Turn your client’s photos into beautiful images

A client's portrait as a beautiful photoshop image example 1

The problem

Err, sorry, the challenge. How many times does this happen? You have an otherwise beautiful design and your client insists on including pictures of people who’s images weren’t taken by one of the world’s best photographers.

This is a reoccurring hitch; we have to include pictures of the CEO, the MD, the whoever, but there’s not the budget or the time to get a professional portrait done only a happy snap of 20k.

A client's portrait as a beautiful photoshop image example 2

The solution

Or is it the workaround? As you can see above, it’s not difficult. Turn your original photo into greyscale and cut it out. Feather or blur the edges in certain parts of the photo by extreme amounts. This is particularly necessary if the subject is leaning up against a wall or has someone else standing in front of them. Go either Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur… or Filter > Noise > Median…, or, preferably, do both.

Prepare your Photoshop document with a white background while experimenting with swathes of colours and blends on different layers. Play around with the blend modes, “Multiply” will be useful. These different colour layers can be used for other portraits, simply change their hue and positioning. Add some more layers on top of white lines with some assorted brushes.

Now comes the clever bit. I found this much easier in Illustrator. Save your Photoshop document noting the pixel dimensions and color mode. Create a new Illustrator document mirroring the dimensions and color mode. Place the PSD on artboard, lock layer, create new layer, and with the brush tool (B) selected, trace certain areas of your image to make it look like an old-fashioned re-toucher has had a go at it. Set artistic brushes (found in the Brushes palette) to some of these lines (“Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil” was my favourite). This is easier to do in Illustrator rather than Photoshop because the lines can be evened out (double click or the Brush tool in Illustrator and make sure the smoothness is around 0).

You may like to copy and paste these elements bit by bit over to the Photoshop document or, having put them on different layers in Illustrator, export it as a PSD and then copy over the layers. Either way, you will want to further experiment with layer blend modes and opacities for these artistic touches.

This was not my idea. I was contacted by The Talent Business to do this for their new staff members. See their “Who to talk to” section.

Here are the originals:

Original client photos

This article was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Illustrator, Photoshop.
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25 Responses to “Turn your client’s photos into beautiful images”

Aaron, on July 9th, 2008 at 3:31 pm, said:

Rob,
Is there a reason that All your images for this post show up as “Stop stealing content! from robcubbon.com”

I should also chastise you for stealing content from..well..yourself…lol.

Otherwise, great post! You always lend me helpful stuff.
Kayla, on July 9th, 2008 at 5:24 pm, said:

These images look so nice, I’d even say techy. Lovely job!
Rob Cubbon, on July 10th, 2008 at 11:08 am, said:

Good point, Aaron, in actual fact, somebody stole my site yesterday and in order to deter them I added a bit of code in the .htaccess file which prevents the hotlinking of images. So everytime an image is accessed from outside your server an alternative image is loaded (my carefully crafted “Stop stealing content from robcubbon.com”). That seemed to deter the thieves! At the same time you were viewing the site from a feed reading aggregator? Which meant your viewing experience was less than perfect! So thanks for letting me know otherwise I would have left it! Cheers, Rob.

Wow, Kayla! Always a pleasure to welcome my esteemed host. Thank you for your comment. Techy, moi?
Tracey Grady, on July 10th, 2008 at 1:54 pm, said:

This post makes me smile, because so often you get design jobs that require little tricks like this to conjure up something professional-looking from very ordinary material that you are given to work with in the first place. I especially like the examples on the Talent Business website – they look great.
Rob Cubbon, on July 11th, 2008 at 2:18 am, said:

I know, Tracey, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find out about something like this – something pretty from something ordinary.
John M, on July 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am, said:

Nice effort. Moreover We have all tools but don’t know their power. I think Photoshop and Illustrator are best tools to do that.
Amy, on July 15th, 2008 at 3:21 pm, said:

Wow, they look so real! Congrats!
Ludo, on July 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pm, said:

What good pictures !! Photoshop is really good…
Henning Nielsen, on July 17th, 2008 at 7:19 pm, said:

What a great solution to spice up your pictures. I can definitely use this tip in my daily work with pictures for clients. Also, nice to see new ways to use Photoshop – thanks.
Rob Cubbon, on July 22nd, 2008 at 2:00 pm, said:

@John M
@Amy
@Ludo
Thank you for your encouraging comments.
@Henning
Thank you. Feel free to send us what you have created!
Joey Martini, on July 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm, said:

Seriously amazing, I could really learn how to do that to input it on my e-commence site. The images you made look really techy, and it when I look at them again I don’t believe that you made them. They look like some professional photographer took them. Congratz
Rob Cubbon, on July 28th, 2008 at 12:05 pm, said:

Thank you Joey, it’s not that difficult to do and makes an ordinary photo look quite special. Good luck with your e-commerce site.
Craig Farrall, on July 29th, 2008 at 12:46 pm, said:

Wow, this looks fantastic, I really love this effect, I will have to try this out one day, I have browsed through your blog, and I must admit, you are very talented, keep up the good work.

Craig Farralls last blog post..Firefox Addons
Rob Cubbon, on August 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am, said:

Hi Craig. Thank you for your kind words about this Photoshop technique. I see you blog is interesting and well presented. Be sure to pop by again!
niña, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:18 am, said:

very artistic!!!
Vanily, on August 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm, said:

good photoshop work, like it!
Prevajanje besedil, on August 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am, said:

Nice tips, thanks.
Pictures looks really fantastic.
Rob Cubbon, on September 17th, 2008 at 1:19 pm, said:

Hello nina, Vanily and Prevajanje besedil, thank you very much for your comments and praise!
Nate, on November 14th, 2008 at 4:06 am, said:

Are u using CS4 yet? if not what type r ya using?
Roger Hamilton, on November 17th, 2008 at 2:44 pm, said:

That’s really amazing! I love your work! What’s a better way to cut out the photographs?
TinyBird, on December 17th, 2008 at 11:17 pm, said:

Wow these are fantastic! Now I have to figure out how to do it in dinosaur Fireworks.
Gregory, on January 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm, said:

I am 40 years old and just finished taking a photoshop class and digital photography as part of my Graphic design major and you did a great job with the images.

Regards Gregory.
Rob Cubbon, on January 19th, 2009 at 4:39 pm, said:

Hi Nate, still CS3, I’m afraid.

Roger Hamilton, lots of ways to do the cutting out. With these I just a path and then feathered the resulting selection. I have written about cutting out (and how to get round it without taking hours) here:
http://robcubbon.com/designing-photo-montages-in-photoshop/
http://robcubbon.com/cutting-out/
http://robcubbon.com/using-photoshop-channels-to-create-cool-montages/
Let me know if you have further questions

TinyBird, I think you can do this pretty similarly in Fireworks?

Gregory, funnily enough I’m 40 as well, although it’s not something I shout about. Keep persevering with Photoshop, it’s great fun!
E, on May 1st, 2009 at 9:15 pm, said:

Nice use of Photoshop. I’m a photographer and most of the people I work with are photographers, so we don’t generally have problems with bad images . But you’re right that in the age of photoshop, there are myriad ways ( not just those above ) to make an otherwise dull photo look compelling. E
Rob Cubbon, on May 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm, said:

Hello E, yes, the best thing to do is to use a great photograph in the first place! But, Photoshop is great at improving stuff that’s good already and stuff that’s not so good! Thanks for your comment.

Graphic and Web Designer London UK