“Here’s a huge .psd kit with a ton of great resources for adding light leaks and film-like tones to your digital images. Inside the .psd are fourteen layers of real light leaks that can be upscaled or downscaled to any size, as well as five tone adjustment groups. Completely free for personal and commercial use.” – from coltonrabon.me

Download Light Leak Kit here

Step 1

Open the photo that you wish to edit and the first thing you want to do after that is duplicate the photos layer. This will make it so much easier if you decide that you want to start over and have accidentally over written your original picture file! Because now you will be working on the duplicated layer rather then the first one.

In this tutorial I’m going to be using a picture of a baby I found on sxc.hu.

Step 2

We need to make a selection of the baby just on his upper body and head. An easy way to do this is to use the Quick Mask Mode to get to it just hit Q. When you hit it nothing noticeable will change, the only thing that does is the quick mask button on the bottom of your tool bar gets selected.

Once your in the quick mask mode select the Brush Tool (B). Hit D (Resets your default colors to black and white) and start brushing over the baby. If you did it right you should be coloring the baby red not black. When you’re done covering the baby hit Q again which should select everything BUT the baby. To fix this just hit Command+Shift+I or Control+Shift+I if you’re on a PC.

Create a new layer and fill it with a color and hide the new layer. This is only so we can get that selection any time we want and we don’t have to repeat this step of selecting the baby with the quick mast tool anymore.

Step 3

With the new selection go back to the pictures layer (not the original the duplicated one!) and hit Command+C (Control+C) to copy it then paste it Command+V (Control+V)

Now you should have just the selection on a new layer. Open Levels (Command+L) and play around with the sliders until you get a darker, but not unrealistically dark, looking subject.

I did: 9, .64, 247

Step 4

Select the Pen Tool (P) and draw a shirt on the baby. Select the layer (by Command+Clicking on the layer) then hide the shirt layer.

Step 5

With the shirt outline still selected go to the first layer and hit Command+C then hit Command+V which should create a new layer. move that layer above all the other layers.

You should start seeing a tan baby with a farmers tan! All we need to do is add a few more touches then were done!

Step 6

Open Levels Command+L and play around with the sliders till you get a lighter subject. I put mine on:

0, 1.15, 241.

Then open Hue/Saturation (Command+U) then make the Lightness about +15

Step 7 – Final Step!

Select the shirt layer, then go to Select->Modify->Contract and enter 3px. Inverse the selection, Command+Shift+I, and apply a Gaussian Blur, Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur make the radius 1.0 pixels

Conclusion

You’re finished! Now you know how to take any picture and give someone a farmers tan! If you wanted to remove a farmers tan from a picture it would be a lot alike this tutorial! All you would need to do is select the farmers tan then feather the selection and use levels to make the selection match the rest of the skin. You might need to play around with other adjustment tools like Curves or Brightness/Contrast and not just the Levels.

Overview

Have you ever wanted to change the color of something in a photo but didn’t know how? Read this tutorial to find out how!

Starting Image

Step 1

Open your photo in Photoshop and select the Quick Selection Tool (W) set the diameter to a reasonable size, something like 10-20 pixels, with a hardness of 100% (You can play around with these settings to fit your needs)

Step 2

With the Quick Selection Tool selected start painting your desired selected areas.

This can be a pretty tedious process depending on the area of the selection you want. If what you want to select is a very large thing with hardly any funny edges make your brush size relatively big so it’s much quicker.

Tip: When painting around the edges and you go over into an area where you don’t want it to select hold down Option and paint over the area you do not want.

Another Tip: If you need to get into a small area a quick easy way to change your brush size is to tap the Left Bracket Key ([). Likewise… if you wanted to make it bigger just tap the Right Bracket Key (])

If you cannot get it to select what you want hit Q and select the brush tool and make your foreground color black and start painting away at the areas you want selected. The places you paint should turn a semi opaque red. When you are done selecting just tap Q again and your area should be selected!

Step 3

Duplicate your selection (Command+J); Click the New Adjustment Layer icon (Bottom of the layers palette) and select the Hue/Saturation.

Check the Colorize check box and play around with the sliders until you get something you like!

Conclusion

There you have it! A very quick and easy way to take an object in a picture, select it and change its color!