First thing you need to do is open your photo on photoshop, right click on layer and duplicate the photo twice by Right Click-> Duplicate -> OK.
Once this is done turn off your background layer, and now you are ready to go into the main retouching process.

First we will apply a filter to the first layer, that’s Filter -> Distort -> Diffuse Glow , which will bring up the Diffuse Glow menu as shown below.

Next you want to move the graininess slider to 0, the glow between 4 and 7 and finally the clear slider between 7 and 10 to avoid wash-out colours hit ok, and you are done with your first layer.

Moving on to your second layer, Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and set it to 5.5 and move back to your top layer.

Select the top layer and go to blending mode to overlay and there you go your new picture glamourized with soft focus and softer light in less that 5mins!

Once you open you Jpg image the first thing you would typically do is Levels -> Adjustment Layer.

1. Once this pops up you would want to move the white and the black sliders to the corresponding tips of the histogram as shown here.

Then you adjust the centre slider so you will achieve a pleasant brightness level.

2. Next thing you want to adjust is the contrast. So you open the Curves Adjustment layer of your photoshop and increase the contrast to point out the main features of your image.

3. Following that is the colour balance. In a Jpg it is not uncommon the colours to be either too cold or too warm. In this case we want to even that out using the Colour Balance too slightly warm colours up. The best practise to warm colours is to add a bit of red and yellow by moving the corresponding sliders.

4. Next step is to add a bit of saturation to the image to avoid our colours from looking dull. This will have an effect to both the dress of our model and her skin tone.

5. Last thing you want to do is slightly “burn the edges”. For this you need the laso tool on your photoshop, for a rather small size image like this one a feather size of 50 should be sufficient.

The idea is to “laso” the parts of the image you want to draw attention to. In this case would be the face of our model. Once this is done you invert the selection and add an adjustment level of layers and using the middle slider you darken it. This essentially will darken all of the picture but the model’s face because we inverted our initial selection. Once all the post processing steps are completed the results should be rather visible.

And in these 5 simple steps we gave new life to our undervalued Jpg image!

For the purposes of this tutorial we will use a colour rich picture, a flower in this example. Load your image on photoshop and on the layers dialogue box got to the filter adjustment icon and select the invert adjustment option. This will invert flip the colours on your picture to the negative.

Then we will duplicate the same layer by clicking on the new layer and dragging and dropping on the layers dialogue panel. Now we are going to change the blending mode, always on the layers panel, through the drop down menu, on the second inverted copy to luminosity. This action will give you the effect of colour infrared film.

We will apply the same effect on another picture to better display the colour infrared type of effect.

Tip: How to create an Action macro on photoshop!
Its handy if you are using this effect often to create an action out of it following the steps:

1. Open up your actions palette
2. Click on the new action palette and name it
3. Click record and repeat once more the steps mentioned above to create the IR Filter effect.
4. Add an invert
5. Duplicate it
6. Change the invert’s blending mode in luminosity using the top drop down menu.
7. Stop the recording action.

Your Action is ready!

When you will want to apply it, just open a photo, click on your actions tab, select the action you just created and click Play! The action is performed in a macro-like fashion.

Starting off our tutorial we will need a close up picture like the one in our example. And by choosing the text tool we are typing something like “Treats”. Moving on we increase the fonts size and scale it proportionally to the main theme of the magazine cover.

When you will first type the Magazine title you will notice that it is hiding the main picture, however according to the industry best practises you want to the title to be floating behind the main picture. In order to do this we go to our layers menu and by dragging and dropping the Title Layer we move it under the picture layer so it is not hiding the picture at all.

Once you resolve the basic outline of your subject and title you will want to give your magazine cover some depth. In order to do this we click on Layer->Layer Style->Drop Shadow as shown on the Photoshop screenshot beneath.

We want to drop a shadow to our subject in order to create the depth illusion. The angle parameter on the Drop Shadow option sets the angle where we want the shadow to come from, by default that is 30 which means that the shadow will be dropping on the left side of our model.

Another useful parameter of the Photoshop Drop Shadow option is the Distance, which determines how wide the shadow will be. The higher this parameter the more wide the shadow and therefore the more depth we give to our subject.

Finally the size of the shadow decides how sharp the shadow in the end will be. Increase that in order for the shadow to be fading out instead of looking unnaturally cut out. Once done press ok and now you have given your subject a nice natural deep look.

On our next step we will look more into the optimal outline of our headers. If you look at any magazine cover you will notice that certain headlines stand out more than the rest by having biggest fonts. This is because they are meant to catch your eye and attract attention. It is directing you to the corresponding article inside the magazine.

Equally when you ll be designing your magazine cover you want to make some of your titles to stand out more than the rest.

Choose your text tool and try a striking colour like yellow to type in your main article. Use for this a bold fonts style like Arial Black and click on the Bold option to make them more prominent.

Make them smaller than your title and position them on the top left side of your magazine. You need to be careful when choosing your colour scheme so don’t choose similar looking colours for your background and fonts. For this reason we will change our background colour into something lighter.

Tip! When you use a font or a colour that blends in with the background its always good to use the drop shadow function to make it stand out more so even when they are matching exactly they will not blend too much.

Other quite important and basic features of a magazine cover are adding the barcode on the bottom right and the date at the top right of the front page. More over you don’t want to clutter your article titles too much.

Keeping these in mind within a good 30mins you should be able using these basic guidelines to create a magazine cover looking like this.

Try your own creations using this tutorial and create professional magazine covers!

In this tutorial we will learn how to make people look old. Using photoshop, we can do something in a short amount of time, which would take nature decades to accomplish. Using the proper tools, you can create a realistic old looking person out of a young vibrant individual. But to make it believable, we need to understand the natural effects on the face of an old person to imitate it through photoshop tricks.

The main areas to be worked on should be: wrinkles, white hair (unless you don’t want them dyed), loose falling skin, probably double chin too if the lady is fat. Adding accessories like a scarf or glasses can be good as it creates realism. Now, let’s start afresh with a picture of a young lady.

We will use the picture of gorgeous Aishwarya Rai who is a popular actress from the Indian Film Industry. Let’s make her ready for the role of an old lady in some random movie of your choice.

Adding Wrinkles
Our first task is to add wrinkles under the eyes of our actress. Select the ‘Burn tool’ which is most suitable for this task with these settings:

Use it to create natural impressions under the eyes like you use a brush. Draw multiple thin lines starting from the edge of an eye and go down along the curve. You should now get a result which that looks something like this:

Observe the slight wrinkles in the picture above. Create more these below the cheek, chin and the neck area as well as under the eyes. Also, use the ALT-button while drawing these wrinkles to activate ‘dodge tool’ - which makes a popping out effect. It should appear like veins on the neck part. Try practicing a little and you will understand the need of both tool (burn and dodge). Now your picture will look something like this:

Using the same technique, draw wrinkles on the forehead. Create horizontal curvy lines of worry on her forehead. Your result will now look something like this:

Now we will create a pull-down gravity effect on the skin. For this we will use the ‘Forward Warp’ tool under the Filter > Liquify menu. Use this to slightly pull the under-eyes, cheeks, and chin down. Also pull the nose down and make it slightly bigger. The nose is one part of the body that always keeps growing which is of course something we’d like to take into consideration while manipulating. Take care while adding these effects as too much would make her look like a zombie.

We must also makes the lips thinner as lips tend to become thinner with age progression. You can do this by using the warping tool we used before. Now your result should look something like this:

So now we’ve made her skin look old but her hair is still black as it was when we started. Let’s fix her eye-brows first. Select the brush tool, and choose the grass brush with following settings.

Open the brushes pallet from the Window > Brushes menu or by pressing the F5 shortcut key. Check ‘shape dynamics’ and use following setting. Tick the Flip Jitter on for both X and Y.

Choose a white foreground color and a Grey background color. Then create a new layer and start drawing on her eyebrows to paint white hair with a natural looking jittery effect.

Now we need to apply the same technique to her hair. On a new layer, paint using a brush. Keep the brush size low to something like 3 or 4. Keep the opacity low at about 30%. Draw strings of hair repeatedly in the direction of the hair flow. Your picture should look something like this:

If you wish, add artifacts like glasses to create more interest and intellect.

Here you see the original picture along with the after-shots. Amazing result, isn’t it?

Using this technique you can impress your friends by creating their future look. It will need some practice and patience but is worth the effort.

Fading a Filter

It is fun to tweak the settings of various filters and check the spectacular combined results as well. In Photoshop you will find the handy Fade Filter facility that controls the intensity of the filter’s effects. The fading filters are helpful in giving the required quantity of filter effect to your image or the selection. To access the fading filter feature you just choose Edit>>Fade or you can access by pressing Shift+Ctrl+F.

Tip: Use the preview option in Fade Filter facility that enables you to see the preview of your image which is different from original one.

Third Party filters

If you are not satisfied with the amount of the inbuilt filters in Photoshop; it allows you to obtain filters from outside. There are many filter development companies. A few leading filter companies are:

• Alienskin
• Andromeda software
• AutoFX Software
• Corel
• Extensis
• Flaming Pear
• Panopticum LLC

You can easily install these filters into your Photoshop environment. Many just need to be copied into the plugins directory of Photoshop whereas others require the installation of an application. Thankfully the latter usually come in packages with easy to understand guides. Check out our plugin directory for a list of available plugins.