Note: This is not so much a tutorial, as a list of the steps that worked for me.
Experiment, have fun and learn!
The application used in this example is: Photoshop 7.0
1.)‘selective color correction’ Open the picture you want to improve and take a good look at it. The darkest point of the image should be black and the lightest point should be white.
If that’s not the case open the ‘selective color’ dialogue (Image / adjustments /selective color).
Select the color you want to adjust from the drop down menu.
On this particular picture I adjusted the ‘blacks’ by adding 5% more black, the ‘whites’ by subtracting 30% black.
2)Perfect glow Duplicate your background layer and set the top layer to blend mode ‘color dodge’. Adjust the opacity of the new layer to give the picture a nice ‘glow’. (I settled for 75%) Don’t worry if this makes things look a bit grainy, we’ll take care of that in the next step.
3)Soft touch Flatten your image to one layer. Open the ‘Curves’ dialogue (image/adjust/curves). Start with the RGB Channel and give the curve a bit of a push upwards in the middle section. Then do the same to each and every of the three other curves ( red, green, blue)
4)Colorize the background The final touch that will make the main focus of the picture stand out even more. Create a new empty top layer and set the blend mode to ‘color’. Click on the gradient tool in the toolbox. Click on the dropdown menu to open the gradient editor. Choose one of the presets (or make a new color scheme) and apply the gradient on the empty layer.
Click on the erase tool, ‘select’ brush mode and erase areas in the foreground ( the main focus of the image) Adjust the opacity.
And ta-da, you're done! That wasn’t too hard now was it?
