I currently am loving pictures with dreamy soft lighting. I actually found this tutorial, which gave me a lot of inspiration and confidence in playing around with lighting, gradient layers, and lens flares.
Today I am going to share the steps I took in editing a photo of a best friend, who let me practice my photography and Photoshop skills on her. (She is such a sport!)
Here is the photo, unedited:
Even unedited, I love this picture. It was a fairly sunny day, so the photo is naturally bright.
Step 1
If I am dealing with a picture of a person, where they are the main focal point, I always start with the "Perfect Portrait" tool in PSE 9. I love this tool. On the right hand side where the current tab is "Edit", click the "Guided" tab. This is the cheat sheet of PSE 9. Scroll down, almost to the bottom, to "Perfect Portrait."
There are so many different things you can do in this tool to perfect your portrait, but I'm just going to touch on the ones I used in editing this picture. I am not going to upload a picture to represent each change I make within this step, so hopefully I can explain it well enough without them.
Okay. So scrolling down under the "Perfect Portrait" tab, the first thing I am going to do is use the spot healing tool (underneath "Enhance facial features.") Zoom in to where you can see the face closely and any blemishes you will want to remove. Once you click on the spot healing tool (looks like a band aid) make the brush as large as you'd like and simply cover the blemish. One swipe, or click, and the blemish disappears!
In the picture above, I remove the blemishes from her face and I also use this tool to remove the fly-away curl she has on the left side of her head.
Next I use the brighten eyes tool. It should be set to a white color. I swipe the brush over her eyes once, and then under each eye once to eliminate any dark circles. (Any more than once and they can start to look scary.) Also, if there are any dark shadows you want to eliminate- this tool can help.
Now I use the burn tool to darken her eyelashes and eyebrows, to make them pop. It will automatically be set on a color, but you can always change this. I've found the dropper tool very helpful for this as well. I will use the dropper in this case to take the natural color of her eyebrows to use for my burn tool brush. (To change the color, click the foreground color square on the left hand side of the screen.)
I also use this tool to add a little color to her cheeks. I change the color of the brush to a soft natural pink and I also change the size of the brush to around 200. Then, I just add a couple clicks on each cheek. That's all it takes!
And then we are done with that step. (There are so many other cool things you can do with the "Perfect Portrait" tool, so mess around with it!)
Here is the picture is after the above edits. Pretty subtle- but it will definitely help keep her features standing out through the next edits.
Step 2
Next, go back to the "Full" tab on the right hand side. From there make a new adjustment layer (by clicking on the half dark half white circle towards the bottom of the "Layers" tab.) Choose "Brightness/Contrast". Mess around with the two to find what you like, but for this particular picture I did brightness of 27 and contrast of 60. I love to make that grass vibrant!
Can I just say that I adore this picture even after this step? Ah, so bright and fun! But, I am doing this tutorial to show a method of adding soft light, so we are going to keep going in the editing process!
Step 3
To add a glowing lightness to the picture, we are going to make a gradient adjustment layer. Go to the same half dark half white circle and click gradient. Click on the gradient to edit it, and make sure it is set to "foreground to background." Change the bottom left color node to white, if it isn't white already. Click okay when you are done editing the gradient, and then move the dial to change the location of the white gradient. For this picture, I have it placed at -151.7. Change the scale from 100 to 150%. Click okay. Next, change the opacity to around 50. (If you want, play around with different blending modes of the gradient layer other than normal.)
After this step you can adjust the brightness and contract again if desired. Then, the picture is complete!
I love how it has a "hazy summer day" feel.
I hope this helped any of you PSE 9 users out there! I am by no means an expert, but I am slowly learning what techniques I like- and I plan to keep sharing them! Thank you!
