See behind the scenes of digital retouching and get your photos manipulated. Leave a comment if you're feeling adventurous or have something to say. I do bite sometimes.
Photos that are good to begin with are a joy to retouch, it’s like cooking with quality ingredients. Just don’t get too excited and overdo it. Too much salt can ruin any meal.
This is what I had for dinner. Mouse over to see the Before:
Overall, I wanted her to look less like a hamburger and more like a carrot so I gave her beta-carotene. Her eyes were already beautiful and green but kind of dry looking and perhaps not green enough. A few drops of olive oil took care of that. And that was basically the recipe. I told you, very simple, yet very good.
Ok, enough of food talk, I’m getting hungry.
Spicy equals yummy,
Buikhu
Photo credit: Not published as per submitter’s request
Remember that one time I retouched a random photo without asking permission first? Well, guess what? Now she’s suing me.
Nah, I’m just kidding. She actually liked it and sent me a new photo voluntarily. She told me she couldn’t do a thing with it so I decided to give it a try. I soon realized she was right: this photo was so damn boring I almost fell asleep.
Take a look:
Yawn. But I wasn’t going to give up. After naps 3, 4 and 5 I finally got an idea. I wanted to go for the Indie Movie Look.
I think somebody is following her… And not just on Twitter.
P.S. Nine Inch Nails is doing something really cool! They are giving away their newest album, The Slip, for free. Yes, the full length album, there is no catch. It’s DRM free, too. I don’t usually listen to their music but I think what they are doing is awesome.
Hit the play button to listen to Discipline:
Hmm, this “P.S.” is almost longer than the actual post. How pathetic is that?
I’m often asked “How did you do that?” but I’m rarely able to provide an answer. The thing is, I don’t have a manual. Every photo has unique needs so my intuition is my only guide. What I am able to do, however, is provide a short time-lapse video.
Here is your chance to follow my intuition:
If that wasn’t your can of Pepsi, a traditional before and after Photoshop comparison is also available.
I don’t have time to be funny today but if you want to laugh and cry, listen to this Turkish (although sung in English) cover of The Beatles classic Yesterday. Please listen to the whole song, it gets better and better (worse and worse). It’s so bad it’s good.
Later,
Buikhu
Photo credit: Not published as per submitter’s request
P.S. If you have submitted a photo but haven’t seen it here yet, be patient and have a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.
I’ve always had a thing about grainy pictures. You don’t want to know why. No one I know seems to share this thing and therefore I’ve had to drill “grain is bad, noise is evil” into my head.
This brings us to today’s Photoshop task. A nice lady from Spain sent me a photo taken with a camera phone (two-megapixel Nokia 8600 Luna, if you care). Noise, grain and snow were all present. Yum!
After drooling over the photo for a moment, I knew what I had to do.
Fast forward a few hours and here’s the result:
My fixation wasn’t the only reason I decided to leave some of the graininess intact. Dramatic noise reduction often has the undesired side effect of making photos look like photorealistic drawings. That’s why you should never attempt to remove noise, but reduce it.
