WS Toolbox: Kevin Kubota
Tuesday January 17, 2006 by Kevin Kubota
I loved the romantic feel of this image, and the way her beautiful pearl necklace fell away from her body as he leaned in to kiss her. It needed a romantic, dramatic feel – something timeless…antique maybe.
To create this image, I used a combination of techniques that are part of my everyday Action Paks. Actions are recordings of steps that you can replay on any image in Photoshop – saving valuable time everyday. You can actually add years to your life by becoming an action junkie! (*Actual life expectancy not guaranteed).
I started with a technique that adds a romantic glow, and intensifies the color and tone of the image – part of the technique that is included in my Lord of the Rings action. I then added my favorite B&W conversion to the image, but lowered the opacity of the adjustment layer to fade the B&W effect – giving the image an antique feeling.
Try these techniques in combination on your own images, but you can also use the glowing and B&W steps separately. Exciting new combinations can evolve when you blend tech-niques together, as I’ve done here.
Here’s the original image. It’s great, but I want to Tweak it!
The first thing to do (with most any image) is to address any retouching needs. I want to do a little digital liposuction on the area above her dress line.
Use Filter>Liquify and the Forward Warp tool with settings as shown. Push gently on the areas to minimize. Use as few strokes as necessary to reach the desired result.
The finished liquified image
Now, we’ll add a nice glow to the image by selecting just the highlights, copying them to their own layer, and applying the gaussian blur filter to that separately from the main image. This helps to preserve image detail and clarity.
View the Channels palette.
CMD-Click (Ctrl-click on a PC) on the RGB image icon, this loads just the highlights and some of the midtones as an instant selection.
Copy the highlights to a layer of its own by using Layer > New > Layer via Copy.
To give the image a nice glowing appeal, apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the highlights layer using settings as shown. You can adjust this to taste and you may need a larger radius setting for higher resolution images.
Next, we’ll increase the intensity and punch in the image with what I call a Radiance layer.
Add a new Levels adjustment layer as shown. Do not change anything in the levels dialog box, simply click OK.
Change the layer blending mode to Overlay by clicking in the popup menu that says “Normal”. Notice how the image becomes punchy and intensified.
The color is punchy all right, but a little over-saturated. This is ok, because we’re going to add a B&W adjustment layer anyway. I’m going to apply my special B&W conversion technique that uses a Gradi-ent Map adjustment layer. The effect is a beautiful warm monotone. Then I’ll fade the B&W layer a bit to give the image the antique look.
Add a Gradient Map adjustment layer.
In the Gradient Map dialog box, click anywhere inside the gradient to edit it.
In the Gradient Editior, click on the 3rd preset: Black to White. This is our starting point for a B&W image.
Next, click UNDER the grayscale, near the middle. This will set a Color Stop for the mid-tones, allowing you to change the color that applies to mid-tones in the image.
Now, double-click on the Color Stop you just set to bring up the color picker dialog box:
In the Color Picker, enter the numbers as shown in the L.a.b. boxes. This will set a medium tone, with a slightly warm grey color value. Click OK to close the Color Picker.
Now we want to change the tonal scale of the image. So, we’ll move the Color stop from the middle, where it is, to the left. Just click on it and drag. Stop when the Location box reads about 41. Fine tune this to your taste.
Ok the Gradient Editor dialog box to close it when you see the tonality you like. Ok the next Gradient Map box to close it too.
After converting the image to B&W, you may want to stop here if you like the look. But we’re going to continue and give it a modern antique feel. The beauty of creating your B&W images with an adjustment layer is that you can easily experiment with this technique to see if you like it on a particular image, and restore it to pure B&W just as easily if you prefer.
Make sure your gradient map adjustment layer is still selected, then lower the opacity of the layer to approximately 70%. Feel free to adjust to taste.
The image is looking good, but I want to bring back a little more clarity in certain key areas that were affected by the glowing step we added earlier. Normally I would do this around the eyes and mouth, but here I want to bring it back on the necklace hanging from her back and on her earrings. I’ll create a layer mask on the glow layer (layer 1) then paint with a soft black brush where I want complete sharpness restored.
Select Layer 1, the glow layer, then add a layer mask to it by clicking the Add Layer Mask icon.
Select the brush tool, with Black as the foreground color. Adjust the size of the brush to match the area you wish to work on and reduce the edge hardness to 0.
“Paint” along the desired areas to restore the sharpness from the original image below. Re-member: when you paint with Black on a layer mask, you are essentially “Blocking” that part of the layer – allowing the lower layer(s) to show through.
I painted around the pearl drop, up the chain, and over the earrings.
Finally, the image needs some sharpening to make it ready for print. I used the new Smart Sharpen filter in Photoshop CS2.
Use Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.
Apply settings as shown: you may want to increase the radius if you have a higher resolution image. Be careful not to over-sharpen, a little less is more when it comes to digital sharpening tools.
Final Image
The final image has a nice dramatic look that fits the romantic feeling of the moment. When the previous steps are saved as actions, the complete process only takes seconds to complete!
Kevin Kubota specializes in weddings and portraiture and teaches popular Digital Workshops, including the classic Digital Photographers Bootcamp™. His latest book, under the same name, is published by Amherst Media. It is available from his training website, along with his popular Action sets, RAW Workflow System, and other essential digital training programs. For more information visit: www.KubotaImageTools.com.
