Basic Image Touch up

In this tutorial, we'll be touching up a photo to give it that professional photography look!

(Click me for High-Res)

Image published with permissions by the author, Jackson Hines; http://www.atomicstud.com

Click me for sample PSD You'll need either win zip or 7-zip to unpack this file, you can download the free 7-zip program here.

Step 1

First and foremost, we want to copy our background layer by dragging it onto the new layer icon or by pressing command/control+J.

Step 2

Usually the image is a little fuzzy since we're not all professional photographers so we want to sharpen our image. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask with "Layer 1" still highlighted. Note: If the filters are locked for you (you cannot click them) it is because you're on the locked background layer!

For the Unsharp Mask, you'll have to play with the values... Too much amount and the images becomes distorted, too much radius and the image will become distorted. Too much threshold and the image won't sharpen! For this particular image, a 35% amout, 3.1px radius, and a threshold of 5 levels would suffice nicely.

Step 3

Professional photographers are know for their pictures - DUH! - but they're also known for their colorful pictures as well. Their pictures are rich with color and detail! So this image, compared to the professional, is a little lacking in the color category so we're going to give it a color boost if you will. With "Layer 1" still highlighted, create a new fill/adjustment layer by pressing the half black/half white circle at the bottom of the later panel and select Hue and Stauration or you can press command/control+U so bring up the Hue and Saturation tool. Note: If you create a new fill/adjustement layer a layer mask will be created as well as a point where you can edit your settings; however, if you use the keyboard shortcut no layer mask will be created and you'll need to start over if you mess up or use the undo tool command/control+Z. We're going to create a new fill/adjustment layer for this tutorial.

The hue changes the overall color that each pixel in the image will have. You could turn all of the greens into purples if you wanted using hue. The Saturation deals with how intense the color is - how saturatied the pixels will be with all colors. The Lightness deals with how dark (<0) and how light (>0) the image will be as a whole. The color boost is subject to the image itself as well as a hue adjustment so you'll just have to play around with the sliders and see what looks professional to you! Notice that the layer mask was created in the image on the far right. You can click on that layer (the one with the slider) twice and it will bring up the hue and saturation tool. You can also paint on the layer mask with a brush and this lets you choose what you want to be saturated or not.

Here's what I got:

(Click me for Hi-Res copy).