››BEGINNERS' WORKSHOP› ›kelbyone.com041Now let’s look at using the High Pass filter to
enhance local contrast. With this technique, you
essentially end up with a dodge and burn layer
comprised of 50% gray; however, by switching
layer blend modes, the gray parts vanish, leaving
you with a wonderfully high-contrast photo.
Step One: Repeat step one above to open a photo
as a smart object in Photoshop.
Step Two: Choose Filter>Other>High Pass. In the
resulting dialog, drag the Radius slider to the right
to around 180 pixels and click OK. Your image
turns oddly gray, but don’t panic; you’ll fix that in
the next step.
Step Three: In the Layers panel, double-click the
tiny icon to the right of the filter’s name (circled
here) to open its Blending Options dialog. Choose
Overlay (Soft Light works, too) from the Mode
pop-up menu and click OK. To see a before and
after version, click the visibility icon to the left
of the filter name in the Layers panel. To experi-
ment with other Radius values in the High Pass
filter, you guessed it, double-click the filter name
in the Layers panel.
Here are before (top) and after (bottom) previews
showing this super-slick technique. (Big thanks to
Jack Davis for originally teaching me this!)