Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to transform a photo
into glamorous portraits by adding a variety of sexy, skin glows you often see in fashion
magazines, posters and record album covers. Open a photo you'd like to use. I downloaded
this one from Shutterstock.com. The first thing we should do is to convert your image
into a Smart Object, so any effects we give it will be non-destructive. Click the icon
at the top, right corner of the Layers panel and choose "Convert to Smart Object".
I'll show you the fastest and simplest way to give it a glamorous, skin glow. Make a
copy of it by pressing Ctrl + J on Windows or Cmd + J on a Mac.
Go to Filter and Filter Gallery. Open the Distort folder and click Difuse Glow.
We won't add any graininess because we want to keep our image as smooth as possible. The Glow amount controls how bright the glow
and the Clear amount determines how much of the image is covered by the glow.
For this particular image, I'll set the glow at 1 and the Clear at 6. Keep in mind, depending on
the size, resolution and characteristics of your photo, you should experiment with these
amounts until you get just the right combination that looks good to you. Then, click OK. Click
Click the Adjustment layer icon and choose "Vibrance". Click the "Clip-to-Layer" icon which clips
or restricts the adjustment layer to effect only the one layer beneath it in the Layers
panel. Slide the Vibance all the way to the right. As you can see when I toggle back and forth, we now added a soft, skin glow to our
image and we did it with just one adjustment layer and one filter. Now, I'll show you some
other ways to achieve beautiful, glamorous effects, but this time, with a bit more complexity.
First, let's group the last effect into its own folder. To do this, Shift-click on the
thumbnail of the middle layer to highlight it and press Ctrl or Cmd + G. Click off the
eyeball next to the folder to hide it. Click Layer 0 to make it active and make a copy of it.
Change the Blend Mode to Overlay. Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur. Reduce
the view until you can see most of the face. Adjust the Radius amount, so you can barely
make out the eyes, nose and mouth. Then, click OK. Hide the layer and make the bottom layer
active. We want to make a selection just around the skin. To do this, go to Select and Color
Range. Make sure Selection is ticked. If you're working on CS5 or earlier, choose Sampled
Colors and adjust the Fuzziness until you see that most of the skin is selected with
as little of the rest of the image showing. Then, click OK. If you're working on CS6 or
later, choose Skin Tones. Photoshop automatically finds the skin and adjusts the color range
to get the best selection. Then, click OK. Press "Q" to make the selection into a quickmask.
Open your Brush Tool and choose a medium-sized brush and a Hardness of 0%. Make sure the
Opacity and Flow are 100% each. Now, paint over areas that aren't part of the skin.
To remove areas of the quickmask, make the foreground color white by pressing "x"
on your keyboard or by clicking this icon. Now, brush over areas of the skin that the
quickmask covered, as well as the lips. To enlarge or reduce the size of the brush, press
the the right or left bracket keys. Now, brush over those areas.
To paint back in areas, press "x" again to make the foreground color black. Make sure you have the eyes and eyebrows filled in.
When you're done, press "Q" again to revert the quickmask back into a selection. Make the middle layer visible and active.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the active layer.
As I turn the layer mask off and on, you can see the difference. Next, we'll make the eye
color more attention-getting. First, make a composite snapshot of your image by pressing
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E on Windows or Cmd + Shift + Option + E on a Mac. Then, make a
copy of it. Make sure black is your foreground color and click on the quickmask icon, so
we can brush in a quickmask. Now carefully brush over just the irises.
Press "Q" to make it into selections and then click the Layer mask icon to make a layer mask of the selections.
Invert the layer mask by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + I. Click the photo to make it active
and click the Adjustment layer icon. Choose Vibrance
and click the clip-to-layer icon to restrict the adjustment layer to just the irises. Slide the Vibrance and Saturation all the way to the right.
The last effect can be achieved simply by adding a filter that we used earlier. First, make another composite snapshot
and go to Filter, and Filter Gallery. Use Diffuse Glow again with same settings you used earlier.
To intensify the effect, press Ctrl or Cmd + F to repeat the last filter.
Have fun transforming regular photos into glamorous, sexy portraits.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!