Editing my new CD cover on Photoshop - ‘Gaussian Blur’

Raw image I started off with, which I took myself.

First I started of by cropping out any un wanted space I had around my talent, by using the ‘Crop’ tool.

Here is the image after I Cropped it.

Next I Changed the levels. I put the black arrow to the start of the diagrams levels.

Then I put the white arrow to the end of the biggest section of levels at which point the grey arrow in the middle moves itself.

The ‘Levels’ tool allows you to make the blacks slightly darker and more defined and the whites brighter and not as dull.

After changing the levels I then selected the ‘Spot Healing Brush Tool’. This gets rid of any unwanted spots/blemishes.

Before Healing Tool

Spot Healing Tool- selectionAfter Healing Tool

I went on to take away further spots and blemishes that I could see.

Differences/Changes

Before Levels and Spot Healing Brush Tool After changes

Then after doing the spots, to make the skin look even better I went on to ‘Filter’ then ‘Convert for Smart Filters’

Then after converting the ‘Filters’ I went back to ‘Filter’ went down to ‘Blur’ then across to ‘Gaussian Blur’.

When I selected the ‘Gaussian Blur’ tool a box comes up where you can change the ‘Radius’ and ‘Pixels’. I changed it to 30.5 because I didn’t want it to blur out too much.

I then Selected the ‘Paint Bucket Tool’.

I went on to select the ‘smart filter’ layer I have just created. And switched the Foreground and Background so the black switched with the white.

Finally clicked over the image with the ‘Paint Bucket Tool’ to take the image back to what it was before the filters.

I went back on to ‘Filter’ but then selected ‘Noise’ and went across to ‘Dust and Scratches’.

Again a box came up where I could change the ‘Radius’ and ‘Pixels’ just like the Gaussian Blur but could also change the ‘Threshold/levels’ too. I changed the Radius and Pixels to 35 and Threshold/levels to 15. This provides a better more powerful way of removing noise from my image.

I then went to the ‘Brush Tool’.

And switched the ‘Foreground and Background colours’ back so the white was on top again.

I changed the ‘Opacity’ to 20% because I didn’t want the Gaussian blur to paint on to heavy. I stillwanted it to look quite natural.

After painting the Gaussian blur back on to the face, hands and body, this is what I ended up with, a perfect skin air brushed effect.

Next I decided I wanted to make the eyes brighter so selected the ‘Dodge Tool’.

I clicked a couple of times over the eyes, in the white of the eyes too along with the reflection of light within in the eyes to make it brighter.

Before

After

Closer up the darker eyes look better, but when the brighter eyes are with the rest of the face they stand out a lot more.

I then also used the ‘Dodge Tool’ on the hair to brighten it up.

Before After

I experimented with the ‘Black and White’ tool and decided I liked it better than I did in colour. I didn’t change the ‘Reds’, but changed the ‘Yellows’ to 17, the ‘Greens’ to 20 the ‘Cyans’ to 100 (the Cyans effected the eyes since they where more Cyan then blue and made them brighter, which helped them stand out even more) and I changed the ‘Blues’ to 11 which also added to the brightness of the eyes. Additionally I changed the ‘Brightness and Contrast’ to make it a little brighter/whiter and to make the blacks a bit darker and higher in contrast, so that they came through more.

I changed the ‘Brightness’ to 40 and the ‘Contrast’ to 36.

Before After

Black and White