Tutorial # 2

What is your starting point when scrapbooking? Journalling, paper and embellishments? For me it is the photos. I LOVE photos! For this reason I like to make them look as good as they possibly can. So often my lighting conditions aren't great or I didn't zoom in enough to really capture my subject. There are lots of ways to make mediocre photos look amazing just using Photoshop. I like Jessica Sprague's (this is from her Computer Tricks For Scrapbooking 2 book, I highly recommend it!)method of how to brighten a dark photo:

"1. Open your dark photo. Right click on the background layer in the Layers palette and choose Duplicate Layer from the flyout menu.


2. Target your new layer in the Layers Palette. At the top of the Layers Palette, drop down the box that says"normal" and choose Screen to set your econd layer to the Screen blending mode. The Screen blending mode always makes your layer (and therefore the layers below it) lighter, so this is a quick and easy way to instantly lighten a photo.

3. The image may appear a little washed out, so let's reduce the opacity of our new layer and add some shadows back in. With your new layer still targeted, go to the top of the Layers Pallette and slide the Opacity slider down until you see the dark shadows begin to reappear. Target your background layer. Go to Enhance>Adjust Lighting> Levels. In the Levels dialog box, slide the middle gray slider toward the left to brighten up the midtone area. Then, slide the left black slider toward the right, just until your shadows begin to darken. Click OK in the Levels dialog box and print your photo."

Once you have mastered this technique you can play around with the other blending modes to change how your photos look. I like to add another layer and apply a Soft Light blending mode to it. I pull the opacity down a bit and voila you have just made your colors pop a little bit more.

Check out Jessica Sprague's tutorial on creating a soft focus effect too!
Here's my example using light and color adjustments as well as the soft focus effect:


Big thanks to Jamie M. for being my model!