| Keate planned to shoot an upbeat track-and-field image, but when faced with dramatic location lighting, he decided to head in a more intense direction. Using Curves and the Dodge and Burn tools, he manipulated lighting and color for a disconcerting image.
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After opening and duplicating the
Background layer, Keate selected the
Clone Stamp tool to retouch large areas
like the knee. For a quick and easy way to
determine where he wanted to clone, he
drew paths with the Pen tool for temporary
guides.
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To place the focus on the feet, Keate
duplicated the retouched layer, drew
a broad selection around the feet and
legs with the Lasso tool, and inversed the
selection (Shift-Command/Ctrl-I). He
then created a Curves adjustment layer,
and in the resulting dialog box, he pulled
the middle of the curve down to darken
the inversed selection. Then he applied
the Gaussian Blur filter with a Radius of
250 to blend the transition from light
to dark. “Instead of selecting an exact
outline of the foot, the selection blends
into the background as a flowing, soft
halo,” Keate explains.
After he blurred, he
chose Filter > Noise > Add Noise to avoid
banding. Generally, Keate sets a small
Amount, but he upped the percentage in
this case for a grainier look. Curves layer
upon Curves layer, he continued enhancing
the heavy backlighting in this manner,
sometimes omitting inversing the
selection and pushing up the midpoint
of the curve, such as with a selection
of the toes. When finished, he merged
the Curves layers with the retouched
duplicate layer.
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Because the shot was underexposed,
Keate drew out contrasts in skin tones
like the sides of the toes. Instead of using
Curves to emphasize lighting, he chose
to capitalize on existing highlights. Keate
duplicated the merged layer, selected
the Dodge tool (O), and chose a narrow
brush tip. In the Options bar, he changed
the Range from the Midtones default to Highlights and set Exposure to 10%. He
zoomed in closely on the toes and ran
the tool over the highlights. Keate also
used this method on a duplicate layer to
selectively even out tones like the dark
spots on top of the foreground foot.
The
heel was too light, so he applied the Burn
tool set to Shadows to even it out. The
dodging and burning shifted pixel colors
slightly, so he temporarily turned off the
visibility of the dodge and burn layer to
sample original color from the merged
layer below with the Eyedropper tool.
He then passed over the altered pixels
on the dodge and burn layer using the
Brush tool with the brush Mode set to
Color at 20% Opacity. “Using the Healing
Brush tool in Color Mode works well,
too,” he adds.
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Keate now focused on overall color.
He created a new top layer, filled it with
blue, and set the layer’s blending mode
to Color at 53% Opacity. He added a layer
mask and painted on the mask with black
at a low Opacity to weaken the effect on
the skin. This produced a slight duotone,
yet didn’t overshadow original colors.
Keate then created a Curves adjustment
layer above the blue fill layer to emulate
a cross-processing effect. By pulling
down the highlight point of the curve on
the Blue channel, the white highlights
shifted to an eerie yellow.
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To add shoelaces to the feet, Keate
shot white laces separately, placed the
image on a new layer in the main image,
and inverted them (Command/Ctrl-I). He
used the Dodge tool to reveal highlights
on the laces, and added a layer mask so
he could hide the ends and size them
to the feet. Then Keate created a new
layer below the laces layer, and used
the veins and ridges on the top of the
foot as guides. Where the skin puckered,
he “pushed it up” further along the
highlights using the Dodge tool set to
the Highlights Range, switching between
a small brush with a high Exposure and
a large brush with a low Exposure. To
“sink” the skin around the lace holes, he
applied the Burn tool set to Shadows
with a 50% Exposure. “In this case, the
color shift from the tools enhanced the
unsettling feeling of laces weaved into
the feet, so I didn’t return them to their
previous color,” he says.
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The final image is shown at left (click to enlarge).
Tip 1: To avoid printing flaws that may not
be noticeable onscreen, Keate creates
a Curves adjustment layer at the top
of an image’s Layers stack. If it’s a
high-key image or it has a silhouette,
he darkens the layer by pulling down
the midpoint of the curve and looks
at the image for any stray pixels, edge
bleeds, or dodging mistakes. To look
for errors in images with normal lighting
or close-ups of skin, he pushes up
the curve.
Tip 2: Use the method from the second step to correct
a landscape image with a blownout
sky. Select the sky area with the
lasso, loosely following the horizon
for the bottom of the selection. Create
a Curves adjustment layer and pull
down the midpoint to darken the
selection. Apply a Gaussian Blur with
a 250-pixel Radius, then apply Add
Noise. This creates a graduation that
goes from light tones on the horizon
to dark tones in the sky.
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Commercial/still-life photographer Keate is based in New York.
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