Feathering

No, this isn't a hair tutorial, which is too bad, really, because having rocked the whole feathered hair look back in the day, I could tell you a thing or two—as could my older sister, who was like the brunette Farrah Fawcett of Jefferson Junior High. Instead, I wanted to do a quick post about that often ignored "feather" setting that you see in the top menu bar when you use any marquee or lasso tool for selecting. It might say "0" it might say "1," but once you know what it does, you may even decide to put "100":


Here's a sample photo:
Let's pretend that I wanted to select the red door because I thought it would look better green to match the shirt of the biker (for the record, I don't). In this case, I decide to use the magnetic lasso to select the door:
To demonstrate the effect of the "feather" setting, I will select the "refine edge" button from that same menu bar:
A dialog box appears that allows you to adjust the feathering of your selection:
Right now, it is set to "0" which means that for better or for worse, the red door you see is exactly what I selected. Feathering softens the selection evenly on both sides. If I change it from "0" to "10" you see this:
You can see how feathering softens the selection. Rather than a hard edge, we now see a smooth transition. But before we pass any judgments, let's really push it. Here's "40" :
And here is "100":

If I stick with "0" feathering and then adjust the color of the door, I get this:

Clean, sharp edges. At least as clean and sharp as the original selection. But if I went wild and put "100" and then adjusted the color to green....
I would end up with a weird trippy red/green haze. Great, if that's what you're going for, but you can see why most people stick with a very low number or even no feathering at all. I should point out that the actual effect of a "10" or a "100" will change according to the size of your image, because the number indicates pixels not a percentage. To be precise, you can enter anything from "0" to "250." I know what you're thinking: No you di'int! 250? 250! What's wrong with you?

Which brings me to why I even wrote this post...

Like I said, most people either don't change the "feather" setting (out of ignorant bliss) or they keep it low. So when Amy Dresser (see my last post about the webinar) started evening out skin tone by lassoing patches of skin, clicking on the curves adjustment layer icon, and then adjusting that patch (she made about 26 such changes), all of us webinar participants watched happily from our various locations until OH THE HORROR!!!! Amy Dresser said that when she lassos patches of skin, she sets the feathering really high. High? How high? 5? 10? No! An insane 100!
Yes, you heard me—100 pixel feathering. The moment she said it, I swear that I heard a collective gasp echo from around the globe like all of the whos down in whoville screaming for dear life. I think I heard the moderator pop the lid off of his heart medication pill box.

But seriously, why the surprise? Well, people expect precision from a high end retoucher and they assume that any selection would be extremely precise (i.e. have hard edges). Au contraire, as Amy pointed out, when you're adjusting skin, you want gradual transitions—it's more natural. Just as the clean lines of the red door above demand a sharp selection, the smooth tones of a person's skin need gradual adjustments.

The moral of the story is that if you think about feathering, you can use it to your advantage. Some people more than others.

Retouch Pro + Amy Dresser = Tutorial Heaven

I've never been big on video tutorials. I prefer to follow along at my own pace. So when I see postings for online events like "webinars" (a really ugly word, my son Max tells me) I tend to ignore them. But when RetouchPRO sent me an email about a "RetouchPRO LIVE" event with Amy Dresser, I signed up. The event interested me because:

1. Amy Dresser is basically the supreme goddess of beauty retouching and has become something of a patron saint to the RetouchPro community. Seriously, look at her work.
2. The event was scheduled to last 2 hours and the registration fee was only $10. Ten bucks to watch a top-notch pro retouch in real time? Deal.
3. She was going to retouch a photo of a man. You almost always see retouching done on photos of women, so I was curious to see if the gender of the subject would change the method of retouching.
   

The big event was yesterday. I loved it and I took notes. I'm not going to try to deliver all the information (and shouldn't anyway)—for that, you can go to the RetouchPro channel on the YouTube Rentals beta site where it will soon be added to their already large collection of rentals. The only downside is that it costs twice as much ($19.98). Read RetouchPro's explanation of the Youtube rentals for more info.

And now...some random notes:

On sharing information
If nothing else, Amy Dresser and I share the philosophy that sharing information is good. Some people are guarded about their techniques as if revealing their trade secrets will make them useless. Amy, on the other hand, knows that no one can replace her own artistic eye and vision. She doesn't need to hide anything because the real technique is in how the brain works. It's the decision making, the seeing that matters more than the Photoshop settings.

On skin
Amy doesn't think gender or age should change the way you retouch skin. "Skin is skin. I have the same approach to everything," she says. The look of the skin (gritty, smooth, dreamy, shiny) is determined by the style, not the subject.

On technical details
She doesn't pay attention to histograms. She never looks at the "info" palette. She doesn't mess with most of the settings in Photoshop or on her Wacom tablet. She describes herself as "not very technical." Nice to know that you don't have to know every little thing about Photoshop to be successful.

On workflow
She does some basic manipulation in RAW, starting with exposure and working her way down. After that, she has an action that sets up her organizational system of folders and layers. Her organization reminded me of a paper outline—it's just a structure that reminds you to attend to certain points, then you fill it in as you work.

On getting things done
Amy works from general to specific. In other words, fix the biggest problems first and work your way to the smaller ones. For example, she's not going to make one area perfect before moving on to the next. Move around the whole face, make everything better and then better and then...oops. Times up. The client wants the photo. Aren't you glad you have a pretty decent overall photo rather than half a face that's perfect and another half you haven't even touched yet?

On little steps
Amy made about 30 separate curves adjustment layers (and quickly) to fine tune the skin tone. When she does dodging and burning, she works at 3%. When she paints (to colorize something or to add a little white at the base of the eyelid, for example), I saw her use as low as 1% flow. This is typical of her tendency to build up many small steps rather than do one sudden change. That way, if you make little mistakes, then they stay little. It also helps cultivate a subtle eye.

On zooming in
More often than not, Amy keeps the photo zoomed out to how it will look in print. That way you don't waste time doing pore-level changes that don't matter. Look at what people are going to see, and if it looks good then why go down to the level of the pixel?

On photography
"I'm actually not a fan of photography." Biggest shock of the session to me. Remember, she is a retoucher, not a photographer. She says she never takes pictures. As for me, I'm a photographer who sees retouching as a means to an end. I retouch because I can't afford to send my work to someone like Amy Dresser, and I'm enough of a control freak to prefer doing things myself if I can't hire someone way better. So, I'll forgive you, Amy, for not loving photography. After looking at photos all day long, you need a break. My suggestion: music.

On using your weirdness to your best possible advantage
"If you have a weird talent and you can find a way to use it for your career, then, like, power to you." Amy always had an eye for detail and color. I would compare this to my mother-in-law, who (as I have mentioned once before) seems to have the equivalent of perfect pitch for color. Amy's visual abilities wouldn't help her much if she were filing papers all day, but luckily, she found a job that turns those abilities into gold.

For future events, look on RetouchPro. That Youtube rental thing (at twice the price) might not be quite the right price point, but if you try it, let me know.

Layer adjustment masks for the lazy artsy slob

When it comes to masking, those extra neat and precise detail-oriented types have the clear advantage. But if you're more the sloppy, intuitive, artsy type, and/or you're a beginner then rejoice! This tutorial is for you. Oh, the discipline that masking requires! This is probably one of the reasons that my personal projects involve fairly minor post-processing manipulation. Mastering all of the selection tools (I have a particular fear of the reputedly wondrous pen tool.), loading alpha channels, altering blending modes...it's just so much to learn that I won't even pretend to cover it all by the end of the month. We'll get to some of it (alpha channels is coming soon), but for today, I want to bask in the relative ease of basic adjustment masking. In particular, the kind of masking that doesn't require precise borders. Here it is in three steps:

1. you open your image
2. you add an adjustment layer such as curves, hue/saturation, etc.
3. you use a very soft brush and paint effects in or out in your sloppy, intuitive way.

Maybe you already know the joys of this kind of masking, but then again, maybe you were just avoiding masks altogether and weren't aware that you had such an easy option.

So let me give a basic example.
Some people might call this the "painting with light" technique. I'm not a fan of the term, because it makes me think of Thomas Kinkade "painter of light." No offense if you're a fan of his (obviously a lot of people are or he wouldn't have stores in your local mall), but those cottages of his always have such intense light emanating from the windows that I can't help but think I am witnessing either an alien abduction or a terrible fire.

But back to "painting with light."
Let's take this pretty lame photo of the pont Alexandre III:


It's no prize to begin with, but if it was the only one you had and you wanted to make your friends green with envy over your trip to Paris then some retouching could help further your sadistic aims.

Now I'll add a curves layer:
Click on the curves icon at the bottom of your layers palette, or in CS4 you can click on the little "s-curve" icon.

Now let's lighten the whole image by taking that black dot and pulling it toward the upper left corner of the curves box:You will see the effect over the entire image because you haven't done any masking yet. With the curves adjustment layer, you automatically get a white mask, which means that any adjustments you make will be applied to the whole image. If you use a black paintbrush on the mask, you can selectively remove the effect. It's just a matter of preference, but I think it's way more fun to use a black mask and the selectively paint in the effect. The only advantage is psychological—brushing the effect in feels more magical whereas brushing the effect out just feels like cleaning up a mess (at least that's how I see it). So dump that white layer mask (click and drag on the mask part—NOT the curves side or you'll trash the whole layer) in the trash:

Yes. Delete. Now alt click on the mask icon to get a black layer mask.

You will just see the dark original...
but by taking a brush (b) and painting white in the mask you can add the light back in as you please. Use the right and left brackets to change the size of your brush and use them with shift to change the softness. For this kind of sloppy intuitive work, I set the brush hardness to zero to avoid strong edges to my changes. You can also adjust the opacity of your brush strokes up in the brush toolbar.

Here's some sloppy painting in action:

Hit the backslash key (\) to see your masking as a red overlay:

You can toggle back and forth or just paint in the overlay view, whatever works. Some more quick painting—and really, this is quick and sloppy but it works—and you've lightened up the bottom:

Remember that this isn't about making one uniform mask, you can change the opacity and make more subtle little blobs of change....

Keep following this process (adding adjustment layers and masking their effects) on as many layers as you want. For example, I think the sky could be less washed out, so I'll add another curves layer and pull the curve down toward the bottom right corner to make everything darker:

It looks like you just undid all of your previous work, but in a minute you'll be painting the effect in and out as above. Once again, I prefer to trash the white layer...


and change to a black layers mask as before.


Mask away....
Notice that I'm not trying to be super precise selections. Instead, I'll use a low opacity brush to feather the effect a little for smooth transitions. I will also take some of the effect off of the clouds to keep them fluffy white.

You can now see the two curves layers...
but since this is a picture of France, two just feels too....too...how you say...conventional. Three is much more interesting.
A little more contrast selectively applied spices things up. And if you think you've gone too far with any one layer, you can always reduce the opacity.

By this point, I'm done, but you could add as many layers and adjustments as you want.
Finally, then, with no adjustments other than our three curves layers, you go from the "meh" photo...
to the "aahhhh" photo:

Closing words...

• use this technique on anything from landscapes to people's faces
• you don't need surgical precision to make artful changes
• if you have never tried adjustment layers and masks, this "sloppy" intuitive way is the least intimidating way to start.
  

Quick tutorial about the Photoshop Quick Mask

Making perfect selections is difficult no matter what tool you use: the magnetic lasso, the magic wand, the quick selection tool, and many others, which is why the Quick Mask is your friend.

Just know up front that "Quick" is a cruel misuse of an adjective meant to taunt you as you painstakingly refine your selection. Best to overestimate how much work it will be to make a good selection, then you can be happy if it doesn't take too long.

Now that I've crushed your optimism, let's move on to a very basic look at the Quick Mask. The quick mask is a nifty red semi-opaque overlay (by default, change color or opacity by double clicking the quick mask icon) that lets you see what you have selected and allows you to make and refine selections. The quick mask tool icon is hiding down there at the bottom of the toolbar:

Or you can find it in the select menu:

Here is a typical way that you might use the quick mask. Let's say that you want to isolate some element of a photo from its background. In this case, let's say I want to take an ornamental ironwork detail, extract it from its background, and save it to use as part of my own brush set or for some compositing project.

For the sake of demonstrating how the quick mask can be used to refine a selection, I will make a really sloppy initial selection with the magnetic lasso tool:

Your selection would never be this bad, but I want to show you that even if it is, you can fix it in a very intuitive coloring-book sort of way. Without deselecting anything, hit "q" to enter quick mask mode (or select it from the toolbar or menu). The red mask lets you see which areas are selected and which are not.

Now that you're in quick mask mode, you can use the paint brush (or pencil or selection tools, but we'll stick with the paint brush here) to refine your selection. Hit "b" to get your brush. As you paint, you can increase and decrease the brush size as needed with the right (bigger) and left (smaller) bracket tools. You can adjust the hardness of the brush (for harder or softer edges) by holding shift while using the right (harder) and left (softer) bracket tools. You can hit "x" to toggle between black or white (i.e. masking or unmasking). Finally, you can toggle between quick mask mode and your selection (the "dancing ants") by hitting "q", but be careful not to click on the image (and accidentally deselect) when you're not in quick mask mode.

It's simple, but it takes time. Things that help: a steady hand, painting or drawing experience, a pen tablet, a zen-like mindset. Sadly, I have, at most, only two of those things.

A detail (above) shows the area that I am painting (with a black brush).

As I work, I hit "q" to check how the selection is progressing. Still work to be done...


I gradually work around the whole thing. Here's the improved version in quick mask mode:

And here is what it looks like when I hit "q" again to turn off the quick mask and go back to my selection.
It's still not perfect, but I have a movie to catch. Priorities. So with my selection still active, I copy it onto its own layer (Mac: Command–J; PC: Ctrl–J):

As you can see, there are still some parts with too much black around the edges. From here, I can use the erase tool to clean it up. If you do a better job up front than I did here, you might already be done.

If you have never used quick mask, just experiment with it (preferably on something with clean edges). Have fun. More work on selections/masking/compositing to come.