MMC140: Week 5: Adjustment Layer Icon

I was very excited when I discovered I could improve the appearance of an image with a few simple mouse clicks. This lesson taught me about the 'curves' adjustment, applying filters and blurs and black and white adjustments.

CURVES
Open the image you wish to add depth to and in the layers panel click on the 'Create new fill or adjustment layer' icon...

Select 'Curves' and click 'Auto' and the image changes dramatically. See the before and after images below...

 Before

After

Then I learned how to manually adjust the curve and select a section of an image to adjust it separately from the rest of the image. Firstly click the 'Create new fill or adjustment layer' icon (image above), select 'Curves' and instead of clicking 'Auto' click on the slider to move it up. This lightens the entire image...great for images with dark shadows.

Great result with the brick wall lightning, however the sky also lightened so to separate the sky and give it it's blue colour back, use the Quick Selection Tool to select the sky. Once the sky is selected click on the document in the curve layer (layer mask icon) and press 'Edit' then 'Fill' then 'Contents use' 'Black'. Deselect and the sky is blue again.

 Before

After

ADDING DEPTH
You can also add depth to an image using the Curve Adjustment Layer and the gradient tool. With your image open, apply the curve auto adjustment (as outlined above), then select the gradient tool - linear gradient and draw a line across the image.

If the light in the original image is coming from the right or top right - draw your gradient line from left to right. If the light is coming from the left then draw your gradient line from right to left.

Once the gradient has been applied select the brush tool and ensure white is selected as the foreground colour, choose a soft brush about 100px and paint the image to add depth. This reveals the image's tonal adjustments underneath.

 Before

After

BLACK AND WHITE
The simplest way to make an image black and white is by adding an adjustment layer as described above, but choose Black and White instead of 'Curves' ...

This window appears where you can individually alter colours to add depth...

Here is the original colour image...

Before

 Default Black and White

 After: the red, yellow and green colours have been manually altered to add depth

FILTERS
When changing an image to black and white doesn't improve the overall image - adding coloured filters make a nice effect. This image has the blue filter added to remove the sky altogether.

Here is the original coloured image...

 Before

 Default Black and White

After: With high contrast blue filter applied

BLUR
This image looked over exposes so we duplicated the original background and softened the blending mode to intensify the image. We then applied Filter - Blur - Gaussian at 4.9px to give it a bright and glowing effect.

 Before

After