How to make your colors really pop in photoshop. Makes skies instantly bluer and more. This 1 minute tip shows you how to use a adjustment (in a different way than intended) to gain super control and isolate the colors in photoshop. I think you will love this little hack that I came up with.
I am going to show you how to make colors amazing in Photoshop using tool you wouldn’t expect to use for color and that’s the black and white filter.
This is one of those “I wonder what would happen if” moments I had a few years ago. I knew that the Black and White Adjustment darkens and lightens the grayscale areas based on their color. I wondered how it would look on a color image if I used a blending mode. It turns out that it works great and I use this trick all the time now, so here I’m sharing it with you, as a useful trick to have up your digital sleeve. It works particularly well for skies.
Lets start with this photo I shot in Santa Fe, NM.
I really want to make the sky and colors on this image pop.
1. Create a Black and White Adjustment Layer
In the Layers Panel, click and hold on the Layer Style icon. Choose Black and White
2. The Magic blending mode
Change the blending mode in the layers panel. Where it says normal, click and change to Luminosity.
Luminosity Blend mode will preserve the color and change the brightness of the image. (See my essential guide on Photoshop Blending modes tutorial here).
3. Make the adjustments
As you move the sliders, you’ll notice that the tones get darker or lighter under each of the colors.
And here is the end result, easy!
You may ask the question, Why not use the HSL sliders? Yes, HSL does a very similar thing and I do use it all the time. However you have the go into the Camera Raw to filter to do that. If you want to keep in nondestructive, you will need to convert the image to Smart Object, which isn’t a big deal if you aren’t going to apply any pixel level adjustments to the image. If you are looking for a quick fix which is non destructive without using Smart Objects, then the Black and White Adjustment layer will work perfectly.
There are many ways of doing things in Photoshop, and like a game of chess, the more tricks you have, the faster you can get to the end result.
Just one thing to be aware of with this technique, don’t move the sliders too much. Extreme movements can cause visual artifacts.
So, anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed it. It was great seeing you here at the CAFE
Let me know your favorite Photoshop hack in the comments!
Thanks for watching
Colin
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