PhotoForge: Curves

PhotoForge: Curves

PhotoForge App on the iPhone 3GS OS 4.0
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Many people have asked me for tips & tricks regarding photo retouching. Color adjustments, light balancing, masking, cropping for composition. There's no real fixed formula you can use for every photograph because each shot has their own nuances, mainly due to lighting. Techniques such as masking may seem easy at first but difficult to do seemlessly. Retouching requires a good eye and patience. Most of it is tedious when you get the hang of it. For this blog posting I'll share a tip for highlight balancing using a basic tool such as the PhotoForge App on the iPhone. I mainly use Photoshop on my PC for retouching photos,. The reason why I'm using the iPhone this time around, is to demonstrate how easily it can be done with such a simple tool. I prefer the PhotoForge app over the Photoshop app on the iPhone, because I find the Photoshop app on the iPhone is limited in functions.

(before & after)
Koibito by Yoskay Yamamoto on iPhone 3GS

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As you can see in the Before & After shot the highlights are washed out and the subject loses a lot of the tonal gradations. Notice the whites on the head, as well as the hilights on the body and right arm. When the hilights are blasted like that the colors also tend to become over saturated. Although saturation in color may be desired at times, it loses softness in an organic shape as well as a natural realistic look if that is to be intended.

Filter/Curves
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Reverse S Curve
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Open the PhotoForge app. Open the image you want to adjust. Click on the "Filter" tab (looks like a funnel, middle icon at the bottom). Click on "Curves". (For Photoshop on the PC: navigate to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Curves...). This is your "Curves" graph, which you can adjust the image as whole, or if you want indivual colors as well. For this demo we'll be adjusting the image as a whole, so keep your default settings on "RGB" and "All". Click and drag to add or move a bezier point on the graph. Multiple points can be applied to the same graph. Shown above is the general reverse S Curve I would usually apply when adjusting for highlight balancing, with tweaks depending on the lighting in the shot. I find it works really well for organic smooth surfaces and portraits.