Whipping Post Improvement

pyrtek

[MOD EDIT: I've moved this post from the original thread in The Whipping Post, since the goal of the WP is critique, not Photoshop how-to. This information will be of better service here in Finishing School. The original thread can be found here.

MarkTodd wrote:

Wow, you really got those eyes much sharper! Could you send me a PM as to your technique on that?

It will be beneficial to others if I post here instead of PMing you.


There are two things I did to the eyes. I made them brighter and I sharpened
them.


To brighten the eyes:

1) Create a new layer in Overlay blending mode and fill it with 50% gray. It
is easiest to do this by holding down Alt and clicking the New Layer icon in the
layers palette. In the dialog box change the blending mode to Overlay and
check the box at the bottom (the fill with 50% gray box).

2) Take a white soft brush at about 10% opacity and paint over each eye
until it looks the way you want it. With each stroke they get brighter, so
it's best to start with a low opacity brush and gradually build the effect, rather
than just blast it with 100%.


To sharpen the eyes:

1) Merge all the visible layers (Ctrl-Shift-Alt E). This will give you a copy
of the image with all the previous changes applied.

2) Change the blending mode of the merged layer to Overlay.

3) Run Filter->High Pass and fiddle with the radius while looking at just the
eyes. The rest of the image won't be affected when we're done. So set the
radius to a value which makes the eyes look like you want them to and hit
OK. [*]

4) Hold down Alt and click the Add layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers
palette (it's the gray square with a white circle in the middle). This will create
a hide all mask for this layer and you'll notice that the effect of the sharpening
you just did disappears completely.

5) Take a white brush at 100% opacity and paint over the eyes to reveal the
sharpening.

6) Save as... etc.


[*] On a full res image I'd probably use the Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpening
filters, but I find the High Pass method to give better results on smaller files.
You are free to use any method for sharpening you choose, of course.

MarkTodd

pyrtek wrote:

[MOD EDIT: I've moved this post from the original thread in The Whipping Post, since the goal of the WP is critique, not Photoshop how-to. This information will be of better service here in Finishing School. The original thread can be found here.



It will be beneficial to others if I post here instead of PMing you.


There are two things I did to the eyes. I made them brighter and I sharpened
them.


To brighten the eyes:

1) Create a new layer in Overlay blending mode and fill it with 50% gray. It
is easiest to do this by holding down Alt and clicking the New Layer icon in the
layers palette. In the dialog box change the blending mode to Overlay and
check the box at the bottom (the fill with 50% gray box).

2) Take a white soft brush at about 10% opacity and paint over each eye
until it looks the way you want it. With each stroke they get brighter, so
it's best to start with a low opacity brush and gradually build the effect, rather
than just blast it with 100%.


To sharpen the eyes:

1) Merge all the visible layers (Ctrl-Shift-Alt E). This will give you a copy
of the image with all the previous changes applied.

2) Change the blending mode of the merged layer to Overlay.

3) Run Filter->High Pass and fiddle with the radius while looking at just the
eyes. The rest of the image won't be affected when we're done. So set the
radius to a value which makes the eyes look like you want them to and hit
OK.
[*]

4) Hold down Alt and click the Add layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers
palette (it's the gray square with a white circle in the middle). This will create
a hide all mask for this layer and you'll notice that the effect of the sharpening
you just did disappears completely.

5) Take a white brush at 100% opacity and paint over the eyes to reveal the
sharpening.

6) Save as... etc.

[*] On a full res image I'd probably use the Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpening
filters, but I find the High Pass method to give better results on smaller files.
You are free to use any method for sharpening you choose, of course.

My thanks again. I very much look forward to trying this myself!