Brightening and enhancing images

Open your image in photoshop, first we will be adjusting the saturation of the image to bring out the colours, to do this go to the image menu at the top of the screen, go down to adjustment where another side menu will appear (see image below) then you will need to select the Hue/Saturation option.


At the Hue/Saturation window that pops up there will be three slides (see image below) we will be using the saturation slider, I want to really bring out the colours of the beach hut doors so I have dragged the saturation slider to the right, you don't want to slide it too far over, depending on the image as it may look over saturated, now I am happy with my adjustments I will click ok.

Tip: In the Hue/Saturation window make sure the preview option is ticked.


Now that is done I want to brighten up the dull looking sky, for this we will be using the Pen tool and the Gradient tool.

Tip: On the layers window, make sure fill is set to 0% when using the pen tool.

Select the pen tool from the tool bar on the left and start clicking around the edges of the sky, you may need to zoom in for detailed bits, to make curves around object with the pen tool click hold and drag, once you are happy with the curve you will need to alt+click on the anchor point to carry on (see image below)


once you have clipped around the sky and connected the path back to the beginning, go to the window menu at the top of the screen and select paths, in the path window you will see a path, you need to click on it and go to the arrow on the right of the path window (see image below) on the path window menu you need to click make selection this will give you a make selection window, in the make selection window under feather radius make it .5 pixels and tick the anti aliased option, operation should be new selection, now click ok.


Select the gradient tool from the tool bar on the left and click the gradient bar at the top of the window to edit the gradient, you will get a gradient window pop up, go down to the gradient and click on the left bottom colour stop on the gradient, this will give you a colour picker window with a vertical slider, pull the slider to a sky blue and click in the colour window on the left of the slider to select the blue you want, now click on ok on the colour picker window, and then you should have a blue to white gradient, click ok on the gradinet editor window, now click hold and drag form top to bottom of your marqued selection on your image, If you dont get it looking right the first time just click and drag over it again until you get the right result, now you have your nice blue sky (see image below). Don't forget to save.


Tip 1. Hover over tools with your cursor and their names will pop up.

Tip 2. Tools on the toolbar with arrows in their bottom right corner have diffrent tools grouped with them, to select these tools click and hold on the tool and a drop down menu will appear allowing you to select alternative tool options.

Tip 3. Always save as your file and keep the original, just incase you need to revert back to it later on.