Adding pop to your photos
Today I’d like to share with you one of my favorite and easiest PhotoShop tutorials. We’ve all been in that situation where it seemed as though we have taken a pretty good photo but when we get back to check it out on our computer the photo just doesn’t pop. Take a look at example A below, this is a nice photo of a boat in near silhouette at sunset and yet they colors are pretty bland, it makes a pretty ho hum picture.
Of course there are many things you can do to the photo to give it a little more polish, like increasing the color balance in the water, sky and clouds. But after all that work it just doesn’t seem to be a very honest representation of the original photo.
My answer to these types of situations is the following:
1. Bring the original photo into PhotoShop (File - Open)
2. Create a duplicate layer (Right Click - Duplicate Layer)
3. Set Gaussian Blur to 2.0 (Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur)
4. Create Overlay (In Layers tab change Normal setting to Overlay)
5. Merge layers (Shift+Control+E) and save image
In the example image below you can see how the colors are vibrant and stunning, it also keeps the integrity of the original image. To lessen or strengthen the effect you can experiment with altering both the gaussian blur and the overlay opacity. Good luck and thanks for stopping by.
