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4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop!

digital-photography-school.com — Because sometimes it's the simplest techniques that can make a big difference with photoshop...

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  • dfnk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+51The first one is a great tip. The others I could do without...
    • sacherjj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27My thoughts exactly. The first one is the only one without amateurish looking results.
    • Nekko17, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1Agreed.

      The first and fourth seemed like some kind of con.. we're not stupid. Once is enough.
    • soogy, on 10/12/2007, -14/+8Amateur? Amateur is when people repost the same "AMAZING Web 2.0 gradients, glass effects in Photoshop!" over and over.

      While not advanced, these simple effects are far more creative than the aforementioned articles I usually see on the front page of Digg.
    • baud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Here's another tip to make pictures pop like #1 (works mainly for landscapes):

      1) Convert to LAB colour mode
      2) Add new Adjustment Layer - Curves
      3) On the "a" channel curve, bring the bottom left corner in, and the top right corner in, so you have a steeper slope that still goes through the centre point
      4) Do the same for the "b" channel curve

      Adjust transparency on the layer to lesser the effect if you don't like it.
    • nordey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Or, instead of dealing with pixels at all, just create an adjustment layer of Hue/Saturation, set it to Overlay or Softlight, then fiddle with the Saturation and Lightness sliders to tweak contrast weight and color saturation to taste.
    • Nerfdude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21this article could just have easily been titled "How to Make Highschool Textbook Covers From the 1980's"
    • sych0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Baud: Seems to do the same as merely bumping the saturation.
      nordy: the gausian blur adds a lot to the photo
    • nordey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Sych0
      Only if you want the "hazy" look, if you are trying to increase the shape and saturation of the image without adding the glowy feel, then you would not want to use the gaussian effect.
    • TNHitokiri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2neon glow is not too bad as well.. but yea, most of them end up looking amateurish
    • furto, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14i was drawing a baloon in photoshop, and it popped! damnit gotta start again...

      he... lame...
    • surfing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Title made me think of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
    • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Seems like you could accomplish the same thing by just using Auto-Levels.
    • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -18/+8They are all terrible. I seriously recommend that you don't follow ANY of these tutorials. You cannot automatically make your picture pop each time, else they'd all look the same (and the effect is awful, too). For example, for the last photo I edited I did a -83 Hue adjustment. It looked great after that. That doesn't mean you should be doing ridiculous hue adjustments on all your photos; they'd end up looking like *****. It was a rare example where the effect worked well (the image was too cool before, -83 warmed it up and made the colors look amazing).

      #1 is the oldest effect in the world. I wrote a tutorial for a website 2 years ago that used this effect.
      #2 Filters? Are you serious? the "Artistic" filters are for people who like being laughed at when they try to publish work. The images look terrible
      #3 Neon glow? Nukes your color. Adding it to overlay just nukes contrast. USE A DAMN CURVES LAYER
      #4 Easy blur? YES! I want to remove the detail that makes my picture look sharp, and instead make the viewer think they're falling asleep! Wahoo!

      These four tutorials produces effects that are awful. It is like when big companies use on their websites, because the designer learned it when he first learned HTML. They are moron tutorials.

      If you want to produce GOOD LOOKING PHOTOS, DON'T EVER USE THESE CLICHE TUTORIALS.
    • RandomSkratch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@GawtMilk

      That's nice....
    • furto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@GawtMilk

      firstly, stfu.. maybe your way too pro for this tutorial but perhaps u should keep that to yourself.

      secondly, #4 is a super simple process to make your pictures look like the bloom effect (my opinion) anyways they still are great and they are good for noobs to get a wider knowledge with the tools and affects of photoshop!
    • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2@furto

      I'm too pro for this tutorial, your too pro for this tutorial, anyone with photoshop is too pro for this tutorial.
  • bugaloobob, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Very interesting and simple. I'll try 'em out.
  • trebe, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4that went down incredibly fast. Is it not loading for anyone else? http://www.duggmirror.com

    EDIT: Nevermind, loading now.
  • warchant, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19imo, none of them really add anything of value to the pictures
    • syco123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I agree, nothing special here.

      S-Curve is a great way that work well on some images. Add a curve adjustment layer and add 2 points to the curve line 1/4 and 3/4 from one of the corners (where the grids cross the line) Move the upper point up and the lower point down. The curve line should now be a slight 'S' shape and it looks great but not on every image. You can achieve a similar effect by boosting the saturation and contrast.
    • wingnut21, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Well, I learned something today: Digg is filled with tons of photoshop newbs who enjoy cheesy photoshop effects.
    • devindotcom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think you replied to the wrong thread there buddy... this comment was skeptical of the filters' benefits.
  • tungsai, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2I found #1 and #4 to be kinda cool.

    I would like to add a quick easy #5: Increase the contrast. I did this with some photos the other day in Fireworks (Macrodobe's version of photoshop), and WOW! it had been a foggy/rainy day, and adding some contrast REALLY made them look more alive!

    • manitoba98xp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Photoshop is also an Adobe product, and Fireworks was never intended to be the same thing. Fireworks competes more with, say, Illustrator. Fireworks is designed for web graphics, Photoshop was designed for photos (although both can be used for the opposite).
    • waynechng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@manitoba98xp

      Actually Illustrator competed against Freehand, while ImageReady competed against Fireworks. ImageReady and Fireworks are for cleaning up graphics, vector or pixel, for web publishing instead of print publishing.
    • mporcheron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Adobe is replacing ImageReady with Fireworks for Adobe CS3 therefore one would asume, as waynechng pointed out, that ImageReady competed with Fireworks
    • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@mporcheron

      Imageready is included in the CS3 beta.

      So...
  • roywaits, on 02/02/2008, -7/+27Step 1: Take better pictures.
    • syco123, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19Step 2...

      Step 3 - Profit!
    • gafasiesornivek, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1Oh quit being so pretentious. Most memory cards are a gigabyte or higher now so take hundreds of pictures then pick the best one. Any photographer that thinks they will still have a job in 5 years is out to lunch. Wait and see prices drop on SLR, auto focus, auto stabilizing, auto lighting camers. Even then, software will surge ahead and pretty soon there will be a lot more great photography with very little cost. Take a look at Flickr. It proves my point. 1000 monkeys at a 1000 typewriters.
    • BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Some good points but I don't think photographers will be eliminated but it's going to require a lot more skill to make money. The days of just learning the basics and being able to make a living are quickly going away. You have to be a strong technician and artist to pull off exceptional shots simple because the technology has lifted the bar for basic shots. My new Canon can pull of reasonably good shot just be pointing it at something interesting and hitting the button.

  • kbarrett, on 10/12/2007, -14/+11Should be retitled: Things you should NOT be doing to your pictures in photoshop.
  • PRlME, on 10/12/2007, -27/+3plz dont do #2 its way 2 90's
    • underthelinux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38...says the guy who types 'plz' and '2'
    • devindotcom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1dude, it's the digger formerly known as prince!
    • PRlME, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1that was my point ass munch "ass munch is also 90's"
  • Llanowar, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Only tip 2 actually made the pic "pop"....


    Though... they all actually suck in my opinion.
  • caffiend, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1That cat in #3 looks like it's wearing a space helmet.
    • brunson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1That's because it's a moon cat... DUH!
  • Necrontyr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8They all suck, hard.
    #1 is an abridged version of the Orton Effect, which ends up looking most better most of the time
    #2 is, as PRIME said, "90's"
    #3 could have been cool, in fact, neon glow can be used to help you duo tone or quad tone your images in a pinch
    #4 is almost #1 again, wtf is with that!

    The Orton Effect: http://www.pcin.net/update/index.php/2006/11/01/the-orton-effect-digital-photography-tip-of-the-week/
    • saska, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1They're simplified versions of the Orton effect. Even in the article you linked, the instructions for getting the Orton effect amount to "Ingredients: lemons, eggs, sugar. Directions: make meringue."
    • slightlyoffbeat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1u rock for giving that link.
  • superpotential, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Personally, these are the only things I feel is okay to do to a digital picture:
    1. Crop
    2. Resize
    3. Brightness
    4. Contrast
    5. Color balance
    6. Gamma
    all of the above are functions of the CCD you are using itself, and changing the gamma or color balance, for instance, still maintains the authenticity of the shot (you're basically tuning the conversion table from one arbitrary incoming watts/mm^2 to pixel value conversion to another, and these also help ensure that monitors display things as real life does).

    anything beyond that, and i consider it an unauthentic shot. great for digital artwork and marketing, but not for the art of photography.
    • gboodhoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4pretty narrow point of view IMO, but in the face of "limitless possibilities", it does make sense to define constraints no matter how arbitrary. Would posting the image to the web be acceptable, or would real output only be considered valid if it were a physical object? Not trying to mock you, just curious about the limits you've chosen for yourself.

      You do realize that there's an entire approach to photography that doesn't even use a camera? The first photographs didn't use cameras. By those standards, using other machines to "dilute" the image is just plain vulgar!
    • syco123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Do what the hell you what to a picture. Don't restrict your artistic ability with narrow guidelines.

      However where a photo becomes 'digital art' is open for debate.
    • superpotential, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2no, i completely agree with and appreciate the concept of digital art and photoshopping. it's one field.

      but i just also appreciate the art of the authentic photo, and the work that goes behind producing good, unedited photos.
    • madhaha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I hate to burst your bubble but the vast majority of (good? popular? National Geographic?) landscape photography is taken with a series of very specialised filters with films that are notorious for producing distorted and more vivid colours (Fuji Velvia, Agfa Ultra 100 etc.). Futhermore, almost all of these images are taken with one lens to form a 2D image with a field of view vastly different from the one we'd experience as humans. Now we're moving into digital. We have cameras that have more than one CCD built in (check out the new Olympus SLRs with live preview) but do we use it to pursue a more authentic, human-experience kind of image or do we use the technology to pursue a high quality, fresh image with high dynamic range through tone mapping etc. that was impossible with film? Ultimately you could pursue either but the majority of us hunt for the aesthetic and careful processing and post-processing is part of it. It is STILL photography.
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1She should have thought outside the "effects" box and suggested the surprisingly powerful rule of thirds though.
    It's probably among the most widely and oldest used tricks in the world of post-processing applied to a photo.

    Guidance: http://www.digital-photography-tips.net/digital-photography-tutor-thirds.html
    Guide by examples: http://photoinf.com/General/KODAK/guidelines_for_better_photographic_composition_rule_of_thirds.html

    Btw, I can recommend the free image viewer FastStone (maybe others have this too) for Windows that has among other things built-in support for this in its cropping feature. Maybe (probably!) there are Photoshop plugins or something like that too.
    • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Btw, upon thinking on it more, skilled photographers perhaps don't use this as a post-processing thing (they're skilled enough to snap the photo for this in the first place), but in the world of digital photography and cropping, I'd still like to call it this. It's a bit similar to how a skilled photographer may not need to apply other post-processing by thinking of e.g. lightning conditions better for making it more lifelike.
    • gboodhoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@jugulator:
      If you'd ever seen the before & after of a commercial photo shoot, you'd understand how essential post processing is in order to output what we consider to be professional images. That's commercial work, but part of the genius of a guy like Ansel Adams (for example) was to understand the role of pre-visualization, image capture and post-processing. Can pretty much guarantee that although what Adams captured on film was hardly accidental, what he output on paper whawas significantly different than the image seen thru the lens
    • saska, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you are a photographer and not just a blogger with a cameraphone, you should be shooting the rule of thirds purely by instinct. Also, if you are photographer, you know when the rule needs to be broken to keep your work from looking like junk stock photography.

      On the other hand, it's true the internet would be a better place if more bloggers with cameraphones at least followed these rules in post-processing.
    • devindotcom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Saska, you're right.. whenever someone brings up the "rule of thirds," I always think "well... it's more like the rule of making your pictures look good," because it is just a sort of pattern that emerges from a lot of good pictures that include a subject and background in proportion.
  • neeyo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1They lost me at "use the lasso tool..."
  • zrang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Wow. This tutorial's almost as useful as the tutorial on how to make a RASTER logo that someone posted a while back.

    Ick.

  • jonathono2000, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG
    If another photoshop tutorial shows up in my Digg Frontpage Widget I am going go absolutely ape in a cage and be very annoyed by all the people tapping on the f-ing glass.
  • spargett, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"4 EASY WAYS TO COMPLETELY DESTROY A PERFECTLY GOOD IMAGE"
  • esaks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2How the hell did this get to the front page??? All 4 of these "tips" will make your image look worse.
  • steveo2112, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The Digg.com streak of linking to really bad Photoshop tutorials, techniques, effects, plug-ins, etc. continues...
  • emilydickenson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2all of those tips are useful, depending on how you want to use the photo. you guys are so harsh... being an elitist about photoshop is pretty lame.
  • AsceticMonk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I liked all the tips! Good digg!
  • leeuk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Sorry, not actually that good. Time spent learning about layer masks and alpha channels would be time better spent.
  • Crossmenjeff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2maybe not the best, but any tips are welcome.
  • Silvermink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Personally, I think one of the best tips is "don't use filters on a photo unless you're just experimenting, or unless you really know what you're doing." I've seen a lot of really horrific things done to photos with Photoshop filters (lens flare being the biggest culprit.)
  • dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Rather amateur results, very obviously 'photoshopped' to look at.
  • BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I never like to blur parts of a photo. Detail is interesting and there's no reason to remove it. I do like using some color adjustments to enhance areas of a photo to fill in parts of the composition that were drab looking originally. A well edited photo should never look edited.
  • cklol, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1...because we obviously need more ***** photomanipped pictures out there. You really shouldn't even have photoshop if this is all you do with it, it's pro software!
  • Cleanlyness, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Leave Ps to the pros. You kiddies obviously can't handle a software like this. You should set www.good-tutorials.com as your homepage if these helped you.

    I bury this as lame.
  • diggsterbuddy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Crossmenjeff,
    I agree with you . Maybe not the best, but still Photoshop tutorials is something we are interested in. I wish their where more . All you that commented on this PLEASE update this with your best tutorial . I will Digg it.
    Thanks.
  • regeya, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Need Photoshop tips? How about http://good-tutorials.com/

    Please stop posting/digging Photoshop tutorials...it makes those of us who know better look stupid when y'all digg these up.
  • blindr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1man those effects are really lame. I knew all of them years ago when i was a beginner.
  • Sarevok9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2wow.... i cant believe this made front page... let alone #1
  • americanahost, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0thanks, see more :
    http://brokensoft.com/adobe-photoshop-tutorials-best-free-adobe-photoshop-tutorials
  • cubicz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0terrible posting
  • AHemp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I, too, don't understand how this god so many diggs.
  • nify, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Quite strange Very Doubtful.
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