Sunshine for Shadows

[phyllis stewart]

While brightening shadows on this retouch I repeated a step and found that I could warm up the color at the same time. Often photos of people in bright sunlight have blue or gray shadows. This should help get better balance into the picture while keeping a "sunny" feel.

[Crone]

Thanks for sharing Phyllis

Very useful

[kaiman]

Phyllis great technique.
It works like magic, and can be easily tweaked to get so many other effects.

The only thing that bothers me is these indications :

a) on step 2 : desaturate 100%
b) on step 3 : desaturate until good color achieved

- Is there a way to desaturate partially, and not all the way to 100% as default.
-Do you mean doing a "Edit/Transition" to partially desaturate ?

I followed the directions ignoring these remarks and it works as clockwork, but it made me wonder, so i had to ask.

If i don't make any sense, please disregard the above comments.

[Graphicsmanip]

Thanks Phyllis. I've been experimenting on that very image with just one overlay layer. Your method adds that extra brightening where it's really needed.

[Crone]

Jorge,

You can edit the saturation by creating a new layer adjustment (hue and saturation) and setting it to 'group with previous layer'. This way you can also edit it latter by double clicking on it's icon in your layer pallet

Hope this helps

[Sandra]

I love the golden glow it gives the skin. I'm sure to use this one in the future, thanks for posting it.

[kaiman]

Sandra, thanks for the tip.

Oops, i mean Crone, thanks for the tip.

I don't know if that's what Phyllis meant, but still very useful, so as not to work directly on the picture layer.

[phyllis stewart]

Yes, adjustment layers are always a good idea for the reason given. I use them for levels all the time. In this case you can adjust the layers until you merge them even without a special adjustment layer since each layer is treated separately anyway.

- Is there a way to desaturate partially, and not all the way to 100% as default. -Do you mean doing a "Edit/Transition" to partially desaturate ?

I desaturated the top layer completely and the middle layer partially. If you don't want full desaturation (with keyboard strokes control/command+shift+u) then just use control/command+u to open hue/sat and push the middle slider back to the left as far as you like. Or, as you seem to suggest, Edit>Fade would work as well after full desat, to reduce the effect.

[kaiman]

Thanks Phyllis and Crone for clearing that up.


And Yes, i meant Edit/Fade. I just did a direct translation as i have the spanish version PS and it reads Edicion/Transicion which would translate as Edit/Transition.

I'll buy English version PS8, some time soon.

[latebloomer]

Thank you,thank you for this tut. We took a group family photo outdoors a few weeks ago and alas there was a lot of dappled lite - blown out highlights and dark shadows. One pass with this technique improved the photo a lot. There were fifteen adults and six children. I think I may try to correct each individual or at least form groups. This photo may be the last time that this group is together so I really want to rescue this photo.

[phyllis stewart]

You are very welcome, Bloomer! So glad the Inn could help you with a valuable photo. We'd love to see the final retouch along with the original, only if you wish to post them. I understand if many folks in the photo may NOT want their faces on the web.