Magazine style effects

bigteethproductions

bigteethproductions

Well-known member
I'm doing some work where I have to parody a magazine cover, like US Weekly.

I'm wondering if there are any tips for effects to use to get that glossy mag cover look with some regular pictures that I've scanned in. Just some basic filters or whatever that are used to make those celebs so shiny and pretty :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

thanks.
 
If you could post some low rez examples of what you have scanned, we can go a little more diretly to the issue. Your question is a bit vauge, as there are multiple things involoved with maazine work. Retouching, color balancing, enhancement, color shifts, levels, curves, bending modes, and even more that I cant think of as I type this. There is no "filter" or ever set of that will take any pic and make it look like a magazine pic. Since each pic is different, each has to be approached and worked on differently.
 
Cover

Cover

1157148998.jpg


This is the kind of thing I'm looking for, just that whole airbrushed, glossy look. I'm just taking regular digital photos that were given to me and I'll layout out in that style of the cover.
 
airbrushing isn't just a couple of filters. in fact, when i do airbrushing work, i don't think i even use any filters other than sharpening and blurring. the trick is to start with well lit subjects, and high quality photos. if you have that, then you can move on to airbrushing. if the pictures aren't taken magazine style, you can't quite fix it in post, sometimes you can, but its best to start w/ good ones.

but after that, you mainly want to just start by duplicating the picture on another layer, then you use healing brush or clone stamp to remove blemishes and such. then you duplicate that layer and you get out smude tool about 40 pixels, soft edge, and strength about 5-8. then you start smudging around the skin on the face, avoiding lines such as dimples and lines under the eyes,
until it smooths it out a bit, not too much, then you turn down the opacity of that layer to about 50%, or whatever looks best. remember, smooth, but not plastic. keep the texture of the skin, but still get it pretty smooth. then you can make a new layer, press alt+ctrl+shift+e to merge all visible on that layer, and do some color corrections with the curves. maybe drop the blues slightly to warm it up and give it a goldish tint. i always like to use a bit of sharpening at the end to get the edges nice and crisp. if you have cs2, do smart sharpening at about 80%, radius .3 pixels, and remove gaussian. thats just basics. other than that just start playing around and get your own techniques. its the best way to learn it. hope this helped!
 
What ice said is right on. Plus, it's sometimes helpfull to make copies of JUST the wrinkles for certain areas (laugh lines around the eyes & mouth for example) and put them on the topmost layer. Then, you can drop the opacity as far as you want, and use that to bring the wrinkles back. Sounds strange, but it is sometimes easier to place selected wrinkles back at a lower opacity onto a completely smoothened face.
 
thanks much guys.... the photos i'm using are not professional, they are basically whatever i'm given as this will be part of a montage style video.

but those suggestions seem very helpful and I'll use them for sure. i definitely know that much of the technique comes from practice but there's only a finite amount of time to learn this, along with lighting techniques, audio, in camera settings.... well you get the picture :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

thanks again, I really appreciate the help.
 
Original Picture (made smaller):
1157524673.jpg


Here's my parody Mag cover for their wedding rehearsal dinner (again, made smaller than original):

1157524652.jpg


I used layers and blurred the background, also tried to take some of the suggestions here to make the appearances of the people a little smoother and more "golden". It looks as if the picture got a little smushed as well in my effort to fit it properly within the mag cover construct. It doesn't bother me, but does it look ok or really obvious?

I'd like to hear what you guys think, keeping in mind that this isn't for an actual magazine, it is parody style, but please let me know things that could be better so I can improve either this one or future jobs.
 
It looks a little squished, but not too bad. Hold down Shift when you are in Free Transform, and that wont happen.

Nice effect of the background blur, and then people DO look a little golden, which looks fine.

In all, nice work. That certainly gave me a hearty chuckle, especially the part with Gene Simmons. I'm sure those folks are gonna get a kick out of it too. Good work.
 
thanks for the feedback Matt. I do usually do the shift key thing with the transform, but i think when sending both layers to new documents one of them got resized differently so in my effort to keep them consistent I got a little squished.

I'm used to using Fireworks so adjusting to the "power" of photoshop is a challenge. Now, I have to figure out how to make this magazine come to life!
 
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