how to photo-shop your pics - workshop by souldoctor, amateur

Been staying home looking at my music, preparing, practising, preparing, practising for performances in August. While I was putting together the flyer for my performance (details coming soon, very soon), I took a break by playing around with this fun thing call

photoshop

hence the inspiration to share...my two cents, very lay man indeed, two cents on how to flatter yourself :)

How to Photoshop-photoshop your photos
A short workshop by Soul Doctor, vain pot and amateur in photography (and photoshop-photoshopping)

most pics by TV Smith & Danny Lim
these pictures have been modified by myself, on HP Image Zone - it came with my printer/copier/scanner :)


Crop
why do you crop?

to focus on the subject -- in the case of a not-so-good composition, just cut away whatever that is distracting, or anything that isn't contributing to the photo.

to flatter -- cut away not-so-nice-hair, the bits of arms that you don't like in that shoot,

I give you an example of what I think, look more interesting after cropping, and of course, I also changed the exposure and the contrast.

croppeduncropped
Play around with Special Effects button
why?
you never know what turns out, so why not?

to mask flaws such as skin imperfections, un-attractive colors, etc. To add character to the subject, etc.
in this case, you see how now even the crease on the dress (imperfection) don't look so bad now..
these next two shots I took on my own with my phone camera. For this one, I added this feature called 'soft-glow' under one of the special effects
and this one, another reason to photoshop your photo is to make low quality (low resolution) photos look more, interesting and fun, instead of just, bad quality. This was taken in my room and the lighting was bad and the phone camera didn't help so I decided to make one version like this...

one other example, I use special effects on this shot (with good friend Nell Ng) to mask the fact that part of this photo is not sharp...


Color me badd

playing around with the color plate toolkit, even the black and white ones are good to try. Changing the tone (temperature & saturation) and colors can make incredible change to a photo, giving it totally different tone/emotion to your original image. See this example...I think the images say it all.


modifiedoriginal
an another example, a shot I took of group Fancy Poultry, changing it to black and white gives it a cool vintage look
more examples of use of new colors for your photos...this one I took of myself, on camera phone


Lighting
why?

For photos that are otherwise is too dark and unclear

after
before

another example -
after
before

ok, I think you should get an idea now (you better!), of what's all these about...have fun. Back to work for me!