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| How to Touch Up Photos with FotoFinish |
Creating Artistic Monochrome Portraits
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There's something about a monochrome portrait, whether B&W or sepia, that says classic
and timeless.
There are two ways you can transform a color image into a monochrome portrait in FotoFinish:
color depth and special effects.
One of the easiest way to convert a color image to B&W is to change its color depth to
Grayscale in the Image menu. Since this reduces the color depth of the entire image, all
layers will have to be flattened before the operation. If you want to experiment or re-colorize parts of the image later, you
may prefer a less drastic transformation.
If you're working in FotoFinish STUDIO and SUITE, you can preserve the original image by moving a copy of your photo to a separate layer.
Simply select the entire photograph using Ctrl+A and copy it. Next, select Add Layer from Layers under the
Image menu, name your layer (i.e.: sepia, bw, or monochrome) so you can easily go back to it in the future, and hit Ctrl+V to paste
your image into the new layer.
Now, you're ready to begin experimenting without altering the original photograph. If you make a mistake, you can always start over in a new layer.
First, let's simply apply a Sepia filter from the Special Effects
dialog under the Image menu. You can choose from a more yellow or B&W toned image (Hint: Click on More and move the slider towards "Less" for a more
gray-toned image and towards "More" for a more "yellowed" toned one.)
If you want to further
desaturate your image, choose Adjust Colors from the Image menu, then in the dialog's drop down list, select Adjust Hue,
click on More,
and slide the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the image. (Note: Want to get some cool effects? Try adjusting the hue while also adjusting saturation. You can
easily achieve some eye-popping results with a little imagination and experimentation.)
Now add a little bit of grain to make the image look more authentic. Just go back to the Special Effects dialog and this time select
Speckle. Choose from one of the available previews or adjust the amount of grain manually using the More button.
Recolorize Parts of Your Image for Dramatic Effect
Want that single red rose or that orange ball to jump out at you? When the rest of the image
is desaturated, anything in color will stand out
dramatically. This is a great way to add a little drama to your B&W or sepia images.
So how can you add color back into your image? With the layers available in STUDIO and SUITE,
this is pretty simple.
Your original,
colored background should be still be underneath your adjusted B&W or sepia layer. All you have
to do is erase the correct portion of the monochrome layer for the color to shine through.
Just choose the  Eraser Tool and select a brush size (Hint: Use a smaller brush size near the edges and zoom in for better
accuracy).
Erase the portion of the sepia layer you want to be in color.
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Transform any image into classical sepia or a dramatic, partially desaturated image
Option 1: Change the color depth of the image to Grayscale
Option 2: Create a new layer |
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Name the new layer sepia or B&W and paste in a copy of your original image |
From the Special Effects dialog choose Sepia to transform your image
The sepia image
Add grain using the Speckle Effect in the Special Effects dialog
Erase the parts of the sepia layer to recolor the image
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This concludes the photo editing tutorial.
 See cool digital photo examples.
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