Make Your Photo Impressive

There are various basic techniques to make your photos look impressive. We're going to demonostrate two techniques today, one by using Color Balance to change a photo's mood and another by creating Gradient Map to create a nice colour contrast.

Open the photo you want to edit or choose this photo here:



Color Balance

With this Adjustment layer, you can change your photo's color variety. Go to menu Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance



Notice how this changes the mood of the photo and how they feel differently:

Using warm colors:





Result:



Using cool colors:







Result:




Using emerald colors:








Result:




Gradient Maps:

We can also use gradient maps to create a very nice colour contrast. To start, go to menu Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map...





Choose any gradient. I'm using black and white to create a monotone effect:



Now to create the contrast, zoom into the parts you want the contrast created:



Pick the Eraser Tool , set the foreground color to #ffffff (white) and start erasing parts of the gradient map:



Note, setting foreground to #ffffff (white) will give you the color areas setting foreground to #000000 (black) will give black and white color

You can also press 'X' as a shortcut to switch between black and white brushes.

Keep brushing on your photo and you will have something like the following result.

Result: