Tuesday Tips & Pics - Guest Post by Mira Crisp

I'm so happy to welcome Mira Crisp from Crisp Photo Works as my first guest blogger! I hope you enjoy her fabulous tutorial, and please leave her some comment love! And don't forget to link up your week's pics a the bottom! If you have any tips you'd like to see covered on Tips & Pics, or if you'd like to write a guest post, send me an e-mail, or let me know in the comments!
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Editing Portraits in Camera Raw

Hi There! My name is Mira and I blog over at Crisp PhotoWorks. I'd like to thank Jaymi for hosting this post and I hope all of you will enjoy it. Today I will show you how to edit your portraits in Camera Raw. I use CS5 so certain things may look different on your screen. I have learned many Photoshop techniques and tricks from watching and reading Scott Kelby's videos and books, and this is one of my favorites.

Don't worry, you can use Camera Raw even if you are not shooting raw files. If you are working with jpeg images, you can open them by going to File and selecting Open As instead of Open. Once the Open As dialog pops up, select the Camera Raw option in the format bar. Be aware though, all changes you make to jpeg image in Camera Raw will apply to your original file and you will not be able to reverse that (unlike a raw file). So, always work on a copy of the image so you don't ruin your original file.



If you are shooting in raw, all you have to do is click on the file and it will open in Camera Raw by default. Once your file is opened in Camera Raw, you can start working on it. There are three steps to editing a portrait this way:

1. Remove skin imperfections.

Spot Removal brush at the top of the menu will remove smaller imperfections by cloning the skin around it. As you can see in the photo below, the red circle is the area you've selected to heal and the green circle shows the area that will be cloned to heal that red circle. Just make sure the "Heal" option is selected. You can change the radius size and opacity too.



2. Soften the skin.

In the second step, we will soften the skin. To do this, double click on the Adjustment Brush and tweak the numbers in the Adjustment Brush window. The only value that needs to be changed in this step is the Clarity value. We will set it to -100. Make sure all other numbers are set to 0. The more you zoom in the face, the smaller brush size you will need. So, adjust the brush size as needed.



Check the Show Mask box to see which areas you are actually painting. Now, we will use this brush to paint all skin areas that we want to soften avoiding eyes, lips, hair line, and the bottom of the nose. In my experience, the results are the best if you move the mouse the same way you apply foundation to your face: inside-out. That way heavy touches will be around the nose and under eyes where you usually need more retouching. You can see an outside-in stroke I did on her chin on the right side of the photo and how visible press point is.

I also tend to paint the neck and other exposed skin to avoid obvious differences. The little pin (image below) is there to help you remove strokes you would like to delete. Try to avoid eyebrows and hairline since this brush will blur them and you usually want them to be as sharp as possible.

3. The third step is to brighten and sharpen eyes.

To do this, we will use the same brush. The only thing we will do differently is to select NEW (instead of selected Add option in the photo below) at the top of Adjustment Brush window. This will load a new brush selection and it will not add to the already used skin brush in step 2. The values we need to change this time are Brightness (around +50), Clarity (around +60), and Sharpness (around +60).

What you need to do now, is to paint the whites of the eyes and teeth. I usually paint loosely over the eyes to include eyelashes too because this brush will sharpen them. Same goes for teeth, if you make the center of the lower lip a little brighter, the effect is the same as you would apply a dot of shiny lip-gloss to your lips. Again, if you don't like the result, select the tiny pin and hit delete. It will delete the layer.

And that's it! While this pretty girl did not necessarily need all this heavy editing, I used her photo to show you how to edit portraits in Camera Raw. Of course, the values I used in this example will depend on your taste and the photo you are editing. I hope you found it helpful!

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