Photoshop: And Everyone is Beautiful

Or in this case, younger!

A ton of outtakes from Gillian's Esquire shoot were posted to gillian_daily last night, and since I had been studying all day - so much that the familiar shoulder pains reemerged -, I thought I could afford to spend a little time in Photoshop. Because those just screamed to be played with.

After comparing the outtakes to the actual pictures published in the magazine, it tickled me to test my skills in editorial design, in other words beautifying a raw photo.

I carefully chose a picture that met the required potential (in the opinion of my humble amateur eyes), and this is the base photo as well as the result for your viewing pleasure. I recommend opening the full-sized versions in two separate tabs for better comparison.




What I did

I'm in no way an expert, so my editing is solely based on intuition. But since there are always people who know even less about it than I do, let me explain:

• At first I tackled her skin and smoothed it out using the smudge tool and filters. Initially I wanted to leave her freckles untouched, but it was way past midnight, so I eventually lost my patience with them. I did pay attention to most of her moles though, because they just give it a more natural look. Working on the skin took the longest of all steps.


• When I was satisfied with the skin-job, I needed to test its look in a different light and colouring, so I increased the contrast and used curves as well. I had to go back between this and the first step a couple of times until I had erased all disturbances.


• I moved on to her eyes and enhanced their beautiful blue colour. It's crucial to find the golden middle when it comes to colour enhancing- otherwise it can quickly look too artificial.


• I decided to bring out her make-up more as well, gave the eyes a stronger golden shimmer to harmonize with her hair, and the lips a soft pink/brown. I also darkened her eyebrows, which had faded out a lot during the light changes.


• Finally the colouring: decided for a slightly greenish yellow style and worked out the details of hair, skin etc. separately.

Ta-da, that's it.


Disclaimer

This is not to say I don't find Gillian beautiful without any photoshopping, which - if you know me at all - would be the untruest thing to say about me ever. Her naturalness is one of the aspects I value and adore most about her character. It was a pure challenge for me, and it was a damn lot of fun working on her again.

And before you say it looks ~photoshopped~, uhm, yes it does, because that's what it is and what all the magazine's photos look like.


Now, what do you think? Should I consider a change of profession? ;)

Just to let you know I did a small friends cut according to the following categories:

1) I didn't even know the person behind the username.
2) You've shown support for McCain/Palin.
3) We mutually ignore each other.


If you think 3) applies to you, but you haven't been cut, it's because I do enjoy reading your posts, whenever I can take the time to, and I'd miss them on my f-list OR I still plan on changing that miserable state in the future.

That's all.

Teaser:



Full trailer and HD downloads: Official Homepage

Martina Gedeck. ♥

Must see.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I won't be taking my laptop- and I'll be too busy squeeing, not sleeping and running around one of the biggest cities of the world to update anyway.









I am done with the spam for today this week. Promised. :D

See you all soon! ♥