How to Airbrush Photos in Photoshop CS3

Although most people know that many of the people who they see on covers of magazines are airbrushed, few people know that this is a technology that is not out of reach for a person to do at home. Any person who has Photoshop CS3 software can airbrush photos in Photoshop CS3. For best results, a person should gain a working knowledge of the software.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• High-resolution digital photo
• Adobe Photoshop CS3

1. Open the photo to be airbrushed by clicking on "file" and then "open." Then navigate to the location where the photo that is to be retouched is located. Double click on the photo and it will open up in Photoshop.

2. Click on the "Paintbrush" tool and set the mode to "brush" under options in the toolbar at the top of the page. Go to the gradient palette and set the opacity to a small percentage (about 15-20 percent). Doing this will allow any work done on the photograph to be subtle and not noticeable.

3. Go to "View" and click on "Brushes." This will open up the brushes palette. Choose a size for the brush that covers a fairly large space. Use the sliding bar on the toolbar to adjust the brush to have an edge that is soft. A 40-50 pixel brush is probably a good size to try to start off with.

4. Select the "magic wand" tool from the toolbox on the left side of the page. Click on the area of the image that needs to be airbrushed. Zoom in to this photo at 100 percent. Make this selection softer by navigating to "select" and "feather" in the menu bar on the top. A box will open in which the size of the feather should be typed in. It is usually best to set the feather to somewhere around five pixels.

5. Click on the "Eye dropper" tool and click on the part of the image that has a color close to the color that is located in the area of the photo to be airbrushed. The brush tool will then use this color when it is selected.

6. Click in the "marching ants" area while the brush tool is selected. This will allow the user to airbrush this part of the image. Hide the "marching ants" by typing "Ctrl+H." This will allow the user to see if the airbrush looks like you want it to. If it does, you are done.

7. Use "Ctrl+Z" to undo the steps you took if you don't like the end result. This process requires some trial and error. Try the process again, but slightly alter the brush sizes and feather size to see if the result is any closer to what you want.

Tips & Warnings

• Feathering is needed because it allows the airbrushed portion of the image to more seamlessly merge with the natural portion of the image.
• Remember to save the original of this image as a different name than what the airbrushed version is. It is important to have a clean original image that can be reverted to.

Resources

• Airbrush Photos in Photoshop
• How to Airbrush in Photoshop