Bring Colour and Light out of Ordinary Image

Posted on December 29th, 2008 under Photo Effect, it has 35 Comments and 23,142 Views so far.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to bring colour and light out of an ordinary image through simple layer blending and image adjustments. I also would like to introduce the idea of “non-destructive” photo editing, which I think will be beneficial for you as a designer.

The techniques used in this tutorial includes various image adjustment tools, layer blending options and the surface blur filter.

Here is some helpful tips I would like to share with you guys:

The purpose of duplicating layers is to achieve non-destructive editing, which means the original image is not affected and you will have greater flexibility when it comes to retouching your image.
Make use of various image adjustment tool (Curve, Level, Black and White, Hue and Saturation), they are the tools to boost your image colour and lighting constrast.
Layer blending mode such as “Overlay”, “Soft Light”, “Color” are always useful for bringing out extra light and colour for your image.
Use Dodge/Burn Tool to give certain portion of your image additional lighting contrast.
Use Surface blur instead of Gaussian blur for image blending.

Some info I found on the web about Non-destructive Photo Editing:

The great advantage of non-destructive editing in Photoshop is that you can easily adjust image effects or adjustments, even weeks or months later. They also allow quick editing and increased flexibility. Everyone who uses Photoshop should know these techniques, because they really make Photoshop so powerful.

- http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut013.htm

Here is a preview of the final result:

Step 1

Load a photo of your choice into Photoshop. Alternatively, you can download a copy of this image if you want to follow this tutorial precisely according to each step.

After loading your photo, duplicate the background layer five times:

Then hide the top 4 layers and leave just the “Background copy” layer visible.

Step 2

On the “Background copy” layer, hit Ctrl + M to bring up the Curve Tool and apply the following settings:

Then change the blending mode of this layer to “Overlay” with an opacity of 60%, and you will have the following image:

Step 3

Un-hide the “Background copy 2″ layer and select it, hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift key to bring up the Black and White image adjustment tool and apply the following settings:

(Please note the settings may be different if you use your own photo, but the idea is to put more emphasis toward certain colours in the image and bring them out a bit more)

Change the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” with an opacity of 70%.

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we can some more exposure to the image. Un-hide the “Background Copy 3″ layer and select it, go to Image > Adjustments > Exposure and apply the following settings:

Then change the layer blending mode to “Color” and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Un-hide the “Background copy 4″ layer and select it, go to Image > Mode > Lab Color and change the image mode to LAB.

The go the Channel Palette and select the “lightness” channel:

Then hit Ctrl + L to bring up the level adjustment tool, apply the following settings:

Change the image mode back to RGB mode. When you’re prompted to flatten the image, choose “Don’t Flatten”.

Change to layer blending option to “Soft Light” with an opacity of 50% and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

Now we can add some extra soft light onto the image.

Un-hide “Background layer 5″ and select it, go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode to “Screen” with an opacity of 60% and you will have the following image:

Step 7

This is an optional step. As you can see after several layer blendings, the mountain on the right has become a black spot without any tree to be seen. We can bring the trees back by using the dodge tool.

Duplicate the background layer once more and put the duplicated layer just above the background layer, but beneath any other layer.

Hit “o” key to select the dodge tool, apply the following settings:

Brush over the mountain until the trees are back.

You can reduce the layer opacity a bit to get a better result, also adjust the brush size for the dodge tool if necessary.

And here is the final effect:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Remember you can always use the layer blending modes, curve/level tools and blur filter to bring out light and contrast for your image.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and if you have any questions, just drop me a comment.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Dominique Echeverri Says:
Hello,

I have tried your technics and unfortunately, I must admit that this tutorial is very bad. In my opinion, you have forgotten some steps and fail to tell us what version of photoshop you are using. Here is what I think is missing :

- In step 3, you don’t say which blending mode you use on the layer at the end of it;
- In step 5, you say ctrl+M to get the Level adjustment tool when in fact it’s the ctrl+L key combination that should have been used;
- finally, in step 7, the placement of the background layer is wrong or the background layer chosen is the wrong one because the result of this step is not at all what is expected.

Might I suggest you use the great tut. app. “Screensteps” to make your tutorials. You will have greater results and fewer mistakes.

If I am in error for my comments, I apologize but after trying this tut., this is what I concluded with.

Good luck in your tuts.
James Says:
Hi Dominique~ thanks very much for your comment! I’m really sorry that I forgot to include those points you mentioned above in the tutorial. I will update them immediately.
Thanks,
James
James Says:
And also thanks for your suggestion to “Screensteps”, I will definitely give it a go!
thank you!
s.udaya kumar Says:
i seen fully …….. i tried …. its the best ……. good keep it up
James Says:
Thanks kumar for your kind comment!
pria Says:
The tut looks simple & self explanatory, but need to correct certain things bcoz the result one gets is very vague. I am sorry if I am wrong, but I think the tut definitely need to be revised to make it more user friendly…
Appreciate your effort & all the best!
James Says:
hi pria! thanks very much for your comment!

I’m still new to tutorial writing, but I’m constantly looking at how others write their tutorial from some other great tutorial site and hopefully I can improve my own tuts.

Thanks for your appreciation and have a wonderful new year :)
psaddict Says:
Added to http://www.psaddict.com
izmir evden eve Says:
nice work thanks friends
Tony Says:
Thanks James I love the effect

Could you possibly explain the purpose of each step in a little more detail and how I would tune it to other photos

Thanks
James Says:
Hi Tony,
Ok I won’t be able to explain in great detail but here is the general idea:

1. The purpose of duplicating layers is to achieve non-destructive editing, which means the original image is not affected and you will have greater flexibility when it comes to retouching your image.

2. Make use of various image adjustment tool (Curve, Level, Black and White, Hue and Saturation), they are the tools to boost your image colour and lighting constrast.

3. Layer blending mode such as “Overlay”, “Soft Light”, “Color” are always useful for bringing out extra light and colour for your image.

4. Use Dodge/Burn Tool to give certain portion of your image additional lighting contrast.

5. Use surface blur instead of gaussian blur for image blending.

Hope those info helps :)
tony Says:
James, I will have a play and see how it goes

Thanks Again

Tony
Heman Says:
good tutorial but for future tutorials, you should include why you do each step as james mentioned. Such as why you use a certain blending option and exactly what it does.
James Says:
Hi Heman, yes I will certainly try my best in explaining for future tuts.
by the way, James is me, the owner of PSD Vault :)
Kamal Says:
dis is wat i’m looking for!!!
thanks!!
wheeeeeeeeeeee……..~~
msTx Says:
Hey James .. i like ur tutotrial ! , but theres 1 problem … i wanna know which adobe photoshop version is this ?! .. coz on step 3 i tried to press ctrl+alt+shift on Background copy 2 with unhide .. and nothing happened… is there any other way to open Black and White image adjustment tools…?
James Says:
hi msTx, i use Photoshop CS3. The earlier version of PS doesn’t have B&W tool, you might have to skip this step… or, I think you can perhaps try combining the level tool + desaturate the image, and see what result that bring you.

hope this helps!
Aditya Says:
Thanks, learned a few new things, especially about the dodge tool :)
Sesso Says:
Great site.
Logo Design Says:
nice tutorial, that photo is beautiful. great site. thanks
joyoge designers' bookmark Says:
nice work thanks..
ninja9 Says:
thanks for the tutorial..newbie like me really appreciate this..

thanks again..
admin Says:
@ninja9: no problem buddy :)
Jørgen Says:
Great tutorial!
I’ve added it to the tutorial directory at http://www.TutorialMagazine.com. Contact me at jorgen [at] tutorialmagazine.com if you want your new tutorials to show up there automatically :D

Jørgen
- editor of http://www.TutorialMagazine.com
Asamoah Says:
Sorry James, but i don’t know the version of photoshop that you are using, for that reason I couldn’t get the desired result after following all the steps. I am using Photoshop CS.
I hope you can give me the steps using my version (CS)
thank you.
By the way I’ve learn a lot.
Business Card Printing Says:
You were really able to make the color and light pop out of the photo! It looks fantastic. Very informative post, thanks for sharing this.
izmir evden eve Says:
thanks that photo is beautiful. great site. thanks
izmir evden eve Says:
thanks Background copy 2 with unhide .. and nothing happened… is there any other way to open Black and White image adjustment tools…?
admin Says:
@izmir: hi thanks for your comment! black and white tool is only available to cs3 +. You can try using Channel Mixer with Monochrome option enable instead.
Hope this helps
huwaw69 Says:
this is great for some outdoor photos! thanks
taryarL Says:
u r really expert at photoshop :)