Today I am going to teach a simple yet awesome technique to level a horizon. I am a camera tilter, always have been and always will be. The problem is that there is a time to tilt and a time to NOT tilt and the beach is a not to tilt sort of time. I like a nice level horizon so this is for all of you camera tilters out there.

Step 1: Open Image

Step 2: Select the Ruler Tool. It is 20 tools down and you might have to right click to see it.

Step 3: Once you have selected the ruler tool, draw a line across the horizon. This works on anything if you have a dresser, chair, wall. Whatever you want to straighten.

Step 4: Once you have drawn your line select Image, Rotate Canvas, and Arbitrary. 

Step 5: This is where the magic happens. The ruler tool calculated how much to rotate the image to make it straight. Once you click arbitrary the math is done for you so you can just click ok.

Step 6: Now your image is straight but what about the extra canvas??

Step 7:  You can do a couple of things to take care of the extra canvas caused from straightening your image. You can clone the white spots out or you can crop most of it out which is what I do.

Step 8: Clone or patch any white areas that the crop tool didn’t take care of.

Now you are all done. Super easy right?

Before:

After:

 

I posted on facebook asking what my next tutorial should be and I got an overwhelming response to cover newborns, topics I was asked to cover were how to get rid of baby acne and how neutralize yellow or red skin tones… which brings me to the reason my tutorial is late. I don’t have many issues with acne or skin tones I was having a lot of trouble finding a photograph to use for the tutorial and this got me thinking, “why don’t I have these issues?”

 #1 Exposure is VERY important. If you are not exposing correctly the skin imperfections/tone will be magnified.

 #2 I typically shoot within the first 5 days and babies start to get acne around day 10.

This little guy is a good friends baby, who is 10 days old. Which provided the perfect picture for the tutorial. I know most of you were hoping for some big secret but there isn’t one. The key is exposure and getting in there early if you do those two things then you should not have any issues but if you do here are a couple of things you can do to fix it. If you are a seasoned professional this video probably isn’t for you but feel free to take a peek just to hear how silly I sound!  You have no idea how much I dislike hearing myself on video!

 

If you have comments or questions feel free to leave them in the comment box. I appreciate it and hope this is helpful for all of you that are just starting out.

“What is Cross Processing?”

Back in the film days (that was eons ago right?)  cross processing was when you purpously processed a film in the wrong chemicals,  for example, processing negative color film  in E-6  chemicals. In the digital world while you are not technically cross processing you can achieve somewhat of the same look in photoshop using curves.

Today I am going to teach you a very simple way to get that cross processed look.

 

 Step 1. With your image open, create a new adjustment layer, you can do this by selecting layer, new adjustment layer, and then curves.

 Once you select “Ok” as pictured in the  box above you are presented with the ever intimidating curves box. Don’t be afraid… move on to step 2.

 Step 2.With the curves box open select the red channel in the channel drop box (highlighted in the box below) or if you’re feeling fancy you can click ctl+1.

Once your red channel is open make a slight ”S” curve by bumping the highlights up and the shadows down and when you are done with your adjustment leave your curves window open and proceed to step 3.

The result so far looks like this.

Step 3. With the same curves window still open select the green channel (ctl+2) and repeat step two by making that same S curve. Just like in step two when you are done with your adjustment leave your curves window open and go to step four.

When adding the green S curve my image now looks like this..

step 4. Now this is where things get funky. With the same curves window open select the blue channel (ctl+3)  and make another S curve but this time in the opposite direction. (bumping the highlights down and the shadows up.)

Once you’re done with all of your adjustments if you select RGB in the channel drop box your adjustments should look something like this. When you are done looking at all of the pretty colors you can click “ok” to view your photographic masterpiece.  Tada! How simple was that?

Because we made this adjustment on another layer you are free to adjust the opacity of the curves layer to your liking so if you went a little crazy with your S curve that is ok. Be sure to flatten your image by going to Layer and Flatten before saving.

Now that I have made all of my adjustmnts my image looks like this.

 

 Fun Tip: To achieve a different look click on the curves layer in your layers palette and select color or luminosity from the drop box.

Here is your new look by selecting color.

Here is your new look by selecting luminosity.

Technical note: I processed this photo using Photoshop CS3 if you would like to automate this process in photoshop be sure to check out my action page!

Have a question or an idea for the next tutorial? Leave a note in the comment box!

I didn’t know exactly where to start so I made a quick 12min video showing you how I would liquify a photo. Obviously this is an extreme case. I don’t liquify my clients to this extent but it’s a tutorial and I thought it would be fun to take it a little further than I normally would. 

There are lots of fun ways to use the liquify tool. You can use it for making people skinnier, you can use it to enhance eyes, and you can also use it to help someone smile.  

In the video I mention that I have a tablet and the tablet I have is the Wacom Intous 3  and I believe it is 6×9 I don’t think I could live or liquify without this tablet. I heart it big time!  

Have questions? Leave them in the comment box and I will answer you as best as I can and I swear my voice isn’t as nasally as this in real life. HA! I couldn’t even listen to my own voice without being completely embarrassed.