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photolesa.com
The creative tutorial home of image wrangler, Lesa Snider.

Step by step tutorials

Welcome to the home of the step by step creative online tutorial. Here you will find detailed, easy-to-understand steps accompanied by screen shots. These tutorials are liable to be about anything from my current project to something that drove me nuts trying to figure out. It is my hope that the things I can convey here will save you time and frustration.

If there's something that you'd like to see written up, please feel free to let me know

Softening Freckles

The magic of selective blurring

An important thing to remember when retouching photos is to exercise a little restraint. You probably don't want to retouch a subject so much that they cease to resemble themselves. Take this photo of a beautifully freckled woman. If we remove her freckles completely, it wouldn't look like her.

Softening her skin, thereby lessening the intensity of her freckles, is what we really want to do. Sound hard? It's really not. Like most things, there's a trick to it.

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Cookie Cutter tool + Custom Shapes = fun photo frames Swirls of Summer How to create a blurry background Post Selective Focus
Blur Baby Blur! Changing the color of hair Digital Beauty Shop
Pinching Flabby Chins Photoshopping People How to instantly reverse color Fun with Adjustment Layers
Removing antennas and power lines Spot Healing Brush to the Rescue! Ordering business cards online
Mysteries of Unsharp Mask How to Create Your Very Own Warp Trail
How to sharpen individual channels Get Sharp! Lesa's Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tips
Creating a watermark action Protecting Your Photos Online, Pt. 2 How to change the default email client in Tiger
Posterizing your way to creativity Creating Cartoon Art Super Funky Edges
Give Your Photos an Edge Stacked paper background Fall Digital Scrapbooking Fun, Part 2
Classy Thumbnails Demystifying Blending Modes A Stroll Down Blend Mode Lane, Pt. 1
The Beginner's Guide to Image Editing, Part 2 Using Channels to produce eye-popping contrast Goin' Grayscale
Using blend modes and masking to lighten shadows Lighten Up! Top 11 Keyboard Shortcuts
The magic of selective blurring Softening Freckles Filter your way to a flurry of snowflakes Let It Snow!
Using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to change hair color Digital Beauty Shop Creating duotones with Elements' QuickFix mode Delicious Duotones
Warp speed color cast correction Color Cast Be Gone! Pick a New Picker
Using vector shapes to add a watermark Protecting Your Photos Online, Pt. 1 The Beginner's Guide to Image Editing, Pt. 3
Turning sub-par images into an emotional piece of art From Photo to Pencil Sketch Creating a collage with Linear Burn A Stroll Down Blend Mode Lane, Pt. 4
Joys of Optimizing JPEGs Replacing Backgrounds with Photoshop's Background Eraser
Placing an image within an image Simulating Pictures, Part 1: Flat Screens Fun with Elements Effects
Retouching People Oversharpening trick makes retouching eyes a snap Super Sparkling Eyes
How to turn friends and loved ones to stone (or a zombie--you pick) Simply Statues Web navigation tips
Quick Creative Collage Combining Images Frame your photo with a Smart Object Ornamental Vector Grunge Frame
Creating a beautiful fade from original color to grayscale Fading Color Placing Text Behind an Object
How to turn a photo into a blueprint Paint it Blue How to change the color of drop shadows Shadow Dancing
Using the Crop tool to make a 10-second frame Quick Polaroid Frame How to repaint an object using the Hue mode Quick Color Change

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