High contrast Dragan effect portrait with Photoshop

Let me show you the best way to enhance facial features on a portrait Photograph to make it look highly expressive and more interesting.

Open a portrait photo you want to give it a impressive look and feel.

I'm going to do the fine actor Ewan McGregor I found here.

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In the menu click Layer > New Adjustment Lay > Levels...

Click OK.

Choose the similar settings as I did to achieve the same effect you can see on the picture bellow.

Like this. We enhanced the contrast a bit.

In the menu click Layer > New Adjustment Lay > Hue/Saturation...

Reduce the Saturation and if needed play with the Hue a bit as well. You want to end up with something you can see on the picture bellow.

I needed to increase the Hue only a bit to loose the red tan on Ewan's face.

In the menu click Layer > New Adjustment Lay > Curves...

Click to add the three points on the line to create the similar curve to mine. Again play a bit wit the curve to achieve the similar result you can see on the image bellow.

Like this, we made the photo even more "contrasty".

Now right-click the original photo layer and choose Duplicate Layer...

Let's now sharpen up the photo to give it that final exaggerated feel.

In the menu click Filter > Other > High Pass...

Choose Radius of anything between 1 and 10.

Myself I don't like to exaggerate too much so I'm staying in the 3 pixel limit.

Click OK.

Set the duplicated layer's Blending Mode to Overlay and if needed reduce the Opacity a bit.

You can leave the opacity as it is if you want. My photo turned out a bit to exaggerated as I wanted it to be, so I reduce the Opacity to 90%.

Almost done. The tip of the nose and chick-bone area is a bit too over-exposed (bright) so I want to bring this down a bit.

Choose the Burn Tool.

Set the Exposure to about 30% or less.

Right-click the picture, set and appropriate Burn Tool brush Size and Hardness to 0.

Now carefully click over the areas that are too bright.

All there's now left to do is to enhance the eyes.

Choose the Dodge Tool.

Set the Exposure to about 30% (see step 13) and Dodge Tool size to fit the eyes.

Now carefully click the eye once, twice or trice to give it that enhanced expressive look.

Do the same for the other eye as well.

That's it, hope you like it.

And the original Ewan McGregor for comparison.

Dragan effects is called after the photographer Andrzej Dragan, known for his amazingly expressive portraits.

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