My name is Justin Paguia, and I’m here to show you how to transform a good photo into a great photo with the help of photoshop and a little creativity.  Below is the final product of a collaboration between the very talented Doug Sonders, and myself.  Doug already knew he wanted to make the photo look like it was straight out of a James Bond flick.  Naturally, the idea of having all the chips and cards fly through the air first came to mind…but something was missing.  Being that Doug and I have worked on previous projects together, he left it up to me to add the finishing touches.

This is the original shot untouched (fig 1).

First, I do the basic retouching (i.e. fix the table end, remove outlets and cords, and anything else I feel is out of place).  I always do the retouching on a blank layer and label it “cu” which is short for clean up.  You can name it whatever you’d like. This just seems to work for me.

What I do next is a basic sharpening technique, either an Unsharpen Mask or Hi-Pass filter with a low radius (this minimizes any halo effect on the edges).  This is done on a merged new layer in case I decide to turn it on/off.

Once I feel the basic retouching is complete, the tedious part of making paths and selections begins.  Using the pen tool and alpha channels, I make selections for everything.  This way, when I want to concentrate and affect only a certain section, I don’t have to worry about affecting anything else.  When I say selections for everything, I do mean everything… from the skin, to the clothes, to the watch, and so on.

For the missing element, I think to myself “that gun looks pretty boring right now”.  So what now? Make the barrel appear to be in mid motion.  In order to do this, I have to make a selection of just the top half of the gun, copy it, place it on a new layer, turn it off, and add a new blank layer underneath.  This new layer is going to be another “cu” which will hide the top half of the gun.

Now that its covered, I turn on the copy of the top of the barrel, and move it to the right. It now looks as though the gun is shooting.

I’m half way there, but the gun still doesn’t look realistic.  The simplest thing to do is to compare it to what a gun being fired looks like, and study the components of what’s inside.  Whenever I work on a project, I use a reference to determine if something is accurate or not.  For this, I just go on the internet and analyze pictures.  Since the part of the gun where the barrel slides is too dark, I just make a “U” shaped solid color on a new layer to give it dimension and depth.

Next, is another layer of solid color to show where the actual barrel will come out from.

Another layer of solid color; this time the actual barrel.

With a new layer linked to the previous layer, I use the brush tool with white to add highlights and dimension.

Make one more layer with the tip of the barrel, add white to make highlights, and you have a gun in motion.

Now I merge all the layers into a new layer copy, and add a motion blur.

With the hard part done, all that remains to do: add contrast and pop the colors.  This is where all the selections come into play.  For each element, I make a new folder with just that selection on a mask, add either a curves or levels adjustment and do fine tweaking to some of the color to color correct.

Once that’s finished, I revisit Doug’s initial idea by adding in the flying chips and cards.  I was given extra shots from the shoot to use for elements, so I grab whatever elements I need, position them to where I see fit, and mask away to make only the cards and chips visible.

The final step for the piece to be complete is to create a dark and moody feel to the overall color.  To execute this, I de-saturate the color to 75%, and give it a green color tone in order to match the walls and poker table. Then voila.

There you have it folks; the long and somewhat detailed breakdown. If you want to apply these same techniques to your own image, remember that you won’t always get it right on the first try. I know I didn’t. It takes practice and patience. If you guys have any questions, feel free to use the comment field.

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