It drives me absolutely crazy when I see a photo like this:
Seriously, how HARD is it to change the color of the blocks so that they look nice? Don’t give me the blah blah about not knowing how to do it. The Photoshop technique for this is REALLY simple. Much more simple than the skills required to take care of skin smoothing and stretch marks.
And if you don’t know how to take care of stretch marks on a maternity client, you should NOT be shooting for pay at all. Mkay?
HERE is what I’d rather see:
THIS is MUCH better! It looks great AND your maternity clients will be SO grateful!
Here are the step by step directions on how to achieve this. I don’t usually post tutorials on this site, but the crazy block colors are driving me nuts, so I’m going to pass on some helping hints to ease my suffering.
1. Duplicate the background layer. You know you should always do that, right? You’re inviting trouble by making edits to the original layer. Always make your edits on a duplicate layer.
2. Using your selection tool of choice (I used the “magic wand” tool) select the colors on ALL of the blocks. Hold down the shift button while you do this so that you can select multiple areas. If one of the blocks is already the color you want, select it anyway – you want ALL of your blocks to be the same exact color and this is the only way to assure that you can do it.
3. After you have selected the colors you wish to change and those areas are surrounded by the “marching ants”, do a copy and paste maneuver to create a new layer. This will be JUST the colored areas you wish to change.
4. Select your new layer and then go to the blending options area and choose “color overlay”. Then choose the color you wish the blocks to be and finalize it.
There, all done.
What? Where are the screen captures ? Oh, hello! I’m not here to hold your hand. If none of the above directions make sense and you need further instruction, that means that you don’t know Photoshop well enough to be using it and if you don’t know PS well enough to retouch your client photos – YOU SHOULD NOT BE CHARGING MONEY. OK?
If you think you do know what you’re doing and I’m just being mean – then utilize the “help” section in PS and you will find the instructions you need.