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JD Anderson | all galleries >> Photo Retouching > 9527-Jonah Eyes BW, with original
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9527-Jonah Eyes BW, with original

I started by shooting this 2/3 stops overexposed. I adjusted the levels on the original to lighten the light areas even more. I then converted to BW using calculations in Photoshop. I used gray, red, screen at 65%. I duplicated the BW layer and again adjusted levels on the BW layer (top one) and blew the highlights even more, and increased the blacks to get the shading I wanted as well as the high contrast in the eyebrows. This made the eyes way too dark, which I expected. That's why I kept an original of the BW layer. I made a loose selection around the eyes on the original BW layer and copied them to their own layer (on top). I adjusted levels to really increase the whites and slightly darkened the blacks. That did not give enough of an effect, so I used the dodge tool to lighten the light parts of the iris, and I used the burn tool to darken the dark parts of the iris. I used the eraser with a very soft edge brush and erased around the eyes to get rid of the transition lines. I then flattened the image, and duplicated the layer. I changed the top layer to multiply blending mode and reduced the opacity to 30%. That gave me even more contrast. I flattened the image again, and duplicated once more. I ran the color pencil filter in Photoshop on the top layer, and reduced the opacity of that layer to 20%. I flattened one more time, then ran FM Intellisharpen (Photoshop actions and plug ins availabe at www.fredmiranda.com) with the settings at 80 and fine detail at 24, zero halo. Oversharpening is what gave me the pixelated/grain look. The left eye was narrower than the right in his expression, so I selected his left eye, copied to a new layer, and used the transform tool to increase the vertical to 104.5%. I then used the soft edged eraser to get rid of the transition lines again. That is pretty much it... Hope you like it!


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