These PS Tools Will Make Your Portraits Stand Out



















Simple portraits are beautiful and worthy of being shared online, but sometimes, they can look a bit boring.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to delete every portrait that looks too dull. Knowing how to enhance simple photos will:
  • Make you a better retoucher
  • Inspire you to find beauty even in the most insignificant places
  • Encourage you to get better at mastering simple themes and compositions
Before you’re even tempted to delete that rich collection of simple portraits, try to enhance them using these incredible Photoshop tools.

Patch Tool


If you look closely, you’ll notice that a few of the model’s blemishes and neck wrinkles are gone. Even though the patch tool might seem like an insignificant part of Photoshop, it will make your editing workflow easier.

This handy tool will patch up any blemishes on your model’s face. You can also use it to get rid of wrinkles, stray hairs, and facial hair. Simply draw over the area you’d like to fix and drag it to a clean patch of skin. I recommend dragging your selection horizontally, as this will create a more natural look.
I don’t recommend using this tool to fix large areas on your model’s skin. Dragging a very large selection away from its source will result in blurred, unflattering-looking skin like this:


Gradient Map

If your portraits are lacking in contrast, you don’t necessarily have to use Curves or Levels. Gradient Map, a tool that’s often overlooked, will make your portraits stand out within seconds.
Before you create a new layer, press D on your keyboard. This will set your colours to black and white.
 
You can also find Gradient Map in Image > Adjustments.
When you select Gradient Map, a small window will pop up. Make sure Dither and Reverse are unticked and click Okay. Then, change your layer mode to Soft Light and lower your layer’s opacity until the results don’t look too dramatic. Even though Gradient Map can look images look intense, you can use it to add a bit of contrast to your images without wasting a lot of time.
If you want to give your photos a more nostalgic feel, change your colours to something other than black and white.

You can either manually change your colours or choose from a few styles in the Gradient Map window. For this photo, I used a variety of tones to add both contrast and warmth to the image.


Screen Mode

Screen mode is a layer mode that’s often used to create double exposures. It can also be used to add reflections and textures to photos of all kinds.

The extra image, combined with the aforementioned Gradient Map tool, resulted in a portrait with lots of textures and vibrant colours.

For this to work, you need to have a variety of stock photos. You can either take them yourself or download them from a website like Pixabay or Unsplash. Use photos that have a lot of light and space, but also remain open to using photos with unusual compositions.
Place your stock photo over your portrait and change your stock photo’s layer mode to Screen. This will immediately brighten your entire image. If the effect is too dramatic, use the Curves or Levels tools to edit the stock photo only.
If you’re not satisfied with the results, use another image or add multiple photos to your portrait. There’s no limit to how much you can do when it comes to these “double exposures.”
Using these simple Photoshop tools, you’ll be able to enhance even the simplest of portraits. And the next time you’re tempted to delete that precious photo, open it in Photoshop and give it a chance to show its true potential.
Must Check Out Posts:


Erase unwanted objects and perfect your amazing photos!
Remove objects from photos with Photo Eraser is almost as easy as taking a shot. Now you can use this tool to erase undesirable objects from your pictures, such as tourists, watermarks, logos, texts, blemishes and other unwanted things without real photo-editing skills required at all.

The most powerful and professional data recovery software for Android that can restore deleted or lost contacts, photos, videos, audios, SMS, call logs, WhatsApp chat, Viber messages from any Android devices due to accidental deletion, virus attack, formatting. It supports all popular Android smartphones and tablets like Samsung, HTC, LG, Huawei, Motorola, Nexus, etc. In the meantime, you will be guided step by step if you never used this kind of tool before.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Photo Collage maker online tools & software

Image
When you come back from a trip and have tons of photos, I am sure you must have thought of one big photo which can have some of the memorable pictures together. Yes, I am talking about a Collage, and in this post, I will share  free Photo Collage makers . I will list online tools and software which can do the job for you. Rest assured that the collage you downloading or saving using these tools will not have any watermark. Free Photo Collage maker While these are free, they do have limitations. Some of them will not let you use all the templates, while some will only make you use a set of templates.  Since we have four in the list, use a combination of them to get desired results. Adobe Spark BeFunky Fotojet Photoscape We researched a lot of software, but most of them either limited or leave a watermark. We even downloaded software which claimed to have no limitations but turned out to have a trial period. So these are your best options. 1] Adobe Spark It is the be
Read more

Best Apps To Blur Background Of An Image On Android

Image
In this age of multiple cameras on smartphones,  portrait pictures  are the rage. While a lot of smartphones now have dedicated depth sensors to give you that crisp  bokeh effect , oftentimes than not, you might end up wanting the  blur  effect on a photo that you didn’t click using the built-in portrait mode. Thus, to help  add background blur  to your pictures, we’ve compiled a list of apps that can be used to create portrait mode shots even after having captured the photo in the past. CONTENTS Google Photos Snapseed Fabby — Photo Editor, Selfie Art Camera LightX Photo Editor & Photo Effects Photo Editor by Aviary Cymera Camera – Collage, Selfie Camera, Pic Editor PicsArt Photo Editor: Pic, Video & Collage Maker AirBrush: Easy Photo Editor AfterFocus Auto blur background – blur image like DSLR Google Photos Many of you might not know this but one of the easiest ways to add bokeh effect to almost any picture on your phone is by usin
Read more

How to Create Realistic Shadows for Product Photography in Photoshop

Image
If you’ve ever used Adobe Photoshop’s built-in Layer Styles tool as-is for creating drop shadows, you may have found it lacking in realism. Here’s a better way to add shadows to your product photography. A lot of the time I use Layer Styles for quick and dirty Photoshop jobs that are more about conveying the sense of depth or texture rather than really making it look lifelike when viewed close up. That’s where  Tony Roslund ’s quick tip comes in (with a hat tip to Aaron Nace from Phlearn). As a professional product photographer, he needs those high-quality shadows for his clients that can usually only be achieved by taking some extra steps. Rather than going to the Layer Styles route, Roslund shows us how to use multiple duplicate layers to build more complex and lifelike shadows. By stacking shadows, his examples also have all the benefits of being independent layers to mask or further refine. Have you tried creating realistic shadows in Photoshop before? Do you use the La
Read more