The Photoshop kind, not the body kind. (But hey, if you want to talk humans-with-curves in the comments, you go right ahead. The world could use a little less skinny ’round here! Just keep it PG-13, you hear?)
Long story short, I’ve been working on a Clinique Quickliner Intense review, and I’m halfway done, but I’m really, really tired. So, you’ll have to wait until Tuesday for that, but this: this, you can have now.
A sad, lonely, unedited March snowfall photo.
The basics
This isn’t actually an in-depth curves tutorial; rather, I feel like I need to periodically remind people that they exist. They’re ridiculously easy (and ridiculously handy), and can be used in anything from vignetting, to increasing contrast and brightening up photos, to doing that hipster-faded thing.
Curves – brighter (think of it like a screen layer), darker (think of it like a multiply layer).
Unless you’ve gone and inverted your axes, pulling the curve upwards is going to add brightness, an S curve is going to increase contrast, and pulling the curve downwards will increase shadows. Dragging the endpoints inwards will add a more harsh change; think of it as brightening or darkening the shadows, rather than the midpoints. A curve in which the lower point is farther from the x=y line than the upper point will decrease contrast, doing that old-photograph thing that people seem to be into at the moment.
Curves – more contrast; less.
Before you ask, yes, I will eventually get around to discussing how to take eye of the day photos. For now, though, I hope this Photoshop how-to will suffice!
At twelve minutes and a bit, I don’t think it’s too terribly long, but in case you need some persuading to watch, here’s what it covers:
- How to Photoshop a portfolio-ready eye shot
- Perfecting brows by hand (and cleaning up stray hairs with the healing brush)
- Creating depth with the burn tool
- Erasing dark circles
But I’m sure you didn’t really need that extra convincing, right? ;)
Wait! Before you go – any interest in learning how to draw in false lashes? I’d be more than happy to do a quick (five-minutes-or-less, I promise) tutorial on creating the perfect fringe of lashes, just let me know!
As always, thanks for watching, reading, and commenting :)
Ugh, I probably shouldn’t film while in a wheat-coma in the future :P Anyhow; enjoy the video, and don’t forget that you can watch fullscreen in HD! (Highly encouraged. Highly.)
After (too long) of a delay, I’m pleased to introduce our next instalment in Tips For Beauty Bloggers. Whether you’re a fellow blogger, a photography fiend, or just another Joe the Plumber looking to clean up some photos, I hope you enjoy this post!
I hemmed and hawed over whether or not to do this as a video, and in the end, I decided it would be best to. I’ve uploaded it to Vimeo (we’re still avoiding YouTube, at least for now) in HD format, so I’d definitely encourage you to view it fullscreen - seriously, you won’t be disappointed.
(Yes, I’m still childishly amused by the wonders of the internet. Now shh; less mocking and more watching!)
If you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, please link back to this post. A project like this one takes a lot of time and effort, so I’d really appreciate it if you could refrain from embedding the video on your own sites. Thanks!
I promised some comparison shots to follow Wednesday’s Infinity Effect How-To, so here they are!
All images here are un-photoshopped – save for cropping and resizing – and feature the infinity effect backdrop on the right. (Left = lightbox). They’ve all been taken in indirect sunlight without flash support and enlarge to ~1000px if you click on them. (If this was a product review post or something, I’d also tweak the colour balance and curves of the image, which is why they might look a little different from usual.)
Small objects
I snapped a few shots of Clinique’s new Moisture Surge Tinted Moisturizer to show this one off, and it’s with your small objects that you’ll see the least difference between the two. (Clinique foundation bottles are about 3″/8cm tall.)
Tonally, they’re a little different, but probably won’t see much of a difference between a lightbox and an infinity effect backdrop if you’re just photographing small products. (The lightbox does produce slightly softer lighting, though, as it sort of bounces around off its sides.)
Large objects
Once things get a little taller, I think the differences become more noticeable – with soft sunlight coming in from my window at a bit of an angle, the lightbox sort of forms shadows within itself.
The product featured below is the Redken Nature’s Rescue shampoo, which is about 7″/16cm tall. Here are the photos as they’d appear from the camera:
