Photoshop Tutorials by Kristina Medhus

All of the below tutorials were created using Adobe Photoshop® CS and higher.

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Soft Glow | Selective Colorization | Faux DoF

The Soft Glow (for portraits, especially good with hair around the face and some vegetation)

Open the image you want to manipulate.
Adjust the contrast and brightness to be a little brighter and with a little less contrast than you would normally like. It will probably look unsettling, this is good. Curves works better with this, if you are familiar with it. Otherwise use the Brightness/Contrast tool.
In the Layers palette, drag your current “Background” image to the “new layer” button to duplicate the layer. With the new copied layer selected, go to “Filter…” “Blur – Gaussian Blur”. I usually choose around 15 pixels but this can be adjusted to taste.
Hit “OK”.
Next in the layers palette, with the new blurred layer still selected, choose the blending mode to “Overlay”. This is the drop down list, or can be accessed by double clicking the layer you are targeting.
Mess with the Curves or the Brightness/Contrast some more to get the look just right. I like to use the Eraser tool to selectively omit some parts that I do not want blurred, i.e. for emphasis, such as lips, eyelashes, or areas that became too dark. If you want, you can take that a step further by messing with the eraser tool’s opacity level!
The possibilities are endless!

Selective Colorization (used in moderation!)

Process your image as you normally would, taking care to remember that some parts of the image you will be processing for optimal black and white contrast, exposure, etc, as well as bright, bold color (you'll see later that you can tone down the color effect as much as you want, but that comes later).
Okay. So you have a layer in Photoshop, labeled "Background". Click on that layer, drag it to the "new layer" button in that same small window, and it will duplicate the layer for you, called "Background Copy".
You may now convert that layer to black and white using your preferred method. For the sake of being explicit, I will explain briefly how to do this using the channel mixer. Normally, I completely condone using adjustment layers (the black/white circle button on the layers palette) for image adjustments, as it's not permanent and can always be altered at any time. But here, it just makes things a little too complicated. So using this time as an exception...

Click on Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer...
When the window pops up, select "Monotone" on the bottom left corner. The menu will change from Red to Gray, with the Red meter at 100%. This is nice and somewhat freaky, but you may not want that. Mess with the levels, trying to keep the total used at 100%. I will say that over the years, my addition has gotten much stronger because of this.
My favorite slider, incidentally, is the Blue channel, because it tends to give dark, moody images (depending on the content of course). As a personal habit, I notice I don't tend to use Green much, except to maybe lighten overall. It all depends on your color content, of course. Think opposites--Lots of Red % means that anything at or around its complementary color (blue) will be very dark. Flesh tones will look porcelain (depending on skin color--ruddy and rose toned complexions giving a creepy, ghostly effect) and some irises will turn black. Blue will bring out freckles and textures in faces, as well as other things. I found freckles I never knew existed.

Hit "Okay" when you're satisfied. With that greyscale layer selected, hit the "layer mask" button on the layers palette, which is next to the other small buttons we've used previously.

It will be all white to start with, so your image will still look black and white. You may need to zoom in to 100% or larger to work on this. Select the brush tool, in the appropriate size for what you will be painting, and select black as the color. Carefully paint in (MAKE SURE the layer mask is selected, not the image!) the areas where you want color to show through. It should come through immediately. NOTE: to get a more toned, muted colorization instead of using black, try using a lighter grey color--remember, the more you near white, the less color you will see.

Once you're satisfied, you can merge the layers and save as .jpg or your preferred output format! Don't forget to resize if you need to.

I hope I could help you out with this. I will say that selective colorization tends to be tolerated only in small doses--it does have a bit of a cliché but use it how you see fit. It's a bit like using a fisheye--interspersed here and there, it can add spice and variety and wow your audience; use it every day from here on out, and your audience will end up more nauseated than they'd prefer.

Faux Depth of Field
(Useful for isolating subjects in photos that couldn't be done during the shooting process; also useful for creating a 'miniaturized' effect that gives things a toy-like appearance--or as I like to call it, "the Diorama effect".)

Open the image in Photoshop® and continue to post process as usual, without resizing.

Duplicate layer after all other post processing is finished, by navigating the Layer menu, or (my method) clicking and dragging the existing layer in the Layers palette to the new layer icon below it (looks like a curled page corner) and releasing.

Add a layer mask to it by clicking the button on that same layers palette window that looks like a rectangular box with a circle through it.

With the paint tool selected, paint in the layer mask with varying shades of white --> grey --> black (including MANY shades of grey...it's very tedious!). It's important to understand what is in the same plane with what--this includes varying heights, shapes, etc. You may want to think this out before painting; figure out what lies together as if you were imagining the image sliced in a 3D manner from your chest to the back of your computer screen: that is, horizontally. Don't forget tall buildings (height doesn't matter, it's where the base of it is that counts), birds, and telephone poles/electricity wires.

Then with that duplicated layer's paint icon showing (no longer in the layer mask), available by clicking on the thumbnail of the canvas adjacent to the thumbnail of the layer mask in the Layers Palette...go to filter --> lens blur

Choose source: Layer Mask

Choose any settings; I don't alter offset depth of field, but I do like Octagon, and note that if you add noise in that filter, certain in-focus parts will not have the noise because of the layer mask, so you will need to go back and selectively add noise to the parts missing it.

Questions? Having trouble? Need specific advice? Loved it? Want more? Just email me.