Here is the model, pretty or not?

Anyway, today I am not going to show you more photos of her, but I would like to show you how to use Photoshop to convert a photo into a pencil sketch masterpiece!

Okay, I know there are numerous ways to make it in Photoshop, but I will show you the easiest way with an acceptable result. Here we go, fire up Adobe Photoshop and open up your prettiest photo. After that follow the following guide.

1. Duplicate the photo by selecting Layer > Duplicate Layer.

2. Make sure the duplicated layer is selected and go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. This will remove all the color from the duplicated layer and turn it into black and white.

3. To make the end result better, we need to increase the contrast a little, go to
Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Drag the Contrast slider to the right to a value of about 20.

4. Once again, duplicate the desaturated layer (the black and white layer); make sure this new duplicated layer is selected, and then go to Image > Adjustments > Invert. This will make the photo into something like the following.

Okay, it does look a little weird, but worry not… the best is yet to come.

5. Now, change the blend mode to color dodge. This will make the photo almost completely white.

6. Here is the final step which will really turn the photo into a sketch. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Depending on the photo you are using, adjust he Radius setting to achieve the best sketch effect.

Here is the final result… does it look like it’s done by pencil sketching?

Okay, what if you wanted to have a colored sketch? No problem, let’s colorize our photo.

7. Duplicate the original layer (the original photo with color) and move it to the top of all the layers. Set its Blending Mode to Hard Light. Next, duplicate this layer, and set its Blending Mode to Color. Adjust the Opacity of this layer to achieve a more realistic effect…

Check out my colored sketch below.

I know there are other more convincing ways, but this quick hack is not too bad I guess. Haha… hope you enjoyed this Photoshop tutorial.

We need a suitable photo to start with, of course. I tried searching my photo archive for a cup of tea or coffee photo, but I couldn’t find any. Looks like I am not a tea or coffee person, but never mind, we just use a french fries photo first. Steam does arise from fries, doesn’t it?

That’s the original image, resized to 460 pixels width. Photo was taken in A&W fast food restaurant in IOI Mall.

You can see the cold fries doesn’t look very appetizing. Adding steam to food can instantly make it look more appetizing. So, by the end of this tutorial, the french fries should appear hot and very appetizing!

Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to do a cone shaped selection above your object, just like what you see in the picture above. After that, feather the selection with a value of about 8 (Select > Feather). Adjust this value accordingly, if your picture is larger, then use a larger value.

Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer). Make sure this is the active layer where you will be working on. Set your foreground and background palette colors to gray and white respectively. After that, cast some clouds on this new layer (Filter > Render > Clouds).

Okay, now you should get some forms of steam, but to make it more realistic we need to blur it a little with the motion blur tool (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur). Set the Angle to -80 and the Distance to 100px (again, adjust these values depending on your photo size).

Steam is of course very mobile and moves around and never rise in a uniform pattern. In order to look more natural and to give the impression of the steam diffusing, we distort it a bit. (Filter > Distort > Wave). Again, play around with the setting values until you achieve a reasonably good effect.

Now, the steam is taking shape nicely, but it’s still a bit harsh. Let’s soften it. In the Layers Palette, change the steam layer’s blending mode to Hard Light and lower the Opacity to about 85%.

To make the steam even more realistic, you could duplicate the steam layer, resize and distort it a bit, and play around with its placement a little to give your food that extra ummmph!

My french fries now look extra fresh and delicious. Let’s serve our hot french fries, shall we?!

I know you are dying to have beautiful blue color eyes just like famous celebrities such as Naomi Watts and Mel Gibsons. Their eyes are beautiful, aren’t they? OK, maybe you can’t have them naturally, but today, let me show you how to quickly change the color of your dull eyes to startling blue colors! Well, in Adobe Photoshop of course.

We will use one of the model I met in the recent PC Fair because she has big eyes.

Above is the original picture taken with Nikon’s prime lens. No flash was used to maintain the natural colors and nice bokeh effects.

Now, let’s zoom in to one of her eyes. Use the Lasso Tool to carefully select the iris of her eye. After one eye is done, do the same for the second eye, but this time make sure to press and hold the Shift key so that you will not lost your first selection on the first eye.

After the selections are done, it’s time to change the color. No, don’t use the paint bucket because that will flood fill the whole selection, instead of that, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. The Hue/Saturation dialog pops up.

Here, you simply need to slide the hue slider until you get the color you like. You can of course click on the Colorize checkbox, and try different amounts of Saturation and Lightness.

There, blue eyes!

Sometimes, you may want to purposely turn a colorful photo’s background into black and white tonnes, but leave the subject in the foreground in full color to produce some contrast. Of course, this will make the subject stand out more! This trick is especially good when we apply it on a picture of a pretty girl.

Let’s take one of the pictures I took during the recent PC Fair for example.

The above picture is the original, in striking colors. She’s a very beautiful girl, right? The background people are very disturbing, so we want to make them less obvious.

First, we need turn this picture into black and white. In Photoshop, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer.

In the Channel Mixer dialog box, click on the checkbox Monochrome to turn the picture into black and white instantly.

Okay, we have turned the picture into monochrome mode. Let’s reveal our subject – the pretty girl.

Make sure the Channel Mixer layer is selected in the Layers list. Select the Brush Tool and make sure the foreground color is Black.

Now, using the brush tool, carefully brush over the area in the monochrome picture where you want to reveal its original colors. If you colored wrongly, you can always undo (Control-Z), or change to white color and brush over the wrongly colored areas.

At more delicate areas, you may need to change to smaller brush sizes, and at bigger areas change to a bigger brush size to color more quickly.

That’s the result. Colored subject while the background is in black and white. Beautiful?

Photos taken under warm lights inside shopping centers always tend to produce too much warm colors. This might be good to normal eyes, but not to professional photographers. I received a few such comments from the photos of Amber Chia which I posted in a local photography forum which I participated in.

Take a look at the warm Amber Chia photo before any correction is done.

Of course, to counter this, photographers can use filters to correct those lighting conditions, but myself do not have one. Fear not, we can also seek help from Adobe Photoshop. I have just learned this Photoshop technique from some gurus in the photography forum which I will show you in this quick tutorial.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter.

Select a suitable photo filter to correct any unwanted lighting conditions, or simply to enhance any specific colors such as red, orange, yellow, magenta, brown, or blue. Just try out and experiment with the different filters, you will be amazed how quick and easy this is in changing the whole mood of the photo.

In my example here, I used Blue photo filter as the original photo was too warm. Blue adds some cold tones to the photo and thus counters the warm lightings.

See the result it creates. Compare this with the original photo above.

For easier comparisons. I put them the before, and after side by side. The after photo definitely looks more natural and better. You think so?

Cheers, and happy shooting.