Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

So you think you have just taken the perfect picture and then you release the flash has just ruined it, but it is possible to compensate for it effects.

Now a days it very hard to get a great photo with a built in flash. It’s great for fill in effects, but if it’s the main light source, the prognosis isn’t as good. There are two problems why these happens. Firstly it is the front lighting squashes detail, and the lack of depth information will make you screen look flat. The second reason is because the brightness falls of rapidly over a distance, this causes the background to go dark.

There is very little that can be done about the front lighting effect, but we can fix the second problem which is between foreground and background. In many scenes it’s a linear effect, with an over bright foreground and a dark background, this means it’s ideal to fix with the gradient. Start off by clicking “create new fill” or “adjustment layer” and then make sure you select gradient from the list.

Now for the next step, set the style to linear and choose the black, white preset form the gradient picker or gradient editor. The angles must be set to 90 degrees, also make sure you have the lightest area at the bottom and the darkest areas at the top. Then make sure the “align with layer” is ticked and then click ok. This then will bring your photo to look very dark at this point, but like anything in photoshop it can be fixed.

Now for the last step, reduce the opacity of your layer to turn down the effect until the scene is evenly lit to your likings. You will find some scenes will be easier to balance than most. For the more advanced images which you might be having difficult with there’s always a neat little trick in photoshop to sort them out. In your sidebar, you can use “Levels – Curves or even Shadow / Highlight” to brighten your images up.