In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to add tone to a black and white photograph to create a more professional look. This method works well for close up portait photos but isn't really suitable for landscape shots.

I am using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial but the same effects can be applied using Photoshop Elements.

1. Open up the photograph you want to use in Photoshop.

2. If the image isn't black and white already then change it to black and white by clicking on the black and white option in photoshop.




3. Now we need to add a colour balance adjustment layer. To do this go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Colour Balance > OK.
A new layer will appear in your layers panel. 

4. You will see a Color Balance panel has appeared with three tone options to change. We're going to modify this to alter the colour balance of the shadows and highlights so you get a slight colour tint. 

First of all select the Highlights button and change the settings to what I have shown in the image to the right.

This will add a warm tint.

5. Next select the Shadows button and once again change the settings to what I have shown in the image to the left here.

This will add a cool tint.

You can play around with these a bit more if you would like to create a slightly different effect from what you have currently achieved. 

Next select the Hue/ Saturation tool and modify the Hue and Saturation until you are happy with the results. 

Finally you can also adjust the contrast and brightness slightly until you are happy with the results.

Below you can see our final result!

Here you can see the comparison from the original colour photograph, the black and white and finally our edited image with the tonal manipulation:

I hope this tutorial has been useful for you! 

After so many lovely comments on my last post I thought I would provide a quick tutorial today to help those of you who fancy learning how to do some photo editing and are looking to get to grips with some of the basics of Photoshop.

For the examples shown in this tutorial I have been using Photoshop CS4 but you can do exactly the same thing in Photoshop Elements.

It is quite popular at the moment to take a colour photo and edit parts of it to be in black and white leaving a few key elements in colour. This can create a dramatic effect particularly in wedding photographs and photos of children.

What about the photos you have that are already in black and white? Is it possible to do the opposite and start with a black and white photo and add some colour to it? The answer is yes! There are in fact many ways of adding colour to a black and white photograph, it is impossible to 'restore' colour to a photo that has always been black and white but you can add colour and either create a dramatic effect or stick to the realistic colours as closely as you can. This is a basic tutorial that will get you started and perhaps introduce some of you to the use of layers within photo editing. 

To begin with open the black and white photograph you would like to use for this tutorial, it is a good idea to rename it and save it to make sure you don't by accident damage the original photo. 


Once you have done this you need to select the eyes using the lasso tool in the left hand tool bar. Simply click around the outline of the eyes to select them. When done you should have a blinking dotted line around each eye.

Now go up to the menu bar and select  Edit>Copy

At this stage you need to create a new layer, to do this look at the Layers panel at the bottom right hand side of the screen. At the moment you will just have one layer showing which will be named 'Background'. To create a new layer simply click on the second button from the right which looks a little like a page being peeled over (highlighted in pink in the picture to the left here). 
When you hover you mouse over this button the words 'Create a New Layer' will appear, click the button and you will see a new layer called 'Layer 1' will have appeared above the 'Background' layer. 

With this new layer selected now go to the menu bar and select Edit>Paste.

This has created a copy of just the eye section of your image.
 To add some colour to the eyes we now select Image > Adjustments > Colour Balance and change the settings to achieve the colour you desire. Once you are happy with the colour select OK.

This is our final image, I have made the eyes quite a striking blue here to show the results clearly but you can of course create a much more natural effect.

You can select any section of the image and do the same to add some colour to the image. 


In my next tutorial we will take a look at layers a little further and I will explain what the purpose is and how they work.

Please take a look at my other Tutorials for more tips for beginners:

Photoshop Tip 1: Object Removal
Photoshop Tip 2: How to create a Photo Collage
Photoshop Tip 3: How to create a Rainbow

If you would like your photographs editing but don't fancy doing it yourself take a look at
what editing services we offer, or feel free to contact us if there is something specific 
you would like doing. 

 

After all the blog posts that have been written about the negative side of Photoshop due to the impact highly edited photos of models and celebrities can have on young people I decided to have a little fun with Photoshop today to see what effects I could create. I mainly used my husband as a model, although I created one on myself too just to make sure he couldn't complain I was being unfair! 

It is truly amazing what you can do with Photoshop and I love the fact that I am constantly learning new things every time I use it.

These pictures were created purely for fun, with the added bonus that I have learnt new tricks that I can use in the every day photo edits I do for customers. I'm sure I will be able to apply some of what I have learnt to some new and magical fairy edits too so watch this space!

This one would make a very fun Halloween party invitation!

This Tiger effect makes me look like I've been having fun at a children's party! 

Perhaps if your little one is having a fancy dress birthday party this technique could be use to create a fabulous cake topper to help celebrate their special day!

Has anybody seen the invisible man? This effect will allow you to blend in to the background - literally! 


There really is so much fun to be had with photo editing, have you got something special you would like doing to one of your photographs? 

If you would like a fun effect applying to your photo then upload it to our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/photofairydesigns. The first three will receive a FREE edit!! Go Go Go! =)

There has been a fair amount of debate and uproar from women in particular about the way images of models and celebrities are improved using photo editing software to create unachievable standards of beauty. I have even previously written a blog myself about the use of airbrushing and recently Joanne Dewberry began a 'Real Women' campaign following the news that H&M have admitted to using computer-generated bodies to model their clothes. 

Of course to a certain extent I am a little biased on this subject, I am a photo editor after all and I have to admit that I am constantly amazed and impressed with what you can achieve using editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. I guess the problem is that reality is being merged with art, if we look at a painting of a beautiful woman we know that it has been created by a person who has perhaps enhanced their eyes and slimmed their waist. In comparison when we look at a photograph we believe it to be a true image, so when we see photos of celebrities with perfect skin, and tiny waists just hours after giving birth we believe them to be true and then a lot of us aspire to have the same level of perfection. I've often thought that there isn't really a solution to this problem, technology advances and it is likely to get worse before it gets better. However, after thinking about it and reading lots of debates about it I now think that one way of reducing the impact of these photographs is to make it a regulation that any photographs that have been edited in this way (body manipulation etc) should have a mark on it to show that it has been edited. That way at least when young women, and men, are looking through these magazines they can see very easily that yes it is a nice picture but it has been highly edited so should be seen more a piece of art than a true life photograph.

I came across this video clip this morning after seeing a tweet about it from @JayLoftus and I thought that it sums this up wonderfully and I hope it bring a smile to your face!  Remember - this commercial isn't real, and neither are society's standards of beauty! 

I'd love to hear your thoughts to this ongoing debate - all comments are very welcome!

Adding a rainbow to an image can be a beautiful finishing touch and isn't so difficult to do just follow these simple steps! 

For this tutorial I am using Photoshop Elements, the current version is Photoshop Elements 10 and can be purchased for around £50 for either a PC or Mac.

1. Open the photo you would like to apply the rainbow to in Photoshop Elements.

4. The 'Gradients Editor' box will now appear and you will see a colour bar along the bottom of the box. Using the sliding tabs reduce the width of all of the colours and the outside tabs so you are left with a narrow strip of colours in the middle of the bar. See the picture above in step 3 for an example of what the bar should now look like. Set the Opacity to between 20 and 30% to give a more realistic rainbow effect. Click 'Ok' once you have finished doing this.

5. New create a new layer by clicking the 'Create New Layer' button at the bottom of the layers panel over to the right of the screen.

6. To create the rainbow simply click your mouse, hold and drag to make a line and when you release the mouse button the rainbow will appear. As you have created the rainbow in it's own layer you can freely move it and adjust the size without affecting the background image. Have a play around until you are happy with the location of your rainbow.  If you want to change the opacity of the rainbow you can adjust it by changing the opacity of the layer in the layers panel.

7. If you would like it to appear that your rainbow is disappearing behind something you can simply use the eraser tool from the tool panel at the left and just erase any sections of the rainbow you want to be hidden.

8. Finish by right clicking on the background layer and select 'Flatten image'. 

9. Save your completed image and use it for whatever you wish!

I'd love to see your finished rainbow images, come over and visit us on our facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/photofairydesigns and share your rainbow edits!
This is the 3rd in a series of Photoshop Elements Tutorials so please check back for more in the future! 

Photo collages are very easy to create and an effective way to show off a selection of your photos whether you are using them for a blog, website, or for printing and using on greetings cards or framing etc. 

For this tutorial I am using Photoshop Elements, the current version is Photoshop Elements 10 and can be purchased for around £50 for either a PC or Mac 

1. The first thing you need to do is to gather the photos that you want to use on your collage and open them using Photoshop Elements so they show in your project bin.

2. Next you need to open a blank document that you will create your collage on. 
To do this click on:


File > New > Blank File ...

A box will then appear asking you what size you would like the new document to be. Set the size of the document according to your requirements. If you are creating a photo collage to use on a web page it is also a good idea to set the pixels per inch size to 72. For printable documents a pixels per inch size of 300 should be used.

3. Once you are happy with the document size click 'Ok' and a new blank document will appear on the screen.

How often do we take photographs that we love except for an object or person in the background that we wish we could get rid of! With most photo editing software it is fairly easy and simple for even learner photo editors to remove these objects. In this post I'm going to tell you how!

In this photograph you can see the patchy areas of grass and the boat oar are distracting items and have spoilt the image we were hoping to achieve. We need a way to remove them without making the image look fake and without over cropping.

This is one of the many times where the clone stamp tool comes in extremely useful. It allows us to take a sample from elsewhere in the photo and effectively paint over the unwanted areas. With this example we can take a sample from an area where the grass looks nice and green and use the clone stamp to reproduce that area to cover over the oar and the patchier areas of grass.

For this example I am using Photoshop Elements, the current version is Photoshop Elements 10 and can be purchased for around £50 for either a PC or Mac. 

To begin with open the photo you wish to edit in Photoshop Elements and save a copy of it with a different name to make sure your original image is safe while you learn to use this technique. This allows you to experiment as much as you like without worrying about destroying your original image:

Next select the clone stamp tool (by clicking on it) from the tool bar along the left side of the screen. Along the top you will now see options for the size and opacity of the clone stamp. Choose an appropriate brush size for the area you will be working on and keep the opacity set to 100%

You may find it helpful to zoom in slightly on your image to the area you will be working on at this stage, particularly if it is a small area you are going to be working on.
Choose the sample area you want to use to cover the unwanted items by hovering your mouse over the area and while holding down the 'alt' button on the keyboard click the left mouse button. 
Now simply click the mouse over the item you want to cover repeatedly until it is completely covered. You may want or need to re sample during this process so just press 'alt' and left click the mouse again to do this. 
Make sure you cover over any shadows the item may have created to give as natural a result as possible.

Once you are happy with the object removal you may wish to crop the image or resize depending on your requirements before saving it. 

Here you can see the before and after results of some quick object removal.

Why not have a go yourself? We'd love to see your results on our facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/photofairydesigns

This is the first in a series of Photoshop tutorials so please check back for more over the next few weeks!

Over the last few years there has been great deal of debate over the use of airbrushing of photographs for magazines and the media in general. Concerns have been raised about the unachievable image it gives young girls (and boys) of the way they then think their body should look. Does this mean we should all see airbrushing as a bad thing, and something that should be avoided, or is it just another example of a useful tool that has been taken to extremes? 

I'm sure most of us have had photos taken that when looked at we've been disappointed at a spot that had decided to appear that day and has taken center stage on the photograph. Or at the way the light has caught our face that has shown up every slight wrinkle that we didn't even realise we had! The classic in my house is a beautiful photograph of one my boys spoilt by a blob of tomato sauce or chocolate smeared around their mouth that they have been savouring since lunch. Personally, I believe this is where airbrushing has a place.  Not to create an unachievable image but to simply make small corrections to create a more flattering photograph. 

It is a shame that such a fantastic photo editing tool has been abused by extreme use and therefore gained itself a somewhat immoral reputation. I suppose in some forms it is being used as a quick and painless form of plastic surgery when it comes to celebrities. Making legs longer, stomachs slimmer, skin and makeup flawless, even changing eye colour. Perhaps there should be some guidelines as to what is an acceptable level of airbrushing for photos used in the media? Or perhaps there should be clearer information given so young people can see what photos have been edited and understand that in the real world people don't actually look like that.

I guess that the problems with this kind of regulation is where does it stop and how to you truly regulate it anyway? For years artists have painted portraits using their own interpretation of what their subject looked like. Perhaps being a little more flattering to ensure their subject was happy with their finished painting. Maybe airbrushing is simply a modern form of this? We can no longer hide behind an artists brush so we try to hide behind a Photoshop brush instead!

Perhaps the main solution to the body image problem is simply to tell our children that these images aren't real. Point out to them all the different shapes and sizes we come in and that being happy and healthy is something far more important to aspire towards than being a size 6. 

What are your thoughts?