For this tutorial we are going to use Jpg in a future post we will also exhibit simple ways of post processing Raw images.

Once you open you Jpg image the first thing you would typically do is Levels -> Adjustment Layer.

1. Once this pops up you would want to move the white and the black sliders to the corresponding tips of the histogram as shown here.

Then you adjust the centre slider so you will achieve a pleasant brightness level.

2. Next thing you want to adjust is the contrast. So you open the Curves Adjustment layer of your photoshop and increase the contrast to point out the main features of your image.

3. Following that is the colour balance. In a Jpg it is not uncommon the colours to be either too cold or too warm. In this case we want to even that out using the Colour Balance too slightly warm colours up. The best practise to warm colours is to add a bit of red and yellow by moving the corresponding sliders.

4. Next step is to add a bit of saturation to the image to avoid our colours from looking dull. This will have an effect to both the dress of our model and her skin tone.

5. Last thing you want to do is slightly “burn the edges”. For this you need the laso tool on your photoshop, for a rather small size image like this one a feather size of 50 should be sufficient.

The idea is to “laso” the parts of the image you want to draw attention to. In this case would be the face of our model. Once this is done you invert the selection and add an adjustment level of layers and using the middle slider you darken it. This essentially will darken all of the picture but the model’s face because we inverted our initial selection. Once all the post processing steps are completed the results should be rather visible.

And in these 5 simple steps we gave new life to our undervalued Jpg image!

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