- This is a typical straight-from-the-camera image. The photographer has created a lovely picture of a pretty young woman and as it is, it’s fine. But it could be better with la few basic adjustments that work with ANY digital capture, not just portraits.
- The first thing we need to do is adjust the Levels
- The histogram here tells us that there are no pure whites or blacks and that the capture is slightly underexposed.Simply stated, that “dead space” to the right of the histogram manifests itself as a white, milky haze over the entire photo. The “dead space” to the left manifests itself as a gray haze over the entire photo. Adjusting the levels will remove all unwanted haze and result in pure, clean colors:
- Here we see what happens when we move the right and left side pointers to under where the histogram begins. The center pointer adjusts the mid-tones, that is it will either darken or lighten the mid-tones. As you can see here, we’ve adjusted the midtones to make them a little more saturated and thus increase contrast. TIP: If you hold downthe Option (Alt on a PC) key as you drag the right and left sliders you will see any areas you are losing detail in.
- Now that we have cleaned up the colors, it’s time to sharpen the image. The best way to do that is with Unsharp Mask. Traditional portrait photographers like the idea of a slightly out-of-focus images believing that it conceals blemishes. This thinking is obsolete now because it’s possible to achieve perfectly smooth skin and sparkling clear eyes thanks to digital manipulations.
- Sharpening is a matter of personal preference and I encourage you to experiment with the settings. This is how I adjust sharpness. Amount: This is the only setting that I change. Depending on the size of the image and the amount of sharpening that was done in the camera, this could be anywhere from 100 to 500. Radius: I set this to .3 and never change it. Set to .3 allows me the full range of the Amount adjustment. Threshold: I set this to zero and never change it.
- FINISHED.Before (L) and after (R):
Basic Photo Adjustments using Adobe Photoshop
April 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Photography, Photoshop
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1 Using PhotoShop to Improve Portraits | The Kellehers // Apr 13, 2008 at 4:00 pm
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