Quickly Enhance Your Photos in Photoshop

While using Layers, I’m going to show you a quick trick to making your photos appear a little more…lively, if you will. Because not every time will you get the perfect exposure, although getting pretty close will make your life a whole lot easier. This trick will allow you to quickly add contrast and brighten up those dull photos you’ve been hiding. Let’s start!

Take for example this photo of spicy hot wings and a glass of Shock Top and orange: (Yummmmmmm)

It’s alright, but we can make it better. First let’s open the photo in Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements, and create a duplicate layer by clicking Control+J, or Command+J if you’re on a Mac. This will create a new layer that appears to look the same as the original. You can think of it as a “twin” layer that you can edit without actually affecting the original layer.

Now, under the Layers tab in the right column, you’ll see a drop down that says “Normal.” We’re going to click that and select “Hard Light” because we are not normal….just kidding. We are going to use Hard Light because this is a quick and easy blending mode that will add a dramatic effect to our photo.

You could stop here, but if you read my tutorial about Curves, then you’ll know that you can always take it a step further. Click Control+M, or Command+M, to open up Curves. The Curves window will pop up, and in the photo we’re using, you’ll see that it’s lacking a little in highlights (right side of the histogram). So, I will adjust my diagonal line as follows to increase the highlights:

And this is our final product!

Here’s a quick comparison of the before and after shots. You’ll agree that the photo on the right is more appealing, and a little more appetizing as well :P

I hope that helped when you’re in need of a quick contrast fix!