I'm going to quote Amy's post here to show that I'm not inventing these tecnhiques, just simply trying to show my method to do them.
| "I refer to already existing highlights and exaggerate and/or simplify them. This is one of those things that will come naturally if you've done a lot of figure drawing, otherwise, it just takes practice. I have a few methods of doing this and sometimes i use one... sometimes more. 1--more dodging and burning! I almost always do some amount of carving directly on the retouched image by dodging and burning– pure and simple. 0% hardness brush, still at about 3-4%. It's a good idea to do this on a second copy of the retouched layer just in case i get carried away and something starts to look weird. In case the client says "woah, too much!"-- it's easy to lightly mask out what's overkill." |
OK then let's go.
Simply click and drag the original background layer onto the New layer icon to create the copied layer. You can see it here called 'background copy'.
Fig 3.
Select the dodge or burn tool from the tool palette depending whether you want to increase the highlight or reduce it (Dodge will increase highlights, Burn will intensify shadows)
Fig 4.
Next we need to set our brush up. Amy suggests a really slow flowing brush at 3%. I've set it at 4% here but the key is to set it very low. Note aswell that I've set the tool to work on the mid-tones. I've found this works best.
Fig 5.
This completely depends on the photograph and what your 'artists' eye sees as a problem. If you see deep shadows or uncomfortable highlights then adjust them to your liking.
I'm going to concentrate on a few areas that bother me and show some befores and after. They will be VERY subtle. Here is the before and after.
This is the 'after' image and roll your mouse over the image to see the 'before' image. As you can see... very subtle. I've increased some highlights and made some shadows a little more pronounced.
Fig 6.
Sometimes you may just sit back and think "Oops... I've went too far".
Don't worry. Remember we used a copy of the original? Simply apply a mask. Make sure your adjusted layer is highlighted and click the create mask button at the bottom of the palette.
Fig 7.
Using a medium opacity black brush, paint back parts of the original photo. If you took away too much, then change back to white to bring your changes back.
