 1922 silent movie classic. It seems to fit the mood of the illustration nicely.

Tip

Sometimes, text becomes unreadable when laid across an image. Changing the font color is one quick way to make it more legible. Another technique is to add a drop shadow. It's easy to do this in Elements. Select the text layer, click the Styles panel, and choose the Drop Shadow option from the drop-down menu. Select a drop shadow style and click once to add the effect to that layer. To modify those shadow characteristics, choose the layer; note that it now has an FX icon added to it. Click this to open the Effects panel and make your adjustments from there (that is, adjust the height of the shadow, its density and size, and so on).

Note

If you don't have this font or anything that closely resembles the style that you might want to emulate in any project, one suggestion is to use a free font, downloaded off of the internet. I use a site called www.dafont.com to source special fonts when I want to make a bit more of a statement than just using Helvetica or Times New Roman. The fonts on this site seem to be very reliable—most are put there by designers who have used them in commercial projects and no longer care if they are in the public domain. Most of the fonts on this site are available for personal use. Some can also be used commercially. Check the small print carefully before you use someone else's font without their permission. Fonts, on macOS or Windows, are stored in the communal Font folder, so once your new font has been downloaded, it can be copied and pasted into that folder. Restart Elements and it should magically appear in the Font drop-down menu in Elements and every other application that uses text.

I'm sure you are now wondering why I had that texture layer at the beginning of this section. I occasionally add a texture layer to image projects if I want to create the feeling of age, deterioration, or grunge (one reason why I shoot interesting textures while I am out and about with a camera—I can use them for projects later on):

In this example, I dragged that texture image from the Photo Bin into the Document; you can see it sitting in-between the top layer and the background layer (highlighted in red in the previous screenshot). If it lands as the top layer, because it's opaque, it will cover the entire image. So, to move that layer, click, hold, and drag it from the top to the center of the layer stack; let go when you see the lower layer highlighted in blue. Treat it like shuffling a deck of cards; it takes a little trial and error to get it in the right position because, if you release that layer too soon, it flips back to where it came from. Drag it until you see the line separating the two lower layers lighting up with a blue line (between the two layers), and then let go:

With your texture layer in place in the Layer panel, change the layer's Blend Mode from Normal (the default setting) to Soft Light or Hard Light and note that the texture now becomes see through, blending with the bottom layer only. The vampire layer remains untouched, but the cathedral crypt now looks 200 years older. If the aging effect is too abrupt, adjust it by reducing the texture layer's Opacity. If it is not strong enough, duplicate the layer (by going to Layer | Duplicate Layer). You can read about Layers and Blend Modes in greater detail in Chapter 6, Advanced Techniques: Layers and Masking.

Important note

What's a Blend Mode? Blend modes can befound in both the Tool options and the Layer palette. Elements has 25 different modes in this drop-down menu, most of which might not seem to do anything to the image at all. They are there to change how the blend-mode layer interacts with the layer underneath it, which is why there's never a Blend Mode accessible on the bottom layer. (See Chapter 6, Advanced Editing Techniques, for more information on using blend modes).

Summary

In this chapter, we moved through a series of makeover exercises designed to demonstrate the power of Photoshop Elements. Starting with a simple brightness problem, we then stepped it up to include fixing underexposure in a RAW file and simple spot retouching in a sky scene, to full-blown color correction and contrast enhancement and detailed skin repair, before finishing up with an assemblage of images brought together to make a digital illustration.

It was a bit of a rollercoaster of experiences, so don't feel bad if the more advanced makeovers felt too hard at this stage; you have learned that you can fix everything from basic brightness and contrast issues to removing stuff that is inappropriate for the shot. You are now well on your way to becoming an accomplished image retoucher and photo editor!

In the next chapter, you'll learn how to work with some of Elements's excellent project-based tools. Essentially, these comprise a number of fairly complex actions that have been semi-automated to both make the learning curve less steep for the user and to make the results appear more professional. You'll love how they are both easy to use, yet allow you to produce awesome results with very little prior experience.