Create Beautiful People With Digital Photography

You've taken up digital photography and you enjoy photographing your loved ones. But --- does this sound familiar?

"Ooooh, what a horrible picture of me! It makes me look so fat. It makes me look wrinkled. Delete it right away!"

Let me ask you this: how weary are you of hearing your subjects complain that they just don't look good in pictures?

That's all in the past when you learn to touch up your digital photography with digital photo editing software.

You already know how to resize, remove redeye and correct color, but those techniques barely scratch the surface of what a good software application can do.

My instructions call for Adobe Photoshop CS3, but many other applications, including the excellent Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Corel Paint Shop Pro Xoffer similar capabilities. Consult your application's help file for program specific instruction.

An Extreme Makeover Without a Knife

This removes blemishes and wrinkles from a face by "grafting" skin from another area to cover the wrinkle.

First, use the Zoom function to get a good view of the blemish. Make a duplicate layer and remove the original layer's visibility. From the Toolbox, select the Healing Tool or the Clone Stamp tool. Set the brush size to cover the blemish you want to remove. Set other controls to Mode: Normal; Source Selected; Selected: Aligned: Use all Layers: not selected.

Now, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) to identify the "good skin" that you want to use for the touchup. Next, drag your tool over the blemish. Presto! The blemish disappears.

To give the face a more natural look, restore visibility to the original layer. Working on the repaired layer, adjust the opacity until some of the original imperfections begin to appear.

Paint Shop Pro gives similar results using Retouch & Restore, then the Scratch Remover Tool for wrinkles, or the Blemish Remover tool for blemishes. Tip: Do your old photographs have scratches and rips? Scan them and use this technique to repair the damage.

Ah! Digital photogbraphy and digital editing. What a deadly duo!

Painless Dentistry

Whiten teeth by lightening the teeth and desaturating the yellow tones.

As before, zoom in on the teeth. Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, select the teeth. Then, go to Image ' adjustments' Hue/Saturation. Select Yellow in the Edit box, then desaturate slightly by dragging the Saturation marker to the left. Next, brighten by moving the Lightness marker to the Right. Click Okay, and you have whiter teeth!

In Paint Shop Pro, choose Adjust & Restore, then Makeover Tools, then Toothbrush. Tip: Use the same Photoshop technique to correct any color imbalance in a photo.

Digital photography and digital photo editing software to the rescue again!

3. The Digital Diet

Lose weight instantly by "shrinking" the torso or any part thereof.

In PhotoShop, create and work on a duplicate layer. Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, select the body or object to be "slimmed." Go to Edit 'Transform'Distort. This places a drag-able box around the selected area. Grab one of the side "handles" with your mouse and drag it inwards, decreasing the horizontal size but keeping the vertical size intact. Click Enter when satisfied. Use your Clone Stamp tool to add background to the solid color that appears when you resize the width.

Paint Shop Pro users: use Effects 'Distort Photos'Warp Brush Tool. Tip: Use this technique to resize or distort any object.

Digital photography brings us the diet we've all dreamed about!

Lastly, unleash your creativity and discover what fun you can have with a graphic software application!

Want some more tips for sprucing up your digital photography? ....

Thank You!

June Campbell

P.S. New to digital photography? Find out how you can take spectacular photographs with your digital camera in thirty minutes or less. Visit StartMyDigitalPhotography.com

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