Posted on 27 January 2009 by Terry

I have been driving around my Macbook Pro with my new version of Photoshop CS4, trying to learn all the little nuances hidden under the hood. Somehow I got sidetracked and ended up at istockphoto.com looking at textures. Don’t ask me how, it just happens when one has a period of boredom, followed by flashes of inspiration and then some temporary forms of ADHD. Anyway, so I did a search on textures as I wanted to work with some layers in Photoshop and play around with some images I shot over the weekend in Seattle. Not having any textures at the ready, I found this one of a tuscan wall that I figured would work perfect. Yeah I had to pay for it, but I wanted it now and did not have my Europe images close by and the time to spend hours hunting for a texture. Besides I I started looking at my old Europe CD’s, I’d end up on some other tangent and never accomplish my goal , so I bought it.
Originally I was going to use and image of Post Alley by the Pike Place Market, but felt that the Seattle image would work a lot better. In the upper left corner, you can see the original texture file as well as the Seattle photo I used.
So, let’s see step by step how I created this.
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Posted on 12 January 2009 by Terry

I get a ton of traffic here, so thanks for checking out the blog if you are a regular visitor. I thought I would post a reminder that you can subscribe via feedburner to be up to date on the stories I post. It takes about 15 seconds and if you use my.yahoo.com, posts can become part of your front page, just like other news stories.
Two hundred plus visitors a day has been a nice surprise for such a young blog, so it will make me work even harder to bring everyone relevant content like PS tutorials and photos from 200+ models I have worked with.
I’m also debating about adding another feature, a behind the scenes look at building a photography based business which I am in the process of doing. If you feel this would be of interest, add a comment.
For a tutorial in Photoshop, on how to create the feed design, Click here
Posted on 22 December 2008 by Terry
Posted on 15 December 2008 by Terry
Model Ashley has beautiful green eyes, but I wanted to enhance
them even more, to bring out the contrast and highlights as well
as adding more color. I also wanted to keep the enhancement subtle, yet realistic.
This is a quick simple task,. First I choose a bright green color,
by going to the eyedropper and then clicking on the color
palette.

This will bring up the Color Picker dialog box. Choose a color
closest to the tone you want to enhance the eyes with. In this
case I chose a green that was not too bright.


Choose the paintbrush size to be about the same size as the models
eyes. Click one or two times on each eye, depending how much you
want to enhance the color.
Then we will want to enhnace the highlights in the eyes. Right click
on the button, just above your text tool. This will allow you to choose
the Dodge Tool.

Click a few times on each eye for the desired result and that’s
it! Though it is a subtle change, the eyes have more life and color
with the highlights being brought out.
Styling and makeup credit: Shawn Alexander from Los Angeles
Model Credit: Ashley
You can download .jpg version of this tutorial Here
I am sharing this knowledge under the Creative Commons License. Feel free to post this tutorial on any non commercial website. Please link the image
back to www.pixebian.com as well as a text link, to same in your post. All content is © Terry Divyak
Posted on 14 December 2008 by Terry

Many times when shooting, especially outdoors, I will get an
over exposed image that I want to salvage. This image of the
beautiful Gabriela, was a great shot, but was way overexposed.
Had I shot this in RAW, I might have been able to tweak it, but
I had shot this as a .JPG, so this was going to take a bit more effort.
Before I learned this little trick, I used to just hit the Auto Level
option or Auto Contrast to see if I would be able to darken up
an image. That was until I found the beauty of using Threshold.
First step is really quite easy, create another layer, so you are not
working on your originial. Just choose Layer>Duplicate. This should
be on everyone’s list of the first thing you do, before working
on an image.
Next choose, Image>Adjustments>Threshold.

When you start the Threshold option, your image will turn black and white and look like a cutout.
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Posted on 12 December 2008 by Terry

Photoshop Digital painting tutorial by Dianae - Licensed under Creative Commons License
From time to time I am going to add creative Photoshop tutorials to the site. All tutorials will be licensed under Creative Commons. This is a great way for everyone to learn about photoshop and some people are way more creative than I am.
Dianae is a perfect example of a talented artist and this tutorial is fantastic. The videos are even more amazing as this was all drawn freehand and not from a photo. But, it is a great tutorial for photographers who want to bring their images into a fantasy style. Continue Reading