I want to start a thread for people to post our favourite Photoshop recipes. There are so many tips and tricks out there and I'd love to collect some of them in one place. Apologies if this has been done before - I've combed the threads and can't see that it has been.
I'll go first. Here's one of my favourites.
PUNCHING UP DRAB COLOUR
1. Go under 'Image' then 'Mode' and click on 'Lab Color.'
2. Create a duplicate layer of your image by pressing <Ctrl> J.
3. Go under 'Image' and click on 'Apply Image'.
4. In the dialog box that appears, change the blending mode to 'soft light' (unless the default 'multiply' mode looks good to you).
5. You now have a choice of three different effects. Click on 'Channel' in the dialog box and see what the 'a' and 'b' channels look like in addition to the 'lab' channel. Generally the lab channel looks best, but sometimes one of the others does.
6. You now get to determine how intense the colour is. The 'Opacity' setting in the dialog box lets you reduce the strength of the effect. Just play around with different numbers. EDIT: You can also change the opacity in the layers panel, which is to the bottom right of your screen. You'll see the two copies of the image you've created there, with the top one - the one you've applied the changes to - highlighted. Clicking the 'eye' icon to the left of it on and off will show you the difference between the original image (background) and the changed one (layer 1). Well, just above the images you'll see the opacity slider. With the top image highlighted, just click on opacity and slide the slider around until you get a degree of colour change you're happy with.
7. When you're happy with the way your image looks, you need to flatten the image. Click 'OK in the dialog box and then either do <Ctrl> E or go under 'Layer' and then 'Flatten Image'.
8. Finally, convert the image back to RGB color. Go under 'Image' then 'Mode' and click on 'RGB'.
Hope that works for you! Let me know if anything's not clear - and I'm looking forward to seeing all of your favourite recipes here too.
I'll go first. Here's one of my favourites.
PUNCHING UP DRAB COLOUR
1. Go under 'Image' then 'Mode' and click on 'Lab Color.'
2. Create a duplicate layer of your image by pressing <Ctrl> J.
3. Go under 'Image' and click on 'Apply Image'.
4. In the dialog box that appears, change the blending mode to 'soft light' (unless the default 'multiply' mode looks good to you).
5. You now have a choice of three different effects. Click on 'Channel' in the dialog box and see what the 'a' and 'b' channels look like in addition to the 'lab' channel. Generally the lab channel looks best, but sometimes one of the others does.
6. You now get to determine how intense the colour is. The 'Opacity' setting in the dialog box lets you reduce the strength of the effect. Just play around with different numbers. EDIT: You can also change the opacity in the layers panel, which is to the bottom right of your screen. You'll see the two copies of the image you've created there, with the top one - the one you've applied the changes to - highlighted. Clicking the 'eye' icon to the left of it on and off will show you the difference between the original image (background) and the changed one (layer 1). Well, just above the images you'll see the opacity slider. With the top image highlighted, just click on opacity and slide the slider around until you get a degree of colour change you're happy with.
7. When you're happy with the way your image looks, you need to flatten the image. Click 'OK in the dialog box and then either do <Ctrl> E or go under 'Layer' and then 'Flatten Image'.
8. Finally, convert the image back to RGB color. Go under 'Image' then 'Mode' and click on 'RGB'.
Hope that works for you! Let me know if anything's not clear - and I'm looking forward to seeing all of your favourite recipes here too.