Hello All,
I took some photographs the other day of please forgive me... a person, ok not exactly nature photography. But since this is the only photography forum I belong to, and there are some photoshop experts, I thought I would ask.
Here's my problem, I'm using Elements 7.0. My subject has dark circles under his eyes. Is there an easy way to get them to fade without looking blotchy? I tried selecting the area with the magic wand and then adjusting shadows, but it looks very unmatched with the rest of his face. HELP!!!
The rwo thoughts that immediately come to mind would be the burn/dodge tool to light the area or the clone tool with a light setting.
I never remember if it is the burn or dodge tool you really want. One lighten and the other darkens. Set it at 100% and it will be pretty obvious if you picked the correct one.
For the clone tool, use a softer brush. There is a setting in there which allows for a sharply delineated clone or allows for the edges to softly fade. It is the ones that look fuzzy on the tool settings.
Regardless of which one you pick, you want to set the opaqueness very low, maybe 1-5% and do multiple passes to "build up" the tone to where you want it.
If you use the magic wand, under Select you'll want to set the feather to some number depending on the size of the region you are working with. This allows your cloned area to fade into the orginal area you are clongin over. 3-5 pixels is a good starting point, not see the image.
Sorry if what I wrote isn't real clear, Hopefully someone else can do a better job of explaning it.
First, create a copy of your background layer: >Layer>Layer Via Copy. That way, if you don't like the result, you can toss the layer in the trash, and try again.
If you want to lighten an area, use the 'dodge' tool and select the little 'airbrush' icon on the tool bar; this will give a nice smooth dodge. Set the tool to dodge shaadows. Choose an appropriate brush size and shape, and then, using a low opacity setting, say, 3-5%, paint the area(s) you want to lighten, as Dan suggests.
The magic wand may be difficult to use, and the selection may include areas of the same color that you do not want to change.
Another option is to use the selection tool to select the areas you want to change. Ensure that you feather the selection by a few pixels. Save the selection as a channel and then use a curves adjustment adjustment layer to adjust the values of the selected areas.
Either of these technoques will take some time to get it right, so you'll need to be patient.
-P
Posted by John Mumaw on August 1, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Try using the Healing Brush on a duplicate copy of the image.
Sample from an area of the face that's not shadowed.
Hey, next time try using a VERY little bit of flash with your ambient light. Adjust the flash setting way down low! This may throw just enough light to get rid of the shadows (unless the guy has tow black eyes after a fight !) without messing with the rest of the exposure. Lots of this depends if you are doing a grab shot or whether it is a composed image. If it is a composed image, you may want to put a reflector at their feet with a little angle so some extra ambient light is thrown upwards. But you have to check and be sure it does not cause shadows the other way or in a wrong wrong way for the image! This isn't Photoshop, but it helps stop having to use Photoshop!
To do non-destructive dodge and burn, try this. Make sure that white is the foreground color and black is the background color. You can do this easily by clicking the small white/black icon at the bottom of the toolbar - this will set the colors to black and white. Then you make sure that the where the larger squares are the white square is above and to the left of the black one. If they are not set up this way, above and to the right of the two large squares there is a small double-headed arrow that will reverse them.
Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray. Set the blend mode to overlay or soft light. Then while targeting that layer and using white, paint over the area you want to lighten with a small brush, set to 10% opacity and 30% flow. Anything that you paint with white will lighten. If you make a mistake you can always paint the area with 50% gray to return it to neutral. If you want to darken certain areas, then you would use black.
A variation would be to set black as the foreground and white as the background, and use the dodge and burn tool. Dodge to lighten and burn to darken.
The nice thing about working on a 50% gray layer is that if you are not at all happy with the results you can always toss the layer and start again. You might want to experiment with the contrast enhancing blending modes - overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light.
Back in the days of wet processing and enlarging, you used a negative in a holder and projected the image onto photo sensitive paper. The longer you exposed the paper to the light coming through the negative, the darker the final print would be. So clear or almost clear areas in the negative would appear as black or dark shadows. Highlights would appear and dense areas on the negative. If you wanted to keep the shadows from getting too dark, while making sure that the highlights got enough exposure to show detail, the common technique was to wave your hand or a piece of cardboard cut out to the rough shape of the shadow area in the path of the light in order to hold back the exposure of the dark areas relative to the lighter areas. This was called dodging. It was meant for small areas of the print. The reverse was also possible - you could cup your hands or make a hole in a piece of cardboard to make a rough shape which could allow light to fall on small specific areas of the print while holding back the other areas. This was called burning. It was a crude but highly effective way of enhancing contrast and retaining shadow detail. Any photographer with their salt was good at doing this. That's where the terms dodge and burn come from.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 2, 2009 at 6:21 PM
Go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and search for "photoshop dark circles". You'll get all kinds of tutorials and tips on doing exactly what you're asking. It's a pretty common thing to do.
Posted by Don Hanson on August 28, 2009 at 1:16 PM
I don't know if you are still working on this, but John is on the right track (hey Doc! )
I like to put an empty layer over the base, set the layer merge mode to "lighten"; then use the clone tool with "sample all layers" set.
use a soft edged brush, and sample the skin immediately below the the problem and then click on the problem area and it should start to disappear. when you are done, start pulling back on the opacity slder for the patch layer a bit.
Discussion
7 repliesI took some photographs the other day of please forgive me... a person, ok not exactly nature photography. But since this is the only photography forum I belong to, and there are some photoshop experts, I thought I would ask.
Here's my problem, I'm using Elements 7.0. My subject has dark circles under his eyes. Is there an easy way to get them to fade without looking blotchy? I tried selecting the area with the magic wand and then adjusting shadows, but it looks very unmatched with the rest of his face. HELP!!!
Thank you!
I never remember if it is the burn or dodge tool you really want. One lighten and the other darkens. Set it at 100% and it will be pretty obvious if you picked the correct one.
For the clone tool, use a softer brush. There is a setting in there which allows for a sharply delineated clone or allows for the edges to softly fade. It is the ones that look fuzzy on the tool settings.
Regardless of which one you pick, you want to set the opaqueness very low, maybe 1-5% and do multiple passes to "build up" the tone to where you want it.
If you use the magic wand, under Select you'll want to set the feather to some number depending on the size of the region you are working with. This allows your cloned area to fade into the orginal area you are clongin over. 3-5 pixels is a good starting point, not see the image.
Sorry if what I wrote isn't real clear, Hopefully someone else can do a better job of explaning it.
First, create a copy of your background layer: >Layer>Layer Via Copy. That way, if you don't like the result, you can toss the layer in the trash, and try again.
If you want to lighten an area, use the 'dodge' tool and select the little 'airbrush' icon on the tool bar; this will give a nice smooth dodge. Set the tool to dodge shaadows. Choose an appropriate brush size and shape, and then, using a low opacity setting, say, 3-5%, paint the area(s) you want to lighten, as Dan suggests.
The magic wand may be difficult to use, and the selection may include areas of the same color that you do not want to change.
Another option is to use the selection tool to select the areas you want to change. Ensure that you feather the selection by a few pixels. Save the selection as a channel and then use a curves adjustment adjustment layer to adjust the values of the selected areas.
Either of these technoques will take some time to get it right, so you'll need to be patient.
-P
Sample from an area of the face that's not shadowed.
Troup
Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray. Set the blend mode to overlay or soft light. Then while targeting that layer and using white, paint over the area you want to lighten with a small brush, set to 10% opacity and 30% flow. Anything that you paint with white will lighten. If you make a mistake you can always paint the area with 50% gray to return it to neutral. If you want to darken certain areas, then you would use black.
A variation would be to set black as the foreground and white as the background, and use the dodge and burn tool. Dodge to lighten and burn to darken.
The nice thing about working on a 50% gray layer is that if you are not at all happy with the results you can always toss the layer and start again. You might want to experiment with the contrast enhancing blending modes - overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light.
Back in the days of wet processing and enlarging, you used a negative in a holder and projected the image onto photo sensitive paper. The longer you exposed the paper to the light coming through the negative, the darker the final print would be. So clear or almost clear areas in the negative would appear as black or dark shadows. Highlights would appear and dense areas on the negative. If you wanted to keep the shadows from getting too dark, while making sure that the highlights got enough exposure to show detail, the common technique was to wave your hand or a piece of cardboard cut out to the rough shape of the shadow area in the path of the light in order to hold back the exposure of the dark areas relative to the lighter areas. This was called dodging. It was meant for small areas of the print. The reverse was also possible - you could cup your hands or make a hole in a piece of cardboard to make a rough shape which could allow light to fall on small specific areas of the print while holding back the other areas. This was called burning. It was a crude but highly effective way of enhancing contrast and retaining shadow detail. Any photographer with their salt was good at doing this. That's where the terms dodge and burn come from.
I like to put an empty layer over the base, set the layer merge mode to "lighten"; then use the clone tool with "sample all layers" set.
use a soft edged brush, and sample the skin immediately below the the problem and then click on the problem area and it should start to disappear. when you are done, start pulling back on the opacity slder for the patch layer a bit.