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[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Find out how this amazing image was created with Photoshop. This Photoshop tutorial will teach you many techniques that you can use to enhance your photos.


Preview of Final Results





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Fashion Shot Photoshop Tutorial



This tutorial will be slightly different from the majority of the tutorials on the web, firstly because it is not aimed at beginners and secondly it will be giving the techniques and why I used them rather than telling you exactly what buttons to press. However I think I've explained most things to a high enough degree to be understood by people with quite a low knowledge of Photoshop but I haven't gone in to details such as how to create a layer etc.

As with most of my tutorials I try to show as many useful techniques in one tutorial as I can fit in even if the final image isn't something you've been dying to learn how to make. I also try and explain my regular workflow as its probably more useful to know why I want to add something to the picture rather than just telling you to do it, for this reason the tutorial may not be in the most sensible order for example I go foreground, background, foreground, background but I assure you this seemed this most sensible way to tackle this image at the time. Lastly I want to say that I got a lot of my inspiration here from Nik Ainley, a very talented digital artist.


Step 1



Start by creating a new document in Photoshop, I used a size of 2554x1559px, I can't remember now why I used that size so feel free to use a different ratio if you are creating a wallpaper although try and keep the dimensions similar to what I have. Next select the paint bucket tool and using a foreground color of black, fill the background layer. Next you will need to get a photo of a person, subjects which will work best are one wearing dark clothes as we are going to fade the person into a black background. The techniques shown is this tutorial can always be adapted, for example if your subject is wearing red you could fade them into a red background. The image I used can be found here and probably worth using if you are new to this kind of editing. Okay either drag the image into your document or just copy and paste it then place it similarly to the image shown below.

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Step 2



Now for the most tedious part in any photo manipulation, also one of the most important parts; the extraction of our subject. This one isn't all that hard to extract because the outline of the man is quite simple. Sometimes when we are given a photo with a white background we can use the magic wand tool or the color range selection. However you can only really get away with this when the background you are putting it on is also a light color because here if we were to use the magic wand we would be left with a narrow gray outline that will stand out against the black background. What we will do is to create a layer mask on this layer, so select the layer with the person in it then click the layer mask button at the bottom of the layers panel. For those that have not yet encountered layer masks then basically what they do is to hide the parts of the layer where the layer mask is dark and let through the parts where the layer mask is light, for example if the layer mask was filled black then none of this layer would be visible but if it is white like ours is at the moment then everything will be visible. Click on the layer mask then select a brush of about 20px and 80% hardness with the foreground color still at black. Now draw round the outline of his clothes, you won't need to be too accurate as the color of his suit and the background are about the same anyway. You may need to use a smaller brush for some parts so just change the size or hit the '[' button to make it smaller and the ']' button to enlarge it. The hair is a bit trickier and will require you to change the opacity of the brush but only go round the basic shape of the hair and don't worry about the strands that stick out as they won't be seen anyway on the black background after going round the person just fill any parts out with this black. The first image shows what it should look like after masking and the second, what my layer mask looked like. Okay since this isn't a masking tutorial I've decided to be nice and post my layer mask so you don't need to extract anything. If you're reading this and you have just extracted the image then think of it as good practice but if you skipped ahead and don't want to spend too much time on the extraction then you can download the layer mask which I've put on my site here. To use this, copy it into your document then go select>color range and set fuzziness to 200 then click on the white part now go to the layer with the man on it and if you have already put a layer mask on this image then delete it and just click on the layer mask button in the layers panel.

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Step 3



Next I duplicated this layer then moved it behind the original layer and scaled and moved it to the left slightly. I then grabbed a large soft brush with an opacity of about 30% and brushed over his face in the layer mask. I then duplicated the original layer again and moved it behind also then went edit>transform>flip horizontal and scaled and moved it slightly. On this layer brushed over his trousers and the bottom of his shirt in the layer mask. Usually when I'm working in Photoshop I add a layer mask to every layer I create just out of habit as it allows for a lot of subtle changes which can be changed throughout the process unlike using the eraser tool. Okay your image should look like the one below, now just change the opacity to both of these new layers to about 10%.

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Step 4



Create a new layer group then select the three layers with the people in then drag them into this layer group. It is a good idea to name this group sensibly as we will have a few groups after we have finished. Now click on the group and add a layer mask, the reason I added a layer mask to the group was that if I wanted to hide parts of all three of these layers then I could do so with this mask. Grab a large soft brush with an opacity of about 30% then brush over the left side (his right) of his body and also his trousers and some of his hair in order to blend him into the background. Try and get him looking like the image below.

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Step 5



Create a new layer group above this called 'adjustments'. This is where we will add adjustment layers to make the image look better. The advantages of using adjustment layers over layer adjustments are that an adjustment layer comes with a layer mask so your adjustment can be applied to selected parts of your image also a lot can be changed later on in the design like the settings or the opacity. You'll probably agree with me when I say that that this man's fashion sense isn't all that great. But with some easy Photoshopping we can change this very quickly. Firstly the navy blue suit would look a lot better black in order to match his hair and our background. The brown belt doesn't match so we will also change that to black and the blue shirt would look better light gray. This all makes for an easy adjustment because all we need is to desaturate all hiss clothes then change the brightness and contrast of the some of the parts. Start by creating a hue/saturation adjustment layer (next to the layer mask button) and change the saturation to -100, in other words grayscale. Now select the layer mask and using a soft black brush with about 30% opacity, paint onto his face. We still want his face to be of a low saturation as shown in the image below so don't brush too much. If you're really into your small details like me then do the same with the small part of his hand that you can see.

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