PhotoShop Classroom Exercise

Using Layers to Enhance Photos, Part 2

In this project, you will take the picture of the girl in the garden, and give her a playmate. We'll use Layers, the Stamp tool and a Layer Mask. If you like, you can use the keyboard shortcuts that I give throughout the project. If you prefer the toolbox, you are responsible for knowing where each tool is located.

Open two images

You know, it almost doesn't matter which two images you open. I recommend this exercise at home: Open any two or three images, at random, and find interesting ways to combine them. In the classroom, we used the finished image of the girl in the garden, and cloned a little boy into the garden to play with her. (Actually, I think he's about to pull her hair.) The little boy is on your textbook's CD, PhotoShop Bible 5 CD, Stock Photos > Photo Disk > Signature Series
> Children, Ss03090.
 
 

Color and brightness adjustments

The first step is to look at your images and decide whether they have any problems. Looking at the image of the little boy, it strikes me that his coloring is cooler than the light in the little girl's image. He is also much too dark. So we need to adjust both the light and the color.
  1. Crop the white space off the bottom of the image. It doesn't matter to our project whether it is there or not, but the large amount of white will affect the Levels reading.
  2. Open the Levels dialog box (Ctrl-L, or Image > Adjust > Levels.)
  3. Look at the histogram. You can see the pixels in this image are grouped at the dark end of the scale. There should be some black in the histogram, because the area behind the boy's head is black, but there should be a nice sampling of colors across the rest of the scale, too.
  4. Move the slider at the white end until the image looks lighter, but don't bleach the color out of the baby's head. You should still see flesh tones, even on the highlight of his forehead.
  5. Move the center slider back to the right a little. You will have to decide where the settings look best to you. Do Not over adjust.
  6. (I started with 0, 1.27, 234, but adjusted the values several times.)
  7. Above the slider you will see a small window, labeled Channel. The channel we are looking at is the RGB channel - a combination of the Red, Blue and Green information. In the Levels dialog box we can adjust the amount of data in each of the channels.
  8. You now have to remember that Red is opposite Cyan, Blue is opposite Yellow, and Green is opposite Magenta. When you add one of these colors, you are subtracting its opposite. When you subtract one of them, you are adding its opposite.
  9. For example, if you take green out of the picture, it will become more magenta. If you add yellow, you will be removing blue. Look at the image of the little boy and decide what colors you think it needs more or less of.
  10. Select each of the channels in turn, and add or subtract color as you think best. When the little boy looks like he might inhabit the same garden as the little girl, you are ready. This is subjective - there aren't any absolutely right or wrong settings, as long as the effect is pleasing. You will probably want to go from one channel to another, several times, until you have the adjustment the way you want it. Remember, you can select portions of the image and adjust them individually. For example, if the denim pants are too dark, but the baby's head is too light, select and adjust separately. Remember, the background is not going to be painted into the girl's garden, so it doesn't matter whether you select parts of it.

Outline for selection.

You can create a selection like this, adjust the child's skin tones, then inverse the selection and adjust the denims.

Cloning the boy into the garden

You will now paint the little boy into the garden, using the clone (Stamp) tool.
  1. Create a new layer.
  2. Choose the Stamp tool (S).
  3. BE SURE  ALIGN IS TURN ON, and opacity is 100% on the options palette.
  4. Alt-click on the boy's nose.
  5. Paint him into the garden, being certain that you are putting him on his own layer.

 

Using a Layer Mask

When you have the little boy stamped (cloned) onto his own layer, you will need to get rid of the background from his original image, that still surrounds him. We will use a layer mask. A layer mask is like a quick mask, except that the parts that are masked will disapper immediately. You can paint them back into visibility, or paint them invisible again.
  1. Click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. It looks like a circle, and is the icon farthest to the left.
  2. Look at the Layers palette, and notice that the thumbnail of the boy's layer now has a second thumbnail image. This represents the mask. Where it is painted white, you can see the paint. Where it is painted black, the painted pixels are invisible.
  3. Be sure you have the Paintbrush (B), Default colors (D), at 100% opacity (press zero to get 100%). Start painting over the background that surrounds the boy. If it isn't disappearing, switch your foreground and background colors (press X).
  4. When you want to paint something in, paint with white. When you want to paint something out, paint with black.
  5. Note that when you are painting on the mask, the mask icon will appear beside the thumbnail. If you are painting on the image, a paintbrush appears there.
  6. When the boy looks realistically as though he is in the garden with the girl, Flatten the image (Layers > Flatten Image).
  7. To frame the image, Select All (Ctrl-A), then click Edit > Stroke > 15 pixels.
  8. You can Save A Copy in the jpg format.

Christine C. Frey
cfrey@erols.com 1