- Lesson overview
- Strategy for retouching
- Resolution and image size
- Getting started
- Straightening and cropping an image
- Making automatic adjustments
- Manually adjusting the tonal range
- Removing a color cast
- Replacing colors in an image
- Adjusting lightness with the Dodge tool
- Adjusting saturation with the Sponge tool
- Applying the Unsharp Mask filter
- Comparing automatic and manual results
- Saving the image for four-color printing
- Review
Making automatic adjustments
Photoshop contains a number of highly effective automatic features that fix many pictures with very little effort on your part. These may be all you need for certain types of jobs. However, when you want more control, you can dig down into some of the more technical features and options available in Photoshop.
Just to be a good sport about it, you’ll first try the automatic adjustments to brighten the colors in the lesson image file. Then, you’ll make adjustments using manual controls on another copy of the image.
- If you didn’t save your work after you cropped the image in the previous exercise, choose File > Save now.
- Choose File > Save As, rename the cropped file 03Auto.psd, and click Save.
- Choose Image > Adjustments > Auto Color.
- Choose Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight.
- In the Shadow/Highlight dialog box, drag the Highlight and Shadow sliders as needed until you think the image looks good. Make sure that Preview is checked so that you can see the changes applied to the image window as you work.
- Click OK to close the dialog box, and then choose File > Save.
- Close the 03Auto.psd file. Then choose File > Open Recent > 03Work.psd to open that image file.