This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to transform photos of faces
into beautiful black and white photo portraits. One trick I've learned is to make the photos have
a shallow depth-of-field, making sure the eyes are in perfect focus and gradually blurring the rest
of the head as it goes back in space. This will bring our attention to the eyes.
Open a focused, Shutterstock. high-resolution photo of someone you'd like to use for this project. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is to separate our subject from its background. Go to Select and
"Select and Mask". I did an in-depth tutorial on "Select and Mask", so if you'd like to watch it,
I provided its link in this video's description. Go to "Select Subject" and "Refine Hair".
Output it to a "selection". You'll see the reason for this choice later .
We'll cut and copy the subject onto its own layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
We'll make a new layer below the top layer by Ctrl or Cmd-clicking the New Layer icon.
We'll fill it with black, but before we do, let's check our foreground and background colors. If they aren't black and white
respectively, press "D" on your keyboard. If they're inverted, press "x". To fill our empty
layer with the foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Click your subject layer to make it active and click the Adjustment Layer icon. Click "Black & White".
Open the list of presets. Click the top one, which is the "Blue Filter" and press the Down arrow key on our keyboard
to see how each filter changes the look of our subject.
For this example, I’ll pick the “Blue Filter”. Make the black layer active and click the Adjustment layer icon. Click "Gradient".
Open your list of gradient presets and click the basic black to white preset thumbnail. Make the style:
"Radial". I'll keep the Angle 90 degrees, but feel free to adjust this number. Check "Reverse"
to reverse the colors. I'll make the scale approximately 150 %, but again you can make it any
amount to suit your portrait. Next, we'll correct the halo that may be surrounding the edge of your
subject's hair. Make your subject active and go to Layer, matting, and "Defringe".
We'll keep its default width of 1 pixel. Basically, "defringe" changes the color of the stray, fringed pixels to match the color
of the edges of our subject. Defringing only works on cut-out objects without Layer Masks. That's the
reason we chose to output the shape of our subject as a selection when we used the "Select and Mask"
filter earlier. Make the gradient layer active and reduce its opacity to an amount that looks
good to you. Next, we'll convert our visible image into a Smart Object so we can add a shallow focal
depth-of-field to it non-destructively. As a Smart Object, we can adjust the blur at any time. Make
the top layer active and Shift-click the black layer to make it and all the layers between it and
the top layer active. Click the icon at the upper, right corner and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Blur Gallery, and "Iris Blur". I did an in-depth tutorial on the Iris Blur filter,
so if you'd like to watch it, I provided its link as well. If you don't see the blue, circular line
and the anchor points, press Ctrl or Cmd + H. We can reposition it by placing our cursor over the
center pin of the widget and drag it. Center it over the eyes. There are four feather handles that
indicate where the blur starts, and four ellipse handles that indicate where the blur is at full
strength. Basically, the blur is feathered between the feather handles and the ellipse
handles. We can adjust where we want the blur to start by dragging any of the feather handles
in or out. We can adjust the shape and angle of the blur by dragging any of the ellipse handles.
Rotating the blur ring adjusts the strength of the blur. When you're happy with the way it looks,
click OK at the top.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!