Souping up a Photo
There are times when a regular photo just doesn’t cut it and you need your photo to pack a punch. Here is one technique that you may find useful.
As with all photo-based techniques, it doesn’t really make up for having a crappy photo though, so if you are trying to rescue something ugly don’t get your hopes up too high!
Before and After
Before we get started, lets compare the original with the result. As you’ll see we’re taking a great photo and making it really punchy by getting it really contrasty and changing the color palette.
Step 1:
So here’s our photo. It’s a great shot from iStockPhoto of someone tearing up a wave. Even without any Photoshopping it’s already looking pretty good, but it lacks oomph.
Step 2:
Our first step is to up the contrast, you can do this by going to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. I’ve upped the contrast by 20 and upped the brightness to stop the photo from getting too dark.
Step 3:
Next we duplicate the layer and press Shift-Ctrl-U to desaturate the copy to Black and White.
Step 4:
Set the Black and White layer to Overlay and 60%. This gives us a nicely adjusted photo.
Step 5:
Now with a large, soft brush, create a new layer and paint some black on the edges as shown. When you’re done, set that layer to Overlay and 50% or thereabouts. We do this just to make the center of the image have a slightly higher contrast to the edges, which helps make it pop.
Step 6:
Now with this method, you should be adjusting to compensate for your specific image. In this photo of the surfer, there is some extra noise in the bottom left. I think they are bubbles or wash or something, it’s not important, to us they are just unwanted noise. So with a large, fat, black brush gently paint over that area. Having some parts of the photo be quite flat and clear makes the other parts seem more visually interesting, so this again helps give the photo more punch.
Step 7:
Now the coloring of the image is quite bright, so we create a new layer on top, fill it with black, and set the blending mode to Color. Then we change the Opacity to just 30%, this effectively desaturates the image a little, but by adjusting opacity we can control this easily and without doing anything permanent.
Step 8:
Now we could stop here, but I want to get some greenish ocean colors in there too. For this purpose I downloaded an image from Arsenal’s Freebie Section under Watercolors. It has a perfect ocean-y color pallet and some texture to boot. So we paste this into a layer above all the others and set it to Color Burn and 20%. I wish I had some good explanation of why I used Color Burn, but the truth is I just played around with all the blending modes until I found one that looked nice!
Step 9:
And here’s our finished image!
Now with a technique like this, remember to use judgment as to how far to go with the photo. In this case I’ve gone pretty far because its a tutorial, but you could always tone this back by copying the original photo on top and setting it to say 30% Opacity so that it mixes in with the Photoshopped version.
Sample PSD
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As always, you got some mad skills and great information here. Thabk you very much.
That is absolutely helpful! Thanks for the tutorial.
You know what. I can’t wait for the next one, really.
Awesome tutorial, everything here is so clean and great, keep up the good job :]
I “stumbled” onto your tutorials yesterday and already I can’t get enough of them, this one is equally as wonderful as the others.
Can’t wait to see what else you have up your sleeve!
Keep up the good work
Excellent tutorial, and very easy to understand
thanks
Great tutorial, thanks.
Sorry to go a bit off-topic, but I couldn’t find a contact page. Is there a reason why you have gone from full- to partial-feeds? I really loved getting the whole article in my feed-reader.
Thanks again.
Excelent website! Its really helpful
using adjustment layer curves works great too. It uses the color information in the photo to create lights and darks and works great for punching in contrast and juicy-ness.
Another great tutorial. Thanks!
Great tut!
The same techniques could be used for all manner of 2D images. I have used a similar method on photomanipulations with great results.
Keep ‘em coming!
Spectacular, wonderful Collis…Sigh you are a rock star.
Great insight and reasoning. I’ve greatly enjoyed your tutorials. Please keep up the great work!
really neat … thanks, I hope you get some new stuff, so I can keep learning
Yeah I liked it too .. thanks and waiting for the next one ;)
I came across your website after reading one of your posts on Freelance Switch. I normally don’t bother with tutorials as they usually don’t give me the results I want – But your tutorials are all excellent!
Looking forward to seeing what more you come up with!
Absolutely Nice, thanks for the instructions :D
Your pixs are awesome and so are you. I can’t do diddle with my ‘paint’ shop.
Collis, Great stuff! Thanks for sharing.
Your skills are just amazing.. Great Tutorial-Blog!
Keep it up! ;)
TOO MUCH COMPUTER ROTS YOUR BRAIN, SONNY!!!
hehe j/k… great work, man! You just blew my mind with that tutorial! =]
Seems like lots of bad-practice and severe colour range clipping would occur using those techniques…
Love it. Pretty helpful!
so useful desaturate + overlay
continue please \m/
My main problem with a cut and dry method like this is that it doesn’t work on all photos. If you did this with a photo that was shot in a theatre or under dark lighting, you lose lots of detail in a persons face or in the white areas. It makes the photo come out splotchy.
It’s also never a good idea to do a general adjustment in the brightness/contrast. There are more precise tools you can use in PS for that.
Not bad, I think a few things could have been done in less steps, but very nice entry tutorial to editing a photo. Keep up the good work.
I found your tutorials on the google “widgets” page and I have to comment on how wonderful this site is. For a beginner like myself, these are so very easy to understand and follow along with. Your photoshop skills are only matched by your wit. Thanks for doing us all a huge service in doing spectacular tutorials.
As always, your tutorials are amazing. I can’t believe these tutorials are given for free and of such quality.
Thanks again!
Nice, thanks :)
Thanks a lot. Learning a lot from you.
Nice tut. I love your techniques, I use many of the same concepts when working with photos as well. Keep em coming.
on stage 6 the water obove the surfer looks alot more blue. this looks better than the final thing i think. cool tutorial cheers.
Cheers Collis! I didn’t know you was a Photoshop guru! ;)
Nice finishing touch with the ocean teal. Looks sweet.
SO good you are a TROMENNNNN JAJAJA IN YOUR NATION IS GREAT DESIGNER MAN
SALUDOS LIMA – PERU
2008 PSDTUTS RULES
cool site, very helpful tutorial!
Muy bueno !
All these seemingly meticulous efforts definitely make for an fantastic result!
Have to be the odd one out here and say I’m not into it. I like the original better, more detail and the colors already looked great. It was a great natural photo.
Not sure why everyone wants to manipulate every single photo they can get their hands on. Color correction and detail enhancing is one thing but it just seems way out of hand. Are we going to look back in the future at all our manipulated unnatural photography with regret?
God…
Mad pimping skills!
Great effect,you rock Collins :)
Very nice. Thanks al lot.
Even though in step 1 I would prefer adjusting Levels rather than Brightness and Contrast, because those two are destructive tools – meaning that you lose picture details.
Nice ^^
Thank for your job
Adjusting photos like this is definitely necessary for a good quality end product. The chicago website design I work for makes sure we go over every image with a fine tooth comb.
nice & useful one
nice!!
I color correct surfing (not bodyboarding) photos for a living. If you took a photographers shot and added the burned edges and green color, they would freak out. You can do a much better job in less steps and still keep the original image intact.
If you are adding a little flare for maybe some type layout on the image, this type of technique is excellent.
Just my .02 cents.
Cool..thanks
cool!
Nice outcome, the green colour layer really adds an extra element of depth.