Hi all,
Thanks for the kind comments, I will try to explain how I did this
(not easy to do for me as English is only my third language). To be
clear it is not another shot, no flash use, I started from the
first image to rework it PS.
1) Adjust levels on a duplicated layer (Photoshop is leaning toward
turning this kind of near to monochrome images into a daylight
version on Auto settings) with auto levels. Then I adjust the
slider to get the % I want.
2) I duplicate the layer (called Layer 1) and blur this seriously,
then I erase with a big and soft brush the part of the man out to
get the underlying image of him and finally I set the amount with
the slider that I want. and finally go to Hue and saturation to
desaturate the background with the slider.
3) Then I duplicate the layer again (I’m always talking about the
starting layer 0 when I say duplicate) and select the Layer 1 and
select the transparancy of that layer and invert it and make a then
Copy Paste so that I have a new layer with only the man, and I set
that layer on screen and adjust again with levels. The parts that I
don’t like are erased (sometimes with changing the amount for the
eraser brush)
4) OK now the face is much to red due to the Auto adjustment in the
levels. I go to Hue and saturation again and then I go to the red
channel and change the Hue and saturation of the red color, or
maybe even better I go to the Selective color and choose there the
‘red’ and adjust the color (you can see the changes in the
preview). Best is again to do this in another duplicated layer of
the man so that if the red changes in parts that you don’t want to
be changed can be erased out so that the underlying are showing up
again. You also have then the possibility to adjust even finer the
amount of te change in the skintones with the slider.
5) Finally I go to the FILTER menu, choose RENDER, set it on
SPOTLIGHT and play a bit around there to add a directional light
(this again on a new layer so that you can erase unwanted parts out
and adjust the amount of the effect on the whole image of the
underlying layers with the slider)
So that’s it, I hope that you are not to confused, once used to
this it goes very fast and the difficulty is to find a balanse in
the light directions and amounts and make it as natural as
possible, so settings will be different for other kind of images.
Maybe if I find some free time I will try to show this all by
making screenshots and make a PDF file that you can download, when
it’s visual it will be much easy to understand I think.
All the very best,
With very kind regards,
Dirk
http://www.pbase.com/dievee
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