I went round and round on my edit this week. I think I set myself up for a challenge when I chose to use a photo with so little color. Thank goodness for the snapshots option in Photoshop’s History window. Every change or two, I made a snapshot. Then I went back and forth between them seeing what I liked and didn’t.
I meant to take notes of the steps – part of my reason for doing the snapshots was to make that easier. Then I forgot to check before I closed the window and, of course, this would be one of those times where I did not save a .psd file. That said, to the best of my memory here’s what I did …
- Adjusted the levels. Setting the white and black points, shifting the input and output until I liked what I saw.
- I used the clone tool to clean up around the top of the ring holder. It looked dusty in the original photo. It wasn’t – just the way the light was bouncing off the top.
- Created new layer for high filter. Lowered the layer’s opacity to 75%.
- New adjustment layer – curves. Adjusted settings for shadows, midtones, highlights. (My version of PS does not have the awesome graph in the background – just a grid – so jealous of that! I think it would make my process a bit different.)
- New adjustment layer – brightness/contrast. Adjusted slightly.
- New adjustment layer – hue/saturation. Adjusted saturation only.
- New fill layer – gradient. Changed the angle and scale. Layer mode to soft light.
- New fill layer – solid color. I used a very light yellow and reduced the layer opacity.
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blessings jill