Lightening the skin with the curves layer

Mar

2015

l_plate I was playing with a tutorial shared on a fellow LJ'er's journal, producing one of her fabulous Spike images, and I struggled a bit with the Curves Layers. I've really only lightly touched on the Curves Layer, using it mostly on it's preset settings of Auto or Lighten. Following another's workflow brought home to me how versatile and powerful a tool, the Curves Layer is. I thought it time to learn more and low and behold I find this Adjustment Layer is the most wondrous tool for changing the color, the light, the shading, the tonal quality of our work. Plus you can add some awesome effects all depending on where you push the sliders and points.

Here I've taken another favourite picture of James Marsters as Spike. It's from a photo shoot. The scan is not too bad though there is some pixel damage if you look closely, as well as James' human skin blemishes showing up quite a bit. This is not too worrying though because I like to smooth my vampire's skin out quite a lot. The coloring is all too human though and a little orangy.

The original Image

Before we get into the lightening process, I played with the Patch tool to lighten the shadows under the jaw and nose. They're not really too bad on this image and shadows are natural and can be a nice contrast but I wanted to practice with that tool and the Healing brushes to smooth it out.

On to the Curves Layer. I add a Curves Adjustment layer by selecting it from the Layers Panel. It's the little graph icon highlighted in this image. I like to use adjustment layers rather than using the Image-Adjustment command. I can go back to an Adjustment layer at any time and see what I've done, and more importantly, change it if I need to. I can add as many or as few Adjustment layers and they will all be changeable at any stage of the project. They do not alter the pixels in the original image.

Mostly I've been using the Auto feature or one of the presets but the time has come to explore the curves layer a bit more.

First thing, if you have a graph like the above, press the Alt key and click anywhere on the graph to have more graph lines to play with.

This will help you tweak your changes much more accurately. The Curves Layer is intuitive. It will change rapidly as you move the sliders and add points to the line. You click on the curve to add points that you can move up and down. Up and to the left will lighten your image and down and to the right will darken it. The sliders on the bottom are a simple change. The left slider will bring up the shadows as you slide it to the right and the right slider will bring up the lighter areas as you slide it to the left. A very quick edit for a more dramatic image. Especially good for a background image.

Back to our Spike image. I add a curves layer and adjust the settings as below by clicking on the curve and dragging the points created. The lower point I moved up and to the left to lighten the darker tones and the upper I moved down and to the right to soften the increased lighter tones. The S shape will give a more even tonal result though there will be times when your points are all on one side. It really depends what you are looking for and using the curves layer is a matter of trial and error. You move your points until you achieve a result you like. I set this Layer at blend mode Screen, Opacity 100% If you want to see the original image before your changes, just click on the eye at the bottom of the panel. This turns layer invisibility on and off. If you want to start over hit the reset button. That's the little curved arrow beside the eye. If you hold your cursor over the little buttons and icons in Photoshop, it will tell you what they do.

Okay. I'm pleased with the range of tone in this image. I've kept some shadow in his face which is important to give it charachter and keep those features we love quite visible. I want his skin lighter though. Vampire alabaster lighter. So I simply copy the current curves layer keeping the values as they are. This time, I play with the color channels. Vampires have a little blue hue to their skin and that's what I want. I click on the RGB button and select the Blue channel. Adding two points and dragging them into a shallow S curve. I leave the Layer mode at Screen and reduce the Opacity to 52% and get this.

Now my vampire is starting to get the look I like. I've still got the shadows nicely highlighting his cheekbones and other facial features and his skin is lightened up very nicely from the original image. Next I add an Exposure Adjustment Layer. I just want to bring back some of the highlights that are a bit dulled by my lightening. The icon for this adjustment is beside the curves one, the little +/- two toned one. This adjustment can be very effective a popping an image, especially scans and screen caps and is used to tweak the settings of your camera which might have been a little under or over exposed when the photo was taken.

This was a tiny adjustment. Whenever I use this layer I seem always to need just a tiny adjustment to Offset to sharpen the color tones. Next, I add a Levels Adjustment Layer. The icon is the little black graph the other side of the curves one. What the levels layer lets you do is adjust the range of contrast and color in your image. It is showing you a Histogram. This is a graph of the total tonal range of an image. I know. I rolled my eyes and ran away too. You don't need to know too much about that at this stage, but I know I'm going to have to wrap my lobes around it one day. All you do need to know is that the levels layer allows you to adjust the three areas of your image's contrast - the shadows, the mid tones and the highlights - separately.

This is the default value of a Levels layer. The left slider controls shadows, the right, the highlights and the middle one, the mid tones. Moving any one to the left will increase the contrast in the range it controls and to the right will decrease it. The Levels layer by itself can provide a great pop to an image. By using the color channels you can change the color tones within an image. I'm just going to play with the overall contrast values for this one. I bring the shadows in a little to the right, move the highlights left a tad and the mid tones slightly to the right.

The most dramatic difference here is the color of his shirt. I've also brought out his features a little more while bringing up the highlights to further lighten his skin. Next I add a Gradient Map using the default Black to White gradient. I use the Apply Image command in the mask of this layer to bring back some of the color. Reduce the Layer Opacity to 65%.

I add another Curves Layer with a very shallow S curve, bringing the shadows up slightly and the highlights down a little. I click RGB, select Blue and make an S as below. This just adds a little more blue to his skin tone.

I decide I want him to have very light blue eyes. I use the copy merge command, to create a new merged layer. This command is the Ctrl/Shift/Alt/E command which copies all active layers and merges them into a new layer, leaving your original layers in tact. I use the Dodge Tool set at 50% on the mid-tones just on his eyeball.

Then I apply another Curves layer and this time I play with the three color channels until I get an effect in the eyes, that I like. I ignore the rest of the picture while I am doing this. I will mask the effects of this curve layer to just the eyes, when I'm finished.

You can see that I have only one point, towards the top of the grid and I have pulled the curve up and to the left to bring up the highlights. I have adjusted each of the three color channels. There is quite a deep S curve for the Blue layer and shallower ones for Green and Red. I moved the points on each until I was happy with the result.

Now I need to mask this layer by using Control I on the mask which fills with black and completely masks the curves adjustment from the image. Then, using foreground white and a soft brush I paint the eyes back in.

I like it. I create a new empty layer and use the sharpen tool just on his eyes and lashes. Just a few strokes at 50 %. Make sure the layer is set to Sample All Layers and Protect Details. Next I create another Levels layer. I want to bring back some contrast to his face and color to the shirt.

You can see the shirt is now quite dark as are the shadows on his face and his eyes are darker. I don't want the eye color changed and I want to lighten the face shadows. To do this I change the foreground color swatch to black, select the Layer Mask and, using a soft brush at 100% I remove the layer effect from his eyes. I then reduce the opacity of the brush to 35% and brush lightly over the face shadows till I get the lightness I want.

This is now a nice soft image with vampire colored skin, interesting eyes and features well defined. I could use him in a project now. I am going to play some more. I copy merge my layers and apply the High Pass filter to the new layer. This filter sharpens your image quite nicely. I set the layer blend to Overlay. I don't want the extra saturation on his face and neck so I use the mask and a soft black brush to remove most of it from these areas. I leave it over his eyes, lips, ear, along the jaw and his hair.

I want to bring back the texture in his hair and I can do this by increasing the contrast. I add another Levels layer and bring the Shadow slider quite a bit to the right until I see good definition in his hair. I don't look at the rest of the image at this stage, just his hair as that is all I want to change. (Though I don't mind the end result and will keep that in mind for a future project. It has a rather comic book style to it. Quite dramatic really.)

I fill the Levels layer mask with black (Ctrl I ) then use my soft brush and Foreground white to paint the hair back in. In the Mask dialogue panel I just add a touch of feather to the mask so that it will merge better with his face at the hair edges.

Now I have my light skinned vampire in his blue shirt back. His hair though, is no longer white. I'm going to add a Black & White layer adjustment. I could also have used a Gradient Map but the B&W will give me what I want. I set this adjustment to Auto and reduced the Layer Opacity to 42%. I have to mask the layer to just his hair and Photoshop has a neat trick to do this quickly. Holding down the Alt key, I click on the previous Levels layer Mask where I've already masked for his hair, and drag it over the Mask on the Black&White Layer and release the mouse. You will get a dialogue box asking if you want to overwrite the existing mask. Click okay and your B&W layer is now nicely masked.

Now his hair is nicely textured and it's white again. I applied a final levels layer just to bring out the highlights a little more and he is ready to become part of a future project. He is much changed from the original and the coloring and sharpening has really brought out his eyes. They look larger even though I did not alter the size or shape.

May the curve always bend your way!