Adobe Photoshop CS6 Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks by Lynette Kent

Chapter
5
Chapter
Enhance Colors, Tone, and
Sharpness in Photos
Almost every project in Photoshop involves
color or the lack of it. Whether you work on a
design or a photograph in Photoshop, you often
adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of an
image. You can fine-tune shadows and
highlights or completely alter the overall tone
of a photograph. You can transform a color
photograph into a grayscale image, colorize an
old grayscale image, or make a color image
look like an antique colorized photograph. You
can also tone a photo as photographers used to
do in the darkroom by digitally dodging and
burning. And you can create these effects using
many different techniques.
Whenever you make color and tonal
adjustments, some pixel information is
discarded. By applying your corrections on a
duplicate layer, on separate layers, or on a
Smart Object layer, you can edit
nondestructively. Using Photoshop’s adjustment
layers, you can make changes without
permanently altering pixel values. And by
opening or converting an image or a layer to a
new Smart Object, you can apply most filters
as Smart Filters, making them continuously
editable as well as nondestructive. Smart Filters
can even be used when sharpening a
photograph, so you can reedit the changes
without altering pixels until you complete your
edits and flatten the image.
Working on a color calibrated monitor, as shown
in task #14, is even more important when
working with color or tone. Otherwise, you may
be changing colors that are not really in the
image, and what you see on your monitor may
look very different when it is printed.