For most designers you will have had the question, “can you fix this photo for me?” asked at more than once in your lifetime. Whether for family or friends, or that one design job that requires you to retouch an image, here is a tutorial that will help you enhance and retouch a photo.

In this tutorial I will be retouching the photo with techniques including the healing and clone brush, using adjustment layers, liquifying and color burn and dodge.

I have selected a photo from a free stock photo site called, stock.xchng.

Here the photographer is ‘Trublueboy’, his profile can be viewed here: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/trublueboy and also his Flickr stream.

So download this image or another so we can start to retouch and enhance a photo!

Step 1:

Open the image in Photoshop and then duplicate the background layer. This can be done by right clicking the layer in the Layers Palette and selecting, ‘Duplicate Layer. Remember for good design practice rename your layers to something obvious, here I have named it Chelsea after the name of the image from Trublueboy.

Step 2:

Now we will get onto cleaning the image. By cleaning, I mean removing spots, blotches and wrinkles if any. To clean the photo, use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) and Healing Brush Tool (J). With either these tools press alt while selecting an area that is smooth to clone or with the healing brush tool clicking alt to define a source point to be used to repair the image.

Step 3:

Now that the image is clean lets use some Adjustment Layers to help boost the color and levels. Select the layer in the Layers Palette and then click the button that resembles a circle half black, half white. This icon should be located at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Click this and select Levels, now adjust the toggles to get the right lighting for the shadows, mid-tones and highlights.

Next we will add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer. So select your layer and then click the Adjustment Layer icon, then select Color Balance. This will bring up the dialogue box, with this select each shadow, highlight and mid-tones and move the toggles to achieve a richer color. Here I wanted to produce a much richer, warmer color, as outdoor photography can sometimes have quite cold color tones.

The final Adjustment layer is the Hue/Saturation Layer, add this and then toggle the saturation bar to be slightly higher, this will make the colors stand out much more.

Step 4:

Time for some surgery! Or in Photoshop’s case, Liquify. Here the use of liquify we will make her lips fuller and eyes slightly rounder. Select the layer and in the top menu bar select Filter > Liquify. Use the tool now to push out the tops and bottoms of the lips to create more fullness in them and also increase the roundness of the eyes.

Step 5:

Now we get onto the retouching section. Create a new Layer (Shift + ctrl + N or Command + ctrl + N). Here we will airbrush with the Paint Brush Tool (B), to give her a more glowing complexion. So select the Eye Dropper Tool (I) and change the sample size to something bigger say around 30-40px average. Select somewhere that is the right skin tone and with the Paint Brush Tool (B), on a soft brush of around 300px and at 15% opacity, paint on areas to smooth the complexion. Remember to keep re-sampling the area with a new tone with the Eye Dropper Tool to get the right tones for airbrushing.

Do the same for the lips and eyes and hair, remember to create them on a new layer so that the colors do not run over each other.

Step 6:

Next on the agenda is to add some highlights to certain areas. This is going to be done with the Dodge/Burn Tool (O). Select the Dodgy Tool (O), this tool will make areas lighter, so apply to areas such as the eye iris, hair highlights, and skin areas to enhance the glow and lines of the photo.

Next use the Burn Tool (O) to make certain areas darker, so the line of the lips and the eye lashes and brow, as well as areas of the hair.

Step 7:

The last enhancing Photoshop effect is the High Pass Filter. This filter extracts high frequency detail from the image and when coupled with a Layer blend Mode it can give some great detail to an image.
First off duplicate the Chelsea Layer, this can be done by right clicking the Layer and selecting ‘Duplicate Layer’. Then in the menu bar at the top, go Filter > Other > High Pass Filter, then toggle the bar to around 2 pixels, you can go higher and experiment what level is best for you, but the more pixels in the High Pass Filter the more sharp and grainy it will become.

Next set this Layer to Linear Light, this will allow the sharp areas and highlights of the High Pass Filter layer through. Essentially it is burning and dodging areas of the top layer through to the bottom. This filter is great for giving back some texture and detail after all the retouching to restore the photo to a more real look.

Final Thoughts:

So here we have it the original and the retouched. As you can see the big difference made from some great filters and blend modes in Photoshop.

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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Enhancing and making a photo dynamic in Photoshop

For this tutorial I have downloaded a few things; water splash brushes from Brusheezy.com, stock photos and one font.

The water splash brushes can be found here: Brusheezy Water Brushes

For the stock photos I went in search of water splashes in glasses and water splashes in general, a good source was istock.com for cheap stock photo.  Lastly the font was sourced from dafont.com it is called Val: Val Font

Step 1:

First off start a new document 1920×1200 pixels.

Then Fill the background with black using the paint bucket tool (G).

Step 2:

Using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire bottom half of the screen. When this layer is created double click it to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light grade of navy to a light blue, here I have used #325372 (light navy) – # b9d2e6 (light blue).

Then add a Drop Shadow of # a8c1d5, Opacity 100%, Angle -4, Distance 4px, Spread 0, and Size 10px.

Step 3:

Again using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire top half of the screen. When this layer is created double click the layer in the layers palette to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light blue to an even lighter blue then white, here I have used # c7d8ea (light blue) – # f4fcfe (light blue) – # ffffff (white).

Step 4:

Next using the Text Tool (T), type out a word you want to manipulate, here I am just going to go with ‘water’! I am using the font Val because it resembles a sort of glass tumbler feel and it will also be easy to add the great splashes to.

Here I will add a Gradient Overlay, so double click the text layer in your layers palette and select Gradient Overlay. Here I have added a gradient of black to dark navy to light blue to white; #000000 (black) – # 31475f (Dark navy) – # f0fafc (light blue) – #ffffff (white).

Step 5:

Next step is to make the text more of a ‘tumbler type’ feel, so here we will look at making a specialized gradient layer and then using some layer effects to make the layers stand out.
So duplicate the text layer, this can be done by right clicking the Layer and selecting Duplicate Layer.

Then we want to Rasterize the text, this is so we can create some effects for on the layer, adding effects or different gradients.

Then clear the Layer Styles so that our effects will show through when we change the text layer, this can be done by right clicking and then selecting Clear Layer Style

Lastly we need to select the text, not the Layer but the actual outline of the Rasterized text, this is done by right clicking and selecting Select Pixels.

With the layer selected use the Gradient Tool (G) with your water gradient chosen, and the Radial gradient option selected (this is in the top middle section of the menu bar).

You should be able to make a nice radial gradient of white going out to the darker colors along the edges.

Next we will be manipulating the layers to have a glass like feel.

Now select the Layer you have just manipulated and in the Layers palette select Overlay as the Layer Blend Mode.

Now select the original Text Layer and change its Layer effect option to Color Burn. This should give an overall nice blend of both top and bottom layer.

The last step for the text layers is the Opacity effect. Here select the first text layer and change this to 75% opacity, this can be found in the Layers Palette in the top right corner and the same with the other text layer but change this one to 65%.

Step 6:

So for the water splashes effect gather all your water splash imagery together and let’s start adding the splashes in!
So here is a selection of my stock imagery I will be using.

In this step all I have done is cut out the bits of splashes I required and with the Eraser Tool (E) and, using a soft edged brush, erased their background out.

Note that I have made all my splash layers black. This can be done by Desaturating the layer, you can do this by using the Hue/Saturation setting (Ctrl+U or Command+Ctrl+U) Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Then sliding the Saturation bar all the way to the left, this will drain all the color out of the layer. If this makes the layer have a washed out look just adjust the Brightness/ Contrast, this is also in Image > Adjustments > Brightness/ Contrast.

Step 7:

Next make all the splash layers Blend Modes into Color Burn, this will give it a crisp, clear look of water!

Now I want the font to blend much more with the splashes and so I will erase out the areas where the splashes join so it looks much more fluid. Use the Erase Tool (E) set to a big soft brush for around 200px and 50% opacity. Then erase the areas of the font that are overlapping with the splashes.

Step 8:

Time to use those cool Brushezzy water brushes we downloaded earlier.

Here I just picked out some droplets that will go nicely on as ground-cover. Set the brush color to a dark grey and place them on. Then I changed the Layer Mode type to Overlay to create a nice blend with the background gradient layer.

Step 9:

Now to give the image a color lift I’ll add an overlay gradient layer. To do this create a new layer on top of all the other layers, then use the gradient fill tool (G). This is the same as the Bucket tool, so if you can’t see it, just press down on the icon in your tool bar and it will reveal the Gradient Tool. Now select a nice blue gradient in the options in the top left (if there are no options just click on the current gradient and it will reveal the Gradient Editor for you to select your colors).

Lastly, let’s make this layer blend in nicely; here I have changed the Layer mode to Soft Light.

Final Result:

Here is the final result; a water effect typography. Now you don’t have to use as many splashes as I have, as I have added a lot of ‘splash effects’ to give you the idea of how they can be incorporated. It is a nice touch to have one or two but overall this is a fun easy tutorial to do that will give you a cool water effect.

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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How to Create Cool Water Effect Typography

1. 3D typography in Photoshop

Long tutorial (count 8 hours for completion) to learn how to create 3D decorative letters in Photoshop.

2. Dripping 3D text effect

Add the WOW factor to 3D text using Photoshop art tools.

3. Typographic wallpaper in Photoshop

Learn some cool techniques to create your own typography wallpaper.

4. Apply a graffiti in a photo with Photoshop

This tutorial teaches you how to apply a vector file on a photography in a realistic manner in Photoshop.

5. Neon light 3D typography

Add a nice neon effect on 3D typography with Photoshop.

6. Burnt-in text effect

A quick and simple tutorial for burnt-in text effect.

7. Supernatural text effect

Smoky night effect on text to give it an eerie supernatural sort of feel.

8. Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Create a dreamy design with 3D typography and other graphic elements.

9. Smooth Glass Type

Tutorial to learn how to create translucent glass typography.

10. Grass text effect in Photoshop

Make a cool text effect out of grass.

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Typographic illustrations in Photoshop: 10 awesome tutorials

Photo by karen horton

Look for some inspiration

Feeding yourself with design inspiration is a must for every designer. Following are a few ways to stay up-to-date with what’s happening.

• Design magazines
  Want to relax? Find yourself a good design magazine and enjoy. There is always creative stuff to discover, so here is a few magazines that I would suggest: Creative review, Neo2, Computer Arts, Juxtapoz, Print or idpure. You can also give a shot to free online design magazines.
• Design blogs
  Like for magazines, design blogs are an excellent resource for inspiration. I will not list too many design blogs here since David Airey already compiled a very useful list of 50 design blogs. Of course you might as well find inspiration in non-design blogs, just be curious.
• Inspiration books
  There is tons of books with tons of logos, letterheads, webdesigns or other designs featured. Some good examples would be books like: Los Logos, Musikraphics, The Big Book of Letterheads, The Big Book of Illustration Ideas or The Web Designer’s Idea Book. I would also suggest you to look at some good art books.

Photo by jetalone

Go back to studying

Going back to school is quite hard when you’re on a day job, especially if you’re freelancing. This said, it can be interesting to go back in some evening school to pick up a course on calligraphy, programming or whatever skill you’d like to learn. The internet is also a good resource if your city or town doesn’t have university or schools.

• Evening school
  Part time schools usually have a wide range of topics covered, so you should be able to learn something new there. The good thing about those is that you’ll get to listen to an expert and directly ask your questions. If you’re a freelancer, this is also a nice occasion to socialize and meet other people with similar interest. I won’t put any links here as it will depend on your location, but a good search should make it easy to find the available courses in your area.
• Online courses
  As you know, the internet is full of free stuff, even college courses. If you are an autodidact at heart, take a look at Standford on iTunes,  MIT online courses or at the University of Washington. The Online Books Page is also a great reference, as well as… Google searches…

Photo by karen horton

Read some design books

While reading on the internet is a great way to learn, books have two great advantages: they put all the information in one place and they give you an in-depth view on a specific topic. Books in the following categories should cover your learning needs.

• Graphic design & typography
  Apart from the inspiration books, many are very useful to learn more about graphic design theory. Color theory, grid systems or typography history are great topics and will definitly help you to improve your skills. If you don’t know what to read, you can start with those: “Grid Systems in Graphic Design“, “Typographie: A Manual of Design” or “Designing Books: Practice and Theory“.
• Software
  You think that you already know all your Adobe softwares by heart? Think again, those softwares are huge and you’ll learn something from a good book for sure. You can also try to learn some new softwares like video editing tools or audio editing softwares, learning 3D might be a good idea too.
• HTML, CSS & Webdesign
  You’ll be amazed to discover how many HTML tags you didn’t know of, CSS tricks you ignored and so on… Reading CSS: The Definitive Guide really helped me to get a better understanding of the possibilities of designing with CSS, just like Don’t Make me Think by Steve Krug.

Learn some new techniques with tutorials

Tutorials are amazing, they allow you to learn skills one by one. The Tuts+ network by Envato should be a good place to get started, they cover pretty much anything design-related: Photoshop, Illustrator, webdesign,… Many Digg-likes are also dedicated to tutorials like PixelGroovy.

Photo by whiteafrican

Attend conferences or watch them online

Successful and creative people talk about the topics they’re experts in, so you better listen to them. Changing your views on design, or simply on the world itself, is a great way not to keep on doing the same things over and over. While attending the conferences is good for networking, it is also very expensive most of the time and often taking place too far. That’s why it’s so good to have the internet and be able to watch those speeches online.

• TED
  “Ideas worth spreading”, TED’s website tells it like it is. Many great designers have been hosted as speakers at TED, so you should take a look.
• AIGA
  Apart from organizing conferences, AIGA also releases videos of the events. Many of those talks are truly inspiring and make you want to move forward.

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Do you want to improve your design skills?

• No gradients! (Unless it’s used in a way that you can replace it with a solid color for applications other than web and print.) If you use a gradient, you won’t be able to use the logo well on things like t-shirts (embroidery) and the like. By Laura.
• Another logo tip, make sure it’s appropriate. By David Airey.
• One thing I would add: limit the number of colors to two – maybe three. Jack McDaniel.
• I am a designer myself and I find more often than not clients will contract me to design a logo, before they have let their business ‘evolve’ beyond the concept phase. The problem with this is often that makes the logo obsolete once the business finds its feet. So my advice or two cents is, be a caring and sharing graphic designer and advise your client that they can have the option of taking the logo design to the drafting stage and then they can sit with those for a few months until their business concept is a little more solid. More often than not, the client changes his mind by that time. They havent wasted money, the have appreciated your honesty, and you dont get the conflict that can come with the frustration involved when your clients feel like you didn’t ‘get’ there business concept (you can hardly say that neither did they!!). By Rachel.
• Always send a message that can be interpreted in just about any language or culture – something that transcends time and space as much as possible. By Brandon Cox.
• “Simplicity is the key to brilliance” Bruce Lee. I’d have to agree with this quote. A nice simple logo benifited all of the worlds best companies; why not yours? By Ben Swift.
• Use a readable font…one that scales well to very large and very small sizes, and that is readable from a distance. That “Brisa” font may be really pretty, but if you can’t read it, it’s worthless. By Melek.
• Always use a Pantone guide and specify the values of the colors for web, print and gray scale… By Christian.

If you have more tips, share them in this posts comments and I’ll update it.

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Logo design: 8 more tips from the readers

1. Work with vectors
   This probably sounds obvious to most designers out there, but it isn’t to everybody so I repeat it as often as I can to avoid receiving those damn jpeg logos. Vector formats are the ones that will allow the most variations for your logo.
2. Don’t use more than 2 fonts
   There is many nice fonts out there and we would all love to use as many as we can. Unfortunately using too many fonts will most of the time result in a loss of coherence. Using two different fonts can be good to create a contrast, catching the eye.
3. Keep it readable
   If people can’t read your logo, it’s useless to have one. This sounds like dumb advice again, but it’s easy to get caught in creating letters or distorting a font until it becomes unreadable. Always stay aware of that when working on your logo.
4. Test sizes
   Your logo should resize well at any size, whether it’s huge on a truck or tiny on a badge.
5. Adapt it for dark backgrounds
   So you’ve got a wonderful looking dark logo, but now your client want to get it on his black car. It’s usually not too hard to adapt it, but you’ll look more professional if you already got that case figured out.
6. Make sure it works well in black and white
   I have a very simple technique for that: I work every logo in black and white before adding any colour. This way choices are made judging by the shapes and you are not distracted by anything else. It makes it much easier to know that your logo will work well in shades of grey afterwards.
7. Don’t include photos in your logo
   Well… this one goes along with the first tip. First, photos are not vectors. Photos also don’t scale, have no branding value and are hard to adapt for any use.
8. Look at it upside-down
   This is a tip I got from my teachers in graphic design school, looking at your logo (or any printed design really) will get the meaning out of the way and give you a new look at the design’s balance and white spaces. Try it!
9. Don’t follow trends
   It’s often hard to escape trends, especially if you’re passionated and love to look at inspiring logos on design sites. Your logo has to work on the long run, so try to avoid the web 1.0 swoosh or the web 2.0 reflection.
10. Get specific feedback
    Asking people’s opinion is worthless if you don’t know what informations you want to get, so when getting feedback, try asking specific questions (eg. does your logo expresses the industry of the company?).

To take your logo design skills one step further, you should check out these great sites:

• Logolog, blog dedicated to logo design.
• Brand New, opinions on corporate and brand identity
• Logo Pond, identity inspiration.
• Logo Design Love, another blog dedicated to logo design.
• Logo of the Day, daily logo design inspiration.

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10 tips for a logo design that works

• Job boards
  Best place to find graphic design work. Since people who post requests on job boards are usually paying to do so, they want to find a real professional, so you better have a portfolio and samples of your work ready when answering. Following are the best design job boards that I know.
  • Authentic Jobs
  • FreelanceSwitch Job Board
  • ProgrammerMeetDesigner
  • Coroflot
  • design:related
  • Krop
  • Simply Hired
• Blogging
  Obviously, blogging isn’t a short term solution to find design jobs. It’s probably the best way to show your expertise and to find an audience. People reading your blog regularly and liking your work will come to you, partly because they know your way to think about graphic design. Make sure you make it easy to contact you and eventually create a “hire me” page (which I will do… some day…).
• Classifieds
  I put it here because I know that some people use it to find work, but I personnaly never used it. I tend to believe that browsing classifieds will only get you to find cheap jobs, but hey, I might be wrong.
  This said, classifieds can be a good way to find local jobs. You’ll just have to find the classified site that fits your region the best. For general sites, you can try those.
  • Graigslist
  • Yahoo HotJobs
  • The New York Times marketplace
• LinkedIn – Facebook
  The way to use LinkedIn to is quite obvious, make friend with people you know and try to get recommandations from them. To my opinion, LinkedIn should be used more to use your network to find clients than to find new prospects.
  For Facebook, I’ve found that it’s a good medium to let people know what you are doing and what kind of projects you are involved in. You may get work from people that you wouldn’t have talked to otherwise, of course that requires to have a good site/portfolio.
• Forums
  This isn’t a quick way to hunt for jobs, but forums can be a good way to show your skills by answering people’s requests and connect with them.
  • Sitepoint Forums & Marketplace
  • DigitalPoint Forum
  • Webmaster Talk

There surely also are other ways to find gigs such as contests, but I only wanted the ones that seemed to be the most efficient. What about you, which ways are you finding graphic design jobs?

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Graphic design jobs, how to find them online

Time savers you should know about

• Workspaces
  By setting up different workspaces for specific tasks, for example photo retouching, drawing or icon designing, you’ll save time not having to open and close toolsets all the time.
  Customizing Photoshop workspaces
• Learn how to use color profiles
  Tired of never knowing how your printed document will look like? Ask the print company you are used to work with for his color profiles and set them up on your Photoshop (and other designing softwares). That way you will be more accurate and will relieve some of the anxiety felt when bringing documents to the print company.
  Set up color-managed print workflows
• Scripts
  This is probably the biggest time saver of all. Automating tasks by recording it once, then just pressing a keyboard combination to do it again. If properly setted up, it can save up to 50% of the time you spend on Photoshop, no kidding! For example, I use it to resize and resample images I put on Designer Daily. Other smart uses can be color conversion, profile conversion, bulk file resizing,…
  Working with Photoshop Scripts

This said, that’s only a tiny part of what you can learn on Photoshop. I can’t extend this article too much, so I just add a list of places where you can learn the do-it-all image software.

How to learn Photoshop

• Digg in the software’s help
  Believe it or not, that’s how I learned the most about Photoshop. The help section is so full of informations that it’s hard not to find what you are looking for. It’s even better if you are getting in more specific or technical information.
• Get a good book about Photoshop
  There are countless books about the popular imaging software. The main reason you should get a book about it is that it will help your general understanding of how the software works and how to think when using it, at least it’s what it did for me. You can go on Amazon and pick a book doing a search or go directly to Photoshop CS3 classroom or Photoshop CS3 for digital photographers if you want to get more specific.
• Subscribe to tutorials sites
  Sites like PSDtuts or PhotoshopStar are a great way to improve. They provide regular articles to learn how to get to a specific result. That way you’ll learn tips that you won’t find in books, simply because the power of Photoshop so big that you can get very creative when mixing techniques.
• Subscribe to Photoshop podcasts/videocast
  I am not really a big fan of podcasting in general, but I did subscribe to Photoshop User TV. Even though the show are too long to my taste, the information given is great with a mix of full tutorials and quick tips. The other way is to learn Photoshop using Youtube. Of course, while you are on Youtube you can’t miss the legendary “You suck at Photoshop” tutorials, they are just hilarious.

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How to get the most out of Photoshop