GALLERIES

  

Every now and again we all take photographs that come out no where near as good as we had expected. Normally these photographs will either be thrown away or deleted. In this tutorial we are going to see how we can take a washed out photograph of a coastline scene and turn it into spectacular sunset scene. Click on 'Patch' to download the image used for this tutorial.

1. Open the image you downloaded called coastline.jpg into Photoshop.

2. The first thing we want to do is emphasise the clouds more. For this we are going to use the Selective Color command. Normally we would get this from the Image... Adjust menu. For this exercise we are going to do it through the Layer Palette. Make sure the Layer Palette is visible (if not press F7) and click and hold the fourth icon on the bottom. When the menu appears choose the Selective Color command.

3. When the box appears, click on the colour menu at the top. At the moment it is displaying Red. Choose Cyan from the menu.

   Move the slider for Black all the way to the right. It should read 100%.

4. Now go back to the dropdown list for the colour, and this time select Blue.

   Again, move the Black slider to the right.

   Click on the OK button to accept the new changes. You will notice that the clouds now stand out more than they originally did.

5. Now we want to apply a Gradient Fill. Again we will do this by using the Create Fill or Adjustment Layer icon. Click and hold the fourth button and this time select the Gradient Fill command. Make sure its set to Foreground to Transparent and the direction -90. Click Ok to accept the changes.

   Adjust the opacity of the gradient layer to about 83%.

6. Next we want to get that sunset colour. Once again, click the Create Fill etc button, and choose Hue & Saturation from the menu.

   When the box appears, click the Colorize option and enter these values: Hue=36, Saturation=69 and Light=+7. Click OK.

7. Repeat the procedure to add a Levels Adjustment Layer.

   Move the left arrow towards the middle, and watch the image darken. If necessary move the far right arrow towards the center to lighten things a bit. When you are happy click OK.

Because we used Adjustment Layers we still have the original image intact. You can now go to each individual Adjustment Layer and tweak the image until your heart is content. Try this on other images and see what results you come up with.