Photoshop - Layer Manipulation and Restoring Symmetry to the Face

Above is the original image of a headshot I took for a client. Unfortunately, in this photograph her left eye was a little squinty due to the power of the flash heads. To make up for my own short comings I decided to try and remove the squint of her left eye. 

So, I began searching for a method to make her face more symmetrical. After a few moments of consideration I duplicated the original image, mirrored it and rotated it slightly, in this way I was able to match it's position fairly realistically. I then added a layer mask to the second, mirrored and duplicated image and began using the brush tool to mask out parts of the image I didn’t want. By editing the opacity, shape and hardness of the brush tool, I was able to use it more effectively. I tended to use very soft strokes so the gradation between the added layer and the original image below became invisible.

I then continued with the manipulation of the image by removing any blemishes with the healing brush tool and editing the colour slightly with a plug in filter. However i found the effects were a little strong and decided to reduce the opacity of the filter to 14%, giving it a much more subtle effect. below is the final result:

Thanks for reading ! and feel free to check out my website at: www.josephrigbyphotography.co.uk

Layers and Blend modes in Photoshop

A brief insight into how I created a couple of improvised album covers on photoshop using layers, the shape tool and blend modes.

I began creating my “Alt-J” album cover by first taking the image ( a photograph I took at the hot springs in Rotorua, NZ) above and duplicating it 5 times. I proceeded by using the custom shape tool on each of the duplicated layers to make selection paths and cut my selected areas from the image, Each time I pasted the part of the image I had cut  out, back on top of the background layers. At this point I had pasted one full circle, two outlined circles and one outlined triangle; each with their separate layer and I arranged them so they were above my two original unedited background images ^. 

This is when I began altering the layer modes of the shapes and top background image, I also used various adjustment layers and the brush tool to mask out areas of each of the layers and adjustment layers I did not want to affect the image. After i was happy with the results, I added the text and below is the final version: