Add more clearness; High Pass

Adding more clearness to vague image is difficult. One way is ‘High Pass’.

  1. Choose the layer witch you want to add clearness.
  2. ‘Copy’ this layer.
  3. Change the mode of copy layer   from ‘Normal’ to ‘Overlay’.
  4. Go to ‘Filter’
  5. Choose ‘Convert for Smart Filters’. By this, if you  must change the setting later, you can change only the setting without making any change to the original layer.
  6. Go to ‘Other’ and ‘High Pass’.

Several ways to add brightness

If I need to add brightness on the image, there are several ways.

  • Add ‘Curves’
  • Add ‘Brightness/Contrast ‘ …..etc

In this page, I introduce the other way by using ‘Dodge and Burn’.

  1. Create a new empty layer on the model’s layer
  2. Go to ‘Edit > Fill > 50% Grey’
  3. Change the mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Overlay’.
  4. Choose ‘Dodge and Burn’ and add them on the place where you want to add the brightness and darkness.

How to control the area of effects

Sometimes we must control the area of effect. For example, imagine to combine these 2 images into one, by using an old man’s head and a young man’s body.

Pay attention on the direction of the light.The light comes from the right in the old man’s image, and comes from the left in the young man’s image.

The image above is just a combination of 2 images. The main problem here is the difference of the light and shadow. It is odd. So I need to add the adjustment layer.

In this case, I used ‘Hue/Saturation’ as the adjustment layer.

By the way, If you want to affect the adjustment layer’s effect only on the layer below, choose ‘Create Clipping Mask’. You can just click the icon below to create ‘Clipping Mask’

I decreased ‘Saturation’ and ‘Lightness’ both and as the result, I got the image below.

I wanted to put the new effect only on the left side, but the new effect was put on all side. I must restrict the area of the effect.

Choose the layer mask of ‘Hue/Saturation’ and push ‘Ctrl button and ‘I’ button’ at the same time. It means the inverse of the effect. Layer mask becomes Black from White.

After this, Choose ‘White Brush’ and paint only the area which you want to put the effect. You can get like this.

All process can be seen in the GIF below.

Aging

Sometimes we need to add wrinkles to the model for aging. For example, imagine to combine an old man’s head with a young man’s body who has no wrinkles on his neck. I think this combination will be odd because the face has lots of wrinkles and the neck doesn’t have any. You need add the other people’s wrinkles on the model’s neck in such a case. 

  1. Get the image which has wrinkles.
  2. Paste it on the model’s file. Place two faces side by side as it will be easy to copy wrinkles.
  3. Make a selection of the neck.
  4. Make a new layer and ‘Create Clipping Mask’ on the neck
  5. Choose the blending mode to ‘Soft light’ or ‘Overlay’
  6. Copy wrinkles by ‘Clone Stamp Tool ‘or ‘Lasso tool ‘on the new layer.
  7. Go to ‘Image > Adjustments > Black & White’ in order to denaturation