Helen Bradley - Photoshop and Lightroom tips and techniques
I'm Helen Bradley - I'm a photographer and Photoshop professional. In this Photoshop and Lightroom blog you will find powerful Photoshop and Lightroom tips, tricks and techniques that will help you get more out of both programs. You will also find step by step guides for working creatively with your photos in Lightroom and Photoshop and any other cool applications I know you will be interested in knowing more about.
Smart Objects are a great tool for working with images in Photoshop but did you know there are two ways to make copies of them. One way you duplicate the Smart Object so every instance of it will always be the same image and the other way you copy the Smart Object but unlink it so you can change out one image without changing the other.
Here’s how it works: Start with a new Photoshop document and add an image as a Smart Object – my favorite way to do this is to choose File > Place and place the image inside the file. This gives you one image as a Smart Object in the Layers palette. Now, the first way to duplicate a Smart Object is to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. This makes an exact copy of the layer so anything you do with the Smart Object on this layer will be done to both layers. Here I double clicked on one of the layer thumbnails and opened the actual image on that layer. I converted it to black and white then closed and saved it and this is what I have now in Photoshop. The two Smart Object layers are both changed. The alternative is to right click the Smart Object layer and choose New Smart Object via Copy. You get the same result as the earlier option with one exception – the two images are separate and they can be altered individually. Here I did the same alteration as before, only this time the image on the top layer is changed an not the one on the bottom layer. If desired you can change the image on the layer. To do this, click the layer to select it and choose Layer > Smart Objects > Replace Contents. Locate a different image to use, click it and click Place. Here I have resized the placed image so you can see they are different. If I had done this with the Duplicate layer then both images would be replaced. Which of these options you use really depends on what you want to do with the image. Sometimes you want two of the same image, sometimes not.
Learn how to link Smart Objects so, when one changes, they both change and how to un-sync them so they are separate. I’ll also show you how to replace the contents of a Smart Object with another image. Useful for wedding photographers and for creating albums in Photoshop.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to work with smart objects in Photoshop. In this video I’m going to show you how you can use smart objects to assemble complex images, and you can do it in a way that harnesses the value of the smart objects. For example, I’m going to create a smart object for this background and then a smart object for this couple. This will allow me to go to this smart object and choose Replace Image. This will allow me to go to this smart object layer, right click and choose Replace Contents. And I can then replace the contents of that smart object with any of the images from that album. And so I can quickly and easily create images for an album with a background in place. But there is a catch and you’ll want to use the right tool for creating these smart objects so I’m going to show you that too.
Let’s just hide this away and let’s go and get our starter document. I’ve already got a vignette that I’m going to use, but we’re going to put in here the original background. So I’m going to choose File and then Place because that’s a way of getting an image in as a smart object. Here’s the portion of this image that I want to use as my background. I’ve already extracted it as a separate image so I’m going to click Place. And I know that this needs to be enlarged a little bit so I’m just going to enlarge it to 75 percent and then click the checkmark. So it’s now in place and it’s a smart object. It has a special little smart object icon. And I’m just going to show you that you have this vignette which is separate and it just goes over the top.
Now we want to create another smart object, but we want this smart object to be unhooked or unlinked to this one. So I’m going to right click and I’m going to choose New, Smart Object via Copy. And what that does is makes a copy of the existing smart object as a separate layer, but it is not linked to the original layer. So now if I go into this and resize it, I’m just going to link these two together, this gives us a new smart object layer in the image which is not linked to the background layer although the two share the current image. I’m just going to add a drop shadow to it. So if we were creating a bridal album we could use this as the starting point for our album. I’m just going to get a slightly nicer drop shadow here and pull that vignette down so that it’s over the top of the background and not the image here. So having created this, this could be the first image in our album. And we can then go ahead using the same background image and just change the smart object out without having to recreate this document, right click, choose Replace Contents.
This time I’m going for an image of the bride and groom, and here they are in place. They’re a little large so I’m just going to choose the transform tool with Ctrl or Command T. I know they need to be taken down to about 10 percent so I’m going to scale them down to 10 percent and just move them into position. You can see that the drop shadow is still in place, the background is still in place, the vignette is still in place, and we’ve got another page of our album already created. If I right click and choose Replace Contents I can go and select yet another image to go in here. And again, the border and everything are already on that image. So it gives me a smart way of creating an album very quickly.
I’m just going to discard that for now and let’s have a look at what you might want to use and which would be a bad choice in this situation. And that would be to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. Now that would give us on the face of it exactly what we had before, a smart object with a second smart object layer over the top. Let’s just go ahead and select that and let’s add our drop shadow to it. Let’s position it where we want it to be above the vignette. And here’s what we had, an image over the background. And we’re ready to print that out.
But look what happens if we go to replace the contents of this image with our bride and groom. Not only do we replace the contents of the image with our bride and groom, and we can scale them back down to the 10 percent size that we were using before, but let’s just link that so that it’s going to be 10 percent in both directions. But look what’s happened to our background. These two smart objects instead of just being a duplicate of each other are in actual fact an exact copy of each other. And so anything that happens to this background smart object is also going to happen to this one and vice versa. If we change this one we’re going to change this one. So if we want the ability to create a smart object from another one but to unlink it so that they’re no longer the same image each time, we need to right click and choose New Smart Object via Copy.
But if we do want two smart objects that are linked and they’re always going to be the same image even if they’re different sizes of the same image then we would simply use Duplicate Layer. Smart objects are a really good tool to use when you’re assembling an album like this because it gives you the ability to create a background image and a smaller image on top and to easily replace that image and create an album very quickly.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this YouTube video tutorial. If you liked the tutorial please like it and feel free to add comments to the video tutorial. I encourage you to subscribe to my video YouTube channel. We release videos twice a week at the very least and you’ll be alerted to the new video releases. And don’t forget to visit my website at projectwoman.com. There you’ll find more tips, tricks and techniques for Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and lots of other programs.
If you’ve used any earlier version of Lightroom and if you now use Lightroom 4 you need to know a bit about Process versions.
In this post I’ll give you the basics of what you need to know which will explain why you see exclamation points by some of your images in the Develop module and why the new Lightroom 4 sliders sometimes disappear unexpectedly.
Process versions
In Lightroom 3 and again in Lightroom 4 the Lightroom Process version was updated. These process versions affect how your raw images are processed by Lightroom so it’s important to understand what they are and how they work.
Initially there was only one process version used in Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2 so upgrading from one version of Lightroom to the next didn’t create any issues. The process version used in these versions was called Process 2003.
When Lightroom 3 was released it had a new process version called Process 2010. This process version had better rendering of the raw image and that meant better detail rendering, better noise reduction and better sharpening.
Because this new Process 2010 was so significantly improved, Adobe didn’t apply it by default to images in Lightroom 3 which had been processed using the older Process 2003. To have done so might have produced unwanted changes to images which had been already processed so it was left to each user’s discretion to apply the changes or not. Images newly imported into Lightroom 3 were processed using Process 2010.
Fast forward to Lightroom 4 and the situation is repeated. There is a new process version called Process 2012 in Lightroom 4. Images newly imported into Lightroom are processed with Process 2012, and those which were processed in an earlier version of Lightroom remain unchanged.
So What is the Exclamation Point
If you see an exclamation mark icon in the Develop module to the right of an image this indicates that it has applied to it a process version that isn’t the current version for the version of Lightroom you are using.
If you want to update an image, click the icon and select to update the image or select to update all the filmstrip photos. You can preview the changes before they are applied if desired.
It’s also possible to update images from the Develop module’s Camera Calibration panel. Here you simply select the desired process version from the Process list. The options are Process 2003, Process 2010 and Process 2012 (Current). In most cases, most users will choose to update the process version to the most current one.
Where did my Sliders go?
When Lightroom 4 was released the Develop module’s Basic panel was altered significantly. The sliders in that panel are now called by different names, they have different starting settings and they do different things to those in the earlier Lightroom versions. In short, the Basic panel adjustments in Lightroom 4 so significantly differ to those in Lightroom 3 that they aren’t interchangeable. Therein lies the explanation as to why your brand new sliders sometimes disappear and the older Lightroom 3 ones reappear – quite simply they do so when you are working on an image processed with an older process version.
So, if you have an image that has Process 2003 or Process 2010 applied to it, the Basic panel sliders will be those you are used to seeing in Lightroom 3 and earlier. If you’re working on a Process 2012 image the sliders are Lightroom 4 sliders. Updating the process version to the most current version will display the new sliders.
What this means to you
If you want the best processing for your images and if you want to see only one set of sliders in the Basic panel then go ahead and update all your images to Process 2012.
If you can see differences between the process versions and if you don’t want those changes applied to some or all of your images then you don’t have to update your images. It’s up to you to make the choice and you can do so for one or more of your images as and when you want to.
However, if you still have some Process 2003 or Process 2010 images in your Lightroom collection just be aware that Lightroom 4 sliders might disappear and be replaced by those from Lightroom 3 from time to time because of this.
Now it is over to you. Have you upgraded your older Process 2003 and Process 2010 images to Process 2012? If you didn’t what made you stay with the older version?
When you need to add guides to an image to help line up objects or the image itself you can do so if you first display your Rulers. Then click on the ruler and drag onto the image to create a guide – drag from the left to make a vertical guide and from the top to make a horizontal one. To remove an unwanted guide, drag it off the screen back to the ruler and it will disappear. To remove all guides choose View > Clear Guides.
Give a grunge look to a portrait using the Photoshop High Pass filter and Smart Objects – it is a quick, easy, and fully editable.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to apply a grunge portrait effect to a portrait in Photoshop. Before we start on creating the grunge effect let’s have a look and see what we’re looking for. This is the original image that I have open here in Photoshop. All I’ve done really is cropped it. And this is the final appearance that we’re going to give this image. It’s a lot more grungy. It’s a lot darker. It’s a lot more interesting image. And the way we’re going to do it is by harnessing the power of the high pass filter which allows us to get edges out of the image. And we going to do it in a way that we could adjust it if we needed to as we go along.
So now that we’ve seen what we’re aiming for let’s get started on our new image. And here’s the image here, and I’m just going to hide away the existing one. And we’re going to start by creating a duplicate of the background layer. I’ll right click and choose Duplicate Layer and click Ok. This is the layer that we’re going to apply the high pass filter to. And if we want it to be editable we need to first convert it for smart filters. All we’re doing effectively is making it a smart object. So we could right click and choose Convert to Smart Object, and it’s exactly the same process to choose Filter, Convert for Smart Filters. This is now a smart object so when I apply the high pass filter to it, it’s going to be done in a way that could be edited later on.
I’m choosing Filter, Other, High Pass. And with this high pass filter what I want is to begin to see the edges in the image but not a lot of color. Now depending on the sharpness of your image and exactly what the image is all about, this might be a larger or smaller value. Usually I suggest around 5 but this image is really quite soft and 5 is just not going to cut it. So I actually have this wound up to 9.6 and click Ok. But because this is a smart filler it doesn’t really matter because if it’s too much or too little we can come back later and fix it. We’re now going to set this layer blend mode to overlay so that we’re picking up these edges in the underlying image. So let’s see how far we’ve come. This is the original image and this is a slightly grittier, grainier version. But it’s going to get better.
We’re going to make another duplicate of the background layer, right click and choose Duplicate Layer. And we’re going to drag this above everything else. And we’re going to make it black and white and then blend it back into the image. It’ll be easier to do if first of all we set the blend mode to something like hard light so we see the effect that we’re going to have. And I would like to do this adjustment using an adjustment layer so that we can also change that later on if we like. Let’s start with Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Black and White. I’m going to click Ok and then I’m going back into this layer stack here. And I’m going to clip this layer because right now this adjustment layer affects everything so we have a black and white image. I just want it to affect this layer. So I click on this top layer and then either position my cursor between the two layers and press the Ctrl and Alt keys, Command and Option on the Mac, to clip that or I could choose Layer and then Create Clipping Mask. It’s exactly the same thing. And what that does is it clips the effect of this black and white layer to adjust this layer underneath.
Now we can have a look at our black and white layer and see how we can grunge up this portrait a little bit better because we’re actually seeing the final results. Now we can drag on these sliders our self to make our own setting or we could select a preset. And I’m going to choose the red filter because I kind of like that effect. And I’m probably just going to lighten these red and magenta channels and perhaps even the yellow channel a little bit before I continue. So I’m just going to close that down now.
Now we’ve got the image that we want we can fine tune it by adding another adjustment to it. And for this I would use a curves adjustment. So I’m going to again choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves. And this is going to affect the entire image this curves adjustment layer. And I just really want to lighten it and add a bit more contrast into the skin tones. If I click on this slider here you can see where the skin tones are in the image. They’re in this area down here so I can drag around this area to increase the contrast in the skin tones, perhaps lighten them up a little bit as we go. And that’s really personal preference at that point.
So let’s have a look and see where we started and how far we’ve come. This is the original image. It looked a little perhaps grungy when we started but we’ve actually been able to make it even look a lot more grungy with the application of this high pass filter, blending it back in with some black and white and then adjusting the curves. Now all of these changes are adjustable so for example we can come back to this high pass filter, double click here and adjust the high pass filter effect. So we can get more or less grunge effect by just adjusting that filter. We can also come back here and adjust this black and white filter, double click here and adjust this. And the final adjustment layer was a curves adjustment layer and it’s editable too. So there’s how to create a quick and easy grunge portrait effect. It’s all editable so that you can change it and fine tune it if you like.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this YouTube video. Look out for more of my YouTube videos on this YouTube channel. I encourage you to subscribe to my channel so you’ll be advised when new videos are released. And remember to visit projectwoman.com. You’ll find more tips, tricks and techniques for working with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom and other applications there.
When working with Multiple Shapes to make one image it’s good to be able to resize or edit them together. To Group them all together, begin by selecting everything to be grouped and press Ctrl + G on a PC or Command + G on a Mac. To ungroup them press Ctrl + Shift + G.
When you’re using layers in Photoshop for photo editing and composting you can speed up the process of working with them if you know these cool layer tricks.
1 Unlock the Background
You will already know the Background of any photo is locked and you can’t do anything much with it until you unlock it. The quickest way to unlock a background layer is from inside the Layers palette. Drag the lock icon to its right and drop it in the Trash and the Background layer will be automatically converted to a regular layer.
2 One click add a Layer
To create a new layer above the current layer click the Add New Layer icon at the foot of the Layer palette.
To add a new layer directly below the current layer Ctrl or Command Click on that icon. Both options add a layer but without displaying the Layer dialog.
3 Merge Everything to One Layer but Keep the Layers too
To merge all the current layers in the document to a single layer and at the same time to keep all the layers intact below it, click the topmost layer of the document and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac). In case you are curious – it’s called Stamp Visible.
4 Select the Content on the Current Layer
To select everything on the current layer Ctrl + Click on the layer thumbnail in the Layers palette.
5 Copy a Layer to Another Document
To copy a layer from one document to another drag the layer from the Layers palette in one document and drop it into the other document. If you hold Shift as you drag the layer will be centered in the middle of the second document.
6 Quick Layer Moves
To quickly move a layer up the layer stack press Command + ] and to move it down, press Command + [.
7 Instant Delete a Layer
To instantly delete a layer, click the layer and press Delete.
Bonus Layer tip
To fill a layer or a selection with the foreground color press Alt + Backspace (Option + Delete on the Mac). Use Control + Backspace (Command + Delete on the Mac to fill the layer or selection with the Background color.
So, over to you now… what are your favorite Layer tips and tricks?
One relatively unknown benefit of Smart Objects in Photoshop is the ability to use it to apply multiple strokes to an image. You can’t do this with Layer Styles on their own but you can do it with Smart Objects.
Here’s how to do this.
First add a Stroke Layer Style to your layer.
You can’t add a second stroke but you can convert the object to be a Smart Object. To do this, right click and choose Convert to Smart Object.
Now click the Smart Object layer and go ahead and add a new stroke to it. It all remains fully editable and you get multiple strokes – or multiple “anything” you want in Photoshop.
To make your Rulers display along the left and top of an image Ctrl + R on a PC or Command + R on a Mac. To make the Rulers disappear, simply press the keystroke shortcut again. Bonus tip – this works in Illustrator too.
Learn how to make paisley shapes in Illustrator using Graphic Styles. I demonstrate graphic styles such as scallop edges stroke style, dotted stroke and a stroke that shows dots that vary in size from big to small.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. Today we’re going to be using Adobe Illustrator and we’re going to be making paisleys with graphic styles. Before we go ahead and actually create our paisley shape let’s have a look and see what we’re aiming for.
This is a paisley that I’ve created using graphic styles and we’re going to create these graphic styles so that we can create it ourselves in future. You can see that there’s a scalloped border around the edge and you’re going to learn how to make this scallop border. You’ll also see how to make these blue dots which are another graphic style and then how to make these pink dots so that they change in size. So each of these is a graphic style and it’s just applied to the shape really, really easily. So it’s a very simple process to create this once you create the graphic styles. And they themselves are pretty simple too.
So let’s just close this down for now and we’re going to work on this document here. For ease we’re going to start with a rectangle because it’s just a whole lot easier than drawing paisleys right now. So let’s do a rectangle. And the first graphic style we’re going to create is that scalloped edge. So we’re going to start by selecting a stroke color to use. And I want my scalloped edge to be a sort of pale blue so I’m going to select that as my stroke color. And I want the fill color for this to be a sort of darker blue so I’m going for a darker blue here. Now the stroke is going to need to be fairly wide so I can see my dots so let’s make that 20.
And here we have the beginnings of our scallop edge but it’s just not looking a lot like a scallop border right now. What we need to do is to go into the appearance panel. So you would select Window and Appearance to get to it. Now we’re going to change the stroke so that we actually have dots. So I’m going to click Stroke here. And what I want to do is I want to make sure that the Cap is round and I want to use a dash line and I want this option here that aligns dashes to corners and paths. And I want to make my dash zero and then my gap something less than the weight of the lines. So here 16 is a pretty good fit here and that’s going to give me my scallop border.
Well it’s giving me a two side scallop right now, but that’s easily fixed. You see this appearance panel works very much like a layers panel and so the appearance that’s at the very top is the one that way we’re seeing over the top of everything. And right now that’s the stroke. If we put the fill over the top of everything then the fill would fill up to the edges of this rectangular shape and we’d be left with a scallop border not on the inside of the shape. So all I need to do is to target the fill here and just drag it up above the stroke. And you can see when I drag it above what I’m seeing is this scallop border. So now that we’ve created the first of our graphic styles we’re just going to save it. And I’m just going to click here for new graphic style and it’s now saved.
Now we can go ahead and create the second one which was those blue dots. We can continue to work on the shape here. That’s just fine. Because we’ve already saved the graphic style we won’t be losing if we make changes here. The first change I want to do is I want to remove the fill entirely. So this will be an empty rectangle with just a border. I’m going to select a different color for the stroke and this time I’m going for an even darker blue than we’ve been working on. So let’s go for this dark blue here. And let’s go for stroke and we want to change the values here. I want the weight to be 16. So this is going to be a slightly thinner set of blue dots which would be appropriate if we’re trying to make a shape that’s going to be reducing in size every time we add a graphic style to it. But I want the gap to be bigger because I want things to be circles and I want them to be dots separated from each other not overriding each other. And I do that by changing the gap value. So I’m going to make that 25. And you can see that that’s giving me my circles. So there’s our second graphic style. Let’s just save that.
And let’s go ahead and make the third one. The fill again is nothing, but this time I’m going to choose pink as my shape and we want to make pink dots that vary in size. And that’s just a little bit different to what we’ve been doing previously. Now the weight needs to be a bit smaller because it’s going to be further into the center of this paisley shape. So I’m going to reduce the weight down to 12 points. Because the weight is 12 points I’m going to decrease the gap. So I’m going to make that 16 so the dots are a little closer together. And now we have to make sure that our dots are going to reduce in size. So I’m going to make sure that I have my shape selected. Again, let’s go to stroke and let’s have a look at how we make them reduce in size. At the moment the profile is uniform so all these dots are the same uniform shape. If I change it to width profile one what I get is small to large and that’s what’s giving us these different shape dots. So there’s our third graphic style and we’re just going to save that.
Now if I was to trash this document I’m going to lose those graphic styles so let’s go ahead and let’s make our paisley in this document. So I’m just going to delete the rectangle shape. And we’ll go ahead and make a paisley but use the pen tool to do that. So I’m going to click and drag to start my shape. I’m just going to make it using 3 points so click and drag at the top of the circle. And you can see that we’re still using that last graphic style so it’s happening in place as we draw. It’s not the one we want but we’ll put up with it for now. What I do want is this original style so I’m just going to click on it to apply it to that shape. And here is our paisley shape with the first style on it.
Now all we need to do is to make the same shape but a little bit smaller. So I’m going to select the move tool here and I’m going to choose Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste in Place. And that should give me a second version of the shape. Let’s just make this a bit bigger here so we can see where we’re working. I’m just going to size this down. And right now I’m going to size it down in proportion so I’m holding the Shift key as I resize it. I’m just going to drop it into place here. And this time instead of this scallop border I want to use the blue dots. So I’m just going to tap on the blue dot graphic style and you can see that we’ve got the scallop with its second layer. And again, I’m going to select that layer, choose Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste in Place, Paste in Back, placed anywhere, really it doesn’t matter. I’m going to just move it out of the way here. I’m going to Shift and resize it so it’s a smaller size, apply my pink dots to it and just move it back into place. Actually I think I want it a bit smaller still because I have an idea for an intermediary step.
Okay let’s just go and get the blue one. We’re here. I’ve got it selected. I’m going to Edit, Copy and Edit, Paste it. And this time I’m going to add just a very plain stroke. So I’m going to get a green and I’m going to make it a weight of about 10 points. And let’s just go to the stroke options here and let’s just turn off this dash line because I want it to be a plain line. Now I’m thinking that’s a bit wide for this purpose. So let’s just make it that and let’s put that into place. It’s not small enough yet. I think I can resize this in place a little bit. So there’s our paisley shape. And we can do this over and over again using graphic styles. We will have to save these graphic styles though if we want to use them in other documents. So from this right click menu we can choose Save Graphic Style Library and we could save that as a set of graphic styles that we could use again in future.
But you’ve seen here how to create a scallop border, how to create a graphic style that is just dots and how to create a graphic style that is a series of different size dots and then how to apply them to increasingly smaller size shapes so you can create a paisley that looks like this very quickly and very easily. And of course these graphic styles can be applied to any shape so you could do it to circles or stars or whatever it is that you want to draw.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my video tutorials on this YouTube channel and please subscribe to the channel if you’d like to hear about new videos because we do distribute them twice a week. You can find more of my tutorials and links to other work on projectwoman.com and please like this video by clicking the like button if you liked it. And I always look forward to hearing your comments.
Want to get a complete view of the document you are working on? To fit the entire document to the current window size, double-click the Hand tool. You can also press Ctrl + 0(zero) on a PC or Command + 0 (zero) on a Mac.
Learn to fix images that have iPhone filters applied to them using Photoshop Elements. Remove unwanted color casts from the images using two different methods.
Transcript:
I was sent this image by a gentleman who wanted me to fix the color in the image because this was shot with an iPhone and the young lady had applied a filter to it. I sent him a few copies back each one of them altered a little differently. And this is the one that he came back and said this is the truest to what her hair color looks like. So now I’m going to show you how you go ahead and fix an image like this.
Now I’ll always work on a copy of the original image, so I’ve made a copy. I’m just going to size this down so we can see both images side by side. Now there are a couple of tools that I would typically use. One of them is Enhance, Adjust Color, Adjust Color for Skin Tones. In this case what we do is we just click on some skin tone in the image and try and fix it that way.
Now it’s not giving me great results here so I want to show you another tool that we could use. And that is just the colorcast tool, Enhance, Adjust Color and then Remove Colorcast. And here we would click on somewhere in the image that was supposed to be a sort of neutral gray, black sort of white area. So we could sample some of her clothes here to see if we get a good fix. We could sample around her teeth as well. And I think that this is a pretty good result as a match for this image over here, so I’m just going to click Ok.
Let’s just zoom out here and see. So these two images have pretty much the same look in them. The hair color is pretty much the same. If anything I might just reduce the saturation a little bit on this image which I could do by choosing Enhance and then Adjust Color. And we could do hue/saturation and then we could just decrease the saturation a little bit across the entire image. And that would get rid of some of the yellow. In fact I think I’ve actually got a better fix on this image probably than I had on the original.
So there’s one way of fixing a colorcast in an image. I have another pair of images of the same young girl. Let’s have a look at them here. And I have one here that was said to be a reasonably good fix for that image. Now I’m going to show you some means of getting this result from this sort of an image. The first thing I’m going to do with this image is because it’s got a sort of reddy orange colorcast on it I think that if I apply a filter to this image we might be able to kill some of that color. So I’m going to choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Photo Filter. And here’s my photo filter dialog, click Ok. And what I want is a cooling filter. That’s a blue filter. So I’m going to go for one of these cooling filter effects. I’m going to wind it up quite high. So let’s see which is the better of them. And I think the 82 is a better cooling filter. You can see that now we’ve got some sort of reasonably good skin tones here. So I’m thinking about 65 is pretty good there. So let’s call that done.
Now one of the things that I would like to do with this image is to get rid of the sort of grain that there is on her skin. So I’m going to take this cooling filter and click on it and just press Ctrl Alt Shift E which will give me a duplicate of that image as it was. So I haven’t got rid of these two layers, but what I’ve got is a layer that contains everything that was in those two layers. And I’m going to duplicate this as well. So I’m going to drag it onto the New Layer icon so we have two versions of her face. This one I’m going to blur. So I’m going to use a blur. I’m going to choose Filter, Blur and then we’ll use a surface blur. Now surface blur is a blur that will blur the surface but not around the edges. It tends to keep edges very crisp. We don’t actually want crisp edges but we do want the edges around her face not to be blurred. So I’m going to reduce the threshold and the radius to small values. What I want to see on this image is a lessening of this grain so it’s sort of blurring out. I don’t want it too blurred, but I do want it blurred. And since I’m only going to use the lightened values here, I’m not really too concerned about the fact that it looks a little unreal at this point, I’m just going to click Ok.
And now I’m going to blend this back in using lighten. So with the lightening we’re actually lightening the pixels underneath so that’s a pretty good result there. But let’s have a look at what we’re sort of targeting. I don’t think this is great, but I don’t think this is quite there either. So let’s have a look and see what we could do.
Well we could apply another photo filter. So let’s go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer. Let’s go and get another photo filter and again, a cooling filter. So I’m thinking one of these others might be appropriate. Let’s just wind the value down and let’s check those again. This one’s pretty good. It’s a little bit red but it’s not a bad sort of cooling filter for this image if we could get the density of it correct. Let’s have a look at this other one. Again, that’s having quite a nice effect on her skin tone. So I might choose one or other of these cooling filters to apply to the image.
So now if I was continuing to work on the image I might want to for example apply a curves adjustment to it. So let’s just go and get our layers. We’re working on an adjustment layer right now so I’ll need to give us a full image layer to work on. So I’ve pressed Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E so we’ve got a new layer to work on. And now we could use a curves adjustment, Enhance, Adjust Color, Adjust Color Curves. And here what I’d be looking for is to sort of just generally lighten the image. So, I think the backlight will give us a reasonably good start here. And I’m just going to adjust this curve so that everything is just a little bit lighter. So I’m just looking at pulling all of these curve marks up a little bit. Here’s our before and after. And you can see that we’ve got a little bit better skin tones here so I’ll click Ok.
And I think in actual fact this time round I’ve probably got a better fix than I had the first time. Perhaps if I have a look at that smart blur again I might to do something else or what I could do is just blur a duplicate of the image using for example a Gaussian blur and then just bring back these areas into the image. Let’s see what we would do there.
I’m just going to duplicate this layer. I’m going to apply a blur for example, a Gaussian blur to this layer looking to get the smoothest skin tones. That’s really all I’m interested in here is the slight smoothening of the skin so that we get rid of the grain that we got in from the iPhone, click Ok.
I’m going to add a layer mask to this layer. And what I’m going to do now is to just paint out the areas where we’ve got some softening of the image. The softening areas are going to be around the eye and perhaps over the lips. So I’m going to bring these areas of detail back a little bit in these areas. So there’s how I would fix these images to remove the impact of using an iPhone to take the images in the first place. Let’s just go back to the Undo history on this image and let’s see how far we’ve come. This is the original image and this is what we’ve got now, a much more pleasing result for the family of this young woman.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. I encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you’ll be advised when new videos are released. And look out at projectwoman.com for more Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Illustrator tutorials.
It’s a good idea to configure your Photoshop preferences so the program works as you want it to. So, after installing Photoshop check your preferences and change any that you need to set by pressing the shortcut keystroke Ctrl + K on a PC and Command + K on a Mac. Bonus tip – it works with Illustrator too!
Learn how to take an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and back again. This will ensure that the image appears back in Lightroom, automatically added to the catalog, with the original version backed up. I also demonstrate the different possible settings so that you may customize this process.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can take an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and back successfully. I’m here in the Develop module in Lightroom and I’ve already done some work on this particular image. And I’m pretty happy with it. The problem is in this animal’s eye though you can see that there’s a little shape here that I want to get rid of.
Now I could get rid of this in Lightroom but it’s going to be a whole lot easier to take this image into Photoshop. So we’re going to do that now. To take an image from Lightroom into Photoshop I’m going to let Lightroom control the process. I’ll right click and choose Edit in. Because Photoshop has already been installed and Lightroom is aware of that I’m going to click Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS6. If I was using a different version of Photoshop I would select that from the list. I’ll click here. And now what’s happening is that Lightroom is asking me what I want to edit, either a copy of this image with the Lightroom adjustments, just a copy of the original or the original itself. In this particular case I want to edit this image with the Lightroom adjustments. So I’m going to edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments and click Edit.
If Photoshop is not already open Photoshop will be opened now. But here’s our image inside Photoshop and I’m just going to size it so that we can see the area in question. And now I’m going to bring in the tools. I have here the spot healing brush tool which is going to be the tool that’s going to help me fix this problem. I think I need to zoom in a little bit closer still so let’s get right into this problem area. And now with the spot healing brush tool I can size it down to suit the problem area and just start working over it. I could also use the clone tool if I wanted to. Any of these tools are going to help me fix this issue. And working with this tool in Photoshop is going to be a whole lot easier than working with the similar tools in Lightroom because I can just be a whole lot more accurate in Photoshop. If I want to undo it I just press Ctrl Alt Z to undo the change.
So when I’m happy with the resulting eye I’m just going to zoom out, make sure it all looks fine, which it does for this particular eye. I’ll probably fix this one while I’m here, but let’s call this good for now. And because I’m ready to go back to Lightroom now I’ve fixed the problem, I’m just going to close this image. So I’m just going to click the X button to close it. I’ll get a message which will say do you want to save changes to the document and I’ll say yes. The important thing at this point is not to choose File, Save as because you want to send the image back to Lightroom in the format that Lightroom sent it to Photoshop.
Now we’re back in Lightroom. The image that we’re looking at is the one that has been the fixed eye. And you can see here it’s called lionanimaleyes edit.tif. What Photoshop has done in conjunction with Lightroom is it’s taken the image, applied the edits to it and then sent it back as a TIF file with -edit after it. This is the original file. We haven’t lost the original. We’ve just got a copy back with the edits applied to it. Now the settings that Lightroom uses when exporting to Photoshop and receiving the image back are in the preferences setting.
I’ll choose Edit and then Preferences. And we’ll go to External Editing. You can see here that edit in Photoshop CS6 is set up as a TIF file. If we wanted to we could bring it back as a PSD file but TIF was selected here. It’s being sent out as proPhoto RGB with a 16 bit depth, a resolution of 240. And here’s the file naming. It’s coming back with the same file name with -edit on it. You can see that we’re using custom settings. Here’s the edit and here are our custom settings, the original file name with –edit applied, and then either PSD or TIF depending on what it is that we have set here for the file format. So all of this is customizable and this is where it’s being controlled as to what it goes out to Photoshop as and what it comes back into Lightroom as. And provided you use that process of just choosing File, Close or File, Save from Photoshop and not Save As so you don’t give it a name, you let Photoshop and Lightroom deal with it, then you’re going to be able to work seamlessly between Lightroom and Photoshop and back again.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. If you enjoyed this tutorial place click Like. You can subscribe to my channel and hear more about videos that are launched regularly every week in future.
You can close the current document you are working on to clean up your work area, by pressing Ctrl + W on a PC and Command + W on a Mac. If you haven’t saved the image you’ll be prompted to do so before it closes.
Smart Objects are a great tool for working with images in Photoshop but did you know there are two ways to make copies of them. One way you duplicate the Smart Object so every instance of it will always be the same image and the other way you copy the Smart Object but unlink it so you can change out one image without changing the other.
Now, the first way to duplicate a Smart Object is to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. This makes an exact copy of the layer so anything you do with the Smart Object on this layer will be done to both layers. 
Here I double clicked on one of the layer thumbnails and opened the actual image on that layer. I converted it to black and white then closed and saved it and this is what I have now in Photoshop. The two Smart Object layers are both changed. 
The alternative is to right click the Smart Object layer and choose New Smart Object via Copy. You get the same result as the earlier option with one exception – the two images are separate and they can be altered individually. 
Here I did the same alteration as before, only this time the image on the top layer is changed an not the one on the bottom layer. 
If desired you can change the image on the layer. To do this, click the layer to select it and choose Layer > Smart Objects > Replace Contents. 
Locate a different image to use, click it and click Place. Here I have resized the placed image so you can see they are different. If I had done this with the Duplicate layer then both images would be replaced. 
original photo by: Stacey Bry
Photo by: John De Boer
Photo by: StillSearc via sxc.hu
Photo by: salssa via sxc.hu