You can do the same thing in many different ways within Photoshop, here is a different approach to changing exposure & color. Lets correct this sunrise scene where the foreground is too dark & the sky is too bright

	Fixing a photo with both underexposed and overexposed sections. Select a Curves adjustment layer (found at the bottom of the layer pallet, black/white circle icon) Bring up your Histogram pallet as well so you can view both the result (histogram) and your Curve. Create a S curve so the curve goes above the default diagonal line and the curves also goes under the default line like in my example. The S Curve attempts to make the dark area brighter (the curve should be above the default line on the left side) and darken the sky (the curve should be below the default line on the right side) Uncheck “Preview” if you want to compare before and after. Continue to adjust the photo until the foreground looks brighter and the sky looks darker but not too much where it looks unnatural.
	The photo is very dull so let’s add some colors to it, under Channel, go through each color channel and increase and decrease the colors to balance it out.
	Select all Copy Merge (it will copy ALL visible pixels instead of just the current active layer like the regular Copy functions) Paste, it will create a new layer based on the copied information. Select Hue/Saturation from Image-Adjustments Increase the Saturation and adjust the Hue position, don’t worry if the color looks unnatural. Use burn to deepen any area that is not overly saturated such as the sky.
	Set the Blending Layer to Color (on top of the layer pallet, where it says Normal, click on it to see the blending menu) All the color information is transferred on to the background layer. Lower the Opacity (on top of the layer pallet) if the color is too saturated.
	Brighten the underexposed some more Add a Curves adjustment layer. (Found at the bottom of the layer pallet) Pull the curve up until you can see more details on the foreground. Click on the Mask icon of your Curve adjustment layer (the white box between the layer name and the curve Icon. Select a large soft edged brush and start painting on the sky (this only work if you have clicked on the Mask icon from the last step) If you turn the Curve visibility off you will see the differences. I lowered the color layer some more to unsaturated it some more. Play around with Hue/Saturation (found in the Image-adjustment menu) some more until you get a color you like.
	Here is the final image, please leave comments below if you have any questions or comments! Thanks!!

continue from Layer Blending Modes Part one

The following sets are combination of the last two set, where 50% gray area has no effect on the photo, darker pixels on the blending mode will behave like their Darkening counterpart and the lighter pixels on the blending mode will behave like their Lightening counterpart.

Overlay – This is a combination of both Multiply and Screen blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will have similar effect to Screen Mode and Black has similar effect to Multiply Mode.

Soft Light – This is a combination of both Darken & Lighten blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten and increase contrast and Black will darken and increase contrast. Notice the 50% gray in the sample did not affect the image while the darker circles darken and increased the contrast and lighter circles does the opposite.

Hard Light – is a combination of Linear dodge and Linear burn, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten the picture and Black will darken the picture. This is useful for adding shadows and highlights to an image as you can see in the sample below.

Vivid Light – This is a combination of both Burn and Dodge blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten and increase contrast and Black will darken and increase contrast.

Linear Light – Burns or dodges the colors by decreasing or increasing the brightness, depending on the blend color. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened by increasing the brightness. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened by decreasing the brightness.

Pin Light – This mode will choose to keep either the color of the base or the blending layer using their light/shadow value. When the luminance value of the blending layer is lighter than 50% gray, any pixel darker than the blend color will be replaced. When the luminance value of the blending layer is darker than 50% gray, any pixel lighter than the blend color will be replaced.

Hard Mix – This mix will result in a definite color of Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, White and Black and nothing in between. This can be useful for special effect or evaluating shapes or analyzing the dominate colors of a photo.

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The next two modes are mainly for evaluation purpose, but with some creativity you can incorporate their effects into your design.

Difference – This mode is used to align two similar photos visually, if two exact duplicate photo were used, the result will be black because there will be no difference. In the example below, I duplicated the photo and made one the Difference blending and one as the base but I nudge the blending layer so that it is not 100% aligned on top of the base, notice the white spots in the final result, that is the difference from the nudging, now you can try to nudge it back so that there are no white spot.

Exclusion – Creates an effect similar to Difference mode except blending with light/white values result in inverted base color and blending with dark/black yields no change. In the sample the sun is the lightest and therefore the base color is inverted and the rocks are left alone because it is closer to a black value.

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The list sets of modes are for dealing with Hue, Saturation and Luminance.

Hue – It will apply only the hue of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the saturation or luminance of the base layer. Notice that the blue, red and green color spots in the example shows in the final result but only with the same amount of saturation and luminance of the base value.

Saturation – It will apply only the saturation of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the color or luminance of the base layer. Notice that the blue, red and green color spots in the example did not affect the color of the final result, the only information that the base is inheriting is the saturation level of the blending layer.

Color – It will apply only the color of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the light and shadow (luminance) of the base layer. It is perfect for coloring in a black and white photo or changing color of a part of a photo. In the sample below, the base layer takes on the color of the blending layer while retaining the grayscale of the original photo.

Luminosity – It will apply only the light and shadow (luminance) of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the color of the base layer. You will achieve the same result if you take the example I showed you above and switch the base to blending layer and blending layer to base.

You do not need to memorize every single mode but it would be helpful to know what Photoshop is capable of so that when you are creating your design you know what your limits are. I understand some of the modes are very complicated and difficult to understand so feel free to ask any questions or if you are able to write it in a way that is easier to understand please leave that in the comment.

I still haven’t found use for some of the modes such as Exclusion, Hard Mix and Pin Light. Have you used any of them for a project? if so let us know what you did with them.

This entry is continued from Layer Blending Modes Part one

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.

If you need to get the exact color from a specific location on your photo you can extract that information using the eye dropper tool.

There are two version of the eyedropper, one is call eyedropper and the other one is color sample tool. They can both be activated by selecting the icon on tool bar or with shortcut key I, and use the Shift+I to cycle through them two.

Sample Size- Point Sample means that it will extract the color information from exactly one pixel, this is the most accurate way to select a color. However, the color in a photograph is rarely exactly the same, if you were to take a picture of a green wall and zoom in on it, you will notice slight variation of the green. Click on the drop down menu and slight one of the higher number sample average, it will get you the average of the nearby pixel.

Color sample tool is similar except the information are posted on the Info panel so that you can read the color information of that particular spot. You can select up to 4 spots and you can delete it by right clicking of each of the spot and select delete. As you are adjusting the color, the info panel will update the color information as well.

As you can see that when I adjusted the color of the photo the Info panel updated as well.

Temporary eyedropper – You can activate eyedropper temporary while you are in a mode that requires you to choose color such as Brush and Paint Bucket tool by holding Alt\Option.

What other tips on eyedropper do you know of and what other uses are there for eyedropper? Please share with us in the comments below!

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.

This tutorial will show you how to adjust your photo color to give it a nice saturation quick and effective.

Here is the a split version of the photo before and after.

In this tutorial I will show you how to quickly increase the saturation in LAB space, LAB uses Lightness, A and B instead of red, blue and green channel. The advantage of using LAB (pronounced L – A – B, not lab) is you can manipulate the color without influencing the tone which is controlled by the L channel.

I’ve changed the color space to LAB mode and strengthen the contrast of the AB channel to increase the saturation and give it higher contrast by manipulating the lightness channel. The rest are just adding special effects such as blur and creating a more pleasing color value. The effects I add was glowing effect by duplicating one copy and blurring it and increase the contrast so that more highlight shows, than blur it again. After blurring it twice set the correct blending mode and turn down the opacity if necessary, go ahead and experiment with the effect to see what you come up with.

If you have questions please leave comments. Thanks!

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.

Original for the Selective Colors Photoshop tutorial

This is the original photo I shoot in he morning in Hawaii, there was a lot of clouds and the sun was interacting with the sky very nicely. I wanted to try to mess with the color of the sky and cloud to give it a completely different feeling so I used the Selective Color adjustment. This is different from selecting a specific color using the Color Range tool method or simply using the Hue adjustment. It lets you change a single color one at a time. You can find the under the layer pallet and in the black/white circle icon you will find the “Selective Color” adjustment. Go through each of the color and play around to see which section has been changed. To see a more obvious result move the black on each of the color, if you do not see anything shifting than that color is not used in the photo. The White will allow you to change all the highlights, so it is great if you want to change the glow or highlight colors in the photo. The black will change the shadow, you will notice that changing the blacks will affect most of the photo, so you do not want to change too much of it. The grey will give your photo an overall color tint or tone.

This is after my photoshop tutorial

This is the final version that I have from the video. So here I’ve made the orange highlights from the original photo even more powerful and I changed the temperature from cool to warm. You could have done most of the editing changing just the gray, but you get a more realistic result if other colors are changed too.

This is another possibility

This is another possibility that can be done, I change the temperature to an even cooler value. So go ahead and experiment with the settings and see what you come up with. Try changing just one color to anther too.

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.