Search This Blog

Increase Contrast in Photoshop

Posted
In the previous Photoshop tip I gave you, I showed you how to sharpen an image using Photoshop layers and blending modes. Today I want to show you how you can improve the contrast of an image using once again layers and blending mode.

Open your image in Photoshop and make a copy of the background by typing ctrl+j. Photoshop will name the new layer "Layer 1" which you can change if you wish to something like "Contrast" by double-clicking the layer name and typing the new name.  For this example I'm using a photo of a white dahlia flower that I took.

Now desaturate the image using Hue/Saturation. The easiest way to do this is to click on Layer 1 and type ctrl+u. Move the saturation slider all the way to the left and click OK. (If you are more proficient with Photoshop, you can use a "hue/saturation" layer which will include a layer mask.)



Now change the blending mode to Soft Light and you have an image with greatly enhanced contrast.




Sometimes the shadows may end up being too dark, so you can bring them back a bit by changing the opacity of the layer. In my example I changed it to 75% opacity.



That's it! You are done!

Subscribe by email Your subscription will begin only after you activate it by responding to the email you will receive from "FeedBurner Email Subscriptions" immediately after submitting this request. If you do not see the email within the next minute, please check your spam folder.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Samoan Youth

Posted
This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
Image

Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

Posted
Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
Image
Posted
Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026 This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly. An Auckland Sighting On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change. If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Stree...
Image