Making Colors Pop with Photoshop

Make Your Dull Photos Come to Life

Sometimes you can get just the right moment, with just the right lighting, but it still seems like something is missing in your photo. The picture isn’t as vibrant as you would like, perhaps. Here is a great way to really make the colors in your photos pop using adobe Photoshop.

The first thing you need to do is open your picture in the Edit mode of Photoshop. At this point make any corrections to your photo, such as cropping, color correction, and removing flaws. Many people go to “temperature” under the quick fix menu to warm up their photos, but hold off on that step for right now.

Now right click on your background layer, under the layers bar on the right. Select “duplicate layer”. You can name this layer whatever you want. I just leave it as background copy. Right under the word Layers is a drop down menu that should say normal. Click on it and choose overlay. The colors and contrast should immediately pop. This is usually too vivid but it is easy to find just the right level. Simply click on the opacity drop down menu and move the slider until you have just the right amount of pop. I usually keep it around 30 to 50 percent.

Once you have the level set where it looks best you can right click on your background layer and choose merge visible. This makes it possible for you to save your picture as a .jpeg file and do more editing to your photo.

This technique works great on portraits because it really makes the eye color stand out. It also works well in pictures with bright colors. It does darken your photos a bit, so if your picture is dark, to begin with here is a tip. Before you create an overlay layer, create a screen layer. You follow the same steps but instead of choosing overlay you choose screen. This dramatically brightens your pictures. You can then repeat the process with an overlay. Once you get started you can try any combination of screen and overlay and play around with the opacity. This will really add some crisp color and vibrancy to dull photos. The look is also very modern, which I like.

Adobe Photoshop is a great tool for enhancing your photos. You can learn more tips by reading articles, watching video tutorials, and experimenting with it yourself. Hope this helps you polish your skills!

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