Softly does it
Following on nicely from the last post, I have another quick trick I often use to give some of my more “meh” photos a bit more “yeh”.
We’ll start with the same photo as before:
As before, the image appears quite “flat” and lifeless. We can try and fix this with a very quick and (usually) efficient contrast tweak using a “soft light” layer.
To this, open your image up in Photoshop, then create a duplicate of the original background layer (right-click on the background layer and select “duplicate”..).
Now, with the duplicate layer selected , choose “Soft Light” from the dropdown list of layer types:
At this point, your image may already look better, but it some cases (including this image), the soft light can be a little overpowering on full opacity.
Obviously, every image is different, so there’s not a “one size fits all” opacity setting, so you’ll need to experiment with each image; Try dropping the opacity down to around 70%, or until you gain a good contrast.
I settled for 70% for this image, and the results I gained were a good deal better than the original:
