Often people see a picture and don’t see what went into it, that is understandable and not as bad as those that throw pics away if they are not “perfect” from the camera. We all strive to get good shots, but sometimes circumstances do not allow it. That’s why it is good to know a few simple things to help enhance that pic that is to dark, to pail etc.
If you have PhotoShop you most probably seen the wonders that seem to endlessly flow from those that use it on what seems like everything these days. This won’t cover any of those, we will simply show you fundamentals and practical use for nearly any picture.
Photo touch-up people all have their own technique but what I like to do is walk my pictures through what I call “the five fingers” or “handful” that comprises of the five most common photo tools.
There is not really a real right and wrong but generally you do the “Brightness and Contrast” first (like the thumb) and “Sharpening” as a last (like the pinky) if at all.
The Fab Five are: Brightness and Contrast, Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Sharpening. You can find most of them in the Image adjustment’s drop-down menu. There are “Auto” ones too that work for some well lite pics but a a rule I try avoiding them as it is really “one shoe fits none perfectly” and can teach you to not learn the actual process that I will walk you through now.
I chose this picture, though not the best it does have some story (the man looking at the book, girl waiting for her balloon hat), and also a big lighting problem as I did not have a external flash, limited space, I could not go back any farther, and indoor lighting that even with my lens filter and indoor settings on my camera hit a miss on this one. All hope is not lost when PS is just a click away.
Firstly I go to correct the light, if you don’t do that first all the other steps will be off as they take from your light and dark elements in the picture.
Go to Brightness and Contrast and move the sliders till you get the desired look, to much will add spots (called noise) and ruin your picture.
Next I usually do Hue and Saturation, though Hue is hardly ever tampered with and in this case I will use the Lightness slider there as well.
Next we take it to Levels
In here you will find these mountain-like scales, by sliding the triangles on the bottom you can adjust black gray and white, in this picture we leave the white alone. You’ll notice the dropper tools on the bottom right, I do not usually use them for this step but will come into play in the next two. If you screw it up there is always undo in the form of holding down the ALT key and refreshing back to where it was.
Then open Curves that looks like this,
Now go to those three droppers and I usually start with Black, then White, and then Gray last. Click on the dropper and then on the point of the pic that should be that color, with gray you have to try around a bit to what looks best for your prescription of the picture i.e. not to much yellow, red etc, just a clean gray. I drew lines to show you where I sampled in this particular picture, black from her sweater, white from the sign and gray from the shadows. This is one of the last steps so you should already have a preseption of the final picture, not to hard and not murky either.
Lastly we will take it to sharpening, many times this is done just as an afterthought but it is real important that if you think it could use some sharpening that you don’t just go to Sharpen or Sharpen More but that you go to Smart Sharpen where you can custom it for your picture. Sharpening must be subtile not drastic.
now it should look like this,
Adjust the Amount slider, the Radius is hardly used as it is to hard a step for pictures like this. You can grab and move around the preview picture, find a spot in your picture that has lots of detail to monitor the effects and make sure it is not to hard or noisy, click OK for the last time and look at the finished result.
This is how mine turned out in the end compared to the original.
This is all done without ever using a brush, layer (though it would be good to make one first or back up the original some how or any PSing effects or manipulations. The basics of photo clean-up are right here in five simple steps. If you never learn anything else in Photoshop if you get these steps down and walk your pictures through them you will have a vivid and clean presentation book, website or newsletter that will make every picture be noticed, and at their looking up to their potential, guaranteed!
