Hello and welcome to another Photoshop (CS2) editing tutorial! This one is all about editing colours. Sometimes I see a great picture: nice aircraft, scenery and composition, but it lacks some colour. In this tutorial I will show you how to touch up the colours in your pictures in a real easy way. You don’t need to draw for this at all!

In colour editing it’s all about subtle changes, so try not to overdo things. If all goes right, all the little changes you make will add up to the right effect.

I’ve put in a lot of pics in this tute, so you can see how I do it.

Now, load up a shot and let’s get started!

The first thing you should do is adjust the brightness and contrast of the shot.

(click the thumbnails to open the pictures)

Just move the sliders until you are satisfied.



Next, is sharpening the pic. I like to use the smart sharpening option for this. Be sure not to oversharpen the pic! The effect should barely be visible, very subtle…





After applying the sharpening filter, I always like to fade the effect a bit for even more subtlety in the changes I’ve made. This is how you fade a filter, brush stroke, render or effect that you have just applied:





Notice that you can also change the blending mode. It’s nice to experiment with that from time to time, but for now, it’s best to leave it on normal.

Now the basic contrast enhancement and sharpening are done, let’s touch up the colours a bit.




Put the intensity slider all the way up to 200. Set the other options to your likings.



As you might have noticed, the colours look very bright and intense now. Maybe a bit too intense, but don’t panic, we’re not done yet! Before we continue on the colours we should adjust one more thing: shadows and highlights.



The following setting mostly works pretty good for me. Feel free to experiment though…



Now let’s gt back to the colours! Adjust the tone and saturation.



To get more balance in the colours, drop the saturation.



It looks a bit dull now, so let’s spice it up again! This time, you’re able to pick the colour of your choice. Use the photo filter.



As you can see, you can pick from a wide range of filters or simply create your own. Remember the bit about overdoing stuff that I discussed earlier? Well, for this small moment you’re allowed to forget it. The end result will be better if you overdo this step just a bit.



Continue to part 2