AngstGoddess003 Embarasses Herself: Tech Q&A

Someone asks me a really fucking difficult question...

---

Q: Dear AngstGoddess003,

How do you make photos all shiny and pretty and kinda cartoon-like and all clean and all that (my description is pretty bad-- I mean the pictures of Edward and Bella like you did for Creature of Habit by Angel)? It's really cool and I would love to be able to do it, but I suspect it's really, really hard. Still, if you think it might be possible... (and on photoshop preferably cause gimp scares me).

Love,
~drift

A: Firstly, thank you for killing my Photoshop. Seriously. Is dead. Begging for mercy. "No more fucking screenshots, AG!" Well, FUCK YOU ADOBE 7.0! I knew I should have upgraded to CS. Damn me and my nostalgia for obsolete technology.

Well, I only have space to answer this question this week because it is painfully long and drawn out AND IF YOU DON'T USE IT I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN!

---

Glamorizing a Photo

There is one singular method I enjoy applying to just about every photo I touch. Glamorizing a photo isn't a science, it's an art. I can't give exact steps for anyone to use at all times, because photos, quality, colors, and perceptions vary, but I can offer a step-by-step using this photo of K-Stew. I will add a caveat that this process must be used in moderation with any photo of a male. Edward was meant to look flawless, but not pretty. We don't want to cut off his balls or anything, mkay?

Choosing a Photo:

High Quality is KEY when doing this! You want something large, even if you plan to minimize it for a banner or avatar. You can even apply this to personal photos taken with a good digital camera. Trust me. I do NOT look like my photos, EVER. I just have Adobe, time, imagination, and appallingly low self-esteem.

Rock the fuck on.

Prepping the image:

Open the photo you want to work with in Adobe Photoshop by going to "File>>Open."

1 - Duplicate Layer by right clicking on the photo in the layer's pallete, and choosing "Duplicate Layer."

2 - Go to Image>>Adjustments>>Brightness/Contrast. This image is already a little too flat for my tastes. A lot like Kstew's acting talent. OOOOOH! BURN! Just kidding (not totally). Leave brightness alone, and dick around with the contrast slider. Find something YOU like. I used the settings shown in the figure because they made me happy.

Softening Skin:

Skin is important to any manipulation. Especially when doing anything vampy, there can be -- quite literally -- no flaws. But also, softening the skin and giving it a porcelain type look is really rather classic, and gives the photo an almost painted quality. I'm also often told that the actress I'm manipulating rarely looks like the actress I'm manipulating once I've finished. This is probably the cause of that. This is a good thing, don't pout.

3 - Zoom in close ("Zoom Tool") and select the "Polygonal Lasso" tool. I'm using polygonal lasso because the plain Lasso is a motherfucking slore.
b. Click around the shape of the face. It doesn't have to be exact, just a general and rough outline. Avoid hair when possible, but don't go batshit if you have a few strands in there.

4 - Holding down the "ALT" button, click around the eyes, nose, and mouth. This will deselect these areas. Be certain to deselct and sharp lines or details. I wish I could be more exact here, but it's really just feeling out the shapes and lines of the form.

5 - Feather your selection by going to "Select>>Feather." I'm using 10px, but depending on the size of the picture you're using, you may need more or less. The general idea is to make the selection fuzzy.

6 - The good part! Go to "Filter>>Noise>>Median"

7 - HUZZAH! What the FUCK is happening? You aren't certain, but you like it, dontchya? Awesomeness, that's what. Play around with the radius here. We want enough to give it a softened look, but not so much that it's ugly and obvious. 13 pixels works well for this image's resolution.

8 - Now our face looks nice and soft, but chances are, there is more skin showing than JUST the face. Leaving other portions untouched will make the image look fake and comical. Repeat steps 3-7 with the lasso/feather/median with any arms, necks, hands, or chests. All skin must go!

9 - And that's the most effective method of softening skin...

Color and Tone:

Colors set the atmosphere for the peice, but skin should always be considered pale in these types of images, and you have to extract all previous color. Here's the totally ghetto method I use to accomplish this.

10 - Whorify by adding makeup! I'm emo, and us emos fucking love our eyeliner and lipstick. Don't skimp, now. Choose your "Burn" tool and set the range to something like 50% (soft brush). Apply to the outlines of the eyes and the lips. Avoid teeth and the whites of eyes.

11 - Flatten image by going to "Layer>>Flatten Image." I know you've been saving, right? RIGHT?

12 - Desaturate the photo by going to "Image>>Adjustments>>Desaturate." This removes all color.

13 - Okay. We're getting ten kinds of artsy fartsy with this step. I'm ghetto with my coloring habits (stop fucking laughing at me), so I open another image of the person in the picture I'm working on. In this case, it's just another HQ still of Kstew (though photo size and quality doesn't matter here). I do this because the skin tone is similar, and the randomness creates a good pallete of colors for me. Don't spend too long choosing. Get a picture of a fucking tree trunk if you have to.

14 - We're going to cover this random picture we've opened in a HEAVY Guassian Blur )"Filter>>Blur>>Guassian Blur"). We want the colors to bleed and merge fluidly. I'm a big fan of the highest possible setting, but I like to keep chunky shapes.

15 - Now we're going to just drag this blurred photo onto the canvas of the photo we've been working on. In the event that it doesn't cover the entire surface of the image, just "Edit>>Transform>>Scale" and force it to.

16 - We want to set this blurred layer to something like "Overlay." Though I like overlay, something else may look better depending on the combinations of pictures you're using. Don't be afraid to play around with it and find something that suits your inner lover-of-pretty-things.

17 - "Flatten Image" once again.

Refining the Image:

Now, it looks pretty fucking sweet, don't get me wrong, but... I need MOAR. This is the portion in which steps become less and less exact and more eye-trained. For example... Step 18...

18 - WHAT THE FUCK! THERE ARE ALL THESE MOTHERFUCKING RAGGED AND ALIASED GRADIENT LINES SULLYING MY PRECIOUS! Why? Well, I could get all technical with the program's internal interpretation of polar pallettes, but... I won't. It even bores me. The important thing is that the overlayed image has accentuated the proof of our manipulation, and now her cheek looks all funky foo. BOOOO. We're going to get our Polygonal Lasso once again and select the portion of the cheek that dissatifies us so.

19 - Feather your selection, as you did in Step 5 and just... Guassian blur the living dogshit out of that motherfucker. We don't take well to that type of blatant non-compliance, aliased gradient lines. Not fucking cool.

20 - Get out your "Blur" tool. There are little edges from our previous selections that will be grainy and really annoying to look at (Around the eyes, nose and mouth. Don't act like you haven't been secretly snubbing them). Set the strength to 100% and, using a small, feathered brush, blur around the fine edges of the lips, eyes, and nose. See image for the exact locations I blurred.

21 - Now, we don't necessarily want our imaggy all blurry. Quite the contrary. We just want to define what's smooth and not. So now that we have accomplished this, we are going to re-sharpen it by going to "Filter>>Sharpen>>Sharpen More." This gives it quality-pop.

The "Extra" Effort:

I take it even farther because 1.) I have no life, and 2.) This is a tutorial, and I'd remiss not to.

22 - I added a black frame to my image because I'm emo, and us emos love black. I then added some "Filter>>Render>>Lighting Effects". I... errr... didn't screenshot this process. Sorry. I just made a new layer and painted black around her face and hair to rid it of that previous, fugly background. And then I tweaked the lighting effects to my preference.

23 - Makeup again! I know, right? It's so much easier this way. Revlon doesn't have an "Undo" button. So, I'm getting a little ghetto once again and just painting on a new layer using a small brush. I chose my eyeshadow colors based solely on personal preference, but are lips ever anything other than red? I also utilized my smudge tool to pull it out over her eye a bit. I then set the layer to "Soft Light."

24 - Well, that looks better, yes?

25 - Eye Color, because you might have a vamp that needs gold or red eyes. I made a new layer and chose a soft paintbrush and a warm golden tone. I then painted one little dot on the eye, and use my "Smudge" tool to smudge it around the pupil.

Now you have a before and after to make yourself feel all accomplished and artsy. Go you!

You can apply this to just about anything. Add a Vampward in the background all kinda creepy and lurkish, and add some cool, textured background or something. Toss in some text, a cool quote, and hope Amethyst Jackson isn't pissed off that I used Bonne Foi without even asking her. (So sorry, bb. I fail at time management.)

---

Send all tech questions to angstgoddess003@tlydf.com. Thanks to tby789 for reccing Bonne Foi for this project, and suggesting the quote.