How to brighten a photo in Photoshop. How to Increase Color Saturation in a Photo in Photoshop CS5

29.01.2015 27.01.2018

There are many ways to make a photo brighter in Photoshop using various functions and effects. Each of them changes colors in its own way and turns out different styles. In this lesson I will tell you about the simplest and most non-aggressive way to change a photo. And in my opinion the most effective.

In this picture you can see the result BEFORE and AFTER.

So first you need to open the desired photo in Photoshop. As we can see, this photo is very dull and gray.

Now let's add a new Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. (Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Brightness/Contrast)

This is where we can edit the contrast and brightness. For each photograph this is, of course, an individual matter. Somewhere you need to tighten it up a little, somewhere more. In any case, don't get too carried away, because there is always a temptation to add too much contrast and brightness. In this case, it may seem to you that the result is good, but in fact the photo will be irreparably damaged.

The result will be like this.

The result is already good. But you can add more saturation. To do this, you can create a layer Hue/Saturation.

Here the Saturation slider is the most dangerous, do not twist it. You need to add it in moderation. At the same time, the Light can be reduced a little (Lightness).

In some cases, this function may not be used. Always look at the circumstances.

Bright and rich, “tasty” colors in the frame are a must for color travel photography.

Today, using one of my photographs as an example, I will talk about three effective tools Photoshop, with which you can very easily make the colors in your photos bright and saturated.

I took this photo during, in the frame - the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The place, of course, is absolutely beautiful and incredibly beautiful, but before processing in Photoshop, the photograph could not convey the beauty of this view. Frankly speaking, she generally looked rather sad:

It is enough to be able to work with three Photoshop tools so that the colors in this picture bloom again with all their colors.

So today we are working with these Photoshop tools:

• Curves
• Selective Color
• Hue/Saturation

Curves

Let's start processing our photo with Curves (Image=>Adjustments=>Curves)

Curves – simple and handy tool for photo processing. When you need to lighten or darken a frame a little, or add contrast, Curves is great for this. With the help of Curves, you can solve more complex problems, but this is a topic for a separate article.

By eye or using the frame histogram, we set the image contrast we need by bending the line in the Curves window.

At the end of the lesson we will use Curves again, but for now let's move on to the next tool - Selective Color.

Selective Color

Selective Color (Image=>Adjustments=>Selective Color) is one of my favorite tools for working with color in Photoshop. Selective Color allows you to work with each color separately, adding or subtracting shades of other colors from it.

Let's see how this tool can be used in practice.

Having opened the Selective Color window, we immediately switch to the mode Relative– now all color changes will take place more softly and smoothly than in Absolute mode, which is more convenient in most cases.

Let's start by working on the sky by opening the color tab. Cyans. Let's add more Cyan (we want to get a beautiful blue sky), Magenta and completely remove Yellow. Next we'll make our sky a little darker by adding Black.

Of course, the sky “consists” not only of Cyan, but also of blue- Blue. Open the desired tab:

Let's add Cyan to the maximum, lower Magenta quite a bit and completely remove Yellow. Our sky has become even bluer and more saturated.

Now let's work with the yellow color in the photo:

Let's add more Yellow to the frame and lighten the yellow color a little by removing 16% Black. Now the yellow color in our picture is a little more saturated and “glows” a little.

Let's take care of the greens:

We will completely remove Magenta and add more Black. Now the greenery (especially the bushes in the center of the frame) have become noticeably more saturated in color.

That seems to be it.

But, in my opinion, it is worth lightening the red color in the frame a little.

At first glance, this change is almost imperceptible, but it is precisely these subtleties, the smallest adjustments that create a “tasty” color picture.

Selective Color The good thing is that you can (and should) experiment a lot with it. And the more you work with color "at random", the better you will begin to understand color.

When I first started color grading, I experimented a lot, just mixing different colors, adding shades, and looking at the result. Over time, you begin to understand what any color “consists” of, and you already know in advance how to get the desired shade. But even then you still need to keep experimenting.

Now let's use the Curves tool again and lighten the whole picture a little:

And also with the help Shadow/Highlights Let's brighten the shadows and darken the highlights a little:

In the article “Effective processing in Photoshop” I already talked about Shadow/Highlights, so let’s move on to the next tool – Hue/Saturation

Hue/Saturation

I'm sure many of you have used and still use Hue/Saturation ( Image=>Adjustments=>Hue/Saturation).

The main feature of this tool is that it must be used very carefully. If you overdo it, the colors will immediately become ugly and overly saturated.

Let's add a little saturation to the whole picture:

Now let's use it very convenient function this tool - in Hue/Saturation you can, as in Selective Color, work with individual colors.

Separately, add saturation to the blue color:

In my opinion, the Golden Gate Bridge itself is a little pale in the frame. We need to add saturation to the red color:

AND finishing touch– darken the photo a little using Curves, thereby adding color depth to the frame.

If you have questions about specific functions of the tools that I wrote about, you can find a bunch of detailed manuals on all Photoshop tools on the Internet.
In this article, I first of all wanted to show the logic of photo color correction using the example of working with Hue/Saturation, Selective Color and Curves.

But there are a lot of other excellent tools in Photoshop, and RAW converters generally provide enormous possibilities for processing.

Very often, novice photographers look at pictures taken digital camera They are disappointed that a photograph that is successful in many respects turns out to be spoiled by insufficient lighting of the main composition or its hiddenness. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases, the image can be lightened quite well if you master the technique of how to make a photo brighter using Photoshop. Like many other things in working with data graphic editor, lightening photographs is a creative process and will be individual for each specific image.

1. In the simplest case, in order to make a photo brighter in Photoshop, you can use the Auto Contrast tool, and sometimes also Auto Tone. The Auto Contrast and Auto Tone tools are located in the Images section of the main menu and can be accessed by pressing Alt+Shift+Ctrl+L and Shift+Ctrl+L, respectively. Despite automatic processing, Photoshop does a very good job of brightening photos. If any of these tools gives an unsatisfactory result, then its action can be canceled by selecting the “Step back” item from the “Editing” section of the main menu or by pressing the key combination Alt+Ctrl+Z.
   
2. There is also an easy way to manually adjust the brightness. To do this, go from the main menu of the program along the path “Image” - “Correction” - “Levels” or simply press the combination Ctrl keys+ L.

   In the Levels window that opens, move the highlight and midtone sliders to the left until you achieve the desired lightness. Click the “Ok” button to save your settings.
   

3. Depending on original photo, best results can be achieved by adjusting the brightness and contrast, the settings window for which is called up along the path “Image” - “Correction” - “Brightness / Contrast”.

   In the window that opens, the brightness and contrast sliders are set to zero. You can shift them both to the right zone of positive values, and to the left with negative values, thereby changing the values ​​of these parameters.

   If you check the “View” checkbox, you will be able to observe the change in the appearance of the photo in real time, which is very convenient for selecting the optimal parameters.
   

4. After the brightness of the image has been increased, adjustments to the color tone or saturation may be necessary. You can open it by going to “Image” - “Correction” - “Hue/Saturation” or by pressing Ctrl + U.

   In the window that opens, by moving the sliders, you can change and adjust the entire color scheme, and individual channels: red, yellow, green, cyan, indigo and magenta.
   

Today I will tell you how to make a photo lighter in Photoshop: I’ll write step by step instructions and I will attach screenshots to it so that it is easier for you to understand the principle of operation.

We will work with a photo editor such as Adobe Photoshop CS6. You can use other versions of this program. The procedure will be approximately the same.

So, to achieve the desired result, we don’t even have to use the toolbar.

Step 1: Open an image. You can do this in three ways:

First: click the “File” button and select “Open” (For quick actions, use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+O).

After which you will see a window in which you need to specify the path to the file.

Second way: Left-click once on the picture and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C, then open the program and use Ctrl+V to add the image to the editor.

Method three: Click on the photo with the left mouse button and, without releasing the button, move the image into the Photoshop window. After that it will be added to software environment editor.

The first method is the simplest. Click on the “Image” button, then “Correction”, and then “Brightness/Contrast”.

Press the "Brightness/Contrast" button

You will see a window called “Brightness/Contrast”. You can easily make a photo lighter or, on the contrary, darker. In our case, the photo needs to be brightened. To do this, move the pointer on the “Brightness” straight line to the right until the result of the photo satisfies you.

For reverse effect you need to move the same pointer to the left.

This is far from the only method to make a picture lighter.

Second way more complex, but thanks to it, you can more accurately configure the required parameter. We perform the following procedure: click the “Image” button, then “Correction”, and then “Levels...” (Open using the Ctrl+L key combination).

Click the "Levels" button

Three pointers and three value fields have opened in front of you, all of which can be used to balance the lighting of the photo. Experiment with them and you will quickly understand how they work.

"Levels" in Photoshop

Increase the brightness in the "Levels" window

Method number 3 is similar to the second:

Click the "Curves" button

The "Curves" window opens

The line that appears can be moved in all directions, but to make the photo lighter, move it to the left. Ready!

Adding brightness thanks to "Curves"

How to make a photo lighter in Photoshop?

The last method will help us answer this question. It's called quite popular word in the field of photography - “Exposition”. The principle of operation is as follows: click the “Image” button, “Correction”, then the same “Exposure”.

The main problem with unprofessional photographs is insufficient or excessive lighting. Hence arise various disadvantages: unnecessary haze, dull colors, loss of detail in shadows and/or highlights.

If you get a picture like this, don’t despair – Photoshop will help improve it slightly. Why "slightly"? But because excessive enhancement can ruin the photo.

To work, we will need a problematic photo.

As you can see, there are disadvantages: there is haze, dull colors, and low contrast and clarity.
This image needs to be opened in the program and a copy of the layer called "Background". Let's use hotkeys for this. CTRL+J.

Dehaze

First you need to remove unwanted haze from the photo. This will slightly increase the contrast and color saturation.

The haze in the photo has disappeared. Create a copy (fingerprint) of all layers using the keys CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E, and move on to enhancing the detail.

Increased detail

Our photo has blurry contours, especially noticeable on the shiny parts of the car.

1. Create a copy of the top layer ( CTRL+J) and go to the menu "Filter". We need a filter « Color contrast» from section "Other".

   

2. We adjust the filter so that small details of the car and background become visible, but not the color. When we finish setting, press OK.

   

3. Because there is a limit to how much radius can be reduced, you may not be able to completely remove colors from the filter layer. To be sure, this layer can be made colorless using the keys CTRL+SHIFT+U.

   

4. Change the blending mode for the Color Contrast layer to "Overlap", or on "Bright Light" depending on how sharp the shot we need.

   

5. Create another merged copy of the layers ( CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E).

   

6. You should know that when sharpening increases, not only the “useful” parts of the image will become sharp, but also the “harmful” noise. To avoid this, let's delete them. Go to the menu "Filter - Noise" and move on to point "Reduce Noise".

   

7. When setting up a filter, the main thing is not to go too far. Fine image details should not disappear along with noise.

   

8. Create a copy of the layer from which noise has been removed and apply the filter again "Color Contrast". This time we set the radius so that the colors become visible.

   

9. There is no need to desaturate this layer, change the blending mode to "Chroma" and adjust the opacity.

   

Color correction

1. Being on the topmost layer, create an adjustment layer "Curves".

2. Click on the eyedropper (see screenshot) and, by clicking on the black color in the image, determine the black point.

3. We also determine the white point.

Result:

4. Lighten the entire image a little by placing a point on the black curve (RGB) and dragging it to the left.

We can finish here, the task has been completed. The picture became much brighter and clearer. If desired, it can be tinted to give it more atmosphere and completeness.

From this tutorial we learned how to remove haze from a photo, how to sharpen it, and how to straighten colors by setting the black and white points.