Even good photographs can benefit from retouching in Photoshop.
Using Photoshop to retouch photographs used to be considered cheating by professionals. But it was soon embraced as a tool to make good photographs even better. Retouching photographs can bring out the areas you want viewers to focus on while removing any unwanted elements in the photograph.
Correcting Red Eye
Photoshop has its own red-eye tool, but there are a few tips to make it more effective. First duplicate the main photo's layer. Select the red-eye tool. The best settings to apply for this tool are 50 percent for pupil size and 70 percent for the darken amount. This will perform a basic red-eye correction. Change the copied layer's blending mode to "Difference." Merge all visible layers into one new layer so that you have a total of three layers. Delete the background copy layer. Now set the black and red layer's blending mode to "Difference."
Straightening Photos
There are many occasions when you might want to straighten a photo. Either the photo was taken at an awkward angle or perhaps it was scanned slightly skewed. Straightening in Photoshop CS 5 is extremely straightforward. Open the photo that you need to straighten and crop. Select the ruler tool. Now find a line that should either be straight horizontally or vertically. Click at one end of the line and drag as far to the other side as you can. Photoshop will then straighten the image and crop any left over white space at the corners.
Improving Skin
This is especially good for high-resolution portraits. Duplicate the background layer. Apply a 10-pixel radius to a gaussian blur effect. Open the Blending Options window. In Advanced Blending, disable red and green blending options, leaving only the blue channel. Duplicate the layer again and use the healing brush tool to remove any obvious marks or blemishes. Create a new layer and select all of the skin. Hold "Alt" and deselect the lips, nostrils, eyebrows and eyes. Apply another gaussian blur at 75 percent opacity, this time with a 20-pixel radius. Apply a "High Pass" filter with a radius of four. Activate the linear light blending mode, and set opacity of the active layer to 40 percent.
Reducing Wrinkles
This can be used to remove any wrinkles caused or worsened by bad lighting. Create a new empty layer. Choose the healing brush tool, not to be confused with the spot healing brush tool. Change the tool's layer sampling settings from "Current Layer" to "All Layers." Uncheck the "Aligned" setting. Hold "Alt" and click on an area of skin to sample from. Release "Alt" and use the healing brush to color the wrinkle to be removed. Photoshop will automatically blend the colors.
