Photoshop Tutorial: A Fun and Easy Way to Enhance Ordinary Photos

Introduction: Sometimes average photos, digital or scanned, can be boring. A great way to make any image or photo more eye appealing and interesting is by enhancing them in Adobe Photoshop. So in this tutorial, we will make an average image more eye catching and interesting by using fun coloring and editing effects. We're also going to learn some sharpening techniques as well. You can start with basically any image or absolutely anything.

Step 1) Open up the picture you would like to edit in a Photoshop canvas. The hot key is CTRL+J. After you open it up, you need to duplicate it. This is very important because it gives you the original to base off of. And if you don't like the final result, you can simply delete the duplicated layer to go back to the original. It's that easy! To duplicate the layer, go to Layer>Duplicate Layer.

Step 2) Now to use the sharpening technique. We're only going to sharpen it a little bit. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen. This will make the image slightly sharper and more clear.

Step 3) Now duplicate the sharpened layer and set the blending mode on the layer menu to Soft Light. If the original image is too dark or too contrasted, you can use some screened layers inside of regular ones. Use your best judgment, it's usually very easy to do so in Photoshop.

Step 4) Usually now the colors may look a bit awkward or weird, maybe leaning towards too much of one color. So now we will add some fun and eye catching color enhancements. Once again, create a new layer. And by using the Paint Bucket Tool (Photoshop hot key "g"), fill this layer using a dark blue. Set this layer to "Difference" on the layer menu bar.

Step 5) Create another (yes another) new layer, fill it with the same blue color as you did before, and set the blending mode to Difference. Also, set the opacity to about 45%.

Step 6) Then you're done! If you don't like your image, you can always delete it or start again and choosing different colors or modes. Photoshop has endless options for changing your photos.