After installing and opening your Photogram panel, it’s time to get to know it closely.

The Photogram panel contains 3 major parts:

1. The effects panel

Click on any of the effects and it will start immediately.

After you click it will be marked with light. In this sample we used Polaroid 600:

Any effects you click, will be added on a new layer, leaving the original image untouched.

Want to try another effects? Click it and it will replace the previous.

Use the scroll on the right hand side to reveal more effects (15 total).

2. The ratio crop slider

Select the crop ratio, click on the desired effect and you’ll get a cropped effected photo.

Don’t worry. it’s completely harmless. Select a different crop ratio, click the effect button again and it will first go back to the full image and re-crop it. If you wish to return to the original size, simply select No Crop and click the effect button.

Please note that cropping is done automatically from center outwards. If you need a specific crop area, first crop it manually with Photoshop’s native tools and use Photogram for it’s magnificent effects only.

3. The additional effects flick-buttons

Flick them to the right to turn them on:

You can turn them on separately as well…

Flick the Date Stamp on, click on the desired effect and the EXIF date will be stamped on your image*:

Don’t like the Date Stamp? Flick it off, click on the effect button (it is marked with light) and it’s gone…

Want to add Light Leak? No problem. Flick it on, click on the effect button and the light will leak in. Each time you click on the effect button, you get a different light leak. That’s how we like our old cameras, with a special and unique character…:

Light Leak #1:

Light Leak #2:

Want to get rid of the Light Leak? Flick it off, click on the effect button and it’s gone (if it could be that simple in the film days…).

* Please note – If the image was saved without EXIF, a special mark “– –” will be stamped instead:

That’s it!

Now stop reading boring manuals… Instead, go and have some fun with your copy of PSKiss Photogram!

Installing the toolkit – Macintosh* and Windows XP

* Important notice for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) users – update Adobe Extensions Manager BEFORE you install PSKiss Photogram using this link:

http://blogs.adobe.com/cssdk/2011/12/fix-for-extension-signature-bug-on-mac-os-10-7-patch-posted.html

1. Quit Photoshop if it is running
2. Extract the .zip file you downloaded from PSKiss Shop
3. Double-click on the file named “PSkiss Photogram.zxp”
   
4. This will launch the Adobe Extensions Manager. Click “Accept”
   
   
5. Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop

Installing the toolkit – Windows 7 and Vista

1. Quit Photoshop if it is running
2. Extract the .zip file you downloaded from PSKiss Shop
3. Click the Start Menu > Programs.
4. Locate “Adobe Extension Manager CS5″
5. Right click on it, choose “Run As Administrator” and Approve it
   
6. In the Extension Manager’s window click “Install”, locate the folder you extracted in step 1
   
7. Select the file named “PSkiss Outdoor Toolkit.zxp” and click on the “Select” button
8. Click “Accept” (ignore and approve the validation notice, it is non-relevant to this kind of extension) and the panel is installed:
   
   
9. Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop

How to open PSKiss Photogram in Photoshop

Go to Window > Extensions and choose “PSKiss Photogram”

Now you are ready to run instagram style effects on your photos, with in Photoshop:

Back to Photogram product page

See the Photogram QuickStart Guide – Here

For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on a photographic series dealing with the changing of the arabic part in the city of Haifa, Israel.

As many photographers, I was used to work with film and it isn’t natural to photograph at night with film, due to problems with exposure and color. Using digital cameras, made night photography very intuitive and natural for me. Still, two main technical questions had bothered me artistically:

1. What is the appropriate color reproduction to reflect the sense of night time?
2. What is the appropriate exposure (histogram) that will reproduce the best luminance transitions, which reflect night time experience?

Color reproduction – this issue disturbs all photographers. The camera sees only “daylight”, it does not understand that my eyes are looking at night time and sees palish warm colors of street lights, while sky colors are dark. So the first thing I began dealing with, was the reproduction of color and sky luminance.

Appropriate exposure – as we all know, the “correct” exposure we pick is based on  histogram.
Actually, all of us work in a “zone system” when we use the histogram (making an exposure with all the details that the camera can reproduce). The camera however, is calibrated to 18% gray brightness. I felt that the photographs were to bright and when I darkened them, I didn’t receive the desired results, especially in darker areas (there were to many details in “correct” contrast). I decided to set the exposure so that the histogram would be “climbing” the left side with the Wide Range B&W presets and reconstruct the details afterwords using the Night Palettes presets.

This type of exposure and gleaning details in post production, makes the appropriate contrast for the very dark areas. Having the appropriate exposure and post production development of contrasts + one of the night palettes gives a very nice sense of night time, with very delicate warm colors.

I used the same workflow to create all the samples in this post – first apply Wide Range B&W preset and then a Night Palette preset.

You are most welcome to share your thought and night photos on our facebook page.

Sample photos:

Original photo:

After Wide Range B&W and Night Palettes 1:

Original photo:

After Wide Range B&W and Night Palettes 1:

Original photo:

After Wide Range B&W and Night Palettes 1:

Original photo:

After Wide Range B&W and Night Palettes 1:

Thanks for your time and effort!

Please visit the Wide Range B&W presets and the Night Palettes 1 presets product pages

Some secrets and tips directly from the developer’s desk // by Nir Kaufman

In real life, we usually don’t treat people as products. However, when using PSKiss Photographer’s Toolbox, I encourage you to give it a try…
First, a few words about the techniques behind the scripts:
The “Product Photography Toolkit” (which is included also in the “Photographer’s Toolbox“) contains two “different” scripts,”Jeweler” and “Colorize“, that take advantage of the powerful LAB color space, which is a kind of a mystery for a lot of Photoshop users.
“High key” is based on a complex of Blending Modes techniques, while “Edge” uses professional masking extraction, to protect important areas.

So what does it  do with portraits?

A good portrait shot contains tons of subtle details and texture, much like a good product shot… So the techniques that make a product shot shine, will probably work with faces as well.

Improve Dull Skin Tone with Jeweler

Human skin-tone (a healthy one…) is a mixture of Red and Yellow colors, with a lot of variations in between. Jeweler contains two sliders: “Stone” and “Metal“. When it comes to a portrait shot, you can replace (imaginary…) the “Stone” slider with “Reds” and the “Metal” slider with “Yellows“. Now, it’s simple and fast to add vividness to skin tones, just by pushing the desired slider to the right. You will notice immediately, how color variations improve the overall look:

Creative Tinting with Colorizer

At first glance, “Colorizer” has nothing to do with portraits. It works like magic when you need to quickly change colors of a product, what it was designed to do. But, there is an easy way to make some creative, gentle “Tint” effects with Colorizer. The rule is simple: drag both sliders half way. At this point you should get a Grayscale image (no color). Now, gently offset one of the sliders (right or left) to get a “Soft tint” Effect.

“Dreamy Light” Effect with High-Key

The High-Key script is based on an original technique that uses Blending Modes. That’s the reason it gives you a very unique result, that doesn’t affect resolution (or blow out details completely). The “Dreamy Light” effect is very popular among wedding photographers, and works for studio portraits as well.

Emphasize Eye-Lashes & Lip-Gloss with Edge

“Edge” is designed to sharpen the edges in the image, while protecting large color surfaces around them. Most of the time, you can use it “as-is” to sharpen your portraits, while protecting skin-tone. You can use this script to emphasize eye lashes and even create a “lip gloss”, as part of your retouch workflow. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Open Product Photography Toolkit or Photographer’s ToolBox and click on the Edge button.
2. Push the “Amount” slider all the way to the right and set the “Radius” slider to about half the way.
3. Click OK to create the Edge layer.
4. Add a black mask for the “Edge layer” and use a soft white brush, to paint over the eye lashes and lips.
5. Reduce opacity of the layer if needed.

Conclusions

Although the Product Photography Toolkit was originally designed to improve product shots, it can bring creativity to your portraits, mainly because the techniques behind the scripts were aimed to emphasize details and texture. The intensive use of LAB color space and Photoshop’s Blend Modes, creates great results at any resolution.

Happy Photoshoping,

Nir Kaufman

Senior Developer @ PSKiss.com

All the tools I’m going to use, are developed by PSKiss and are available in our shop.

Step #1 – Develop the Camera Raw file

Opened the original Raw file with Adobe Bridge (this step can be done, just the same with Lightroom). Switched to the Camera Calibration tab to choose the develop profile. Since it is a portrait, I chose Camera Portrait:

Wasn’t quite happy with the skin and hair tones, so I chose PSKiss Powered Skin & Lips:

It is always a good idea to start from the Camera Calibration tab because this is the stage where you set the initial color table of your image.

Step #2 – Retouching Skin in Photoshop

I used PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro – Skin Gear for this task. For more information, refer to the Pixel Gear Pro Tutorial or watch the free video tutorial.

For this image I used the Beauty preset and added Low Grain:

The Layers  panel after this step, looks like this:

The image, before and after applying Skin Gear:

Please note that no other filters or retouching tools were used. Only Skin Gear.

Step #3 – Enhancing Contrast

Click the Stamp Visible button in the Pixel Gear Pro panel to merge all layers into a new layer at the top of list in the Layers panel:

Note that this button appears on all three parts of this panel.

To enhance Global Contrast, Shadows Contrast and Highlights Contrast in one step, I used Tone Gear filter from the Pixel Gear Pro panel:

For more information about Tone Gear filter, refer to the Pixel Gear Pro Tutorial or watch the free video tutorial.

Some drama was added to the portrait…:

Step #4 – Creating the Look

To create a unique look to this portrait, I chose the Look Factory from PSKiss Portrait Photography Toolkit:

I used Satin presets and increased the Intensity to 75:

This is how it turned out:

For more information about the Look Factory and the Portrait Photography Toolkit, refer to the QuickStart Guide or watch the free video tutorial.

 Step #5 – Sharpening the Portrait

Sharpening a portrait is quite a challenge. You don’t want to sharpen the areas you just recently smoothed, do you?

To sharpen this portrait, I will demonstrate two different tools, each one creates a different kind od sharpening results:

1. Sharpening with Edge Gear

Edge Gear is an edge enhancer / sharpener, located in Pixel Gear Pro panel:

Just to remind you, we already have a mask of the skin areas which was created in Step #2, where we used Skin Gear. So it is very simple – click the Use Skin Gear Mask button in the Edge Gear panel. This will create a new merged layer and a mask, ready for sharpening:

I started with Edge Gear’s Medium preset. To achieve a more gentle sharpening, lowered the Edge Width to 1 and increased the Amount to 60:

This with the mask, created a suitable selective sharpened image:

2. Sharpening with Face Sharp

Face Sharp is located in the Portrait Photography Toolkit:

Face Sharp sharpens the image, using a smart auto-mask that protects skin tone:

Finished!

Processing a portrait from develop, through retouch and creating a look until the final sharp touch, can be quite easy to accomplish, when using the right tools

Using PSKiss Photography Photoshop Toolkits and DNG Profiles, allow you to get from start to finish, quickly and easily without the need to become a Photoshop wizard…

Click on the image bellow to see a larger version of the image, before and after:

We are proud to be the first company to offer real time image processing tools based on Pixel Bender technology.

Important notice for owners of previous versions of PSKiss Pixel Gear filters

1. If you have previous versions of Edge Gear, Skin Gear, Skin Gear Pro, S/H Tone Gear or S/H Tone Gear Pro, please remove them from the Pixel Bender Files folder and remove the old panel before installing Pixel Gear Pro 1.5. This will prevent any chance of conflicts or double files.
2. Please update Adobe Pixel Bender plug-in to it’s newest version.
3. Follow the installation instructions:

Install Adobe Pixel Bender Plug-In

In order to work with our filters, you must first install the Adobe Pixel Bender Plug-In.

Please follow these few simple steps:

1. Download Pixel Bender Plug-In Ver. 2.2/2.3 for Photoshop CS5/CS5.1. Please note that without this plug in, Pixel Gear filters will not run.
2. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, you will be asked to create one. It is free of charge.
3. Mac OS X and Windows XP users, follow steps 3-4 of the next section.
4. Vista and Windows 7 users, Click Hear for special instructions.

Install PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro – Mac OS X and Windows XP

1. After installing Pixel Bender Plug-In, unzip the file PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro.zip:
   
2. Quit Photoshop if it is running.
3. Double-click on the file named “PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro.zxp” (Vista and Win7 users, see special note):
   
4. This will launch the Adobe Extensions Manager. Click “Accept”:

• Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop

Special note for Vista and Windows 7 users:

1. Quit Photoshop if it is running
2. Extract the .zip file you downloaded from PSKiss Shop
3. Click the Start Menu > Programs.
4. Locate “Adobe Extension Manager CS5″.
5. Right click on it, choose “Run As Administrator” and Approve it.
   
6. In the Extension Manager’s window click “Install”, locate the folder you extracted in step 1:
   
7. Click “Accept” (ignore and approve the validation notice if it pops-up, it is non-relevant to this kind of extension) and the panel is installed.
8. Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop.

How to open PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro Panel in Photoshop

Go to Window > Extensions and choose “PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro”:

Now you are ready to use your Pixel Gear Pro panel and filters:

Installed items:

• 3 Pixel Bender filters – Skin Gear Pro, Edge Gear, SH Tone Gear Pro (installed into Pixel Bender Files folder)
• 1 Workflow panel

Back to Pixel Gear Pro product page

Go To Pixel Gear Pro Free Tutorial

We are happy to be the first company to offer real time image processing tools based on Pixel Bender technology.

Welcome to PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro step-by-step free tutorial

Watch the free video tutorial, if you don’t like reading text tutorials…

PSKiss Pixel Gear Pro contains 3 filters:

1. Skin Gear – A professional skin retouch filter
2. Tone Gear – A professional Shadows, Highlights and Global contrast enhancement filter
3. Edge Gear – A professional edge sharpener

1. Retouch With Skin Gear

• In this tutorial we will use a portrait photo in order to emphasize Skin Gear Pro advantage in skin retouch. You can use Pixel Gear Pro on any kind of photos.
• After installing Pixel Gear Pro panel and filters and presenting the panel, open a photo you wish to edit:
  

The first filter presented in Pixel Gear Pro panel is Skin Gear. If you want to use Edge Gear or Tone Gear, simply select them from the “Choose Your Filter” menu at the top of the panel:

Retouching Skin

To start the retouch process, you need first to create a selection of the skin areas.

Click on to open the Color Range dialog box. Hold down the Command key (Macintosh) or the Ctrl key (Windows), to present the color image in the window. Click once on a skin area and release the key you were holding:

Hold down the Shift key and add click on more skin areas in the image (you can click within the Color Range dialog box or on the image itself), keep on clicking (don’t let go of the Shift key) until you get almost every bit of skin presented by white color:

This might select some unwanted areas that have the same luminosity as the skin areas. To remove these unwanted areas, hold down the Option key (Macintosh) or the Alt Key (Windows) and click on them. When you’re done with selecting skin colors, refine your selection by adjusting Fuzziness and Range:

You might need to continue Shift-clicking and Alt/Option-clicking to fine tune your selection. When done, click OK.

This will mark a selection on your image (“marching ants”):

To convert this selection into a layer mask, click .

This will automatically duplicate the Background layer, add a layer mask based on your selection and activate the layer itself, so you can apply the filter in the next step:

Now it’s time for some retouch work. Click to launch the filter’s dialog box:

Note that the preview in the Pixel Bender window, ignores the layer mask and shows the entire image.

Retouching skin with Skin Gear Pro

• Use Smart-Smooth Level to soften the overall “feel” of the skin. Higher values mean softer skin. This slider should have the largest value of the first 4 sliders.
• Use Overall Restore to threshold smoothing strength. Higher values means more original details are maintained. Lower values mean smoother skin. This slider should have the lowest value of the first 4 sliders.
• The basic thumb rule is – the larger the gap, the smoother the skin…
• Use Preserve Skin Features and Remove Skin Defects to control which kind of details will be preserved. Higher values mean more large details than skin texture. Lower values mean less large details and more texture.
• Think of these sliders as if they were “layering” the face from large details to small texture details.
• For best results, keep these sliders’ values above Overall Restore value and bellow Smart-Smooth Level value. Make sure that Preserve Skin Features value is higher than Remove Skin Defects.
• All values are minimum 0.5, maximum: 15
• Use Intensity to control the impact of the filter. Higher values mean significant smoothing. Lower values mean milder influence.

In this sample we used our “Beauty” preset:

More about Skin Gear Pro presets, in a little while…

After setting up the filter, click OK

Fine-tune the mask

After applying the filter, you might find out that some areas, such as eyes, lips and hair, need to be excluded from the filter’s influence. In addition, some skin areas might need to be added to the effected areas.

To edit the mask:

1. Alt/Option-Click on the mask thumbnail in the layers panel to present the mask:
   
   
2. Choose the Paint Brush tool (we added it to the Workflow panel, for your convenience):
   
3. Set the Foreground/Background colors to default (button also included in panel):
   
4. Paint with white on places you want to add to the effected areas; Paint with black on places you want to exclude (use the “X” key to exchange between them):
   
5. Alt/Option-Click the mask thumbnail to present the colored image. If needed, keep working on the mask. Pay attention to important “character” details, such as smile wrinkles and nostrils. In this example we also excluded the hair:
   

Final retouch of defects

Some defects can’t be removed by the filter and must be removed manually.

To manually remove these defects:

1. Activate the layer (instead of the mask) by clicking its thumbnail in the Layers panel:
   
2. Choose the appropriate retouch tool – the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp Tool from the Workflow panel:
   
3. Zoom-in and remove the defects:
   

Adding grain

Sometimes, after smoothing a portrait, the image might nott look “realistic” enough. To prevent this, you can add some grain to the retouched areas.

To add grain to retouched areas:

1. Click on one of three grain levels in the Workflow panel – Low, Medium or High:
   
2. Each one will add a different amount of soft “Film Grain” into a separate layer:
   
3. Note that the grain layer effects only retouched areas and that opacity is set to 75%. If you need more, you can always push it up to 100%.
4. If you would like to use a different grain preset, simply click on its button in the panel. It will replace the current grain with the new one.

Using Launch Preset

Skin Gear Pro Workflow panel allows you to quickly launch 3 presets for skin smoothing:

• Editorial – Uses low smoothing values and basic intensity. Suitable for official portraits and editorial usage.
• Beauty – Uses medium smoothing values and higher intensity. Suitable for commercial beauty and fasion photos.
• China Doll – Uses high smoothing values and very high intensity. Use this one when you want that “China Doll” face effect.

When you click on one of these presets, PSKiss Skin Gear Pro dialog box inside the Pixel Bender Gallery will appear automatically. Check the preview image. If you are happy with the result, click OK and continue with the workflow. Otherwise, make your adjustments until you reach the desired effect and click OK.

The Final Image

Here are the original image and the retouched version, side-by-side (click to see full size image):

2. Shadows, Highlights and Global contrast enhancement with Tone Gear

• First, select the Tone Gear filter in the Pixel Gear Pro panel:
  

• When you continue working on a photo you’ve retouched with Skin Gear, we recommend you create a new layer that will contain the merged data of all 3 layers. To do so, simply click the button:
  

Click  to launch the filter’s dialog box:

Control Contrast with S/H Tone Gear Pro

• Shadows Contrast edits contrast in darker parts of the image. Higher value means lighter shadows.
• Shadows Range sets the tonal range for shadows. Higher value increases tonal range of shadows and more areas will be effected by Shadows Contrast changes.
• Highlights Contrast edits contrast in brighter parts of the image. Higher value means darker highlights.
• Highlights Range sets the tonal range for highlights. Higher value increases tonal range of highlights and more areas will be effected by Highlights Contrast changes.
• Global Contrast edits contrast of the entire tonal range of the image. Higher value means more contrast.
• Highlights/Shadows Balance determines the general influence on image. Higher value means overall darkening.
• Preserve Saturation turned on means contrast changes effects only luminosity. Turn off if you wish to boost saturation.

The sample image is quite quite evenly lit, so we started with the “Fine SH” preset:

We wanted to add some drama to this portrait, so we increased the Global Contrast and pushed up the Highlights / Shadows Balance to get an overall darkening effect.To prevent her shirt from getting too dark, we increased the Shadows Range. Since we didn’t want to change the saturation, we kept the Preserve Saturation turned on:

After setting up the filter, click OK

After you installed and opened the panel in Photoshop, you are ready to start working on your outdoor photos.

Working in “Button Mode”

All you need to do once the panel is visible, is to click on buttons. It’s truly that simple.

If you work on an outdoor photo, use the Outdoor Photography filters:

For more information – See the PSKiss Outdoor Photography Toolkit QuickStart Guide

If you work on a portrait photo, use the Portrait Photography filters:

For more information – See the PSKiss Portrait Photography Toolkit QuickStart Guide

If you work on a product photo, use the Product Photography filters:

For more information – See the PSKiss Product Photography Toolkit QuickStart Guide

If you want to use all filters without navigating between the categories, Show All the filters:

Each button in the panel launches a filter that allows you to manipulate your photo, quickly and easily.

The work with the panel is progressive – Each filter starts with the results of the previous one. Note that each filter creates a separate layer of it’s own, so the original image stays untouched. This layer has a unique name given by the filter. Please do not change this name, it is used by the very useful Merge All button.

The workflow assistance buttons:

Undo the last operation. Click again to Redo

Sets the view to Actual Pixels

Merge the selected layer with the one below, or merge selected layers together

Merge all PSKiss layers added by the filters, into a single layer

About the Free Demo

The Free Demo decreases image size to 640px (wide or tall) before activating the filters. All features are identical to the commercial version.

The panel is marked “Free Limited Version”:

Download the Free Demo – Here

Installing the toolkit – Macintosh and Windows XP

1. Quit Photoshop if it is running
2. Extract the .zip file you downloaded from PSKiss Shop
3. Double-click on the file named “PSkiss Photographers ToolBox.zxp” (the word “Free” is added to the Free Demo version)
   
4. This will launch the Adobe Extensions Manager. Click “Accept”
   
5. Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop

Installing the toolkit – Windows 7 and Vista

1. Quit Photoshop if it is running
2. Extract the .zip file you downloaded from PSKiss Shop
3. Click the Start Menu > Programs.
4. Locate “Adobe Extension Manager CS5″
5. Right click on it, choose “Run As Administrator” and Approve it
   
6. In the Extension Manager’s window click “Install”, locate the folder you extracted in step 1
   
7. Select the file named “PSkiss Photographers ToolBox.zxp” and click on the “Select” button
8. Click “Accept” (ignore and approve the validation notice, it is non-relevant to this kind of extension) and the panel is installed:
   
9. Quit the Extensions Manager and launch Photoshop

How to open PSKiss Outdoor Toolkit Panel in Photoshop

Go to Window > Extensions and choose “PSKiss Photographers ToolBox” (the word “Free” is added to the Free Demo version)

Now you are ready to use your Photographer’s ToolBox:

Back to Photographer’s ToolBox product page

Photographer’s ToolBox QuickStart Guide – Here