Need advice on touching up photos

About the dodge and burn tools. I never use them. IMO, a better way to go about that is to create an overlay layer and fill it completely with 50% gray. Then, use the airbrush tool to paint black or white onto that layer. You can vary the opacity of the brush to get different brightness levels. If you don't like one, just paint back over it with 50% gray and it's just like new.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Another advantage to my way is that it is completely non-destructive, and also undoable and alterable at any time because it is on a separate layer. If you're working on an image and half an hour later you find you don't like the way you dodged or burnt something, just go back into the overlay layer and change it!

Double Post:

How about this:



I used the magic wand tool to select the sky, since most of it was a solid color that contrasted sharply with the man and the background. The tolerance was 30. Whatever was selected improperly I fixed manually. Most of the sky itself was already at 255, so there was no way to get any of it back, so I cloned in a sky from one of my own photographs, and adjusted the levels to match the level of haze and sunlight in the picture. I then used the quick mask tool to select the pirate, adjusted his levels, inversed the selection, and the applied a lens blur filter to the image. Then I went into LAB color mode and adjusted the curves to enhance the colors a little. I then used some of my photokit sharpener tools to selectively sharpen and bring out certain parts of the pirate.



This one was easy. I just reduced the level of green in levels, than used a nifty little technique called "Local Contrast Enhancement" to increase the local contrast between the fish. It's simple. Just go to the Unsharp Mask dialogue and set the radius to around 30-50, and the amount around 20-60, and there you go. It produces better contrast between small areas than just increasing the contrast. I noticed that the LCE blew out the highlights on the white area of sunlight underneath the fish, so I went back and did the LCE on a seperate layer, and then went into the Blending Options dialogue and dragged the highlight slider down, so that it didn't affect the highest highs.



I took some liberties with this one, heh.

And there you have it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Heh, thanks. If you ever need help, just post here, or PM me.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Ulysses

Lots of nice work here. Only problem is the way you guys have been editing the photo of the pirate statue. That round whitish object to the right of the pirate is clearly in the foreground, yet all of you have blurred it as though it is in the distance, attempting to simulate depth of field. That ruins the illusion for me sadly. You could put it on a separate layer with a very mild blur, but i'd estimate that object to be no more than a few metres behind the pirate at most.

Yeah, but depth of field can be varied. Perhaps my interpretation just has a wider aperture. It was adjusted so that the DOF encompasses just the pirate. I know that is how I would have composed the shot if I had been there.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?