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Archive for the ‘Photoshop’ Category

One of my favorite ways to quickly enhance and subtly improve an otherwise good photo is with Photoshop’s layer, new adjustment layer, levels tool. To see it in action, grab a good photo in need of some brightening or darkening or subtle shading changes and we can get started.

First open your photo, here is one of mine that I have chosen:

I like this photo right out of the camera. It was shot in December 2008 at the Monterey CA, harbor at sunset.

So using our Photoshop levels tool here is what we can do:

When the dialog box opens, adjust the levels slider until you have eliminated any dead data, in my photo you will see that I have trimmed the light and dark levels by sliding the slider on both ends toward the center.

And just that quickly here is the final result:

And again here is the before:

It is subtle but you will notice that the water in the foreground and the sky in the background are slightly darker and deeper in color than the original.

Thanks,
Richard

Photoshop is a fantastic tool for the working Web Developer and it just seems to get better with every version that Adobe puts out. One of my favorite things about Photoshop is that you can do some remarkable cleanup of photos without having to spend hours and hours in the process. However, it is such a deep and capable application that most of us only get to scratch the surface of its features in our daily work-lives.

So here is one of those techniques that I use over and over to cleanup and enhance photos for the web. It is the High Pass Filter technique for sharpening and color enhancing a photo in one process.

First select an image you need to brighten and make pop. I have chosen a great photo from my vacation in Kauai last spring.

I like this photo right out of the camera but it suffers from some of the hazy lighting that was in the air that day so I am going to enhance it with the High Pass Filter technique.

Step 1:

Open your Photo in Photoshop, I am using the CS3 version for Windows but it works well in other versions too.

Step 2:

Duplicate the Background layer.

Step 3:

Change the image mode from RGB to Lab Color. When prompted select Don’t Flatten from the popup dialog box.

Step 4:

With your duplicate layer selected, open up the Channels tab on the layers tool area and select the Lightness channel.

Step 5:

On the top tool bar select Filter/Show all menu items/ Other/ High Pass Filter. Adjust the filter until you are able to begin to see detail in the preview of your photo in areas where there was not much detail to begin with. You will have to eyeball it and likely try this a few times before you get a feel for how much filter to apply. But because you are working in a layer you can always start again.

Step 6:

Switch back from the Channels to the Layers view and change the mode of the Photo back to RGB, again don’t flatten the image.

Step 7:

In the layers tool bar, change your lighting from Normal to Soft Light.

Once you do that you will see the finished product.

So here is the image before:

And here is the image after:

Side by Side comparison:

I like this technique because it does the sharpening and color enhancing all in one process. Try it out for yourself I think you will find many applications for it and it is a great time saver too.