Photo retouching tips

Retouching can be a complicated and involved process that requires numerous tweaks to arrive at a final, satisfactory outcome. If you need to annotate an image with a number of corrections, then the Notes tool can be an invaluable aid. This humble but handy tool enables Photoshop users to pin a note to a specific part of a photograph and leave a detailed comment. Open ‘notes_before.tif’. We’ve used the Note tool to suggest some typical retouching requirements, such as whitening the eyes, removing blemishes and tidying away unwanted stray clothing straps.

To create a note, grab the Notes tool and click where you’d like to attach it. The Notes Panel will appear. Type some text into the Notes Panel’s text field. You can add other notes and use the panel’s arrows to scroll between them (or click a specific note icon’s thumbnail.) You can also select a specific note’s icon and colour code it by clicking the Color icon in the Options bar. To save the notes alongside the image you’ll need to go to File>Save As and use a .TIF or .PSD format. Tick the Notes box in the Save As dialog box and click Save. In our step-by-step guide on the right we’ll use the Notes tool’s colleague, the Eyedropper tool, to quickly make the changes suggested by the notes we’ve created in our portrait image.

Step by step guide to using the Eyedropper tool

01 Sample the skin

Open ‘notes_before.tif’ and grab the Eyedropper tool. Click Sample Size in the Options bar and choose 11 by 11 Average. This samples an area rather than a single pixel, which helps sample a more compatible skin colour. Hold down Alt and click to sample a patch of skin near the unwanted strap.

02 Spray the strap away

Grab the Brush tool and choose a small soft tip from the Brush preset picker. Spray the sampled skin colour over the unwanted grey strap. Hold down Alt and click to summon the Eyedropper so that you can resample patches of adjacent skin colour. This is an alternative to using the Clone Stamp tool.

03 Brighten the eyes

Grab the Color Sampler tool and click the whites of the eye. The Info Panel will record the RGB values of the sampled point. Pure whites would have a value of 255, 255, 255, but our eye’s under-exposed whites are a duller 197, 166, 149. Spray the Dodge tool over the whites to give them brighter, whiter RGB values.

Page 2: Get more from the Eyedropper, Ruler, Color Sampler and Notes tools by modifying options…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2012 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.