Blemishes on Skin

Skin can be very easy or very hard depending. If you have a small blemish like a zit that you want to remove you can do it simple with the clone stamp tool. Hold alt and select an area close to the blemish but not too close. Pay close attention to the coloring and lighting in the area you want to take the skin from. Just stamp the blemish. If you do it right it should be instantly hidden. Easy for anyone to do to their photos.

Smooth skin:

Find this on my Deviant Art Page: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/071/0/6/NomadicAngel_TiggStock_Retouch_by_PhotoFixerOlivia.jpg

Hair!

Tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut. I have no idea what style I want. =/
On that same note hair can be quite challenging to retouch. If you want to tidy up your hair in your photos i suggest only editing the stray hairs and let the bulk of the hair stay natural. You will end up making the hair look really weird if you overdo it. Never use the blur tool. That's a common beginner mistake and it looks very obvious and unprofessional. Hope my tips are helpful to someone... anyone... =)

Example of hair retouching that looks natural:

 Trying to remove the stray hairs around the top would just give her helmet hair. Or you know.. something flat and unnatural.

From my deviant art page: http://photofixerolivia.deviantart.com/art/Female-Portrait-Retouch-157037595?q=gallery%3Aphotofixerolivia%2F24720491&qo=15

Must have!

I came across this green screen on Amazon. Its only $22 and eligible for the free super saver shipping!

I soooo have to have it. This will make photographing and recording videos a breeze. I already have experience removing green screens and replacing with images in Adobe Premiere and in Photoshop its even easier.
I feel bad that all my photographs for: http://desert2forestart.blogspot.com/ and http://www.etsy.com/shop/Desert2ForestArt suck so much. I'm not a photographer. I will never ever claim to be.
Using this green screen will make photographing art so easy! I can lay the screen out all neat and then just replace it with white in Photoshop and maybe a nice light natural gradient.
I still need to learn how to use good lighting when photographing.
I'm such a noob. Somebody help me! haha

bai
Olivia

http://photofixerolivia.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rancho-Cucamonga-CA/Affordable-Photo-Retouching-by-Olivia/392069081345

Another Day Another Tutorial

Here is another very easy tutorial that absolutely anyone with photoshop can do. Make beautiful, dazzling, stunning eyes with good use of the brush, airbrush tool. This tutorial, like all my tutorials was done in Photoshop CS2 but I think since the tools and options used are so simple that you can apply this to any CS version. Its important when doing this tutorial to layer as described in the tutorial. If you put the layers in the wrong order the colors will look wrong. I did this tutorial with blue eyes but you can use it with any color.

Click image for full size. 

---

Tutorial at my deviant art page.

Easy Photoshop Tutorials

I just wanted to post a tutorial I've done in the past. It is a super simple lipstick tutorial. Ideal for people who want to play around with their photos.

Putting lipstick on bare lips in Photoshop CS2.

                                        Click the image for full size. 

 Tips

• Do not try to paint on the color with the brush, airbrush tool. Thats super tedious and inaccurate. It will turn out splotchy, uneven, too dark, fake looking and go past the edges of the lips. 
• Use any one or all of the lasso and marquee tools to select the lips. This takes no skill and you can visually see how accurate you are lining the lips. 
• Adjusting the hue will make the color of the lips change evenly and naturally. Giving the appearance of flawlessly applied lipstick. Use the CTRL + U command to bring up that window and slide the hue slider around until you find a color you like. If you would like the color to be more bold increase the saturation while in that same hue window. 
• The dodge tool will give a nice shine and the burn tool will darken the shadows in a natural way. You will have to play with these until you get the look you like. Don't overdo it or it will start to look fake. 

There are many ways to achieve this look but I think this is the easiest way and anyone can do it. 

I know the image is really simple and I don't show you where the tools you need are located and what settings to have them at. If you play around with it and can't get it to look right just let me know with a comment or message and I will go more in dept with you and help you figure out what you are missing. 

I'd like to offer video tutorials in the future to show very clearly and quickly what tools to use and how to use them. If anyone has any suggestions for recording software let me know. I know there are many options out there like fraps but which ones are less laggy, better preforming and less costly =)

Thanks for reading. Hope you get something out of this.

---

View this tutorial and more at my Deviant Art gallery

First!

I made this blog to promote my photo retouching service as well as get feedback on my work, trade tips with other photo editors, and provide beginner tutorials to help others spice up their photos. I'll start off by welcoming you to my blog. I hope you enjoy the content!

Here is my first commissioned work, I'm very proud of it =)

Obviously the before is on the left and the after is on the right. I did this photo restoration in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (yes I am licensed) in 2400 resolution (I have a good video card so my computer can handle that). I sent prints to my customer. I forget how much I charged this was a while ago but a project like this is about $40. 

One of the things she really wanted was for me to brighten up the background and make the boy stand out more from the background. So I added some shadowing around the edges of his side. This photo is so amazing and I had such a blast doing this project. 

Thanks for reading! 

Some fun and easy tutorials coming soon. So come back =)

---

My photo retouching page on Facebook you can view some of my gallery here
Follow me on Twitter
My Deviant Art gallery you can view most of my gallery here and I have some tutorials here.