I love to add a bit of contrast pop to my images and I wanted to share one method that I use quite often in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. I called this action CoffeeShop Lustrous because it makes your images "shine".
Isn't Maple the doggy cute? I need to post a new photo of her because she is already so much bigger. If I could only get her to stay still and pose for me. ;-) To quote Duke, "I love my little doggy!".
This action allows you to individually adjust both the highlight and lowlight contrast/brightness and does a lowlight contrast boost so you get a nice color "pop" in the process. This action really saves you so much time compared to doing it by "scratch" and it is completely adjustable.
Run this action on an image that has white balance correction. When you start the action it will flatten your image and then ask you to do a lowlight and highlight adjustment (see below). Just adjust the sliders to taste.
This action also sharpens your image for the web or print. Simply adjust the radius. Don't worry about over-sharpening at this point because you can dial down the opacity of the sharpen layer at the end.
After the action runs you will have three layers (background, sharpen and color pop). You can adjust the opacity of the color pop and sharpen layer and use the white layer masks to "paint out" enhancements you don't want (use a soft black brush in NORMAL MODE on the white layer mask).
Download the free CoffeeShop Lustrous Pop Photoshop and Photoshop Elements action HERE!
I will be posting Perfect Portrait 2 and also a little tutorial on making fun little buttons using free icons like the ones I have on the top of my blog. Plus plenty of other goodies! Thank you so much for visiting my blog.
Want all of my favorite CoffeeShop Actions or Design Elements in one simple download AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures. For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.
