Fix-Me-Up
clara_swift posted a badly scanned photo earlier today and asked for peeps to fix it/iconise it. I complied (because I always do what Clara tells me to do) and then I thought I'd give a quick guide to how I approach the "fixing up" of photos.. you know, badly scanned photos, watermarked pictures and such.
Right, we start with a photo. This is part of the picture Clara posted. It's a good idea to keep the image at a fairly large size if you want to "fix it up" - you'll have a bigger canvas to play around with.
Step one: I copy the layer so I have two identical layers. Then I find the Blur tool, choose a reasonable size - you want it to be fairly small so you can work with details but not too small as to drive you insane. Start blurring the face in the copy layer. You'll want to blur the cheeks, the nose etc but leave in as many details as you can.
Gosh, looks scary, doesn't it? Don't worry. You are going to fix that with the Smudge tool. In the PhotoShop toolbar that looks like a finger smudging something. With the Smudge tool, the light touch is necessary. You also need to use it as though you were actually painting, so move your mouse as though you were painting with a brush and follow the lines of the face.
Then I flatten the layers (the copying was so you could always return to the original image) and resize the image to the size I want it. I sharpen the image with the Sharpen brush set at 17 per cent opacity.
Poor emo boy is terribly orange, so I hit Ctrl + U and lower the saturation to about -45. Right, then I go into Image > Adjustments > Variations and begin to play around with the hue variations. I know from colour theory that green cancels out red and so I cleverly assume that cyan does the same with orange. I also add some blue-ish tint to the poor lad. You may also want to play around with levels (also found under Image < Adjustments).
Then it's a matter of making it into an icon with brushes, accents, text etc. You can see he's been tampered with .. because I did this fairly quickly .. so you'll want to hide that by adding texture etc. You can achieve a less obvious fix-up by being more patient and using the tools in smaller sizes.
With watermarks I use smudge a lot plus Clone Stamp and a tiny bit of Healing Brush.
Right, we start with a photo. This is part of the picture Clara posted. It's a good idea to keep the image at a fairly large size if you want to "fix it up" - you'll have a bigger canvas to play around with.
Step one: I copy the layer so I have two identical layers. Then I find the Blur tool, choose a reasonable size - you want it to be fairly small so you can work with details but not too small as to drive you insane. Start blurring the face in the copy layer. You'll want to blur the cheeks, the nose etc but leave in as many details as you can.
Gosh, looks scary, doesn't it? Don't worry. You are going to fix that with the Smudge tool. In the PhotoShop toolbar that looks like a finger smudging something. With the Smudge tool, the light touch is necessary. You also need to use it as though you were actually painting, so move your mouse as though you were painting with a brush and follow the lines of the face.
Then I flatten the layers (the copying was so you could always return to the original image) and resize the image to the size I want it. I sharpen the image with the Sharpen brush set at 17 per cent opacity.
Poor emo boy is terribly orange, so I hit Ctrl + U and lower the saturation to about -45. Right, then I go into Image > Adjustments > Variations and begin to play around with the hue variations. I know from colour theory that green cancels out red and so I cleverly assume that cyan does the same with orange. I also add some blue-ish tint to the poor lad. You may also want to play around with levels (also found under Image < Adjustments).
Then it's a matter of making it into an icon with brushes, accents, text etc. You can see he's been tampered with .. because I did this fairly quickly .. so you'll want to hide that by adding texture etc. You can achieve a less obvious fix-up by being more patient and using the tools in smaller sizes.
With watermarks I use smudge a lot plus Clone Stamp and a tiny bit of Healing Brush.