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You know at sometimes you have taken some memorable shots, but the quality of the photos didn’t turn out the way you expected it to be. So, you might consider doing some photo retouching using Photoshop, to enhance the photos. What I am going to show here is basically a way to fix a problem that always occur when shooting photos indoor, under exposed low light level photos.

The photo shown above have several problems. First of all the pathetic light leveling, coarse pixels that makes the face looks rough, and eyes looks dull. First of all, I would have to adjust the lighting to lighter and move lively color. For me, my trick is to work with the Curves tool under the Image > Adjustment menu, adjust the colors a bit to get the right lighting I want.

Basically in this photo, I decreased the Blue channel a little, increased both Red and RGB channels to give it a brighter and nicer skin complexion. You may play around different channel settings, to get the result you desire. Then, you might want to try adjusting the Brightness and Contrast, under the same menu as Curves. The trick is never adjust the contrast too high, or the photos will be much more pixelated/rough. Below is what I got right after the Curves changes and Brightness and Contrast.

Now, the color is the way I like it. Next, I need to do something about the skin, it doesn’t have to be that rough you know. Duplicate this image into another layer, then go to Filter > Blue > Gaussian Blur menu. Adjust the Radius to blur out the image, basically I would say stay in between 0.3 to 3 pixels or you will blur out the image too much.

As I have already told you to duplicate this image, there is a reason. You would need to erase the “non-skin” areas on this layer, so that you won’t get blur eyes, blur hair and clothes. As you erase these areas, the bottom layer will show through the original non-blur image. So, you would have smooth skin, but not blurry eyes and hair.

Next, I need to do something about the eyes, they just look dead. Use a small soft rounded brush, and tap a little bit of white on top of the eye area. Make sure you do this on a separated layer on top, so you won’t ruin the original photo. Lower the opacity to 25%-50% on the layer that you have applied the eye highlight, so that it doesn’t too too fake.

Then, a little bit more of adjustment on the Brightness and Contrast and voila, before and after. What do you think?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.