Photo tip

I use Photoshop Elements 4.0 to touch up my photos. Today, I took a photos of my kids for a project. I wanted all of them on a plain background and preferrably without flash. The photos w/o flash turned out dark, and a few were too blurry to use. However, the ones that did turn out were fixed with a quick click of the “auto color correction” feature. I could have tweaked it further, but chose not to.

Another tweak that is just a bit better, but more involved I call “leveling tweak.”

Step 1: copy the background to a new layer by dragging the layer thumbnail over the new layer icon and dropping.

Step 2: Click the “create adjustment layer”icon (it looks like a black and white circle) and select “levels”.

Step 3: Move the middle slider all the way to the left. It is supposed to make the photo look washed out.

Step 4: Group the adjustment layer with the image below it by Alt+clicking between the layers.

Step 5: Then change the blend mode of the grouped image to “Soft Light”

Step 6: if needed, change the opacity of the top image until it looks just right.

I do this with any photo that seems to lack color depth and lighting.

Here is an example:

This seems to do the trick without as much of a yellowish tone.

Do you have some tips to share? Post a link or email them to:

Teresa@MemoriesThatLiveOn.com