Quickly brightening up a photo in photoshop.

A few steps to quickly brighten up a photo in photoshop, the image I've chosen is pretty bad and isn't exactly perfection by the finishing line but it's much better than it was and a bit easier on the eye.

You could skip the reading and watch the video. That's in real time, it's not a complicated or long process... Turning on high quality and full screening helps... 

Step 1 Open up, levels.

So open your image.

Now go to your levels.

Image>Adjustments>levels (ctrl+L)

You'll see a little graph appear, first off bring the two end sliders up to where it starts on either side, it'll probably start looking brighter already. Now move the middle slider around to get a feel for brightness, choose the spot you like the look of, ignore the colouring for now.

If you're having trouble with very dark or very bright spots you can use the lower slider to cap off the highest and lowest levels by moving the sliders on the little gradient bar below. Try to avoid doing this though as you'll lose colour information as well, this can make an image look very washed out if you do it excessively.

Comments

[AnarchistAsian]

nice job, and.. OMG, this one is actually published!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[killerjackalope]

cheers and it's a shock...

[AnarchistAsian]

yes yes, i was just blown away...

[killerjackalope]

Again? I'm going to start tethering you...

[AnarchistAsian]

what if the rope breaks?

[killerjackalope]

I'll glue you to something, then tie that something to something heavier, then glue it to a small hippopotamus...

[AnarchistAsian]

But then i cant be astonished or blown away! =-(

[killerjackalope]

Surely you'd be astonished about the fact that those events actually happened...

[AnarchistAsian]

surely surely, but not astonished enough to be blown away- unless that is that me, the hippopotamus and all, will be so BLOWN AWAY that i... uhh... blow away.

[gmjhowe]

Good work, but - you havn't even mentioned curves - auto levels is great for noobs, - in the bit about levels you didn't mention about using the eye droppers.

[killerjackalope]

Levels are easier for people to deal with in my experience...
Auto levels are too noobish
I suppose the droppers could be mentioned but I find them to be a bit squiffy when used...

[gmjhowe]

i think that curves is a much easier one to learn. Specially when people start to learn what curves tend to lend to which effect! With the droppers its all about knowing where to click for what effect (dont worry, im sure you will get to a point where you can jedi your way with them)

[killerjackalope]

I know how to use them but they're a nuisance because a little image noise in the wrong spot and it's thrown right off, that and I tend to point the image towards one side not all averaged and such... That made no sense, it's hard to explain...

[gmjhowe]

haha, its ok i understand (my job is actually as a graphic designer incase you didn't know). Truth is i tend to use a combo of all the mentioned methods, and sometimes a bit of masking if the image is complex.

[killerjackalope]

I do bother to do it but not for a five minute jobbie... I did know you were a graphic designer.

[gmjhowe]

try sifting through a few hundred pictures that also need to be resized, and converted to cmyk.

[killerjackalope]

I was doing that last week, edit list for fashion show submissions, add cropping, balancing colours and tediously evaluating as you go... Granted I didn't have any CMYK conversion to do because they're not be printed by me which was a nice touch...

[gmjhowe]

yeah, you see, alot of pictures come in from n00bs, so as a result there normally a huge size, with a low resolution. So i normally have to change them all to 300dpi. My advice, however, is that if they are going to be printed, it might be best to convert them to cmyk yourself, because you might find that after conversions yellows and greens can look very different. And, the worst one, is when people supply unusable pictures and logos, normally ones they have stolen off the internet!

[killerjackalope]

I don't know what they're going to be used for so for that company we're told high quality Jpegs are the best bet, I'll be doing all my converting to print up a portfolio soon enough though so that will be a joyous day, no doubt... I hate it when someone throws you an internet logo and it's useless though with simpler ones illustrator's vector conversion tool can be helpful... Granted it shouldn't be your job to fix anyway...

[=SMART=]

Cool stuff, the finished photo looks a lot better :D
I like the theme you have for XP, i have something similar for my dell laptop when im not on the mac.

4.5* For Outstanding :D

[killerjackalope]

Cheers smart, it's the Zune theme, nice and simple but it looks good...

[KentsOkay]

Spiffin! Now I just need a free Mac program to do it with :P

[LinuxH4x0r]

Great job! Now I have to figure this out in gimp...

[killerjackalope]

Cheers, it's all the same stuff different shortcuts really, also any simple blurring will work for the colour step, I can't remember if gimp has the same set of filters for such things...