pbds 501: photoshop experiments

learning photoshop

trying to perfect portraits

Dear 501 Class and other readers,

I’m going to go off on a tangent here about portraits. If you would like to skip it and just see my somewhat elementary techniques for making my portraits better, you are more than welcome, just scroll down to the numbered section!

The portrait is one of my favorite forms of photographic expression. Maybe it started when I was in high school and I went to see the Annie Leibovitz Women exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. I was struck by how fascinating I found pictures of people just standing there, not necessarily doing anything at all. A person’s humanity can be captured in a portrait if it is taken correctly, by someone with a keen eye.

Since moving to DC, I’ve kept my eyes open for portrait exhibits (and am lucky to work near the portrait gallery!). Richard Avedon’s Portraits of Power was an amazing exhibit. Each portrait is pretty much logistically the same—same size, same lighting, a studio shot with one person—but each person’s individual portrait tells you a little bit about them—through their eyes, through their wrinkles, through their expression. Robert Franks The Americans exhibit was similarly touching, BUT he has a very different style. His photos aren’t purely portraits, and his shooting style is different entirely. He is out in the streets and fields of the U.S., rather than in a studio. And, he often would “shoot from the hip,” holding his camera at his chest or other place, not up to his eye, to capture people candidly.

I haven’t quite learned the ins and outs of making my digital portraits as intimate and striking as I want them to be. But! Photoshop can help me make up for my lack of knowledge behind the lens. Here are a few techniques I've learned how to use in class that make my portraits a little better.

1. Remove extra stuff. Play with color. Blur background. I wanted to highlight Kelsey in this photo because she was blending into the background.

Remove stuff: I removed the people in the background and other miscellaneous objects to get the focus on Kelsey in the front. I selected bigger objects with a marquee tool, and then filled in the space with content-aware filler. For the smaller objects, I used the “band-aid brush.”

Play with color: I actually did a lot of this in Camera Raw, by manipulating specific colors. You can do that for color ranges in Photoshop. I downplayed the dominate colors (greens, yellows, blues) of the background, and played up the colors that Kelsey has (reds, browns). (You can do this in Photoshop using the Hue/Saturation menu by selecting specific colors.) I also played the Post Crop Vignette in Camera Raw to bring more focus to the center.

Blur the background: By blurring the background layer, you can further highlight the person in the portrait. I used the blur tool and put it on the biggest size.

Before & After

2. Select person. Play with color. Another way to highlight a person more specifically is to select them, make them their own layer, and then make different overall changes to their layer and the background layer.

Select person: Using the Quick Selection tool, I was able to select Kelsey in entirety I right-clicked on the selection and made a “Layer via copy.”

Play with color: I used the edited version from above to make this one, so Kelsey was already highlighted by having the extra removed and her adjusted colors. I decided to make the background almost sepia and keep her pretty saturated. I was able to do this by applying a warming Photo Filter in the Adjustments section. I also desaturated it a bit.

3. Giving a portrait the Lomo feel.

Lomography has become increasingly popular over the last 20 years (and for me the last year). It is characterized by hypersaturation, blurriness, and odd exposure due to the low-fidelity of the cameras themselves. It’s supposed to look this way, and perhaps its popularity is due to the counterpoint it provides to the high-quality and staged feel of many photos from digital slrs. In any case, lomography produces some awesome portraits and gives a vibrancy to its subjects that can’t be accomplished by digital cameras, UNLESS you know how to manipulate your photos in Photoshop to give them that feel. I followed the directions on this website and it turned out decent. I'm sure there are other things I could do to make it look more like a lomography photo. I'm going to have to look into it.

Quick tips: Use the curves tool to make the colors look more like those in a lomography photo. Make the line look like an S. Then, make a vignette. You can do this by making a rough circle with the lasso tool, inverse the selection, add a new adjustment layer-->levels. Adjust the middle level to around 50. Place a new layer on top, make it black. Go to blending mode, select the hue and change it to 40% opacity.

Before & After