> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ OCTOBER 2019[ 68 ]
- (DE) HAZE
The Dehaze slider has been around for a while now, but you can switch
things up and add some haze by dragging the slider to the left. The best
way to apply this is in Adobe Camera Raw using a Radial Filter (J) or
Adjustment Brush (K) to target a specific portion of an image, rather
than the image in its entirety. Set the Dehaze slider to the left at around
–75 and also boost the Contrast slider to around 20 to help enhance the
effect, then paint over distant areas of your photo to add some haze and
create the effect of depth, which will boost the ambience of the scene. - QUICK FIRE-HOT SUNSET
To give a sunset photo a little extra punch, use a Gradient Map adjust-
ment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map). A Gradient
Map allows you to assign different colors to the tonal values within the
image. You can use this to your advantage to warm up the dark tones.
Click on the gradient preview thumbnail in the Properties panel
(Window>Properties) to open the Gradient Editor. Double-click on the
bottom-left color stop, change it to red, and click OK to close the Color
Picker. Change the bottom-right color stop to yellow, and click OK to
close the Gradient Editor. The image will now look oversaturated. To fix
this, set the blend mode of this new adjustment layer to Overlay, then
lower the Opacity to around 40% to scale down the effect. That’s all it
takes to fire up a sunset scene. - VIBRANCE VS. SATURATION
To make the colors pop in your image, it’s often best to leave the Satura-
tion slider alone in Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop; instead,
use the Vibrance slider (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Vibrance). The
Saturation slider targets all the colors in the image, many of which are
already saturated enough. The Vibrance slider enhances the secondary
(or less saturated) colors within the image.
You can even take that up a notch. If you go to the HSL Adjustments
tab in Adobe Camera Raw and adjust the Saturation and Luminance
of specific colors, you can play those tones off against each other to
make the image really stand out. For example, you could decrease
the Luminance of the Blues in a sunrise image to help the warmer
reds and oranges pop. - LEVELS FOR CONTRAST
When adding contrast in Photoshop, you could turn to the Bright-
ness/Contrast layer adjustment; but a better way would be to use a
Levels adjustment layer. With Levels, you can set the white and black
points to show true black and white, which adds much more visual
interest. Here’s how: Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels and
then, in the Properties panel (Window>Properties), drag the blacks
slider (located below the histogram) to the right and the whites slider
to the left to make the necessary adjustments. - INVERT TO SEE DUST AND BLEMISHES
This often-overlooked tip can help when you’re staring at photo after
photo, assessing them for dust spots or blemishes. To help find these
imperfections, press Command-I (PC: Ctrl-I) in Photoshop to Invert the
photo, which will turn all the colors on their heads, but oftentimes will
give you a better view of dust spots that you might otherwise miss. - NO FILTER LONG EXPOSURE
If you forgot your ND filter for long exposures, or perhaps didn’t have
the time to shoot a long exposure, you can create the look in Photo-
shop. Press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate the layer. On the
new layer, apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) set to
80 px. Option-click (PC: Alt-click) the Add Layer Mask icon (circle in