Hi everyone! Tracy here, coming to you on my first Tuesday ever, now that we’ve expanded Tuesdays to include tips and tutorials, as well as trends! I finally have something to contribute, so I hope you all benefit from this, which I guess is a combination of tips and tutorials!

Sometimes we have a photo that just screams for extra special treatment. And, in those cases, I always reach for this technique. My tutorial below is written based on Photoshop Elements, but would be easily accomplished with any photo editing program – simply look for comparable commands and actions within your own software. OK, away we go!

I am going to play with the following photo today… this is a photo of my cousins (they are sisters) that I took during the bridal shower for the one on the right. It is a super special pose and, while the photo is okay on its own, I wanted to give it some special attention before I scrapped it:

So, the first part of this technique is owed to someone at Scrap Matters – I know I learned it on their blog, but could not find the original post to link back to them. But… that’s where its from! My first step is to turn the photo black & white – so, to do that, we first go to Enhance —> Adjust Color —> Remove Color (or you can use Shift+Ctrl+U) as a shortcut. That yields this:

That’s okay, but definitely kind of blah, right? So, here is a way to liven it up and deepen the black&white effect. You want to duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J), then take the top layer and change the blending mode to Soft Light. Finally, reduce the opacity until you like the way it looks and then merge the two layers together. I usually lower mine to somewhere between 65-85% – in the result below, I used 70% …

Now, that is a bit better, but still a little too “gray.” So, now we’re going to give it an extra little boost by playing with the Color Variations. Enhance —> Adjust Color —> Color Variations. Make sure you have the midtones radio button checked, then move the intensity slider to the left until it is one click away from the end of the scale. Finally, click on Increase Red once, and Decrease Blue once. Click ok and you’ll be left with a stunning black & white photo:

Now, I could stop there (and that’s where the Scrap Matters tutorial stopped), but for this photo, I want to give it that soft filtered, dreamy effect. Again, I found this technique online, but have no clue where I found it. And, I tweak it to suit my purpose, so now I’m sharing it with you! The first thing you want to do is duplicate your photo again (Ctrl+J) and then apply a Gaussian Blur on the top layer (Filter —> Blur —> Gaussian Blur). The radius setting I use is always dependent on the photo. For a real close-up (like a headshot), I usually set it at anything from a 6.0 to an 8.0. For a photo that is pulled back a bit more like this one, you might use a significantly bigger radius. In my example below, I used a radius of 25. Basically, you need to play with this step and try different settings until you get a result you like. And then, this is where the magic happens! You next need to take your hard-edge eraser tool and on the top, blurry layer, you need to erase the inside of the eyes, the eyebrows, and the teeth & lips. Be careful in this step not to erase any of the “skin” area on the blurry layer. If you find you are noticing a harsh line where you erased, go back in with a soft-edge eraser and touch up that line until you don’t notice it. I’ve taken a screenshot of my photo after I erased the eyes, teeth & lips. The erased areas are very subtle and you really can’t see any noticeable line, as long as you don’t erase any of the skin areas:

After applying your blur and completing the erasing step above, you then need to reduce the opacity of the top layer to something between 45-60%, ordinarily. In my example below, I lowered the opacity to 50%. After merging the two layers together, I have this:

Most of the time, that is my last step, but for this photo, I felt it needed a little something more. So, I played with the Light Levels (Ctrl+L) a little bit and boosted up the white and gray sliders just a hair. Then, I used my burn tool, set on “Shadows” at 40% to just lightly burn around the edges of the photo and I ended up with this, final version of this very special photo!

See how their skin just glows and their smiles and eyes pop? THAT’S the look I was going for! And, though it may seem like a lot of steps, it really only takes me about five minutes to accomplish all of that. With practice, you’ll be able to accomplish the same technique in no time at all yourselves, too! And, every now and then, we do have that extra special photo that demands the extra attention!

So, here is a final side-by-side comparison of each step. You can really see how this technique takes a decent photo and makes it an AWESOME one:

So, my challenge to you is to try it yourself! I’d love to see your results – if you try it, please upload someplace online and send us a comment with the link so we can see. Have fun tweaking those photos and making all your loved ones look positively GLAMOROUS!

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