Photoshop Techniques


Photoshop Techniques Contrary to popular belief, the creative process of a photographer does not have to end the minute the picture is taken. After the picture is developed, printed, and in your hands, there are still several things that can be done to enhance the picture. One thing that can be done is to tone or tint the picture. Toning or tinting is generally known as applying color to black and white prints using photo oils, pencils or other products. Walk into any card store and you'll probably see an example of toning. The effects that can be achieved are truly amazing. However, toning has one disadvantage that inhibits most photographers from trying it -- it requires artistic talent. This is where digital toning comes in. With the new tools available it is possible to tone your pictures without any artistic know-how. The tool of choice for digital toning is Adobe Photoshop. This is really the only option and is a must have for any digital artist. Using Photoshop I will go through step by step how to tone your pictures. The methods described work on both Adobe Photoshop 4.0 - CS2. This tutorial assumes that you, as the web savvy photographer, have managed to convert your pictures (by scanning or a PhotoCD) into a format usable by Photoshop. I should mention a couple of things before I begin. To help you see how toning is done, I included a picture of the method described every step of the way. However, this picture could look too dark or too light when you see it on your screen. This is because of the gamma setting of your monitor. I assure you when you start toning pictures, yours will look just fine. Also, the methods I am about to show you are merely one of the ways digital toning can be done using Photoshop. I know of at least 3 other ways that it can be done, but for some reason or another the method I am about to show you has become my favorite. Finally, I have never written a tutorial like this before. If you see a way that this site can be improved please don't hesitate to submit a comment. Picking a Winner The first step is to pick the right picture. Not every picture looks good toned. Generally landscapes and portraits look the best. Toned pictures of children holding flowers or some other mushy scene are the types of pictures that are usually used by card companies. Sometimes a nice landscape with water in it also looks good toned. Any picture with too much clutter in it generally does not look good toned. Ultimately, picking the right picture depends on your tastes. If you think a picture could look better toned, give it a try and see how it ends up. The worst that could happen is that it wouldn't look good and you would delete the toned picture. For this tutorial, I used a picture of fruit that was provided with Photoshop 4.0. Killing the Color The next step is to change the picture into black and white, assuming the picture isn't black and white already. To do this click on the Image menu, then select Mode, then Grayscale. Immediately, you should see your picture turn black and white. Once this is done, it is best to adjust the highlights, midtones, and shadows of the picture. Many pictures that are converted look a lot better with a little tweaking. To do this click on the Image menu, select Adjust, then Variations. Doing this should bring up a screen allowing you to darken and lighten, the highlights, midtones, and shadows of the picture. I could explain exactly how to use Variations, but it is way too difficult to explain without confusing you. The best thing to do is to play around with Variations for a while until you get the effect you want. The idea is to have a picture with highlights a little darker than pure white, light gray (18% gray) midtones, and rich, black shadows. For my picture, I used the Variations tool to lighten the midtones and highlights, and slightly darken the shadows. Coloring Within the Dotted Lines The next step is to actually begin to add color to the picture. First, we must convert the picture back into color mode. To do this go to the Image menu, select Mode, then select CMYK Color (this is the type of color most suited for inkjet printing). You should see no change in your picture, doing this simply allows color to be used in the picture. Now, we begin the toning. The first step is to select the area you want toned. If you want a particular object toned, like a rose, then you need to either select it using the Lasso tool or use Layer Masks (which is an article in and of itself). If you want the whole picture toned, then you can skip this paragraph. If you want to give similarly shaded parts of your picture a tone (i.e. toning only the highlights, or toning only the shadows), which is what I did in my picture, you must select the color range you want toned. To do this click on the Select menu, then select Color Ranges. When the Color Ranges screen comes up, you will see two round "radio" buttons, labeled Selection and Image. Click on Image. Below these two buttons, you will see a drop down menu labeled Selection Menu. On this menu select Black Matte. You should see your picture turn black (don't panic). OK, now let me explain what you just did. On the Color Ranges screen, the little thumbnail you see now shows your picture. Now, the main picture window itself shows the parts of the picture you have selected. Right now nothing is selected so all you see is black. Now we can begin selecting the parts of the picture you want toned. First, click on the button that shows an eyedropper with a plus sign next to it. Now, take your mouse over the thumbnail of your picture that appears on the Color Ranges screen, and start selecting parts of the picture. The way this tool works is that if you click on a part of the picture that is pure white, every part of the picture that is pure white will be selected, if you click on a part of the picture that is light gray, every part of the picture that is light gray will be selected, and so on. To see which parts of the image you have selected, look at your main picture window. As you start selecting parts of the picture on the Color Ranges screen, your picture window that was previously all black should start revealing the parts of the picture you have selected. For my picture, I selected the highlights (the white and very light gray areas) of the picture to tone. Once you have selected the part of the picture you want toned, select OK on your Color Ranges screen. Once you pressed OK, your picture window should show dotted lines around the areas of the picture you selected. To color the picture click on the Image menu, select Adjust, then Hue/Saturation. Once the Hue/Saturation screen comes up, you should see a checkbox labeled Colorize. Select Colorize. Also make sure the Preview checkbox is selected. Now the parts of your picture that you previously selected should turn a bright, saturated red. To make that red a less saturated, move the Saturation slider to the left. If you want to tone your pictures with a different color you need to play with the Hue slider. Moving the slider to the left produces brown and blue tones, while moving it to the right produces green tones. As you move around the Hue and Saturation sliders you should see changes in the picture window. Basically, play around with this until you get an effect you like. For my picture I chose to leave the hue alone and I lessened the saturation. Complementing the Color At this point, you have made your first digitally toned picture. Of course, it doesn't have to end here. The creative possibilities using this technique are endless. More than one color can be added to the picture to give it some extra flavor. For my example, I decided to add a blue tone as well, to give the picture a nice atmosphere. So, using the selection process described previously, I selected the medium and dark gray portions of the image. Then, using the Hue/Saturation window, I gave this area a very light blue tone. Each unique picture looks best with a different number and shade of colors. However, using anymore than three colors does not look very good. In my opinion, for most pictures using two colors looks best. Touching Up Once you're completely done with your digital toning, a little touch up work also helps make the picture look better. For my picture I thought it should look a little softer, so I used a slight Gaussian Blur (found in the Filter menu, under Blur). I also took the liberty of removing a couple of blemishes (a black dot on the pear and black marks on the lower left corner of the picture) using the Rubber Stamp tool. For the parts of the image where the blue hit the red, I used the smear tool to make the transition see smoother. With all this done my image was ready to print. Related Pages: Photography Feature Stories Photographers' Techniques Camera Equipment Reviews Fine Art Photography Commercial Photographic Services Home

Photoshop Techniques

Contrary to popular belief, the creative process of a photographer does not have to end the minute the picture is taken. After the picture is developed, printed, and in your hands, there are still several things that can be done to enhance the picture. One thing that can be done is to tone or tint the picture. Toning or tinting is generally known as applying color to black and white prints using photo oils, pencils or other products. Walk into any card store and you'll probably see an example of toning. The effects that can be achieved are truly amazing.

However, toning has one disadvantage that inhibits most photographers from trying it -- it requires artistic talent. This is where digital toning comes in. With the new tools available it is possible to tone your pictures without any artistic know-how.

The tool of choice for digital toning is Adobe Photoshop. This is really the only option and is a must have for any digital artist. Using Photoshop I will go through step by step how to tone your pictures. The methods described work on both Adobe Photoshop 4.0 - CS2. This tutorial assumes that you, as the web savvy photographer, have managed to convert your pictures (by scanning or a PhotoCD) into a format usable by Photoshop. I should mention a couple of things before I begin. To help you see how toning is done, I included a picture of the method described every step of the way. However, this picture could look too dark or too light when you see it on your screen. This is because of the gamma setting of your monitor. I assure you when you start toning pictures, yours will look just fine. Also, the methods I am about to show you are merely one of the ways digital toning can be done using Photoshop. I know of at least 3 other ways that it can be done, but for some reason or another the method I am about to show you has become my favorite. Finally, I have never written a tutorial like this before.

If you see a way that this site can be improved please don't hesitate to submit a comment.

Picking a Winner

The first step is to pick the right picture. Not every picture looks good toned. Generally landscapes and portraits look the best. Toned pictures of children holding flowers or some other mushy scene are the types of pictures that are usually used by card companies. Sometimes a nice landscape with water in it also looks good toned. Any picture with too much clutter in it generally does not look good toned. Ultimately, picking the right picture depends on your tastes. If you think a picture could look better toned, give it a try and see how it ends up. The worst that could happen is that it wouldn't look good and you would delete the toned picture. For this tutorial, I used a picture of fruit that was provided with Photoshop 4.0.

Killing the Color

The next step is to change the picture into black and white, assuming the picture isn't black and white already. To do this click on the Image menu, then select Mode, then Grayscale. Immediately, you should see your picture turn black and white. Once this is done, it is best to adjust the highlights, midtones, and shadows of the picture. Many pictures that are converted look a lot better with a little tweaking. To do this click on the Image menu, select Adjust, then Variations. Doing this should bring up a screen allowing you to darken and lighten, the highlights, midtones, and shadows of the picture. I could explain exactly how to use Variations, but it is way too difficult to explain without confusing you. The best thing to do is to play around with Variations for a while until you get the effect you want. The idea is to have a picture with highlights a little darker than pure white, light gray (18% gray) midtones, and rich, black shadows. For my picture, I used the Variations tool to lighten the midtones and highlights, and slightly darken the shadows.

Coloring Within the Dotted Lines

The next step is to actually begin to add color to the picture. First, we must convert the picture back into color mode. To do this go to the Image menu, select Mode, then select CMYK Color (this is the type of color most suited for inkjet printing). You should see no change in your picture, doing this simply allows color to be used in the picture. Now, we begin the toning.

The first step is to select the area you want toned. If you want a particular object toned, like a rose, then you need to either select it using the Lasso tool or use Layer Masks (which is an article in and of itself). If you want the whole picture toned, then you can skip this paragraph. If you want to give similarly shaded parts of your picture a tone (i.e. toning only the highlights, or toning only the shadows), which is what I did in my picture, you must select the color range you want toned. To do this click on the Select menu, then select Color Ranges. When the Color Ranges screen comes up, you will see two round "radio" buttons, labeled Selection and Image. Click on Image. Below these two buttons, you will see a drop down menu labeled Selection Menu. On this menu select Black Matte. You should see your picture turn black (don't panic). OK, now let me explain what you just did. On the Color Ranges screen, the little thumbnail you see now shows your picture. Now, the main picture window itself shows the parts of the picture you have selected. Right now nothing is selected so all you see is black. Now we can begin selecting the parts of the picture you want toned. First, click on the button that shows an eyedropper with a plus sign next to it. Now, take your mouse over the thumbnail of your picture that appears on the Color Ranges screen, and start selecting parts of the picture. The way this tool works is that if you click on a part of the picture that is pure white, every part of the picture that is pure white will be selected, if you click on a part of the picture that is light gray, every part of the picture that is light gray will be selected, and so on. To see which parts of the image you have selected, look at your main picture window. As you start selecting parts of the picture on the Color Ranges screen, your picture window that was previously all black should start revealing the parts of the picture you have selected. For my picture, I selected the highlights (the white and very light gray areas) of the picture to tone. Once you have selected the part of the picture you want toned, select OK on your Color Ranges screen.

Once you pressed OK, your picture window should show dotted lines around the areas of the picture you selected. To color the picture click on the Image menu, select Adjust, then Hue/Saturation. Once the Hue/Saturation screen comes up, you should see a checkbox labeled Colorize. Select Colorize. Also make sure the Preview checkbox is selected. Now the parts of your picture that you previously selected should turn a bright, saturated red. To make that red a less saturated, move the Saturation slider to the left. If you want to tone your pictures with a different color you need to play with the Hue slider. Moving the slider to the left produces brown and blue tones, while moving it to the right produces green tones. As you move around the Hue and Saturation sliders you should see changes in the picture window. Basically, play around with this until you get an effect you like. For my picture I chose to leave the hue alone and I lessened the saturation.

Complementing the Color

At this point, you have made your first digitally toned picture. Of course, it doesn't have to end here. The creative possibilities using this technique are endless. More than one color can be added to the picture to give it some extra flavor. For my example, I decided to add a blue tone as well, to give the picture a nice atmosphere. So, using the selection process described previously, I selected the medium and dark gray portions of the image. Then, using the Hue/Saturation window, I gave this area a very light blue tone. Each unique picture looks best with a different number and shade of colors. However, using anymore than three colors does not look very good. In my opinion, for most pictures using two colors looks best.

Touching Up

Once you're completely done with your digital toning, a little touch up work also helps make the picture look better. For my picture I thought it should look a little softer, so I used a slight Gaussian Blur (found in the Filter menu, under Blur). I also took the liberty of removing a couple of blemishes (a black dot on the pear and black marks on the lower left corner of the picture) using the Rubber Stamp tool. For the parts of the image where the blue hit the red, I used the smear tool to make the transition see smoother. With all this done my image was ready to print.

Home