Photoshop is famous (infamous?) For being able to make photos look better than in reality. No wonder - its suite of tools can do everything from adding something to completely reworking an image. We will show you some ways to take your digital snaps or scans to the next level with a few simple techniques that yield great results.
Steps
Method 1 of 2: Cleaning time
Step 1. Open a photo
Once opened in Photoshop, it will appear as a layer called "background". The first thing to do before applying any retouching is to crop the photo and remove anything that gets in the way of the image. For this tutorial, we'll start with this image
You can download the high resolution version from here
Step 2. Select the Crop Tool (C)
Most of the time, our shots are taken without thinking too much about the composition. Whether we're just capturing a moment or taking a lot of shots in hopes of finding "the right one". Cropping can help focus an image on the subject and add a lot of strength to the image itself.
Step 3. This image was cropped using “third party rules]”
The general idea is that an image is divided into thirds, horizontally and vertically. Important elements of the image should be bounded by such lines or be in close proximity.
- You can see how the mountain tops are more or less aligned with the vertical lines, while the sky and trees are defined by the horizontal ones. It seems that this makes the image more interesting rather than having everything in the center.
- Awards Enter to crop the image.
Step 4. Select the Move By Content brush (J)
Use it to clean up the bits of the image that haven't been cropped but are too many. For our test image, we will remove the lower left and upper right trees.
Step 5. Now your image is ready for the next step:
make it exceptional!
Method 2 of 2: Method one: daydream
Step 1. Duplicate the background layer
Right-click on the background layer and choose Duplicate Layer from the menu, or drag the background layer to the New Layer icon and Photoshop will automatically create a duplicate layer.
Step 2. Set the blending mode to Soft Light
This can make the image too dark, but it is only an intermediate step. Once the blending mode has been set, select Control-I (Command I) to invert the image, or choose Adjustments from the menu Image and then select Invert.
Step 3. Use the Accentuate Pass filter
From the menu Filters, select Other…> Accentuate Passage … Make sure Preview is selected, then adjust the radius selector to your liking. Note that the image changes with a nice, soft effect. The radius actually depends on the resolution of the image. If it has a very high resolution, you will use a larger radius than in a low resolution image. Let yourself be guided by your taste.
Although we are using it with a landscape, this effect is also very pleasant with portraits
Step 4. Create a tonal value adjustment layer
With the background copy layer selected, click the Levels icon in the Adjustments window.
Click on the button Car it will automatically balance the levels between the lightest and darkest parts of the image. You can use the sliders to fine-tune the image, or use one of the pre-set values at the top of the Properties window.
Step 5. Create a Curves Adjustment Layer
Click on the Adjustments tab again and click the Curves icon (on the right, next to the tonal values icon). This will allow you to fine-tune the contrast of the image.
Click about ¼ of the line and bring it down just a little bit. Click again about ¾ of the line and pull up a little. This should form a kind of "S" shape and the image should be much more dramatic
Step 6. Change the Blending Mode of the Curves Adjustment Layer to Brightness
This will prevent the contrast from interfering with the color information of the image.
Step 7. Merge the layers
From the Layers window menu select Merge Visible or press Control-Alt-Shift-E (Shift-Option-Command-E on Macs) to create a new layer that merges all the information into one layer.
Step 8. Select the Dodge Tool (O)
The Dodge and Burn tools are ideal for emphasizing the highlights and shadows of an image. At the top of the Photoshop window, set the controls like this: For the Dodge tool, set the Exposure to 5% and the Range to Highlights.
- Set the brush to a fairly small size (depending on the resolution of the image), and use the Dodge tool to highlight the highlights. It works great for bringing out details from an image, without lightening things up too much.
- The Burn tool will darken things, and is used on shadows to give more depth to images.
Step 9. Compare the images
Above is the original image, followed by the edited version.
