Hey guys,
After checking out this awesome website from
Tara Whitney, I thought that I would play with one of my fun portrait shots. This is of my cousin when we went on our North QLD Holday in Sep/Oct of 2006. So what do you think? I love the post photoshop pic!
Process
What I did to change the photo is shown in the list below:
- Open up the Original jpg in Photoshop
- Duplicate the 'Background' layer and apply some Levels to the duplicated layer to enhance the shaddows/highlights
- Duplicate the 'Levels' layer twice
- On the lower duplication layer, apply a lense blur
- Mask the top layer, and paint away the area which I wanted to be blurry. Masking is good - because you can undo really easy
- Once that was complete, I then smudged the 'halo' on the blurry layer. It appeared as a halo around Ryan because he was blurred, and on another layer he was in focus, leaving this 'ghostly halo' around him.
- I then duplicated the original 'Levels' layer and moved it to the very top, applied an 'Overlay' blending mask, and set the opacity to 50% A little too much maybe, but I like it...
It's amazing what a little work in Photoshop can do to an image! I am definatly going to do some more Photoshop work on portraits. It brings out some pretty damn sweet results!
Enjoy
- leighton