{"id":34,"date":"2013-06-02T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T19:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/?p=34"},"modified":"2013-06-02T11:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T19:01:00","slug":"photoshop-elements-9-adding-soft-light-to-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"Photoshop Elements 9: Adding Soft Light to Pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love taking pictures. \u00a0And, after a lot of practice- I am learning to love Photoshop. \u00a0I currently have Photoshop Elements 9, and researching all over the internet I’ve found that there aren’t many tutorials by PSE 9 users. \u00a0SO, I am going to share some of my experiences with PSE 9. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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I currently am loving pictures with dreamy soft lighting. \u00a0I actually found this tutorial<\/a>, which gave me a lot of inspiration and confidence in playing around with lighting, gradient layers, and lens flares. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Today I am going to share the steps I took in editing a photo of a best friend, who let me practice my photography and Photoshop skills on her. \u00a0(She is such <\/i>a sport!)<\/div>\n
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Here is the photo, unedited:<\/div>\n
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Even unedited, I love <\/i>this picture. \u00a0It was a fairly sunny day, so the photo is naturally bright. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Step 1<\/b><\/div>\n
If I am dealing with a picture of a person, where they are the main focal point, I always start with the “Perfect Portrait” tool in PSE 9. \u00a0I love this tool. \u00a0On the right hand side where the current tab is “Edit”, click the “Guided” tab. \u00a0This is the cheat sheet of PSE 9. \u00a0Scroll down, almost to the bottom, to “Perfect Portrait.”<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There are so many different things you can do in this tool to perfect your portrait, but I’m just going to touch on the ones I used in editing this picture. \u00a0I am not going to upload a picture to represent each change I make within this step, so hopefully I can explain it well enough without them. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Okay. \u00a0So scrolling down under the “Perfect Portrait” tab, the first thing I am going to do is use the spot healing tool (underneath “Enhance facial features.”) \u00a0Zoom in to where you can see the face closely and any blemishes you will want to remove. \u00a0Once you click on the spot healing tool (looks like a band aid) make the brush as large as you’d like and simply cover the blemish. \u00a0One swipe, or click, and the blemish disappears! \u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In the picture above, I remove the blemishes from her face and I also use this tool to remove the fly-away curl she has on the left side of her head. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Next I use the brighten eyes tool. \u00a0It should be set to a white color. \u00a0I swipe the brush over her eyes once, and then under each eye once to eliminate any dark circles. \u00a0(Any more than once and they can start to look scary.) \u00a0Also, if there are any dark shadows you want to eliminate- this tool can help. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Now I use the burn tool to darken her eyelashes and eyebrows, to make them pop. \u00a0It will automatically be set on a color, but you can always change this. \u00a0I’ve found the dropper tool very helpful for this as well. \u00a0I will use the dropper in this case to take the natural color of her eyebrows to use for my burn tool brush. \u00a0(To change the color, click the foreground color square on the left hand side of the screen.)<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I also use this tool to add a little color to her cheeks. I change the color of the brush to a soft natural pink and I also change the size of the brush to around 200. \u00a0Then, I just add a couple clicks on each cheek. \u00a0That’s all it takes!<\/div>\n
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And then we are done with that step. \u00a0(There are so many other cool things you can do with the “Perfect Portrait” tool, so mess around with it!)<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0Here is the picture is after the above edits. \u00a0Pretty subtle- but it will definitely help keep her features standing out through the next edits. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Step 2<\/b><\/div>\n
Next, go back to the “Full” tab on the right hand side. \u00a0From there make a new adjustment layer (by clicking on the half dark half white circle towards the bottom of the “Layers” tab.) \u00a0Choose “Brightness\/Contrast”. \u00a0Mess around with the two to find what you like, but for this particular picture I did brightness of 27 and contrast of 60. \u00a0I love to make that grass vibrant! \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Can I just say that I adore this picture even after this step? \u00a0Ah, so bright and fun! \u00a0But, <\/i>I am doing this tutorial to show a method of adding soft light, so we are going to keep going in the editing process!<\/div>\n
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Step 3<\/b><\/div>\n
To add a glowing lightness to the picture, we are going to make a gradient adjustment layer. \u00a0Go to the same half dark half white circle and click gradient. \u00a0Click on the gradient to edit it, and make sure it is set to “foreground to background.” \u00a0Change the bottom left color node to white, if it isn’t white already. \u00a0Click okay when you are done editing the gradient, and then move the dial to change the location of the white gradient. \u00a0For this picture, I have it placed at -151.7. \u00a0Change the scale from 100 to 150%. \u00a0Click okay. \u00a0Next, change the opacity to around 50. \u00a0(If you want, play around with different blending modes of the gradient layer other than normal.)<\/div>\n
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After this step you can adjust the brightness and contract again if desired. \u00a0Then, the picture is complete!<\/div>\n
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I love how it has a “hazy summer day” feel. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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I hope this helped any of you PSE 9 users out there! \u00a0I am by no means an expert, but I am slowly learning what techniques I like- and I plan to keep sharing them! \u00a0Thank you!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love taking pictures. \u00a0And, after a lot of practice- I am learning to love Photoshop. \u00a0I currently have Photoshop Elements 9, and researching all over the internet I’ve found that there aren’t many tutorials by PSE 9 users. \u00a0SO, I am going to share some of my experiences with PSE 9. \u00a0 I currently… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42QGB-y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1480,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/1480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsdontcollectdust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}