Smooth and Highlight

Introduction

This tutorial shows you how to smooth and highlight your photographs. This effect can be archived in many different ways, and the one I'm going to show you now is very easy, but extremely useful.



Above you can see the before and after images. Some of you might not want to change the original image, and that's just fine. But for the rest, when the image could need some spicing up, just follow the next steps.

Step 1.

At first we find a picture that we want to use. Click here if you want to use mine.
Now make a copy of the original layer.

Step 2.

Select the layer you just made and go to Filters>Others>Maximum and give it about 3-4 pixels. Click OK.



Now apply Gaussian blur, Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to about 4-5 pixels. Click OK



Now set the layer mode to "overlay" and the opacity to 60%

Step 3.

Ok, the image looks much better now but there are still few things to do.

Go to Filters>Render>Lighting Effects and use the same settings as the image below.

Step 4.

Now make a new layer and place it at the top. Make it into an adjustment layer by selecting the black and white circle at the bottom of you layer palette.



Select "Levels" and adjust according to the image below. Then click ok.

The outcome.

Now you can add text, borders or anything you want, just experiment.



I hope this tutorial helped you to understand some of the endless possibilities of Photoshop. Good luck!

You can find more Photoshop tutorials at tutorialvault.net