Making colors pop in Photoshop
The following is a basic, but powerful way to open up those digital images. Feel free download this image to play with
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Launch Photoshop and open an image.
Go to Image / Adjustments / Threshhold
Move the slider all the way to the left to find the darkest point in your photo. Once it looks similar to this, hold the shift key and click in one of the black areas. It will give you a reference point for later use.
Move the slider to the left and “shift click” for your highlight reference.
Click cancel
Now go to Image / Adjustments / Curves
Double click the dark eyedropper and set your shadow rgb values to 0,0,0.
Set your midtone values (the middle dropper) to 128,128,128 and finally set your highlight values by double clicking the dropper on the far right to 255, 255, 255.
Click once on the shadow dropper in the curves dialog then click on the shadow reference point. It will balance all the shadows.
Click on the highlight dropper and then on the highlight referance point.
Click on “OK” in the curves dialog and then “yes” to set these new target default colors.
Now your images colors are balanced. It may seem subtle, but this little trick can really help some photos.
Before
After
