The Internet is swarming with photographs that simply cry for a little tweak or two. Some don’t cry, but rather scream. Like a Banshee. Sometimes, reading my favorite blogs, my heart just about breaks. (That’s when I usually start whimpering like a puppy. My family is used to it. They just fetch my meds. Silently.) About two weeks ago I saw an article at John Cho’s blog and nearly overdosed. He posted some photos he took at the Niagara Falls and those really needed to be worked on. In an attempt to bring my med bills down, I offer the following little tutorial – just a few quick & easy things you can do in Photoshop, which really make a difference. Independent of version – I’ve worked with Photoshop since 1989, but these basics remained the same.
1. The Original Image
2. Levels
First step: click -> Image: Adjustment:Levels (or use Ctrl/Apple-L)
That brings up this window:
That’s the picture’s “histogram”. Note how the black curve, in this example, takes up only the left half of the graph – that means that the brightest information in the picture has about 50% ink coverage. And that’s exactly why the image is so dark and lacks contrast.
So, grab the pointer at the right and drag it left to the point where the curve tapers out – the point where the real information starts. Remember: No ink coverage under 50% = no pixel information whatsoever. And don’t forget to hit that button with OK written upon it!
And that’s already the most important step in this tutorial – just look at the effect it had:
3. Curves
Now click: -> Image: Adjustment:Curves (or use Ctrl/Apple-M)
The diagonal line in this window represents the brightness of every pixel in the image, running from the darkest in the lower left corner to the brightest in the upper right. Grab the middle of the line, and drag it a bit toward the upper left corner – this will smoothly brighten the midtones. And don’t forget to hit that button with OK written upon it!
The result is not as dramatic as in step one, but still impressive:
4. Saturation
The colors are still a bit on the pale side, however – that’s because the camera was irritated by all the mist in the air. Click -> Image: Adjustment:Hue/Saturation (or use Ctrl/Apple-U)
Now this here is a really powerful tool – only do what I tell you to! Never, ever meddle with the ‘HUE’ setting unless you studied graphic design for three years or more – otherwise the ‘International Brotherhood of Designers’ will send their killers after me… again…
Move the saturation slider to the right until the colors are as vivid as they were in reality. (Wow, +37 is a lot. – I hadn’t expected it would take that much.) And don’t forget to hit that button with OK written upon it!
Admittedly, this effect is more subtle – but nevertheless marked, isn’t it:
5. Sharpen
Now that we’ve brought out the details, we can see it’s a little, little bit blurry. So there’s one final thing to do: click -> Filter:Sharpen:Sharpen More (No keyboard shortcut, unless you manually define one)
This menu varies, depending on your version of Photoshop and the filters and plug-ins you may have installed…
Now, this may almost only be detectable by the trained eye, but I still think it’s an important change:
Note: We didn’t ditch any information that was in the image, we just pushed it around a little bit. This is a fundamental difference to what many other, simpler software tools do – Office Picture Manager, for example.
You’ll have no trouble locating many other heartbreakers online, but here are three more of my problem children:
6. Examples
Here’s an example from the blog of Michelle Malkin. This one needed no changes in saturation or sharpness:
And here, I cropped the image a bit to for the sake of composition, and took a little green and added a little red for good measure. It’s from Mariuca’s blog
The next one required a somewhat more substantial retouching – I hope you’re impressed.
Thank you for your attention – always keep in mind: Never, ever touch that Hue slider! Never!
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