How to increase the contrast of a photo in Photoshop. How to adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness using Photoshop

Before you enlarge a picture in Photoshop, you need to adjust its intensity and contrast. In this article I will show how, using correction Brightness/Contrast, increase contrast, create a deeper, more cinematic image. We'll also touch on the topic of adjustment layers and their uses.

1. Corrections and adjustment layers

Before you increase the brightness of an image in Photoshop, it is important that you understand that there is a difference between applying adjustments directly to a layer and applying adjustment layers. Adjustment layers allow you to apply adjustments to a single layer, which you can always delete and change, lower the opacity, or even add a blending mode. It's best to make changes using adjustment layers rather than applying them directly to the layer or image.

2. Brightness and Contrast

You can use the brightness slider to make the image lighter or darker. Using the contrast slider, you can increase or decrease the contrast of the image. By lowering the contrast, you can bring out more detail in the image, revealing information in the dark and light areas.

3. Increase contrast by decreasing contrast

Now I’ll tell you how to increase the quality of a picture in Photoshop. I added an adjustment layer to this image " Brightness/Contrast" I'm going to increase the brightness, but I want to decrease the contrast level in order to bring out some details, which overall will give an overall increase in the contrast of the image.

4. Adjustment layers with blending modes

I added another adjustment layer " Brightness/Contrast" and set its blending mode to "Soft light". And also reduced its opacity a little to soften the contrast, which increases the set blending mode.

5. Reduce contrast before gradient map

After sharpening the image in Photoshop using an adjustment layer, I applied the “Gradient Map”. It will increase the contrast because I gave it two colors and then set this adjustment layer's blending mode to Soft Light. Adding a Gradient Map below the adjustment layer will restore the reduced contrast in the image.

6. Non-destructive editing

All changes made using adjustment layers are reversible. You can always go back and adjust the transparency or other settings. Therefore, it is better to apply adjustment layers rather than direct corrections to a layer or image.

Translation of the article " PHOTOSHOP: THE BEST BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST ADJUSTMENT"was prepared by the friendly project team.

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Photoshop correction Shadows/Highlights helps lighten slightly dark areas of an image and darken light areas to restore hidden detail in photos with...

Step 1

Open a photo of the person in Photoshop. We will increase the color intensity to maximum level, increasing the saturation of tones, sharpness and adding a predominant yellow color. Portraits of men with rough faces and beards are best suited for this effect. After increasing sharpness, many small details will begin to stand out strongly, which you will not notice in photographs of young boys and girls.

Step 2

Create a copy of the photo layer (Ctrl + J) and apply the Unsharp Mask filter (Filter ? Sharpen ? Unsharp Mask).

Step 3

Now let's experiment with color. First you need to reduce its saturation. Do this with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Why do we reduce color saturation if we want, on the contrary, to enhance it? There is no easy answer to this question, but the best explanation is that weak colors create a good base for further actions, since weak saturation brings together contrasting tones.

Step 4

To further unify the tones while still creating a strong color overlay, create a Photo Filter adjustment layer.

If you want to compare the difference before and after adjustments, turn the adjustment layers off and on one by one.

Step 5

Now we will increase the contrast of the entire photo. Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and move the Contrast slider to 36.

You may have noticed that we are working with adjustment layers instead of directly making adjustments through the Image menu? Adjustments. This is done in order to maintain the reversible editing style. Reversible editing allows us to change many settings at any time. This applies to adjustment layers, filters, layer sizes, etc.

Step 6

Now we will create the vignetting. Create a new layer in Multiply mode. Select a soft brush of 200-300 px size with 30% opacity. Paint over the edges of the canvas.

Step 7

Create a new layer in Overlay mode. Select a soft brush of 300px size with 10% opacity. Make several strokes on the person's face to create color variation and focus the viewer's attention.

Merge all layers (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E) and set the resulting blending mode to Soft Light. You will notice that the color saturation and contrast will increase greatly. Reduce the layer fill to 58% to reduce the effect.

Photoshop automatically names new layers in a non-informative way, like “Layer 1”; this name tells us nothing about what the layer will be used for. Let's fix this and give it a meaningful name - double click directly on the name "Layer 1" (or "Layer 1"), it should be highlighted, and enter a custom name, I'll call it "BrightnessContrast".

As a result, the layers panel should look like this:

The top layer has been renamed "Brightness/Contrast".

Step 3: Selecting the Brightness/Contrast Tool

On this moment The "Brightness/Contrast" layer is active (it should be highlighted in blue), go to the "Image" menu tab at the top of the screen, select "Adjustments" and then the top item in the list "Brightness/Contrast":

Go to the Brightness/Contrast tool

Photoshop will then instantly open the tool's dialog box:

Brightness/Contrast tool dialog box.

Step 4: Click the "Auto" button in the dialog box

Before you start dragging the brightness and contrast sliders, the first thing the user wants to do is click on the Auto button, which was added as a new option to the Brightness/Contrast command in Photoshop CS6.

Clicking this button tells Photoshop to set its own, presumably best, settings to improve the quality of the photo. More than just matching, Photoshop analyzes your image and compares it to similar images from many professional photographers, then tries to compare its result with similar pictures:

Clicking the Auto button.

After clicking the Auto button, Photoshop will analyze your photo for a few seconds (the time depends on the size of the photo) and then produce a result that is almost always an improvement over the original. In my case, Photoshop decided to set the Brightness to 43 and Contrast to 14. Compare the original and enhanced photos by hovering your mouse over the image:

Automatic Brightness and Contrast settings using Photoshop algorithms.

Step 5: Adjust Brightness and Contrast using the sliders

If you remember from the lesson “Auto tone, Auto contrast, Auto color correction” that after applying these commands, image corrections can no longer be changed, because Since they do not offer a way to change the results, this statement does not apply to auto-adjustment of Brightness/Contrast. Once you've already pressed the Auto button, you can make your own manual adjustments to further enhance the image using the appropriate sliders. Moving the sliders to the right will increase brightness and contrast, moving to the left will decrease it.

In my case, I want to make the photo a little arty, so I'll drag the Brightness slider a little to the left to lower the brightness to about 38. Then I'll increase the contrast a little by moving the corresponding slider to the right to about 35.

Each image will be different, everyone has their own taste, so there is no recipe to remember here. Just move the sliders, look at the image, fix the changes and leave what you like best:

Manually adjust brightness and contrast using sliders. To compare with the original, move your mouse cursor over the image.

By default, we see an already edited image in the document. If you want to compare your results with how the image looked before adjustments, simply uncheck the Preview option.

Tip: You can quickly enable/disable the preview option by pressing the keyboard key P.

Uncheck the box to view the original image.

Option "Use previous"

By default, this option is disabled, and for good reason. Now I'll check the box to select this option:

Selecting the "Use legacy" option.

As you might have guessed from its name, the option includes the use of outdated algorithms for changing Brightness/Contrast, those algorithms that were used before the Photoshop CS3 updates. Then the Brightness/Contrast setting was, to put it mildly, not the best, and here's why. Let's drag the brightness slider all the way to the right and see what happens.

My image now looks light, all the dark tones have been knocked out. This happened because when "Reuse Previous" was enabled, Photoshop increased the brightness stupidly in linear mode. In other words, he simply took all the tonal values ​​of the image (highlights, shadows and midtones) and brightened them all by same meaning. Areas that were light became pure white, dark areas became light.

Let's compare this with a modern algorithm, for which we simply uncheck "Use legacy", in other words, enable the algorithms introduced from Photoshop CS3, then drag the brightness slider all the way to the right. Result:

Image view with maximum brightness at disabled"Use previous" options.

Now the image is also too bright (usually in real editing the brightness value is never increased to the maximum), but notice that the dark areas are still dark and detail in the bright areas is preserved.

The fact is that, unlike outdated versions, the new brightness control nonlinear. Photoshop first determines which tonal values ​​need lightening and lightens them individually depending on how much they need to be lightened. This avoids brightening dark, shadowed details and also prevents bright areas from being washed out to pure white (all of which washed out to pure white when using outdated algorithms):

This happens when the brightness value is lowered.

Adjusting the contrast works in a similar way, but at the maximum value and with the “Use previous” option enabled, it gives an interesting effect:

Contrast at maximum, "Use previous" enabled.

Reset Brightness/Contrast values ​​to default

If you clicked the "Auto" button and didn't like the results, or you just want to clear all your settings and start editing again, hold down the Alt key and click the "Reset" button. Pressing Alt changes the button's value from Cancel to Reset. When you press Reset, the brightness and contrast values ​​will be set to zero.

Changing the button from “Cancel” to “Reset”.

Step 6: Click OK

When you are satisfied with the result, click OK to commit the changes and close the command dialog box.

Comparison of original and edited version

As we discussed earlier, when the tool window is open, you can compare the edited version with the original image by turning on/off the preview option. Now that we have closed the tool window and accepted the changes, we no longer have access to the preview option. But there is still a way to compare the original and the edited version, to do this, just click on the visibility icon of the "BrightnessContrast" layer:

Turn off the visibility of a layer by clicking on the corresponding icon.

This action will hide from visibility upper layer("BrightnessContrast") in the document, revealing the original image on the Background layer below it.

Click on the same visibility icon again (the empty square where the eye used to be) to turn the visibility of the "BrightnessContrast" layer back on.

Step 7: Lower Layer Opacity (Optional)

If you decide that your new Brightness/Contrast settings are having too much of an impact on your photo, there is an easy way to reduce their impact. Make sure the "BrightnessContrast" layer is still selected, and then simply lower the "Opacity" value in the top right corner of the Layers panel. The default Opacity value is set to 100%, which means the BrightnessContrast layer completely blocks the visibility of the original image. Lowering the opacity allows some of the original image to show through on the Background layer through the "BrightnessContrast" layer. The more you reduce the value, the less impact your adjusted version will have.

Our step by step instructions, will help you quickly and easily edit your photos.

So, let's launch Photoshop.
Open photo - menu item File->Open(or click Ctrl+O)

1. Correct the light.

Let's go to the menu item Image -> Adjustments -> Levels…(Or click Ctrl+L)

Put a tick on Preview(Preview) to immediately see the result.
Drag the sliders until we achieve the desired result:

2. Increase brightness and contrast

Let's go to the menu item Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast…(Brightness/Contrast)

Move the sliders to the right.
Brightness increases brightness, Contrast, respectively, contrast.
Don't forget to tick the Preview to see the result of moving the sliders.

3. Increase sharpness

Let's go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen…

In the window that appears, move the sliders to the right Amount(magnitude, intensity of filter application) and Radius(radius, “coverage” of the effect) until the best result is achieved:

Additionally, you can add sharpening manually using the tool
Sharpen Tool. Find it in the toolbar on the left (or click R):

We adjust the force of influence - Strength, move the slider to about 15.
We also select the brush size - Brush(hot keys for adjusting brush size are X and B)

Using this tool, I decided to slightly increase the sharpness of the links:

Result: