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! 

In today's Photoshop tip we are going to look at the use of layers. Being able to understand and use layers is extremely important when you are looking to maximise the possibilities of Photoshop. They are so important they even have their own panel and category in the Menu bar at the top of the screen. The good news is that layers are pretty easy to understand and once you get the hang of them your photo editing skills will improve in leaps and bounds.

What is a Layer?
The easiest way to think about a layer is to imagine it as a sheet of paper, you start off with your bottom layer of paper and you can add more layers over the top. The layers literally sit on top of each other so that whatever is in the layer above will be seen on top of whatever is below it.

Layers are useful as it allows us to add extra things to an existing image such as a logo, person, whatever you have an image file of!

To explain more easily lets take an example, here is the picture we will start with it is one of my current fairy edits that is partially completed but you can choose any photograph or image that you have.

So we can see from the image above that it is already a pretty nice image but it is looking a little bare so it would be nice to add more blossom and perhaps a few other things.

The first step is to open your image in Photoshop, I am using Photoshop CS4 but you can also create layers in Photoshop Elements.

If you look at the image to the left you will see I have highlighted the Layers panel which sits at the bottom right of the page in pink. At the moment you will see one layer called 'background'. This is the image you have opened.

To create a new layer click on the second button from the right at the bottom of the layers panel that looks like a page being peeled over from the bottom.
When you hover your mouse cursor over it the words 'Create a new layer' will appear and when you click on it you will see a new layer appear above the Background layer called 'Layer 1'.

It is important when you are working within layers to always make sure the layer you want to work with is selected. You can tell it is selected when it is highlighted in blue, so as you can see from the image to the left here the background layer is currently selected here.

The next thing we are going to do is to open up the blossom image we want to use to add to our background layer. We do this in the normal way (File>open etc) then once the image is open we can either select part of the image we want to use in our background by using the lasso tool to select or if we want to use the whole image we can simply go to Select> All.

Now we go to Edit>Copy

At this stage we can go back to the original image that we want to use as our background, so in this example I click the tab to go back to the baby image. Once there I make sure 'Layer 1' is selected and I click on Edit> Paste.

You can see from the image to the right that
the blossom image that I copied has now 
appeared in my baby image.

I can move this around and resize it using the move tool from the left hand tool bar.

 I have also renamed the 'Layer 1' layer to 'Blossom' by double clicking on the layer name. This is a good idea if you are going to be adding a lot of new layers as it can become confusing as to which is which! 

You can carry on adding new layers and copying and pasting other images into your document until you are satisfied with your final image. 

You can see from the image below that I have added more blossom and some butterflies to my final photo.

So as you can see using layers isn't so complicated and the difference it can make to your images is huge!

Our Blossom Baby image is available to buy for just £12 if you don't fancy having a go yourself, we use images of your baby and insert them into the photo to create a magical image to treasure and makes a wonderful gift for friends and family.

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. 

 

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!