This is a quick method for producing a fast shading effect in Photoshop. It works well with portraits but could be used for other images too. All the layers are preserved so you can go back and change the settings as you wish.
It’s worth pointing out that I have “overcooked” this for the tutorial. I would normally use less blur and not change the curves so much. The point is that you can choose your own settings to get the result you want.
1) Open your image in Photoshop. You should be able to do this in most versions of Photoshop from CS upwards.
2) Remove any skin blemishes using your favourite technique. There are so many skin retouching methods that there’s not much point going into them all here.
Select the “Channels” window and Command+Click on the RGB layer. This will appear to highlight some of the image – what it has actually done is created a luminosity selection which we will use next.
Go back to the layers pallet and from the adjustment layers menu select Curves. This will create a new curves layer with a mask that looks like a black and white version of the image.
Increase the brightness of the image. Grab the curve in the centre and drag the line up a small way – you can come back and change this later.
Rename the layer “highlights”.
We are going to work directly on the mask. To see the mask hold down the Alt key and click on the mask icon in the layers pallet. This will show you the black and white mask.
From the Image menu select Adjustments>Levels. Move the sliders so that the mask has higher contrast. You want the highlights in the image to look like fairly solid blobs.
Blur the mask. From the Filters menu select Blur>Gaussian Blur. How much blur you add depends on the size of the image but you you want to soften the highlight and shadow areas without losing the shape of the face. Try a value of 20 for the sample image.
Alt click on the mask icon again to get back to the original image.
5) Duplicate the highlights layer (Command-J) and rename the layer “Shadows”.
6) Invert the mask.
Click on the mask icon in the Shadows layer and press Command-I.
7) Change the curve
In the shadows layer drag the curve down so that you increase the shadow density.
At this point you can go back and edit the curves on the shadows or highlight layers. You can also edit the masks to dodge or burn various parts of the image.
