It’s summer heat once again, and with it, less clothes, more bathing, fancy sunbathing creams and lotions etc… And while girls and boys try to present themselves the best way possible, with perfect bodies created by miraculous shakes or the local gym, posing on beaches and in cafés in their D&G swimsuits, Armani slippers and Prada sunglasses, they tend to forget that everyone around them is shooting, with phones, cheap “idiots”, officially called digital cameras, etc. Most of those pictures are likely to end up on the internet, most commonly on Facebook, the very one that more and more people claim to hate while they secretly log in to check on who might have liked their photos.

This article is intended for those who love Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all other social networks that enable you to upload the latest photo from any device that integrates internet support, but also those that hate them. This is the simplest way to show your photos to everyone, but you’ll eventually stop your mobile uploads and think about them a bit. You take a look at that large touchscreen on your new Samsung and realise that your face is too dark owing to the sun being behind your back, which the LED flash can’t really compensate for, along with an unfamiliar guy chilling next to the bin - that should really be removed from the picture.

This is where the new Photoshop CS5 and our advice come in, helping you to improve all those photos that you’ve made, which will ensure your perfect appearance in the virtual world. Of course, there is a bunch of programs that can apply a few filters across any photo, but Photoshop is the one that offers the most pleasant work with the most options. Therefore, as soon as you get back home, pour yourself a large glass of your favourite drink - 0.5L will do best - and start transferring photos via cable, Bluetooth or any other way. It’ll certainly be easier for you to decide which photos are good enough to even be considered when glanced upon on a large display. What we will do is give some good advice on how to improve photos relatively quickly and easily by applying basic and advanced Photoshop features.

Tan, Freckles, Garnish, Plasters and Similar Problems

Let’s have a look at a picture made “manually” by one of the people featured in it. This is a common example where exposure errors appear, i.e. differences in face brightness between the faces in the first plan and those in the background, whether you’re taking the picture in the open, in the evening or in a confined space. Most cameras show optimal results when the flash is used for distances between 0.6 and 3 metres. Since it’s a bit of a problem to stretch your arm that much, all the while keeping the camera pointed to yourself, an overbright face and too dark a background is regularly a problem (except when there is strong sunlight available), as seen on the image No. 1.

 

Image 1	Image 2

 

This is why we’ll first try to reduce exposure a little with the Image/Adjustments/Exposure tool. Use small setting steps and monitor image changes. We reduced exposure a little, increased offset a tiny bit and reduced gamma to 0.91. This reduced white spots on the forehead, decreased the overall brightness of the image and lowered contrast a bit, as evident on the image No. 2. If you managed to hit the door with your head after a good beach party, like the girl in our example, chances are good that you’ll have a plaster on your forehead; however, this doesn’t mean that your Facebook friends need to know about it. This is why the Lasso selection tool is useful (pressing L on the keyboard is the shortcut); pick it and mark the patch. You can improve the precision of your selection by calling Quick Mask (Q on the keyboard) and use rubber (E) or brush (B) to intervene. Alternatively, you can use the Quick Selection tool (W) and improve your selection under Select/Refine Edge, which we did, and you can see the results in the image No. 3. If a mask layer has been made for you, you can load the selection from the mask via Select/Load Selection, wipe the new layer and continue working on the background layer. With the background layer selected as the active selection, press Delete (Del) to call the Fill options window, in which you’ll leave Content-Aware fill in the drop-down menu and confirm with OK. This gave us a pretty good result that we’ve improved even further by using the Spot Healing Brush tool, again, with the Content-Aware feature checked (J), in order to remove all pimples and spots from any of the faces.

 

Image 3	Image 4

 

Alternatively, you can use the Healing Brush tool, located in the tool palette in the menu underneath the aforementioned Spot Healing Brush tool, which uses the sample from the region selected by you using the Alt key and clicking the desired image part. You can see direct improvements provided by this method in the image No. 4, and the result of it on the entire photo in the image No. 5. We shall now create a new layer in order to work on the tan, only to merge it with the background layer later on. Select/Colour Range will do a fine job in making the selection for this step, which you can additionally tweak in Quick Mask.

 

Image 5	Image 6

 

We’ll add a bit of suntan on the faces by using Image/Variations; clicking once on More Red, More Yellow and Darker on the right will usually do the trick. Try out these options, especially with influence reduction, by pushing the slider to the left (the Fine setting) and changing the tones that are to be affected (Shadows, Medium and Bright tones) - image No. 6.