Save My Shot Saturday - October 17, 2009(My sincere apologies for getting this up late! I took a fall and injured myself, and was delayed in getting this online.)
My friend Joan sent me this photo of this adorable little man. The onboard flash on the camera made this shot way too light! Joan would like to end up with a nice photo of this little redhead, so here we go... Whenever possible, I will provide EXIF data as additional information. Camera settings for this photo: Canon 30D The first step was to make a duplicate layer (CTRL-J) and set the blending mode to “Multiply”. I then duplicated this layer 2 more times – giving me 3 layers in “Multiply” mode. The 3 layers in multiply mode made the exposure on his face better, but now the background is too dark, and his eyes are too dark. I put a mask on the third multiply layer, filled it with black, effectively masking out the darkness of that multiply layer. Using a soft brush, I “painted” on the mask with white (to reveal the darker “exposure” of his face), painting over him completely to reveal the darker image, but leaving the background slightly lighter. (I originally tried leaving the background dark, but it was just too dark for my taste, and I decided to take it back one layer.) I then switched my color swatch to black (x) and “painted" his eyes back to a lighter color. Since they were still not light enough, I put a mask on the second “multiply” layer, and painted the eyes lighter again. I added a new layer (by clicking on the “Create New Layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette) and renamed it “clone layer”. I used the Clone Stamp Tool and with a soft brush at very low opacity I began to clone the areas on the forehead and cheeks where it was completely “blown out”. I cloned very lightly just to barely give some color to the areas, but still leave some contouring on the face. I added another new layer and renamed it “eye enhance”. I set the blending mode on this layer to “Soft Light” and slightly enhanced the eyes using a small soft brush set to white at opacity of about 5%. I lightly painted the enhancement opposite the catchlight in the eye. At this point I decided that his skin was too red. I added a Selective Adjustment Layer (by clicking on the “Create a new fill or adjustment layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette). In the selective color layer, I put a value of -60 in for the Magenta, and a value of -20 in for the Yellow. The image now looks WAY too yellow! I fill the mask on this adjustment layer with black to hide the changes I just made, then I use a soft brush set to white, at low opacity (about 15%), and I begin to “paint” very lightly on the red areas of the face to tone down the red. I do this until I am happy with the results I see on my monitor. (If it still looks too red to you on your monitor, remember that all monitors are not calibrated the same.) I clicked on the top layer to highlight it and make it active. Then, using SHIFT->CTRL->ALT->E, I combined all the layers into one image at the top of the stack. I sharpened the image slightly using Sharpen->Unsharp Mask, then saved the image with the layers (in case I want to come back and make any changes), then I used “Save As” to save the image as a jpeg. After completing this image, I still thought it was somewhat reddish. However, the young man in the photo is a redhead, and his skin definitely has a red tone to it, so I decided to leave it as it is.
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