Video Training Review: Portrait Magic with Susi Lawson - Page 2

Cover Girl (two videos) begins in Photoshop to work with masking layers to set up a portrait by darkening out the background, cleaning up the imperfections, adjusting the skin, and adding highlights to hair. Then the switch is made to Painter to add more creative effects to the image. Here you will add stars, pixie dust, and other techniques to make a creative image.

Dragonizer is an action that has become popular online that adds use automation to perform image enhancements and add a lot of impact to your image. In this video, after blacking out the background, you essentially run the action and it walks you through the steps of the dragonizer. There are times that you can make adjustments to your liking but all-in-all this lesson shows you how to create a unique group image.

Girl (two videos) takes what would be a very ordinary snapshot and converts it into a portrait-like image. Here you will see how to recreate even the most ordinary background into a very convincing scene in Painter. Next you will learn how to fix skin tones. You will see how to correct faces when they are in shadows. You will also see how to fix portraits by adding hair strands to cover up edges.

John is another Painter video where once again you work with fixing the skin, eyes, and teeth in Painter. Next you will blur out the background to give a painted look. Then you will clean up the design logo from on a shirt, and finish touching up the image.

Studio To Scenic now recreates the front cover image. In this lesson you will work with three separate images. First you will work with color corrections via curves in Photoshop. Next you will create selections to insert other images into it. After inserting the third image, you will then see how to proportion the images and get them to fit in the image as a whole. Then you will learn how to add items to make the scene more realistic, in this case, grass. Using the smudge tool you can cut down the sharp edges. Finally you will do some of the regular things like brighten eyes, and adding highlights to the hair.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. He also blogs at PhotographyTodayNet and at All This and Everything Else.

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