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How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Create a new layer and choose again the Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill it with #0A1116 color.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set the Blending mode for this layer to Hue.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Create a new layer again and use Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill it with the color #7B88A1.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set Fill to 22% for this layer and change the Blending mode to Linear Light.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Click Create new fill or adjustment layer from bottom part of the Layers panel and click to Curves to adjust the curve shape as shown to make a little color corrections.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

We’ve got the next result:

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Then create a new layer and select on it the Soft Round brush of white color to represent the next abstract lines as shown.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Insert the mask on the made layer by choosing Add layer mask on the bottom part of the Layers panel and choose the Soft Round brush of black color (set Opacity to 15% in Options bar).

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Paint in the mask using this brush to change the visibility of the layer containing the abstract lines.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Make a copy of the last made layer and remove the mask from this layer. Choose the Eraser Tool (E) to erase the next zones along the copy’s edges.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set the Blending mode for this layer to Overlay.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Insert then the mask on the layer by choosing Add layer mask on the bottom part of the Layers panel and choose the Soft Round brush of black color (set Opacity to 15% in Options bar).
Paint in the mask using this brush to change the visibility of the layer containing the abstract lines.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Create a new layer and select from Brush Tool (B) the early created brush (brush Opacity – 50%) to draw many circles on the zone near the woman’s head.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Create another new layer and choose the mentioned brush to represent other small circles.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set Fill to 25% for this layer and set the Blending mode to Hard Mix.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Click Create new fill or adjustment layer from bottom part of the Layers panel and click to Curves to adjust the curve shape as shown to make a little color corrections.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

We’ve got the next result:

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Create a new layer and choose the Soft Round brush of white color (brush Opacity – 20%).

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Use this brush to represent a highlight as shown

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set Fill to 54% for this layer and set the Blending mode to Overlay.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Next we’ll select the Ellipse Tool (U) to represent a white circle.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Set Fill to 20% for this layer and set the Blending mode to Linear Dodge.
Click on Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and select Gradient Overlay.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown. Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Add Stroke:

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

We’ve got the next result:

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Make many copies of the layer containing the small last made circle and choose the Free Transform (Ctrl+T) command to change the copies’ sizes, placing them as it is demonstrated below.

How to use brushes to enhance your portraits in Adobe Photoshop CS5

We’re done!

View full size here.

Files for this tutorial can be downloaded from here.

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