How to Add A Little “Umph” to Your Images. (The Fast Way)

Posted by admin in Photography

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Every photographer has their own perspective and opinion about a “good” shot or image. In this case (tutorial), though the original image itself is already a wonderful shot, it will be enhanced just to add a little excitement to it, quickly and easily. This method involves playing with the levels, brightness/contrast, highpass filters, and using “overlay” in the blending modes.

Photo credits go to “zizzy0104″, from http://www.sxc.hu, The Leading Free Stock Photography Site.

Final Image Preview:

Hover over to view the after shot, click to see the full image!

Ready? Lets begin!

Step 1:

Make sure you have Adobe Photoshop! Though there are several great photo editing software out there, this tutorial will cover the steps through Photoshop.

Next, find an image you want to edit and open it in Photoshop! For this tutorial, I used a random image from SXC. You can download it for free here.

Step 2:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 2

For viewing purposes later on, create a copy of your image by pressing “ctrl + j”. Name this new layer “original copy” and put it in a group, by pressing ‘ctrl + g’.

Step 3:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 3

Once you have the new layer named and in a group, highlight it and click on “Layers > Adjustments > Levels” in the tabs at the top menu. From there, adjust the middle and right Input Levels as shown. Don’t make it too bright, just enough to darken some shadows in the next step. Click OK, then follow the next step.

Step 4:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 4

Next, create 2 copies of the layer ‘original copy’, by pressing ‘ctrl + j’, and turn both layers into a black & white image by pressing ‘ctrl + alt + shift + b’. You may also make your layer black and white by clicking on “Layers > Adjustments > Black & White”.

After creating the new black and white layers, rename them ‘bw 1′ and ‘bw2′. Next, set both their blending modes to “overlay” with opacity set to 45%.

Step 5:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 5

Select ‘bw1′ and go to “Layers > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast”. Turn the ‘brightness’ tab to -150. Then, hit OK. Make sure the blending mode for this layer is set to ‘overlay’, with the opacity at 68%.

Step 6:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 6

Because the female in this image is primarily darker the the rest of the shot, we’ll need to brighten her up a bit! Select ‘bw1′. By using the ‘erase’ tool, simply erase parts of her from this layer. The brush size should be at 70px at 100% opacity.

Step 7:

How to Add Umfph To Your Images - Step 7

This last step may be up to your own preference. Select the ‘original copy’ layer, and make a new copy, sitting it on top of this layer. In the menu at the top, click on “Filters > Other > High Pass” and select the setting as shown (adjust this depending on the size, quality and sharpness of your image). For this shot, I used a radius of 3, and set the opacity to 43%.

Conclusion

And that’s it! Now you can go and show off to your friends how good you are at photo editing.