4 Ways to Use Photoshop to Enhance Your Images

There are times when your shots won’t turn out the way you wanted, despite planning the settings, angles, or composition. Fortunately, Adobe Photoshop can rescue your pictures as long as you know what to fix. Here are four ways to use Photoshop to enhance your images and produce photographs like a pro.

4 Ways to Use Photoshop to Enhance Your Images 

The post-processing stage is a vital part of photography, especially since there’s always room for little photo editing magic to make your shots stand out. Photoshop allows you to remove unwanted elements, correct exposure, adjust colors, and modify sharpness in order to enhance your pictures.

Remove Unwanted Spots 

There are cases when the camera sensor is dirty, resulting in dust particles or small spots appearing in some areas of your pictures. You can save your shots by removing those blemishes. 

Besides, cutting out objects or other elements in a frame gives you enough space if you want to use Photoshop to create a border. One way to do this is by using the Spot Healing Brush tool to tone down or remove selected healing work by creating a new layer. 

If you prefer a more defined selection, another option is the Patch Tool, which clones the selected source area as you drag and repair the scratched area. Meanwhile, it would be better to use the Clone Stamp tool if you want to copy the exact detail from one part to another.

Correcting Exposure

Learning how to adjust exposure is another great way to enhance images, and consequently, increase your workflow productivity. Photoshop features a range of adjustment tools, allowing you to fix exposure and bring out more details. 

The Exposure panel consists of Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Shadows/Highlights, and HDR Toning. All of these only require you to move the sliders to the left or right until you attain the results you want.

Adjusting Colors and Effects 

Notice how some photos tend to have a bit of blue tinge? This happens when you use incorrect white balance, impacting the contrast, saturation, and vibrance of your pictures. 

You can fix this by using the Selective Color, which lets you pick a particular color in the photo and change only those colors. For example, you can change a person’s skin color without affecting the other colors in the image. 

If you want to achieve more accurate colors, adjusting the Color Balance is the simplest way to fix colors, shadow, highlights, and mid-tones. You can also add unique effects and filters to enhance a photo’s colors.

• Lomo Photography: This filter requires you to use the Levels Adjustment layer to apply dreamy and surreal effects.
• Gritty Effect: You need to utilize the Curves Adjustment layer to add dramatic flair with bronze hues. 
• Photo Movie Effect: By tweaking the Exposure and Hue/Saturation settings, you can turn a plain-looking photo into an elegant Hollywood film vibe. 
• Vintage Photo Effect: With some changes in the Brightness/Contrast and Smart Filters, you can transform a photo’s color with a vintage feel.

Apply Sharpening or Blurring Features

Have you experienced shooting in a fast-paced environment that even the manual focus got confused about where to focus? Sometimes, even pictures in perfect focus can benefit from some sharpening to further highlight the details. 

To reduce softening and add more definition to your subject’s edges, you can use Photoshop’s Smart Sharpen filter to sharpen edges without creating image noise. 

On the flip side, you can use the Blur tool to place some creative blurs or soft, out-of-focus backgrounds. Choose from various Blur effects such as Gaussian, Field, Radial, Lens, and Motion. You simply have to apply an amount in the Radius box until you get the desired results.

Conclusion 

It is essential that you learn and master these Photoshop techniques to improve your skills as a photographer and editor.