The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 33 docx

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301Chapter 10Special Effects for Photographers
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Five:
Press Command-L (PC: Ctrl-L) to
bring up the Levels dialog, and drag the
shadows Input Levels slider (the triangle
under the far-left side of the histogram
graph) to the right a bit (as shown here)
to darken in the shadow areas, so there’s
a big difference between the bright areas
and the dark areas.
Step Six:
Now you’re going to darken the edges
of the photo on all sides, to give it that
burned-in edge look. Go under the
Filter menu and choose Lens Correction.
When the dialog comes up, click on
the Custom tab in the top right, then
go down to the Vignette section, and
drag the Amount slider almost all the
way over to the left to darken the edges
quite a bit (as I did here, where I dragged
it over to –92). Now drag the Midpoint
slider (which determines how far in
toward the center of your image the
darkening extends) to the left to +31 (as
seen here), so it almost looks like there’s a
soft spotlight right on the bride. Click OK
when you’re done.
Continued

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Step Seven:
The final step is to add a bit of overall
softening (you don’t want the photo to
be super-crisp), so press Command-J
(PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate the layer (it’s
called Layer 0 now because when you
use the Lens Correction filter, it has to
convert your locked Background layer
into a regular layer), then go under the
Filter menu, under Blur, and choose
Gaussian Blur. When the filter dialog
appears onscreen, enter 25 pixels for
your blur, then click OK. Lastly, go
back to the Layers panel and lower the
Opacity for this layer to 20% (as shown
here) to finish off the effect. A before/
after is shown below.
Before
After
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The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
303Chapter 10Special Effects for Photographers
Continued
I used to have an entire segment in my live Photoshop seminars where I’d show you

the seven things you needed to do with your camera to shoot a pano that Photoshop
would merge seamlessly together. Then Adobe improved the Photo merge feature so
vastly that you only needed to do one simple thing (more on that in a moment), and
they added a few extra features that make it produce the best results yet. In fact, it’s
so easy, there’s no reason not to be shooting panos every chance you get. Here’s how:
Panoramas
Made Crazy Easy
Step One:
This first thing isn’t technically a Photo-
shop thing, but if you do it, it sure will
make working with panos easier. When
you’re out shooting, and you’re about to
shoot a pano, before you shoot your first
pano frame, hold your index finger up in
front of your lens and take a photo. Then
go ahead and take your pano, and right
after you shoot your last frame, hold up
two fingers in front of your lens and take
another photo. Here’s where this pays off:
When you open all your photos from
that day’s shoot in Mini Bridge, you could
easily have hundreds of photos (especially
if these are vacation photos). As you scroll
through, as soon as you see an index
finger, you know these are your pano
photos (by the way, if you have that whole
self-loathing thing going on, or if you’re
a teen, you don’t have to use your index
finger). Plus, it not only tells you that you
shot a pano, it tells you exactly where it

starts and where it ends (as seen here). It
sounds silly, but if you don’t do this, you’ll
actually miss panos you took, and you’ll
just kind of wonder, “What was I thinking
when I took those?” and you’ll scroll right
by them. It’s happened to me, and so
many of my friends, that we now all use
this technique, and we never miss a pano.
SCOTT KELBY
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Step Two:
You can star t by selecting the individual
pieces of your pano in Mini Bridge (as
I have here, where I took 11 individual
photos, hand-held, in China’s Forbidden
City, something I never would have tried
a few years ago. That’s how good this
Photomerge feature is). You just select
everything between the two finger
shots, click on the Tools icon, and under
Photoshop, choose Photomerge (as
shown here). Note: If you already have
your photos open in Photoshop, then
you can go under the File menu, under
Automate, and choose Photomerge.
Either way—they both will get you to the

same place.
Step Three:
When you choose Photomerge, it brings
up the dialog you see here, with the
images you selected listed in the center
column. (Note: If you opened your pano
photos from within Photoshop, the cen-
ter column will be empty, so you’ll click
the Add Open Files button.) We’ll look
at the Layout part in the next step, and
jump down below that center column.
Leave the Blend Images Together check-
box turned on. Now, there are two other
options you may need, depending on
how you shot your pano: (1) If you have
lens vignetting (the edges of your images
appear darkened), then turn on Vignette
Removal (as I did here), and although
it will take a little longer to render your
pano, it will try to remove the vignett-
ing during the process (it does a pretty
decent job). If you’re using a Nikon,
Sigma, or Canon fisheye lens to shoot
your panos, then turn on the Geometric
Distortion Correction checkbox at the
bottom to correct the fisheye distortion.
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305Chapter 10Special Effects for Photographers
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The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Four:
In the Layout section on the left, the
default setting is Auto (as seen in Step
Three), and I recommend leaving that set
to Auto to get the standard wide pano
we’re looking for. The five Layout choices
below Auto (Perspective, Cylindrical,
Spherical, Collage, and Reposition) all give
you…well…funky looking panos (that’s
the best description I can give you), but
suffice it to say—they don’t give you that
nice wide pano most of us are looking for.
So, let’s just stick with Auto. Click OK, and
within a few minutes (depending on how
many photos you shot for your pano),
your pano is seamlessly stitched together
(as seen here), and you’ll see status bars
that let you know that Auto-Align Layers
and Auto-Blend Layers are both being
applied to make this mini-miracle happen.
Step Five:
To make your pano f it perfectly together,
Photomerge has to move and rearrange
things in a way that will cause you to
have to crop the photo down to get the
final result you want (we get the easy
job—cropping only takes about 10 sec-
onds). So, get the Crop tool (C) and drag
out your cropping border (like you see

here, encompassing as much of the pano
as possible without leaving any gaps).
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TIP: Why Make Panos with Photo-
merge Instead of Auto-Align Layers?
If you use Auto-Align Layers, you’ll notice
that many of the layout features seem
the same as in Photomerge. So, why use
Photomerge for stitching? It’s because
Photomerge does more than just align
layers—it stacks all your images into
one document, then it aligns them (like
Auto-Align Layers), but then it blends
them together into one seamless pano.
It does all three things at once. So don’t
let the Photomerge dialog fool you—
it’s doing more than it seems.
Step Six:
Press Return (PC: Enter), and your pano
is cropped down to size (as shown below)
and you can make any other adjustments
you want. Now, for Photoshop to pull
this mini-miracle off, there’s just one rule
to remember when you’re shooting: over-
lap each photo segment by around 20%.
That’s the one rule I still teach. Do that,

and the rest will take care of itself.
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The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
307Chapter 10Special Effects for Photographers
Continued
Being able to easily turn a photo into a realistic-looking painting has been on the
photographer’s wish list for quite some time (this look is very popular with wed-
ding and portrait photographers), and in Photoshop CS5, Adobe majorly updated
the painting tools and painting engine, allowing the most realistic photo-paintings
yet. The idea is not to paint the subject from scratch, but to use the colors and
tones from the original image, and mix them using brushes that make the photo
look like a painting (luckily, it’s easier than it sounds).
Turn a Photo
into a Painting
Step One:
Open an image you want to turn into
a painting. Now, you’re going to want
to paint on a separate layer above your
Background layer, so start by creating a
blank layer (click on the Create a New
Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers
panel). Next, get the new Mixer Brush
tool from the toolbox (click-and-hold
on the Brush tool, and the other tools
appear in a flyout menu [as shown here],
or press Shift-B until you have it).
Step Two:
When you choose the Mixer Brush tool,
all sorts of new Brush options appear up

in the Options Bar, along with a number
of Blending Brush Combination presets
for how the brush applies your “paint.”
For this particular project, we’re going to
go with an oil painting look, so from the
presets pop-up menu, choose Very Wet,
Heavy Mix (as shown here).
©ISTOCKPHOTO/EKINS DESIGNS
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Step Three:
There are a couple of other little tweaks
we need to make up in the Options Bar
to set up our brush the way we’ll need it
for this look. Starting at the left, there’s a
button for loading the brush after each
stroke, and it’s on by default. Go ahead
and turn this off by clicking on it (it’s
circled here in red). Now, come all the
way over to the right side of the Options
Bar and turn on the Sample All Layers
check box. This is really important, because
turning this on lets us automatically use
the colors from the original photo on the
Background layer, which is pretty much
the key to making this all work.
Step Four:

One last thing before we begin painting:
we have to choose our brush tip. Click on
the Brush icon on the far-left side of the
Options Bar (it’s the second icon from
the left), and the Brush Picker appears.
You’re going to start by painting over the
background areas first, so let’s choose a
good brush for that—the Flat Fan High
Bristle Count brush (as shown here).
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The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Five:
Now you’re going to start painting over
the image, but the idea is to paint in the
direction of the shape (for example, later,
when you paint over the baby’s hair, you’d
paint in the direction the hair is going).
You’re going to need to vary the size of
your brush using the Left and Right
Brack et keys on your keyboard (the Left
Bracket key makes your brush smaller;
the right, larger. They’re located to the
right of the letter “P” on your keyboard).
Start painting over the blanket on the
baby’s head, and just try to stay pretty
much inside the lines, which I know these
days is supposed to be a mentally limiting

exercise, because in kindergarten we’re
told to always stay inside the lines, and
now everybody wants to paint outside
the lines so they experience personal
growth, but these people aren’t painting
with the Mixer Brush tool in CS5, so just
paint inside the lines for now, and let
your therapist deal with the aftermath
at your next visit (kidding).
Step Six:
Go ahead and paint the blanket the
baby’s lying on, as well, then you’re going
to switch brushes to something smaller
for the detail areas (like the baby’s face).
So, go up to the Brush Picker and choose
the Round Curve Low Bristle Percent
brush (as shown here), lower the size of
your brush, and begin painting over the
contours of the baby’s face (it won’t look
good quite yet, but the next steps are
what bring this baby home. Well, at least
figuratively). Also, if it seems “too wet,”
lower the Wet amount (up in the Options
Bar) to around 15%, then lower the Mix
amount to around 52%, and the Flow
amount to 60%, so the intensity of the
effect is much lower.
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The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers

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Chapter 10
Step Seven:
Keep painting, varying your brush size,
until the image is fully painted over, then
click on the Background layer and press
Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate it.
Drag this duplicate layer to the top of
the layer stack (as seen here). This puts
the original untouched image on the
top of the stack. Now, to blend the
original photographic image (with all
its original full detail) and the painted
version you did on the layer below it,
just lower the layer’s Opacity until you
like how the blend of these two look
(thanks to Adobe’s own Russell Brown
for the idea of bringing back the original
photo for added detail). In our example,
I lowered the Opacity to 40%, so you
see a lot of the paint strokes, but you
retain detail in key areas.
Step Eight:
One last step: Press Command-Option-
Shift-E (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E), to make
a new layer at the top of the stack that
looks like a flattened version of your
image. Now go under the Filter menu,
under Artistic, and choose Underpainting.

When the filter dialog appears, don’t
touch anything—just click OK. This puts
an underpainting effect, complete with
canvas texture, over your entire image.
Luckily, this is on its own layer, so to
blend this top texturized underpainting
layer with the layers beneath it, just
lower the Opacity to around 20% (as
shown here) to complete this simple
version of the painted effect.
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