How come celebrity models do not look exactly the same in the magazines as in the real life? Of course there is something going on behind the curtains, but what is happening?

Master Photoshop in just 2 hours with our online video Tutorials!

By now, we know that photo editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop can be used to manipulate photos and make people look “good”. Have you ever wished that you could look thin whenever you look at your photos? If you ever wished for a miracle, this tutorial is here to help you. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll explain how to make someone look thin using Photoshop.

Step-by-step tutorial:

1. First, open the picture you want to modify. Go to File -> Open and then choose the photograph.

2. Then, go to Filter menu and select Liquify.

3. A separate window will be opened for performing the Liquify effect.

4. In the new window, select the “Freeze Tool” for freezing the areas of the photograph that you do not want to make thin. As an example; the head is an area that we do not wish to make thin. Therefore, the background and the head area will be frozen using Freeze Tool.

Once the areas that do not need to be touched are marked, they will be highlighted in red. You can use different brush sizes (select from the right panel) carefully selecting the areas you do not want to be retouched. If you want to magnify the image for better visibility, press “ctrl and +”. Now, we’ll start with the body areas that are not highlighted in red and make them slightly thinner.

5. Now that you’ve got the parts that you do not want touched; go to the “Wrap Tool” located in the toolbar.

6. Make the brush size bigger, about 125 will be the ideal. Now touch the edges of the body area with the selected brush to make them look thin. For touching up the fine areas, simply use a smaller sized brush. Carefully touch the edges of the area while making sure they do not look abnormal or out of shape. Once you are done with thinning the body area, you’ll get an image similar to the one below. The cleared areas are the areas that have become thin.

7. Once you are done with the thinning, click OK in the right panel to go back to the image’s main window.

8. Save the thinned image and compare it with the old one. You will instantly see the difference between the two — differences such as the ones shown below are not uncommon.

Final words on making someone look thin using Photoshop

Making someone look “good” with Adobe Photoshop is just a couple of minutes away and it is as easy as this mini-guide illustrates. You can make anyone look thin with a few clicks of your mouse but do remember that your creativity and artistic ability needs to be used when attending to the task. So go on and make people look slim and beautiful!

Step 1
First we need to create a new canvas with black background. The following settings are recommended:

Step 2
Create your type mask text using the Horizontal Type Mask tool as shown in the picture below:

Using the Horizontal Type Mask tool pick an area where you want your title to appear and type away.

Step 3
Using the Fill tool, fill the inside of your letters with white colour.

Step 4
Next pick the Smudge tool and smudge the edges of your text. For this pick a big brush area around 35cm diameter.

Step 5
Next step is to colourize your text. Bring up the Color Balance dialogue menu from the bottom right bar of your PS, and play around with the Shadows, the Midtones and Highlights as shown and hit OK. This will give you the burning effect.

Step 6
Moving on we will add some Gaussian Blur effect. Simply go to the Filter menu from the top toolbar, hit Blur and then Gaussian Blur and OK.

Step 7
To create the Neon effect you will need to duplicate your image and choose Linear Dodge on the copied layer. This will give the outline of your layer a neon like fluorescent look.

Step 8
Using the Horizontal Type Tool this time we will create another text layer to fill in the Neon fonts we created in the previous step. Choose the same font size and type the same word/words with your original text and overlay the new layer on top of your original one.

Step 9
Finally we will add the glow to our text. Double click on the layer of your Neon object and scroll down to “Outer Glow”. Change the glow color to a red glow. Your Burning Neon Effect is complete!

Adding Spiral Beams around your objects really gives a 3D sense to your objects. We will see on this tutorial how you can add these beams around any object you may want to give depth to using Photoshop CS4. For the purposes of this tutorial we suggest using a 3D object like this sphere but any object would do.

1. The first thing we want to do is create a new layer.

2. Next we will open our path’s panel and choose the ellipse tool. Once you pick the ellipse tool go to the tool’s options bar on the top toolbar and click on the middle icon named Path, you can easily identify it by hovering over with your cursor on the icons of the toolbar. This will turn your cursor into a little pen tool. With this tool chosen draw a very thin wide oval near the base of your object.

3. Next we need to choose our direct selection tool. This is placed usually just over the ellipse tool, on the lower portion of the tools toolbar and is marked with a black arrow. Click on it and select the path of the oval object you just designed, this will bring up 4 anchors. We want to add 2 more anchors to these, so we will go to the Pen tool and from the available tools choose the add anchor tool. Click on it and create 2 extra anchors just on the edges of your object on the areas highlighted.

4. Once we have all 6 anchors set, we will go back to the direct selection tool and we will choose the anchors that would stand lie behind our object and delete them. This will give us a flat C running around in the front side of our object.

5. Next we will grab this path and move it down to the new path button. This is placed on the bottom toolbar of the paths panel. Once done right click on it and duplicate that path. We will now edit the duplicate path we just created. We will select the path that runs on the left side of our object and delete it.

6. Next we will grab our brush tool, which is placed on the top side of the tools toolbar.
Click on it and go to brush options, we will set the brush diameter to 7pxls and set hardness to 100%. Next click on the brush options dialogue box, which is placed just on top of the paths panel you have running and turn shape dynamics ON.

7. Next right click on the duplicate path and select stroke path. Choose brush and simulate pressure. This will create a beam that whirls around the object.

8. Now we will switch to the original path and again on the path selection tool. Select the paths of the swirl we created before, hold down the shift key and hit the upper arrow key a few times so the path will move upwards. Once done we will replicate the stroke path steps as described on step 7. This will create another swirl. Repeat this until you get the desired number of swirls.

9. Finally we want to give our swirls an angle. For this go back to the Layers mode, remember we were working on the paths mode until now, and select the swirls layer. Right click on it after you select it and select skew and give your swirls an angle by pulling the top right corner a bit up and the bottom left down, which will give them a cool moving effect.

We will start off by enlarging the breasts and for this we will use the Liquify dialogue box and from this we will choose the Bloat tool. Once you have the Bloat Tool selected you will need to adjust the brush settings, we will go for a rather big brush size in this case around 400. Set the brush density pretty high as well whereas the brush height is up to your liking. Once you have your brush settings done click and hold around the area you want to enhance. Click OK to accept the changes.

Now that we have enlarged the breasts we will give them some depth by using the Burn tool. Choose the burn tool from the left sidebar and at the top at the settings select midtones and set the exposure at 20%. On Photoshop CS4 check off the protect tones.

Once done that go to the cleavage area and burn the area there slightly. Finally take the Dodge tool select midtones and exposure again around 20% and paint right next to the area you burnt before to lighten it up and add more depth, until you get the desired effect.

With laso tool selected start drawing the outline of the teeth. Use the shift key to correct the parts of the teeth you have missed and expand the selection. When your selection is ready zoom out and hit ctrl+alt+D, this will open the Feather Selection dialogue box, and choose to feather this by 1 pixel. This way you will avoid the rough edges on your selection.

In order to whiten the teeth select the Curves Adjustment Layer, on the diagram that will open put your pointer in the middle and the input about 135 and the output to 132. So using the laso, then feathering the selection and using the curves adjustment layer is a quick way to whiten the teeth on the models of your images.

Also, check out how to make digital cosmetic surgery. Remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

The last mode will bring up the color table, from it drop down menu, Choose black body. Using ctrl+a select everything in your image and then ctrl+c to copy everything. Then with F12 bring back the original image and straight after ctrl+v to paste the modified image you just created with the 3 steps mentioned above.

Finally drag the Blend mode to Luminosity, if you want to touch it up add a little noise by Select -> Filte r-> Noise, 3% should be sufficient for a relatively small photo and that’s it!

Access the Patch tool on the left side bar of you Photoshop and draw around the wrinkle area that you want to fix. Once done click and drag to a smooth area of the skin of similar luminosity. You will notice that the wrinkled area is smoothed out.

In order to perfect that use the Clone Stamp tool and by dragging it over the edges of the newly edited areas smooth out the uneven areas. Repeat the Patch tool application on all the wrinkled areas of your image. It is best to do this in smaller areas to achieve best blending. Once you are done again smooth out the result using the Clone Stamp tool.

Finally using the airbrushing you can smooth out the end result even more.

The first thing you need to do is to create a blank canvas by File -> New -> Blank Canvas and match its dimensions to the DVD case you have, simply measure your dvd case and match the measurements to your blank canvas.

It is important to create the spine of your DVD cover that will be the folding part of your DVD cover. Once this is set you simply have to slide the pictures up to that

Once that is done you start applying the texts by pre-creating the text-layers and applying them on the images. Ideas for texts are your logo, the title, a description snippet etc. Its handy to create these as templates and then simply apply them and change the titles thus saving time.

When you are all set, you flatten your image and then create a new document and go to 200 dpi and drag and drop your cover onto that document, print it out and its ready to slide into your dvd cover.

You can apply the exact same technique for CDs too simply choose a 5x5 template!

Once you go on Quick Mask mode you will need to zoom right into the eyes using the zoom tool on your Photoshop toolbar. You can simply draw a selection over across the eyes using your zoom tool, once you release the mouse this will bring the eye area right into focus.

Next step is to select a brush from your toolbar and start brushing, as in painting right on the coloured area of the eye, the iris. You will notice that the brush effect will appear painting the eye area red.

Tip! If you want to go lighter on the brush click on the brush preset picker on the top photoshop toolbar and decrease the hardness of your brush by moving the hardness slider to the left.

Once the brush hardness is reduced paint over the eye again and repeat on the other eye. When done click on the Normal Mode button to go into normal mode, and this will turn the “masked” eyes into selection.

Moving on go to View-> Actual Pixels to view the image in higher resolution. Then go Select -> Inverse and this will make the eyes the only selected part of the picture which will allow us to change their colour.

To do that go Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation. By playing around with the Hue we are going to change the colour of the eyes. Before that we do not want to apply the Hue effect on the whole picture that’s why we do View -> Extras, deselect Extras.

Back to the Hue/Saturation window, we reduce Saturation just a little bit and finally move the Hue slider around and see the effect that this has on your model’s eyes!

Tip! If you want the eyes really colourful just increase the saturation level. Equally by controlling the lightness slider you can lighten and darken the shades of the colour of your choice.

What you need to begin with is a picture, once you open your picture onto Photoshop you will need to take its outline like in the example below.

Next you need to start working on the colouring. Its best to choose the colour of the skin as it is a solid colour to begin with.

The way you work with the colours is one layer and one colour at a time, you can see at the picture below how the colours are applied into layers, with the skin colour being the basis for the rest that will follow.

Once you finish off with the colours the most important part of the process begins that gives your picture the cutting edge, which is shading.

Again the skin is the part you want to start first as it is rather easy to shadow and highlight and works as a basis for the shadows and highlights that will follow.

After you are done with the skin effects the clothing is what you want to focus on as it is more painstaking as you want to give it a natural flow and foldings. Once done its time for the accessories and other details of your image and lastly for the hair.

The hair is in reality the most time consuming part of using the vexel process as it takes several strands and highlights to represent correctly reflected light. Finally give your image a matching background that will compliment it and you are done!