Week 1 Tutorial: Photoshop Post Processing There are many photo editing programs available, but Photoshop is one that many in the digi community use for editing and processing photos. You may recall in the General Post Processing thread, the use of photo filters to change the color and mood of a photo. In the image below I used the blue filter to help convey my son's emotions while we were waiting to see the doctor. Here are step by step instructions for achieving the same look in Photoshop. These steps can be repeated and by applying different color filters you will change the mood of the photo. Keep in mind that you are welcome to adjust the settings to your liking to help tell your story. Sometimes photos are not perfect straight out of the camera. Dalis offers her tried and true Photoshop photo editing tips below. There are a few magic (or should I say magical) tricks that I tend to use when I am faced with a not so awesome picture. If a photo is too dark you can use a quick blend mode to improve the overall impact of the photo. Using Curves in the Adjustment Layers Menu can help improve photos that are too dark and too bright. NOTE: If your picture is too dark add Curves Adjustment Layers and select "lighter RGB". If your picture is too bright add Curves Adjustment Layers and select "darker RGB". Using Levels in the Adjustment Layers Menu can also help improve photos that are both too dark and too bright.
If you know how to read the histogram, then using curves isn't really a trial and error kind of thing.
Awesome info, guys! I'm a trial and error sort of gal myself. Love learning all I can about photo post processing! Thanks.
Grace, that's the idea of these tutorials for you to give it a try, play with it. Worse case scenario UNDO everything and start again!
I really appreciate the effort you put into these tutorials! I have been afraid to experiment with curves, but am definitely going to try it now!
Awesome Liz, Show us when you do, ok? We love to see you guys try things out and tell us how it went.
The histogram is graph of the distribution of dark to light pixels throughout an image. In Trista's samples, the gray area of the curves box and the black area of the levels box is the histogram. The leftmost area of the graph represents true black in an image and the rightmost area represent pure white. The histogram typically represents only the darkness and brightness of the photo, although you can switch it to look at the color channels as well. In the photo that Trista is using, there is a spike of data on the left. A histogram cannot be read independently of its photo....meaning that in some cases, say an image that was shot with a lot of shadows, a dark background, etc., a histogram that looks like this particular one may indicate that a photo is well exposed. However, in this shot, as you look at it, you can see that there are lots of bright (ie, light toned) yellow leaves in the background, the little girl is wearing a light jacket and pants. This indicates, that based on the histogram, the entire image is underexposed as too much of the data is reading as dark - there are no pixels representing white (which the little girl has in her leggings). Although the parents are wearing darker clothes and there are tree trunks, etc., the overall scene here was not a "dark" scene. Most likely the camera meter saw all those bright leaves in the background and said alert, alert! I can't have that area too bright, so I am going to make the overall image darker. This is the advantage to shooting in manual mode, because generally people are smarter than cameras But that is a different lesson. The midpoint of either levels or curves represents the midtones; this image needs the midtones brightened, and by doing so, you will also somewhat lighten the shadows and the whites, bringing them more in line with an accurate representation of the scene at the time. So for this image, rather than using any of the pull down presets, I would click a spot in the middle of the original straight/45 degree line of the curves box and pull a point up and slightly to the left, thereby moving those darker points to the middle of the curve. This has the effect of lightening the entire photo.
