PSC10: Layer Magic II

In today's Photoshop Corner, we'll put some of the things into practise that we learned in PSC09: Layer Magic. Let's use some layers in order to selectively brighten up an image.

For this example, I've chosen an image that I took of someone sitting in front of a window. The overall scene has been taken at dusk, with the inside of the building lit by incandescent light. The buildings in the background are well exposed, they have kind of a dusky feeling to them, which I really like, but the person in the foreground is too dark and can hardly be seen. And the reason why I underexposed the person is that I didn't want to overexpose the background, and I didn't have any other means of brightening up the foreground during taking the picture, so I decided to rely on post processing in this case.

In order to brighten up the person in the picture without doing anything to the background, we will of course use layers.

Step 1: Brightening it up

One of the things we learned in last week's Photoshop Corner is that we can use a curves layer above an image layer and set the blending mode to Screen, in order to brighten up an image, so let's give that a try.

The result is that we can see more of the person now, but the buildings in the background start to get too bright and even a bit overexposed in some areas. Which leads us to step two

Step 2: Masking it

In order to prevent the background from being affected by the screen layer, I add a layer mask by clicking on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layer palette. I select a black brush with soft edges, and when I now paint over the image background into that layer mask, it will start bringing those areas back down again, because the mask will prevent the screen layer from taking effect in those areas.

Step 3: Brighter!

Now I can see that this operation had some effect on the person in the picture, but it isn't enough. so the next step for me is to simply duplicate that screen layer including its mask. This should bring up the brightness of the person even more with still not affecting the background. And in order to duplicate that layer, simply drag the whole layer to the New Layer button at the bottom of the layer palette.

Aaaaah, that's much better! Now I really start to get that dusky feeling and as the interiour of the building was lit with incandescent light, you can see a really warm colour cast in the foreground. And this is kind of what I intended. I had the camera's white balance set to daylight, which I knew would result in the exteriour getting a slightly cool cast in the evening, and the interiour getting a warmer colours.

But we're not done yet. I still think that parts of the face of that person and the jacket he's wearing could use a tad of brightening up. But instead of doing another layer duplication which would result in the whole foreground being brightened up, I decided to use a bit of burn and dodge.

Step 4: Burn it!

I already explained my burn/dodge technique back in Photoshop Corner 06, but I believe it's so important, that it can't hurt to quickly go over it again, especially as it makes use of a layer.

Instead of using the regular burn and dodge tools in Photoshop, I create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer button at the bottom of the layer palette while holding down the Alt/Option key. This brings up a dialogue that allows us to do a few important settings:

Set the mode to Overlay, and check the box that says "Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray)"

What this does is it creates a grey layer in Overlay blending mode above the image. Now whenever you paint with a brush brighter than 50% gray on that layer, the Overlay mode will make that the image gets brither in those areas, and if you choose to paint with a darker brush, the image will get darker. This is a great technique to get subtle brightness changes in very specific areas of an image.

Now I simply grab a white brush with soft edges, set the brushes opacity to something like 10% and do a few gentle swabs over the dark areas of the persons face and jacket in order to brighten it up a little.

And there we have it, the final result, exactly as I originally intended the picture. A bit of a dusk feeling on the exteriour in the background, and a warm incandescent light feeling for the foreground, all combined in an image that is well exposed, both in the foreground, and in the background.

This is just one of the countless examples of using layers, but I hope it has given you some ideas to do your own experiments.