(Mark, get out of my face or I swear I won��t write this. Stop hovering, dammit! Love you! Now, scat!)

Changing skin tones and manipulating portrait colors in photoshop seem to be the craze these days. And I��ve been doing it for the longest time without really any conscious effort on my part. But I��ve been asked to write this basic photoshop tutorial, so I will attempt to retrace my steps.

After many false starts, I figured that the best way to write this is from a first person perspective. The didactic tone never really worked for me, anyway.

Step 1. I first created a new layer above my original background image and filled it with black (#000000).

Step 2. I then duplicated my background image and changed its layer style to Luminosity.

Step 3. Next, I made a second duplicate of my original background image and played with its brightness and contrast settings. You can do this by going to Image in your Top Menu, selecting Adjustments, and clicking on Brightness/Contrast (Image»Adjustments»Brightness/Contrast). I played with the Brightness and Contrast until I got something that looks like this:

Step 4. Still working on my second duplicate image layer, which I renamed ��Background copy 2��, I changed the Layer Style to Luminosity. The result looked like this:

Step 5: I then made yet another duplicate of my original background image and named it ��Background copy 3��. I then changed its Layer Style to Vivid Light and changed its Opacity to 34%.

Step 6: At this point, the photo was starting to shape up the way I wanted it. But the purple shirt was really bothering me. It stood out so horrendously that I just had to get rid of it. To do that, I made a fourth duplicate of my original background image. This time I (unimaginatively) named it ��shirt��. I then desaturated the layer by going to my Image menu, hovering over Adjustments, and clicking on Desaturate (Image»Adjustments»Desaturate).

Step 7: That took care of the purple shirt, but it also got rid of the colors of the rest of the image. So, I needed to get rid of the rest of the desaturated areas and just retain the shirt. To do this, I used the Layer Mask Tool to mask out the area outside the shirt. You don��t have the be overly accurate. You may have noticed that my brush strokes are not exactly perfect. As long as you get rid of visible areas, that should do the trick.

Step 8: To add some highlights and textures, I created a fifth duplicate of my background image and named it ��Background copy 4��. I then added some noise by going to Filter»Noise»Add Noise. Next, I added a bit of blur by going to Filter» Blur»Motion Blur. For the motion blur, I set my angle to 0 with a distance of 38 pixels. The noised and blurred layer looked like this:

Step 9: Using the same layer as in step 8 (noised and blurred), I changed the Layer Style to Overlay. Then, I changed the Layer Opacity to 47%.

Step 10: As a final touch, I created a new blank layer and filled it with orange. I used #f8c618 (R=248, G=198, B=24) for this particular image, but feel free to experiment. I then changed the Layer Style to Overlay and set the Opacity to 14%. And voila! Portrait manipulation in photoshop done.

Extras: You can even go the extra mile and