How To Tuesday {Photoshop Tricks}

I remember when I first started doing portraits, I'd lament at how "unprofessional" my photos looked.  At the time, I knew nothing about Photoshop and what editing I did do was done in iPhoto.  iPhoto is not a bad program, actually.  I was going to pull out one of  my old photos I had edited in iPhoto and prove to you how bad it was, but when I looked at them, they were not that bad.  iPhoto (and other programs, like Picasa) are pretty good for photo editing if it's what you've got.  They've got nifty tools and you can transform your photos with one click and they have the same basic elements as programs like Photoshop or Lightroom or Aperture.

However, Photoshop is the cream of the crop.  It's the best you can get.  The full version is a small fortune and Photoshop Elements (just it's basics) still runs about $150.  But it's worth it if you can get it.  Photoshop is epic in it's capabilities.  What I know about it is miniscule and I can probably spend the rest of my life discovering everything that it can offer.   There are about a hundred different ways to do any given task and possibilities are endless as far as the out come.  Simply put, it's overwhelming.  Frightening, even. And the only thing to do is to jump in with both feet.

I'm going to talk about the two basic edits I do on every single photo I edit.  Like I mentioned at the beginning, I was so sad that my photos didn't have that professional look to them, saturated colors, really white whites.  They looked... muddled.  So the first thing I'm going to teach you how to do is to up the contrast.

Most people are going to recommend that you make a duplicate copy of your original image just in case something happens and you can't undo what you've done.  To do that, open your image in Photoshop.  In the top menu bar, click Image > Dupliate Copy.  This will make a copy.  I'd close or minimize your original so you don't accidentally work on it.  The image I'm going to use today is this one of my sweet baby girl when she was maybe 6 or 7 months old.

Dang, she was a cute baby and I love this photo, but it definitely needs a little help, so we're going to add some contrast.  Like I said, there are many ways to accomplish this, but the easiest way I've found is to use the Curves function.  Go back to the Image menu again in the menu bar > Adjustments > Curves OR on the right side of your screen there will be your Layers palette.  Look for a circle that is half filled in, click on that, then Curves.  A window will pop up.  Click on the Presets and there will be one for Linear Contrast.  Click that.  This will make the darks darker and the lights lighter.  For this image I clicked it twice.

Much better, no?  The first one looks like it has a grey film over it.  The second one is much clearer.  Now, you may have noticed in the Auto Contrast option in the Adjustments menu.  Yeah, I just found that as I was writing this.  That works even better.  (See?!  You learn new things all the time.)

I suggest spending some time playing around in that Curves window and the presets.  Lots of fun, cool tools in there.  You can lighten, darken, etc.

Next, I like to sharpen.  Sharpening should be subtle, in my opinion.  If you over sharpen, things start to look a little wacky (as my 4 year old would say).   To sharpen, you need to make sure that your background layer in your layers palette is selected.  I suppose this step can be done first, but I like the immediate gratification of the contrast, so I do that first.  Once you're ready to sharpen, in the top menu bar click Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.  Then adjust the sliders for amount and radius until it is to your liking.  Make sure the Preview box is checked so you can see the adjustments happen.  You can click it on and off to see how you're doing or in the window, if you click and old the mouse button down on the image, it will show you the difference.  I usually take it easy with sharpening, but I had a teacher tell me that he takes it as far as he can before it starts to look pixelated.  Or wacky.

Like I said, subtle, but her eyes are clearer.

So, here's the before and after:

I probably could have lightened her up a bit using that Curves Adjustments window, but you get the idea.

Next time, I'll tell you about Auto Curves, my new favorite trick!

Happy Photoshopping!