How are they doing this in photoshop!?! I want to know!?

Question

The Eyes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2529833610/in/set-72157604538863324/

The Eyes and Overall Lighting

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2740893162/

What Kind of filter is this?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2653803485/

How do they get it to look this good? I know it's not what it looked like originally!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2653802147/

Again, how do you achieve this overall look in photshop?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2654624650/

The Eyes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2438000650/

Are they on a ladder to take this, how is it such great quality?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/2654627670/

Basically, I have photoshop, I have the camera, I have a good eye, how are they doing these photos? The filters, angles, lighting, actions, etc! Please help! 10 points to best answer and a million thank yous for your time!

P.S. How do they get the nice high end portrait skin glow that are achieved in these portraits, I'm pretty good with photoshop so please go into detail or find tutorials on what you're talking about or which filters you use if you could! Thanks again!

Answer 1

In most of these images, the trick is the lens. Take a look at the additional information on the right hand side:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcjag76/243...

This has the meta data, it's very useful. It tells you exactly the aperture, shutter speed and film speed used to take the photo, as well as if a flash was fired or not.

The key to most of these photos with the nice blurred background is shallow Depth of Field. You need a lens like a 50mm or 85mm that has an aperture of 1.4 or 1.8. F/2, F/2.8 is ok, but you won't as nice as effect.  You then get in as close as possible while still in focus, that will make the background blur nicely.

The other option is to use a large telephoto like a 70-200mm at f/2.8 and get in as close as telephoto will allow.

In both cases, use focus manually, not auto focus as you will be able to get in closer with manual focus than with auto focus.

For the nice 'catch-light' in the eyes, very simple as well. Natural light, ,  reflector or a softbox.

For natural light, by positioning yourself between a window and the subject, the subject with have the bright light from the window in their eyes.

A reflector (something like this http://cgi.ebay.ca/30in-Silver-Gold-Refl...

is used to reflect light onto you subject.

A softbox is essentially a flash with a diffusing material on the front to greatly diffuse the light.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

well, theres too many for me to be specific, but for the most part i noticed that they used the blur tool for the background and sharpened up the subject. in addition, they increased the saturation on the subject and decreased it on the background...

im sure that they have many tutorials for getting pictures like those at http://www.createblog.com, so check it out!

Answer 3

It's the camera...there are cameras that give you really good quality pictures...

In photoshop I don't think that they are using filters in these pictures...

They use blurs, layers, and layer modes as well as levels, sharpeners, and hue/sat layers...I think some even have curves/selective coloring...

For example the eyes...Use the hue saturation layer to get the color, use the sharpening tool to get the good quality...

But if what you said is true [that you have a good camera and are good with photoshop] then you should'nt be having too much editing to do to your pictures...

Good Luck <3

Answer 4

yeah that's a good question, idk i think they have major skills, there's also a good website called picnik.com =] its good and u can use the effects

Answer 5

Ok i think on most of these where the object is incredibly bright. In photoshop they are using the Dodge (lighten area) and Burn (darken area) to make the object look more appealing and stand out more. With photoshop 7 i am almost positive these tools are available they are on the tool bar. I have photoshop 6 and it has these tools. Also they probably are using a slow shutter speed to make the photo brighter and more detailed. Try these things and with the right combination you can probably replicate these photos.

Good Luck!

Answer 6

I see a lot of high key lighting and not too much beyond basic Photoshop.

The eyes might be bumped up in saturation a bit using a separate layer, but it might just be some judiciously applied image sharpening.

ALL of these shots show some sharpening.  Whether it's simply done using unsharp mask or some other technique, I can't say.  I've been enjoying using the High Pass filter as an overlay on a duplicate layer lately.  It looks less obtrusive that USM.  Sometimes, I end up using BOTH, but at moderate levels for each one.

The one shot shows some vignette applied and this is available as a camera adjustment or camera correction in PS or PSE.  It also might have about 20-40% sepia filter applied.

Answer 7

Most of this is done when taking the photograph. Blurring the background is just a large lens opening and close focussing.

Photoshop is a fabulous program and I use it a lot. However it should only be used to enhance things in your photograph. The most work should go into taking the photograph 'right' in the first place.

There are some very good books by Martin Evening on how to use Photoshop. (He's an English fashion photographer). See if you can find a copy of his book:

'Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers'. The book has a CD with Quicktime movies to illustrated the exercises.

Have a look at his website. You'll learn HEAPS. (I did and I've been using Photoshop since version 4).

Nick

Answer 8

Try using some tutorials, because everyone uses different methods and combinations of methods to achieve whatever you see. Just play around using tutorials until you're comfortable enough to explore on your own. I'm still not at that stage lol I gave up on Photoshop a long time ago.

If you want to look for tutorials, deviantART (www.deviantart.com) is the best place to look. Just type in their search engine "photoshop tutorials eyes". That's for the eye stuff but you can replace that word with "lighting", anything.

Here's an example

http://h-d-stock.deviantart.com/art/H-D-...