Dr House by Macpulenta

Agent Smith by Timshinn

Bruce Springsteen by Jason Seiler

Nicolas Cage by PixelTribe

The Royal Tenenbaums by infernovball (actually one of my favourite artists Blake Loosli)

Qui gon by bangalore monkey

Bjork by shellyinez

Einstein by crazedude

Michael Stipe by YngveMartinussen

If you don’t like 50% grey as your background colour, and let’s be honest it can be a little dreary, you can alter the color if you want to. Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (PC) on any area of the artboard. A menu drops down that lets you fill the artboard with white, black, gray,or a custom color.

A feature I particularly like on Christophe’s site is the “making of” section where you can see how he works with images to create something somewhat fantastical yet realistic. Every time I look at his images I think, “I want to try that in Photoshop”. The following images are from Christophe’s site and they give an insight into his work process. In these pictures, young beautiful Barbie ages into older, still beautiful Barbie.

1. Create a new Photoshop document with a white background.

2. Select the Type tool from the tool bar and add some text. I used Centruy Gothic, bold style, size of 72 and tracking (spaces between the letters) of 100.

3. Double-click on the text layer to open up the Layer Style dialog box. Click on the word “Stroke” on the bottom left. Set the size to 10 px and set the Fill Type to Gradient. Don’t click OK yet.

4. Click on the Gradient dropdown box and choose the Black, White gradient.

5. Still in the Gradient Editor click on the Black Color Stop, then in the Location field type in 33%.

6. Click on the White Color Stop and in the Location field type 33%.

7. Click to the right of the white color stop to add a new one. The new color stop should be white by default. If it is not white, just double click on it to open the color picker to choose white.
Type 66% in the Location box.

8. Click once more to the right of the second white color stop. Double click on the new color stop and set the color to dark red #990000. Set the Location to 66%.

OK so that’s the special gradient created. You’ve removed the smooth transition from one color to the other producing three solid blocks of color which will make up the strokes.
Click OK.
9. Now back on the Layer Style dialog box, set the Style to Shape Burst. You will be able to see all of these changes on your initial text.

When you’re happy with how your text looks, click OK.
As I mentioned earlier, the text is fully editable so you can add more type and it will keep the layer style. Also by changing the color of your original text you can get some nice effects. For example, my original text was black, if I go back and change it to white, it looks like this.

You can also get some interesting effects by going back to the Stroke style and changing the thickness of the stroke. Here the stroke is 5 pixels with red type.

You can always go back to the Gradient Editor inside the Stroke effect and change or add color stops as in the steps 5 – 8 to get a wide variety of effects.

1. Open up the photograph that you want to frame. (This is a photograph I took in South Kerry in February. Yes February!) Set your Foreground and Background colors to black and white respectively by pressing D on the keyboard.

2. Press Ctrl + A (Windows) or Cmd + A (Mac) to put a selection around your whole image, then press Shift + Ctrl + J (Windows) or Shift + Cmd + J (Mac) to put your selection on its own layer.

3. Choose Image > Canvas Size and when the dialog box opens turn on the Relative checkbox and set the Canvas Extension Color to white. Now set the Width and Height for the size of your frame and matte. This is something that may require a little trial and error depending on the size of your photograph. You might need to try out a few different values with. For the image that I’m working on here, I set the Width and Height to 10 cm.

Click OK to add white space around your photo.

4. Create a new layer below your photo layer.
(Note the light gray border in these images is used to denote the edge of the Canvas and will not appear in your images.)

5. Now you’ll draw a selection larger than the photo and this will be the edge of the frame. Select the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and drag out a rectangular selection as large as you would like your frame to be.

Note: If you want to move your marquee while you’re dragging it, just hold down the space bar while the mouse button is still depressed. When you’ve moved it to where you want it, release the Space Bar and continue dragging.

6. Press X on the keyboard to set your Foreground color to white, and press Alt-Backspace (Windows) or Option-Delete (Mac) to fill this selection with white. Now press Control-D / Command-D to deselect.

Ok, so nothing appears to change at this point because you’ve added a white rectangle on top of a white background, but if you look at your layers palette, you’ll see the middle layer thumbnail has changed.

7. Now you’ll add a stroke to the edge of the middle rectangle. Click on the Layer Styles button on the bottom of the Layers Palette and choose Stroke from the drop down menu.

When the Layer Style dialog box opens, set the Size to 15 pixels, set the Position to Inside (by choosing Inside the edges stay nice and sharp) and choose a dark gray in the Color Picker.

Note: Again you may have some trial and error with the Size value. It really depends on how large your image is and how thick you want the stroke to be.

Don’t click OK yet.

8. You’ll add some depth now by creating a very subtle inner shadow in the upper left corner of the middle rectangle, so click on the words Inner Shadow on the left hand side of the Layer Style dialog box.

Set the Opacity to 50% and uncheck the Use Global Light checkbox. Set the angle to approximately 140 degrees and set Distance and Size to 10.

Click OK to add the Stroke and the Inner Shadow.

9. On the Layers palette, click on the Create a New Layer icon. This time you’re creating a small matte between your photograph and your frame. Select the Rectangular Marquee tool again and draw a marquee slightly bigger than your photograph.

10. Now you’ll fill this selection with white by pressing Alt + Backspace / Option + Delete. The press Ctrl + D / Cmd + D to deselect everything. Once again, there is nothing new to see in the image because you have added a white box over a white background.

11. Click on the Add A Layer Style icon on the Layers palette and choose Inner Glow from the drop down menu.

When the dialog box opens, change the Blend Mode pop-up menu to Normal, lower the Opacity to about 30%, then click on the color swatch and change the glow color to black in the Color Picker.

When you click OK, a soft shadow is added to the layer giving the impression of an inner matte.

Now to finish up, you’ll add a soft drop shadow to the frame (the layer with the stroke and inner shadow already on it). Click on that layer and then choose Drop Shadow from the Add a Layer Style pop-up menu.

Set the Opacity to about 30%, turn off the Use Global Light checkbox, increase the Size (which is the softness of the shadow) to 70 pixels, and then click OK. (Note: If you’re working with low resolution images, decrease the Size setting.)

Your final image should look something like this:

You can of course play around with the size of the frame, the size of the inner matte and the colors to get different effects for your online portfolio, gallery or images on your website.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to use these tools to remove some wrinkles from an elderly lady’s face. To ensure that we get a realistic result we’ll firstly duplicate the background layer and carry out all changes on this duplicate layer. On completion of retouching, we’ll use the two layers together to get a more natural look.

Retouching on a separate layer

One way to protect your original image is to do your retouching work on a duplicate layer of the original image. Then, you can retouch the duplicate layer. When you finish retouching, you can blend the two layers. This technique usually enhances the results, making your retouching work look more natural and realistic.

The Healing Brush tool uses sample pixels from an image to let you correct imperfections. The amazing thing about the Healing Brush is that it also matches the lighting, shading, texture and transparency of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed. It results in a very natural looking image.

1. Open up the image that you want to retouch. I’m working on a portrait photograph of an older lady.

2. In the Layers palette, click on the Background layer and then press Ctrl+J /Cmd + J to create a duplicate layer. Double-click the new layer (called Layer 1), and rename it Repairs and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS). Leave this new layer selected (highlighted in blue).

4. In the toolbox, select the Healing Brush tool , which may be hidden under the Patch tool .

5. On the tool options bar, open the Brush pop-up palette and set the brush diameter to a suitable size – you need it to be big enough to cover wrinkle lines – I chose 12 pixels. Close the palette and select the Aligned check box. Leave the other settings at their defaults ( Normal selected as the Mode option and Sampled selected for Source). Note: I have recently updated the screengrabs on this tutorial to CS5, but the options are almost identical on previous versions.

Notice the two wrinkles running horizontally across the man’s forehead. (Zoom in if necessary.)

6. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click a smooth area of the forehead, on the left side of the image, to set the sample point. Then, drag the Healing Brush tool over the lower of the two forehead wrinkles.

As you drag, you’ll notice that the painted pixels don’t exactly match the subject’s natural skin tones. When you release the mouse button, however, the colours correct themselves so that the wrinkle is covered and the skin looks quite natural.

7. Continue painting with the Healing Brush tool to remove the upper forehead wrinkle and the furrow line between the eyebrows.

Patching and softening

The Patch tool combines the selection behavior of the Lasso tool with the colour-blending properties of the Healing Brush tool. With the Patch tool, you can select an area that you want to use as the source (area to be fixed) or as the destination (area used to do the fixing). Once you’ve made your selection then you drag the Patch tool marquee to another part of the image. When you release the mouse button, the Patch tool completes the job. Make sure that the Retouch layer is selected in the Layers palette before you continue.

1. In the toolbox, select the Patch tool (), hidden under the Healing Brush tool ().

2. Drag a marquee around the wrinkles under the eye using the Patch tool.

Move the Patch tool inside the selected area and drag it to a smooth, similarly toned area on the forehead. Let go of the mouse key and voila! Wrinkles removed. It’s going to look a bit weird before you release the mouse but once you do, you should see a nice patch of smooth skin under her eyes. You’ll notice that the marquee stays active over the repaired area, ready to be dragged again, either to another area that needs patching (if the Destination option is selected) or to another sampling site (if the Source option is selected).

3. Continue to use the same technique to erase the wrinkles under the other eye.

4. Touch up other parts of the subject’s face with the Patch tool until most of the wrinkles are hidden, or at least softened.

It’s very important that cosmetic touchups on the human face look as natural as possible. To make sure that things are looking too smooth or plastic looking, we’re going to reduce the opacity on the repairs layer so that we can see a few of the wrinkles coming up from the bottom layer.

5. In the Layers palette, change the Opacity value of the Retouch layer to about 60%. Now, hints of the heaviest skin creases appear in the image – a bit more realism. The lady should have at least A FEW wrinkles!

6. Click the eye icon in the layers panel to toggle the Repairs layer on and off. You should see a fairly large difference between the original image (on the right below) and the retouched one (on the left below).

And there you have it. Now to apply this to myself in real life : )

Anyhoo, this is all leading somewhere, and that’s to a short Illustrator tutorial on how to make Spirograph type spirals using Illustrator.

1. Create a new document, I set mine up at 600 x 600 pixels

2. Set the Fill colour to empty and the Stroke colour to greeny-blue #04ACB5. Draw out a square using the Rectangle Shape tool, hold down Shift to ensure it’s a perfect square.

  
3. Select the Convert Anchor tool (hidden under the Pen tool), then click and drag on the top left anchor point of the square so the corner inverts itself.

4. Repeat step 3 until all four corners are inverted like this:

5. Select the whole object and choose Object > Transform > Rotate. Set the Angle to 5 degrees and then click Copy. This leaves your original square in place and makes a duplicate and rotates by 5 degrees.

You should see something like this:

6. Now here’s the repetitive but fun part that makes the pattern. Instead of going back up to the menu and repeating the process, just use the shortcut Ctrl + D (win) Cmd + D (Mac), and keeping pressing it over and over.

7. And over and over and over, until you get a pattern that you like

You can make all kinds of Spirograph patterns using this exact method. All you need to do is start off with an interesting shape and then vary the angle of rotation.

In the example below, I started an ellipse in dark red, then copied and rotated at 10 degrees.

In this one I started with a ten pointed star, rotated the duplicate by 5 degrees and alternated the colours between purple and greeny-yellow.

There you have it. Did you have Spirograph as a child? Still miss it occasionally?

1. Make sure that you have two images open – the one you want to clone from and the one you want to clone to.

2. Select the Clone Tool (S) and Alt + Click (windows) or Option + Click (mac) on the first image to select a sample point.

3. Switch over to image you want to clone onto and start painting.

The toy model look has become a very popular photo effect in recent times. It tends to work best on photographs taken from a height such as a shot from a window or a bridge. The high viewing angle helps to give the impression that you’re looking down on a toy model.

1. Open up your picture in Photoshop. This is an aerial picture of Paris I downloaded from Stock Xchng. You can get it here http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1195352

2. We’re going to use the Quick Mask mode in Photoshop, together with the Gradient Tool to create a selection.
Press Q to jump into Quick Mask Mode. Reset the Foreground and Background colours to black and white by pressing D. Your colour picker in the toolbar should look like this:

3. Select the Gradient tool in the tool bar. It may be hidden under the Paint Bucket tool. On the Options bar at the top of the screen, click on the Reflected Gradient icon and click on the Reverse checkbox further to the right.

4. Now with the Gradient, click and drag on the picture from the point that you want to be in focus downwards. You may find you have a bit of trial and error with this step. You should now see a red mask appear over your photograph. The parts of the image that will remain in focus are the clear parts, while the red parts will be blurred.

5. Press the letter Q again, to turn off Quick Mask mode. You should now see a horizontal rectangular selection in the area that was clear in Quick Mask mode. This will be the part that is in focus.

6. Go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. On the dialog box which opens, under Depth Map, click the Invert checkbox so that a check appears in the box. In the Iris section, choose Hexagon (6) from the Shape and for Radius drag the slider to somewhere between 35 and 40. Once you change the Radius, you’ll see the Toy model effect start to happen. Finally set the Specular Highlights Brightness to 50.

7. Click OK to apply the blurring and then press Ctrl + D (windows) or Cmd + D (mac) to deselect.
You should find that your picture looks a bit like a photograph of a toy model. This effect looks really great if there are cars or people in the picture, as they suddenly look like miniatures. Here’s the final picture.